Colson Whitehead's new book The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death should be more fun than it is; Grantland paid the $10,000 stake for Whitehead-- a professional novelist and amateur poker player-- to take part in The World Series of Poker; Whitehead trains for the main event by playing in smaller tournaments in Atlantic City and he acquires a classy female novelist and professional poker coach who has actually played in the big event, and so the book has the potential to take on a Rocky tone, but playing poker at this level isn't much fun, nor is the training, and Colson Whitehead is not a fun guy, in fact, the funniest thing about the book may be the picture on the back cover, where he sports his poker uniform, a custom made "Republic of Anhedonia" track jacket . . . and while Whitehead is a bit of a grouch, the writing is hip, the allusions come fast and furious, and there's quite a bit of poker knowledge wedged in between his existential griping.
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This Underground Railroad is Actually Underground
I was pleasantly surprised (and pleasantly horrified) by Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad . . . I assumed that because of all the critical praise the book received (and because of the content) that reading it would be like eating fiber, good for you but no fun, but I was very wrong; Whitehead starts with the childhood conceit that the underground railroad is actually an underground railroad, and in the spirit of the magical realists, he makes you buy his fantasy . . . and in between the dream-like underground journeys on the train, the main character Cora-- a runaway slave-- who suffered abominably on the plantation and witnessed things even worse than she endured, finds herself in a fragmented variegated mainly hostile country; each stop on her journey is insidiously evil in it's own unique way; there are scenes reminiscent of the Tuskegee experiment, Anne Frank's captivity, Flannery O'Connor's Gothic South, and the stereotypical Southern plantation . . . and the common thread that unites this ugly patchwork of loosely connected territories of racism and abuse, is the slave-hunter Ridgeway and his odd companion/slave Homer, an educated and erudite miniature lackey on a bizarre epic journey far from his African-American roots, making his way in the only way that he can, betraying his people in order to thrive and survive; the book certainly evokes the state of our country today: fragmented, unsympathetic and divisive, and the theme is ominous-- perhaps only a civil war and the consequent reconstruction can mend the rips and tears in the fabric of our nation . . . but despite this heaviness, the novel is a damned good read . . . horrific, hallucinatory, compelling, and epic by turns, and just when you think you can't take it any longer, when you've entered the broken mind of the slave and see no escape from the shackles and chains, then the plot takes off and you're on the train, underground, excited to poke your head above ground in some new place, with some new tone and tenor, possibly better than what came before.
2016 Book List
Here's what I read in 2016 (and despite reading nearly a book a week, I feel dumber than ever) and if you head over to Gheorghe: The Blog, you can see my eleven favorites . . . and if you're really feeling crazy and literary, you can check out my previous lists, but if you're going to read one book on this list, I would suggest Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather . . . I've read it twice, and I'll bet I'll read it again someday . . . anyway, here they are-- it's a little scary for me when I peruse this list, because I can't remember all that much about some of the titles, but I guess that's what happens when you read too much;
1) Trunk Music (Michael Connelly)
2) Hide & Seek (Ian Rankin)
3) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Robert D. Putnam
4) One Plus One Jojo Moyes
5) Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World
6) Death Comes to the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
7) The Milagro Beanfield War (John Nichols)
8) Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
9) The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run-- or Ruin-- an Economy (Tim Harford)
10) Tim Harford The Undercover Economist
11) The Expatriates (Janice Y. K. Lee)
12) Tim Harford The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
13) Dale Russakoff The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools?
14) Charlie Jane Anders All the Birds in the Sky
15) Mohamed A. El-Erian The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
16) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Evelyn Waugh)
17) The Power of Habit:Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
18) Angels Flight (Michael Connelly)
19) Robert J. Gordon The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War
20) Tony Hillerman A Thief of Time
21) Peter Frankopan Silk Roads: A New History of the World
22) Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger
23) Tony Hillerman Listening Woman
24) Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind
25) The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest David Roberts
26) Roadside Picnic (The Strugatsky Brothers)
27) Chuck Klosterman But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past
28) White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer
29) The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will Shape our future by Kevin Kelly
30) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
31) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Jerome K. Jerome
32) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
33) Truly Madly Guilty Liane Moriarty
34) Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
35) Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil
36) Ghosts by Reina Telgemeier
37) The Walking Dead 23-26
38) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark For the Ivy Leagues by Jeff Hobbs
39) The Nix by Nathan Hill
40) Bill Bryson The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
41) Tim Wu The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
42) Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
43) Nicholson Baker Substitute
44) The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts
45) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.
1) Trunk Music (Michael Connelly)
2) Hide & Seek (Ian Rankin)
3) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Robert D. Putnam
4) One Plus One Jojo Moyes
5) Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World
6) Death Comes to the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
7) The Milagro Beanfield War (John Nichols)
8) Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
9) The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run-- or Ruin-- an Economy (Tim Harford)
10) Tim Harford The Undercover Economist
11) The Expatriates (Janice Y. K. Lee)
12) Tim Harford The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
13) Dale Russakoff The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools?
14) Charlie Jane Anders All the Birds in the Sky
15) Mohamed A. El-Erian The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
16) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Evelyn Waugh)
17) The Power of Habit:Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
18) Angels Flight (Michael Connelly)
19) Robert J. Gordon The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War
20) Tony Hillerman A Thief of Time
21) Peter Frankopan Silk Roads: A New History of the World
22) Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger
23) Tony Hillerman Listening Woman
24) Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind
25) The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest David Roberts
26) Roadside Picnic (The Strugatsky Brothers)
27) Chuck Klosterman But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past
28) White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer
29) The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will Shape our future by Kevin Kelly
30) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
31) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Jerome K. Jerome
32) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
33) Truly Madly Guilty Liane Moriarty
34) Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
35) Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil
36) Ghosts by Reina Telgemeier
37) The Walking Dead 23-26
38) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark For the Ivy Leagues by Jeff Hobbs
39) The Nix by Nathan Hill
40) Bill Bryson The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
41) Tim Wu The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
42) Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
43) Nicholson Baker Substitute
44) The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts
45) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.
The Books Dave Read in 2023
1) The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
2) The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
3) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
4) Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
5) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
6) Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline by Simon Parkin
7) The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters
8) Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
9) The Revolutionary: Sam Adams by Stacy Schiff
10) How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
11) South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
12) Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson
13) This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas
14) The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet
15) Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
16) The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy
17) The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
18) Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
19) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
20) Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It by Daniel Knowles
21) The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
22) Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
23) 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
24) If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
25) Ringworld by Larry Niven
26) My Murder by Katie Williams
27) Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
28) The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
29) The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
30) God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker
31) Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong
32) Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
33) Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
34) Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey
35) Counterweight by Djuna
36) Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
37) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
38) Pet by Catherine Chidgey
39) Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste by Carl Wilson
40) Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
41) The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
42) Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
43) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
44) Wellness by Nathan Hill
45) Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
46) All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
47) When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.
New York in the 70s: A Mealier Big Apple
Colson Whitehead resumes the adventures of Ray Carney-- furniture salesman and occasional criminal-- in Crook Manifesto (the sequel to Harlem Shuffle) and you get a wonderfully gritty and graphic view of the Big Apple (and the surrounding areas, even Jersey . . . at one point a vehicle is abandoned on the "raggedy edge" of New Brunswick) in the 1970s . . . all the corruption, revolution, urban renewal, urban decay, cons, grifts, and wild times in a city that is a long way from gentrification-- a city that is literally on fire . . . a joyous cast of characters mixed up in a metropolis on the edge of chaos.
Shuffling Around Harlem and Elsewhere
Colson Whitehead's new novel Harlem Shuffle is not as dark and profound as The Underground Railroad but it still explores race and place-- Ray Carney appears to be a straight furniture salesmen to most of the uptown denizens of Harlem-- but he's more crooked than the average person might think (but less crooked than his father and many of the hoods that abound in his neighborhood) and while there's no surreal time-traveling train, the structures of grift, corruption and power are quite different when he pops out of the subway downtown, where the white people are-- the book is a caper tale, a revenge story, an astute take on the duality of human nature, an evocative period piece, and a real page turner, definitely worth a read.
Book List 2022
Here are the books I finished (possibly with some skimming) this year . . . I started plenty of others and quit them because . . . well because I wanted to . . . that's what's great about reading-- if you've got access to a library, you aren't beholden to any particular book:
1) Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson
2) Lazarus Volumes 1-6
3) Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
4) Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson
5) The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
6) The Given Day by Dennis LeHane
7) Live by Night by Dennis LeHane
8) A Little History of the World by Ernst Gombrich
9) Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
10) Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
11) Caliban's War by James A. Corey
12) Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
13) The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
14) Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath
15) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
16) Abbadon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
17) The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
18) The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
19) One-Shot Harry by Gary Philips
20) The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer
21) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
22) Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
23) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
24) Harrow by Joy Williams
25) The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
26) Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
27) The Foundling by Ann Leary
28) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
29) Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
30) Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
31) Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner
32) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle
33) Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
34) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
35) Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
36) The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
37) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
38) City on Fire by Don Winslow
39) Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
40) what if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe
41) Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Stephen Johnson
42) The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
43) The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race For a Gun, and The Community United to Save Them by Sudhir Venkatesh
44) Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
45) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
46) Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
47) Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
48) Liberation Day by George Saunders
49) Upgrade by Blake Crouch
50) Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
51) Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway
52) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
53) Pines by Blake Crouch
54) The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte
55) Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
56) Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
57) Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross
Teach Your Teenager to Think Poker
This spring, during the COVID lockdown, I started playing poker. Low stakes Texas Hold’em. I wanted to keep my mind active, and I was sick of watching Bosch. That guy is a grouch.
So I took up online gambling.
To many of you, I’m sure this sounds like a terrible decision, but I wasn’t alone. Online poker is legal in New Jersey, and the poker sites experienced a lot of extra traffic during the pandemic. This was great for the regulars, the grinders. Easy money. Online poker is tough. There are quite a few seasoned veterans out there, so you’ve got to know what you’re doing. I was lucky not to lose my entire (albeit tiny) bankroll in the first few weeks.
At the start, I thought this was something relaxing and fun I could do in the evening while drinking a few beers, something to pass the time.
If you’re serious about learning to play poker, that’s not how it goes. Instead of cracking an IPA, you’re better off brewing a pot of coffee. This is NOT passive entertainment.
I also found that I enjoyed reading books about poker just as much (or possibly more) than I enjoyed playing poker. These books taught me to think poker. How to assess risk and reward. Compute pot odds. Analyze your position. Bet for value. Read hand combinations. How to control your emotions, and avoid tilting into madness.
And while I might sound like a reprobate, I also learned that you should encourage your kids to gamble. Placing an intelligent wager involves so many necessary skills that children need to hone — especially teenage children — that you’ve got to let them try, even if the populace calls you a corrupt degenerate.
That’s what the populace called Socrates.
If you are going to teach your kids to gamble, teach them poker. I’m sure there are valuable administrative lessons to be learned from managing a fantasy football team and rolling the bones can school you in basic probability (Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski taught us this in The Wire). Still, none of these games require the philosophical and strategic thinking you need while playing poker, Texas Hold’em in particular.
If my son had utilized some poker logic on his epic adventure, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up cleaning all the bathrooms in our house. It’s not like I hadn’t taught him.
If Woody had gone straight to the police . . .
Before my online poker experience, I thought I was a decent poker player. I’m good at math, I like probability and statistics, and I’ve always done well when I’ve played with friends. But playing countless hands online and reading a slew of classic poker books has shown me the many, many holes in my game. Flaws in my logic and thinking. Spontaneously stupid reactions.
I get overly competitive. I make rash decisions. I’m too curious. I’m either too passive or I’m too aggressive. I play too many hands. My bet-sizing is often imprecise. I bet too much. I check too much. I call too much. I don’t bet the river enough. I could go on and on. The best way to improve at poker is through brutal self-reflection. If you don’t analyze your mistakes and play better, you will lose your money. The scoreboard is your ever-fluctuating bankroll.
Some people learn to play poker through repetition, playing countless hands for decades. This works, but it’s arduous and expensive. Some people use videos. There’s a plenitude of resources on YouTube if you’re willing to wade through them. Some people pay serious money to get coached. But I’m a high school English teacher, and so I turned to my old standby: books. I read quite a few. Due to COVID-19, there was nothing but time.
Some poker books are mathematical and tactical . . . works by David Sklansky, Dan Harrington, and Ed Miller. Some are more evocative. British poet Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town is regarded as the best book about poker ever written. It’s stylish and authentic. But it won’t help your game. Tommy Angelo and Phil Gordon are more philosophical and meditative. Gus Hansen’s bestseller Every Hand Revealed is candid and fun, in a goofy sort of way. Lots of exclamation points. In The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, Colson Whitehead comes across as an existential grumbler. If you want ambiguity, read the essays in Full Tilt Poker. Every author has a different methodology.
The takeaway from the literature is this: poker is an entire branch of knowledge. It incorporates psychology, game theory, statistics, probability, economics, risk assessment, and character analysis. It can get really deep. If you want to hear how deep, listen to an episode of the podcast Just Hands. Jackson Laskey and James Bilderbeck dissect one hand per episode. Thirty minutes to an hour of “nebulous thoughts” on poker strategy and decision-making. They slow downtime, which is the basis of philosophical thinking.
In the moment, whether we are playing poker or living our life, we use heuristics — rules of thumb — to make our choices. We don’t have enough time to deeply analyze every decision. But if we had the time, any moment can get sticky. My point is — whether in cards or life — there’s no formula. It’s more than simply looking at your hand and throwing down a bet.
Like many of you, I was doing a lot of parenting during the pandemic. Certainly more parenting than poker. We all learned that when schools and sports and trampoline gyms are shut down, you’ve got to up your parenting game. There’s no formula on how to do that either.
I tried to encourage my two high school boys to stay active, in mind and body. To finish their remote school work. To read something other than memes and texts on their phones.
My younger son — a shy and reticent freshman who hadn’t hit puberty yet — was unfazed by the pandemic. He got his school work done, played video games and Magic and Dungeons & Dragons online with his friends, and enjoyed sleeping in. Though he was annoyed that tennis season was canceled, he was happy enough to play with me. We found some courts that didn’t close and played nearly every day. Sometimes he wandered around town with his nerdy friend Martin, but he was happy enough watching shows like Big Shrimpin’ and Silicon Valley with the family
He wasn’t worried about missing keg parties or flirting with girls.
My older son, a sophomore, was a different story. He was so angry about losing tennis season that he didn’t want to play with us. It reminded him of all the good times he was missing with his friends on the team. He recently grew seven inches (shooting past my wife and me) and he had something of a social life before the pandemic: he had a girlfriend for most of winter track season, he went to a house party and drank too much alcoholic punch (and consequently spent the night puking) and he was president of the Rocket Propulsion Club.
He was a real teenager.
While he tolerated us (we played a lot of Bananagrams) this wasn’t enough action for a sixteen-year-old man-child. And where there is action — trouble and risk — poker logic is crucial. Right?
This is always the question with an analogy. Does it hold water?
Is poker just a game, or does it have some bearing on reality?
Do pinochle and Parcheesi teach you essential life skills or are they simply ways to idle away the time? How about chess? Is football similar to modern warfare? Is hockey similar to anything?
In The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Spencer — Holden Caulfield’s history teacher — tells Holden that “life is a game” that one plays “according to the rules.”
Holden disagrees.
“Game my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right — I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
I empathize with Holden. Not all analogies hold up. But I’d like to make the case that poker does. Especially Texas Hold’em.
Here’s a quick primer, in case you need convincing.
Old-time poker champion Doyle Brunson called no limit “the Cadillac of poker” for a reason. There’s more on the line, more ways to play, more variation in style, and — because of the “no limit” element — it hasn’t been solved by computers. It’s a miracle of limited, but significant information.
Just like life.
Here’s how it goes. First off, everyone gets two cards, face down. These are your “hole” cards. You see them, no one else does. If you like these cards, you have the option to bet on your hand: invest in it right off the bat. You also have the option to “check” to someone else’s bet — essentially match the bet so you can continue playing. You could also brazenly raise the bet. Or you could do the opposite. You could fold. Quit the hand, before anything wild happens. This decision is yours alone.
That’s the miracle of poker. You can quit before the game even starts. Opt-out. The best poker players are the best quitters. It’s the biggest part of the game. This may sound odd, to those of you who frown upon quitting, but getting out when the getting out is good is a real skill.
We often tell children “quitters never win,” but there are many advantages to quitting that are often not promoted. The Freakonomics episode “The Upside of Quitting” explores this theme.
Now, if you’re sitting at the table, you can’t completely avoid betting. Twice per round, you are forced to bet a little bit. These are the antes. The small blind and the big blind. Otherwise, there would be no risk at all to play and you could wait forever for a pair of aces. The blinds ensure that if you don’t eventually play, you will lose all your money. You’ll be blinded out. So if you are at the table, there’s always some risk. But you can leave if you like. This isn’t Russian roulette with Robert Deniro and Christopher Walken in a Vietcong prison camp. You can always walk away from the table.
After the initial round of betting on your two hole cards, then the dealer “flops” out three shared cards. Everyone can see these. So you’ve got shared information and private information. You weigh this and decide if you want to bet, check, raise, or fold. The way the other people bet, check, raise and fold reveals information about their hands. This could be accurate information or they could be bluffing, representing cards they don’t have. You have to decide. Be careful of peer pressure, you don’t want to bet just because everyone does. You need to like your hand, at least a little bit.
Another card is turned. This card is called “the turn” because it can turn the tide of the hand. There is more betting. You can still quit! Although, mentally it gets harder to quit once you’ve come this far because you’ve put some of your hard-earned money into the pot. You want that money back, but it’s not yours any longer. It’s up for grabs. It’s hard to accept. We’ll get more into this logical fallacy later. But remember, the best poker players are the best quitters.
At any time during this process, in “no limit” Texas Hold’em, a player can bet all their money. The nuclear option. Most poker does not operate like this. There is a limit to how much you can bet. It makes it easier to compute the odds of winning the hand, versus the percentage of the money you need to bet. This “all-in” option in Texas Hold’em is what makes the game so indeterminate.
You may be able to figure out the percentages of drawing a flush, but can you figure out the percentages of the human mind? You may be able to imagine what a rational being would bet, but what about the lunatic on your right? How about the genius on your left? Is that a regular guy with a good hand, a super-genius utilizing combinatorial game theory, or a spoiled dilettante with a giant trust fund?
There’s no way to know for sure.
After the turn, one more card is revealed, for a total of five shared cards. This card is called “the river” or “fifth street.” This is the card that can make your hand. Or you can fall off the cliff, into the river and be swept away. Sold down the river. It’s an apt metaphor for this essay.
Now there are five community cards and two private cards. You choose the best five of the seven to make your hand.
The best hand wins the pot. I won’t get into what beats what . . . if you don’t know that a full house beats a straight, then I’d like to invite you to a Tuesday night Zoom poker game.
Now let’s extend the analogy in a general way. For many people, life during the pandemic was similar to playing poker.
Most of us were making calculated bets all the time. Getting together with friends in the backyard? A small bet. Outdoor seating at a restaurant? Maybe a little bigger. Playing tennis? Marching in a protest? Visiting a crowded beach? Reopening school? Who knows? All different amounts of risk and reward. Different amounts of pleasure, different amounts of action and excitement and different risks of contracting COVID.
Of course, there were old people and immune-compromised people who had to sit the game out. Some essential workers were forced to put their immune systems on the line for eight hours every day. For these people, the pandemic was not a game.
But for many of us, it was. Getting plastered in a crowded Miami bar turned out to be an all-in bet. The nuclear option. Big fun, but it’s also the highest risk to get the virus.
You could always fold your hand. If the party got too crowded, you could leave. Opt-out. If there were hordes of people inside Costco, you could come back some other time. Play another day.
My kids were playing some pandemic poker.
My younger son was playing it pretty close to the vest. Lots of online stuff. Sometimes he’d go out walking or play some tennis. Small bets.
My older son was running every day with a couple of friends. He was going over to Rutgers with his buddies and doing Rocket Propulsion stuff. He was playing video games in his friend’s backyard. Also smallish bets.
But like I said, my older son Alex was a real teenager. Half man, half child. He needed more action than that.
On a hot day in June, he went over to a friend’s house, ostensibly to play Spikeball. Thunderstorms were in the forecast. The lockdown had been going forever. No school, no organized sports, no graduation parties, no hanging out in an air-conditioned house with friends.
Around noon, Alex called and told me the two older boys — seniors — had decided to bike to Princeton. Alex was going as well. They were going to take the towpath (a.k.a. D & R Canal State Park) from New Brunswick to Rocky Hill and then bike into Princeton proper and eat lunch. It’s a long way there. Twenty-five miles. And then you’ve got to get back . . .
I told him this wasn’t a great idea and listed the reasons:It was too late in the day.
It was hot.
The forecast called for thunderstorms.
He wasn’t wearing spandex bike shorts . . . he would chafe.
He was using his younger brother’s bike, which was too small for him.
Essentially, I was explaining that this was not a great hand. Sometimes, you’ve got to be patient and wait for another.
Pete Townsend explains this in the song “It’s Hard.”
Anyone can do anything if they hold the right card.
So, I’m thinking about my life now . . .
I’m thinking very hard.
Deal me another hand, Lord, this one’s very hard.
I didn’t tell him he couldn’t go. I just clearly laid out the problems. I assumed he was bluffing. This is one of the holes in my poker game. I often think people are bluffing, pretending that their awful hand is good. I assume they will come to their senses soon enough. I want to see what happens because I think I know more than they do.
This kind of curiosity is costly.
Most of the time, people are sincere about their bets. Bluffing is counter-intuitive and feels wrong. People generally believe their hand is good enough, even if their hand is bad. They just think it’s better than it is.
My wife asked, “Did you tell him he could go?”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s going. I just told him it wasn’t a great idea.”
My wife shook her head. She hates my wishy-washy parenting. But there’s no rule book for these situations.
I should point out: this is a kid who never bikes anywhere. God knows why, but he’s opposed to biking. He likes to ride his skateboard. He borrowed his younger brother’s mountain bike for this adventure, which was too small for him. So I assumed he’d be turning back sooner rather than later.
I should have considered his company. Alex was a sophomore, and he was going on this adventure with two athletic seniors. Guys about to graduate, guys ready to leave home and go to college. Guys with a bigger bankroll than my son. There might be some peer pressure to not fold.
When Kenny Rogers sang “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” he skipped all the psychology. You’re not playing in a vacuum. There’s pressure not to fold them! Your friends never want you to fold them. They want to see some action. Especially some action with your money. Vicarious action.
I told Alex he could turn around at any time. He was NOT all in. I would put the bike rack on the van and pick him up anywhere along the route. No problem. I would give his friends a lift as well, if they wanted to bail. I could fit all three bikes on the rack.
I figured at some point on this ride — or perhaps even before they set off — he would fold his hand. It was a bad hand, for the reasons I listed above. But I wanted him to figure that out.
Alex told me that they packed some food and plenty of water and some rain gear.
Helmet?
No helmet.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail is a flat path that lies between the Raritan River and the canal. It is all called the tow road because mules used to tow barges and canal boats up and down it. The canal is just a foot or two below the level of the path, but there are often cliffs down to the river. It’s not dangerous in the daytime — the path is well kept. There are occasional ruts and roots, and plenty of poison ivy on the sides of the path, but no terrain that warrants a helmet.
The no-helmet-bet is one worth making on this kind of trail. The chance you’re going to fall and crack your skull is minuscule. The pleasure of the wind in your hair is definite. And it was hot.
When’s the last time you fell while riding a bike on a straight path?
At the start of their trip, luck was on their side. They got a good flop. They made the long haul to Princeton without mishap, and the storms didn’t hit until they got into town. They grabbed some lunch, waited out the rain under an awning, and then decided to take the bus home.
They were giving up on the turn, and that was fine. Typical of so many poker hands. You open with a big bet, continue to bet on the flop, and then take stock of the situation and decide to fold. Quit before things get too intense. They could do the entire fifty-mile there-and-back-trip some other time.
My wife and I were happy with this decision, it was getting late and we figured we were going to have to drive to Princeton to give Alex a ride home. The bus was a great call. Saved us a trip in the car. The bus was supposed to leave at 6:15 PM.
I texted Alex at 6:20 PM to see if he had caught the bus. No answer. Twenty minutes later, I got a text. They missed the bus. They had decided to bike home. I called him and told him he wasn’t going to make it before dark. He insisted they would make it. If not, he said, they would get off the towpath and ride on the road. He said that his friends had flashlights. Alex did not have a flashlight, nor did he have a light on his bike.
He also wasn’t wearing a helmet, so we didn’t want him to ride on the road in the dark. We told him once it got dark, that we wanted him to stop riding the tow road — regardless of what his older friends were doing. He agreed to this. A couple of hours later, it got dark. We got in touch with him. Alex said they were near Manville — about ten miles from home — and we instructed him to get off the tow road at the nearest exit. There was a D&R Canal Trail parking lot right in Manville. We hoped to find him there. We headed west in the minivan, traveling parallel to the canal.
This where poker becomes a psychological game. Logically, he should have backed out. Folded. He had put a lot of time and effort in, it was a lot of fun, but it was over. Pitch black and he was riding along a river. But many people — including myself — often have trouble leaving an interesting hand. You’ve invested so much. People throw good money after bad. Alex decided to go all-in on the river. This was a bet we didn’t want him to make, but circumstances pressured him into it. This happens sometimes. You should know when to fold’em, but when no one else is folding their hand, sometimes your last card doesn’t matter. You blindly bet the last card because you are married to the bet. You can’t back out . . . even though you can. How could he leave these two senior boys? They were pot-committed into biking from Highland Park to Princeton and back, and they were going all-in. Alex told us they discussed the risks and rewards of this play. He knew he was going to get grounded, but wanted to make the entire trip. This is what separates the best players from the good players. They can back out of a hand even when they’ve invested a great deal of time and energy into it. Alex knew the right thing to do but still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
So my wife drove the van, while I navigated a route as close to the river as possible. I texted Alex. No answer. And he didn’t have his phone location on. We lost touch with him. He wasn’t at the Manville parking lot, so we started driving around, finding places where the canal path intersected with the road. I could see the path through the trees, and occasionally make out the silhouettes of fishermen or hikers. No group of kids on bikes, though. It was getting darker and darker.
We were hoping to stumble on him at one of the bridges or park entrances, but no such luck.
My wife and I both certainly had some grim thoughts running through our heads. While the path was easy enough to navigate in the daytime, at night it was a different story. There were roots and occasional potholes and it was surrounded on both sides by water. There were steep drops to the river, which was rocky. The canal is deep. And our son wasn’t wearing a helmet. If he fell, hit his head, and slid into the river or the canal, that would be an ugly situation.
My wife decided if we didn’t get in touch with him by 10 PM, we were calling the police. I agreed.
We finally heard from him at 9:30. The nick of time. He told us they had screwed up the location and were closer than they thought, well past Manville. We found him and the other boys in Johnson Park, which is a mile from our house.
Alex was grounded for the week. He had a list of chores longer than his arm (sometimes it’s nice when the kids get in trouble).
It’s too bad because he almost didn’t get into any trouble at all. He would have had a great story and been on an epic adventure, and suffered no consequences. He just needed to use his poker logic.
I told him this was a situation where he “stayed married to the bet” and “threw good money after bad.” One of the most important things in Texas Hold’em is to be aggressive — to go for it — and then if you know you are beaten, get out of the hand. Fold. He did the reverse, he went all-in with a questionable hand.
Alex understood this. He made a sequence of bad decisions, starting with taking off towards Princeton at noon. But if he quit the sequence at any point . . . if they all turned around earlier, if they took the bus, if he got off the path and called us with his location before the sun went down, if he did any of those things, he would have been a hero. When you make a really difficult fold, they call it a “hero fold” because it’s so difficult to back out of a situation like this. Understanding this and actually making the fold are two very different things.
This is what he needed to do . . . he needed to recognize he was with two eighteen-year-olds that were headed to college and didn’t have to live with their parents for the foreseeable future. They could go all-in with fewer consequences. They had a bigger bankroll. The peer pressure got to him, and that’s fine. It happens. I did plenty of stupid stuff like that as well when I was young. There were plenty of times when I should have folded them, but I didn’t.
So Alex paid off his bet, cleaning cabinets in the kitchen, weed-whacking, etc. Maybe he learned a lesson? I also didn’t mention that his buddy Liam — the younger brother of the senior wrestler — wisely decided to stay home. He didn’t even play that hand. When you’re dealt a lousy hand, sometimes you fold immediately — you don’t get on a bike on a hot humid stormy day and head to Princeton without a helmet. But then, of course, you’re not gambling. And what fun is that?
So I took up online gambling.
To many of you, I’m sure this sounds like a terrible decision, but I wasn’t alone. Online poker is legal in New Jersey, and the poker sites experienced a lot of extra traffic during the pandemic. This was great for the regulars, the grinders. Easy money. Online poker is tough. There are quite a few seasoned veterans out there, so you’ve got to know what you’re doing. I was lucky not to lose my entire (albeit tiny) bankroll in the first few weeks.
At the start, I thought this was something relaxing and fun I could do in the evening while drinking a few beers, something to pass the time.
If you’re serious about learning to play poker, that’s not how it goes. Instead of cracking an IPA, you’re better off brewing a pot of coffee. This is NOT passive entertainment.
I also found that I enjoyed reading books about poker just as much (or possibly more) than I enjoyed playing poker. These books taught me to think poker. How to assess risk and reward. Compute pot odds. Analyze your position. Bet for value. Read hand combinations. How to control your emotions, and avoid tilting into madness.
And while I might sound like a reprobate, I also learned that you should encourage your kids to gamble. Placing an intelligent wager involves so many necessary skills that children need to hone — especially teenage children — that you’ve got to let them try, even if the populace calls you a corrupt degenerate.
That’s what the populace called Socrates.
If you are going to teach your kids to gamble, teach them poker. I’m sure there are valuable administrative lessons to be learned from managing a fantasy football team and rolling the bones can school you in basic probability (Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski taught us this in The Wire). Still, none of these games require the philosophical and strategic thinking you need while playing poker, Texas Hold’em in particular.
If my son had utilized some poker logic on his epic adventure, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up cleaning all the bathrooms in our house. It’s not like I hadn’t taught him.
If Woody had gone straight to the police . . .
Before my online poker experience, I thought I was a decent poker player. I’m good at math, I like probability and statistics, and I’ve always done well when I’ve played with friends. But playing countless hands online and reading a slew of classic poker books has shown me the many, many holes in my game. Flaws in my logic and thinking. Spontaneously stupid reactions.
I get overly competitive. I make rash decisions. I’m too curious. I’m either too passive or I’m too aggressive. I play too many hands. My bet-sizing is often imprecise. I bet too much. I check too much. I call too much. I don’t bet the river enough. I could go on and on. The best way to improve at poker is through brutal self-reflection. If you don’t analyze your mistakes and play better, you will lose your money. The scoreboard is your ever-fluctuating bankroll.
Some people learn to play poker through repetition, playing countless hands for decades. This works, but it’s arduous and expensive. Some people use videos. There’s a plenitude of resources on YouTube if you’re willing to wade through them. Some people pay serious money to get coached. But I’m a high school English teacher, and so I turned to my old standby: books. I read quite a few. Due to COVID-19, there was nothing but time.
Some poker books are mathematical and tactical . . . works by David Sklansky, Dan Harrington, and Ed Miller. Some are more evocative. British poet Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town is regarded as the best book about poker ever written. It’s stylish and authentic. But it won’t help your game. Tommy Angelo and Phil Gordon are more philosophical and meditative. Gus Hansen’s bestseller Every Hand Revealed is candid and fun, in a goofy sort of way. Lots of exclamation points. In The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, Colson Whitehead comes across as an existential grumbler. If you want ambiguity, read the essays in Full Tilt Poker. Every author has a different methodology.
The takeaway from the literature is this: poker is an entire branch of knowledge. It incorporates psychology, game theory, statistics, probability, economics, risk assessment, and character analysis. It can get really deep. If you want to hear how deep, listen to an episode of the podcast Just Hands. Jackson Laskey and James Bilderbeck dissect one hand per episode. Thirty minutes to an hour of “nebulous thoughts” on poker strategy and decision-making. They slow downtime, which is the basis of philosophical thinking.
In the moment, whether we are playing poker or living our life, we use heuristics — rules of thumb — to make our choices. We don’t have enough time to deeply analyze every decision. But if we had the time, any moment can get sticky. My point is — whether in cards or life — there’s no formula. It’s more than simply looking at your hand and throwing down a bet.
Like many of you, I was doing a lot of parenting during the pandemic. Certainly more parenting than poker. We all learned that when schools and sports and trampoline gyms are shut down, you’ve got to up your parenting game. There’s no formula on how to do that either.
I tried to encourage my two high school boys to stay active, in mind and body. To finish their remote school work. To read something other than memes and texts on their phones.
My younger son — a shy and reticent freshman who hadn’t hit puberty yet — was unfazed by the pandemic. He got his school work done, played video games and Magic and Dungeons & Dragons online with his friends, and enjoyed sleeping in. Though he was annoyed that tennis season was canceled, he was happy enough to play with me. We found some courts that didn’t close and played nearly every day. Sometimes he wandered around town with his nerdy friend Martin, but he was happy enough watching shows like Big Shrimpin’ and Silicon Valley with the family
He wasn’t worried about missing keg parties or flirting with girls.
My older son, a sophomore, was a different story. He was so angry about losing tennis season that he didn’t want to play with us. It reminded him of all the good times he was missing with his friends on the team. He recently grew seven inches (shooting past my wife and me) and he had something of a social life before the pandemic: he had a girlfriend for most of winter track season, he went to a house party and drank too much alcoholic punch (and consequently spent the night puking) and he was president of the Rocket Propulsion Club.
He was a real teenager.
While he tolerated us (we played a lot of Bananagrams) this wasn’t enough action for a sixteen-year-old man-child. And where there is action — trouble and risk — poker logic is crucial. Right?
This is always the question with an analogy. Does it hold water?
Is poker just a game, or does it have some bearing on reality?
Do pinochle and Parcheesi teach you essential life skills or are they simply ways to idle away the time? How about chess? Is football similar to modern warfare? Is hockey similar to anything?
In The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Spencer — Holden Caulfield’s history teacher — tells Holden that “life is a game” that one plays “according to the rules.”
Holden disagrees.
“Game my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right — I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
I empathize with Holden. Not all analogies hold up. But I’d like to make the case that poker does. Especially Texas Hold’em.
Here’s a quick primer, in case you need convincing.
Old-time poker champion Doyle Brunson called no limit “the Cadillac of poker” for a reason. There’s more on the line, more ways to play, more variation in style, and — because of the “no limit” element — it hasn’t been solved by computers. It’s a miracle of limited, but significant information.
Just like life.
Here’s how it goes. First off, everyone gets two cards, face down. These are your “hole” cards. You see them, no one else does. If you like these cards, you have the option to bet on your hand: invest in it right off the bat. You also have the option to “check” to someone else’s bet — essentially match the bet so you can continue playing. You could also brazenly raise the bet. Or you could do the opposite. You could fold. Quit the hand, before anything wild happens. This decision is yours alone.
That’s the miracle of poker. You can quit before the game even starts. Opt-out. The best poker players are the best quitters. It’s the biggest part of the game. This may sound odd, to those of you who frown upon quitting, but getting out when the getting out is good is a real skill.
We often tell children “quitters never win,” but there are many advantages to quitting that are often not promoted. The Freakonomics episode “The Upside of Quitting” explores this theme.
Now, if you’re sitting at the table, you can’t completely avoid betting. Twice per round, you are forced to bet a little bit. These are the antes. The small blind and the big blind. Otherwise, there would be no risk at all to play and you could wait forever for a pair of aces. The blinds ensure that if you don’t eventually play, you will lose all your money. You’ll be blinded out. So if you are at the table, there’s always some risk. But you can leave if you like. This isn’t Russian roulette with Robert Deniro and Christopher Walken in a Vietcong prison camp. You can always walk away from the table.
After the initial round of betting on your two hole cards, then the dealer “flops” out three shared cards. Everyone can see these. So you’ve got shared information and private information. You weigh this and decide if you want to bet, check, raise, or fold. The way the other people bet, check, raise and fold reveals information about their hands. This could be accurate information or they could be bluffing, representing cards they don’t have. You have to decide. Be careful of peer pressure, you don’t want to bet just because everyone does. You need to like your hand, at least a little bit.
Another card is turned. This card is called “the turn” because it can turn the tide of the hand. There is more betting. You can still quit! Although, mentally it gets harder to quit once you’ve come this far because you’ve put some of your hard-earned money into the pot. You want that money back, but it’s not yours any longer. It’s up for grabs. It’s hard to accept. We’ll get more into this logical fallacy later. But remember, the best poker players are the best quitters.
At any time during this process, in “no limit” Texas Hold’em, a player can bet all their money. The nuclear option. Most poker does not operate like this. There is a limit to how much you can bet. It makes it easier to compute the odds of winning the hand, versus the percentage of the money you need to bet. This “all-in” option in Texas Hold’em is what makes the game so indeterminate.
You may be able to figure out the percentages of drawing a flush, but can you figure out the percentages of the human mind? You may be able to imagine what a rational being would bet, but what about the lunatic on your right? How about the genius on your left? Is that a regular guy with a good hand, a super-genius utilizing combinatorial game theory, or a spoiled dilettante with a giant trust fund?
There’s no way to know for sure.
After the turn, one more card is revealed, for a total of five shared cards. This card is called “the river” or “fifth street.” This is the card that can make your hand. Or you can fall off the cliff, into the river and be swept away. Sold down the river. It’s an apt metaphor for this essay.
Now there are five community cards and two private cards. You choose the best five of the seven to make your hand.
The best hand wins the pot. I won’t get into what beats what . . . if you don’t know that a full house beats a straight, then I’d like to invite you to a Tuesday night Zoom poker game.
Now let’s extend the analogy in a general way. For many people, life during the pandemic was similar to playing poker.
Most of us were making calculated bets all the time. Getting together with friends in the backyard? A small bet. Outdoor seating at a restaurant? Maybe a little bigger. Playing tennis? Marching in a protest? Visiting a crowded beach? Reopening school? Who knows? All different amounts of risk and reward. Different amounts of pleasure, different amounts of action and excitement and different risks of contracting COVID.
Of course, there were old people and immune-compromised people who had to sit the game out. Some essential workers were forced to put their immune systems on the line for eight hours every day. For these people, the pandemic was not a game.
But for many of us, it was. Getting plastered in a crowded Miami bar turned out to be an all-in bet. The nuclear option. Big fun, but it’s also the highest risk to get the virus.
You could always fold your hand. If the party got too crowded, you could leave. Opt-out. If there were hordes of people inside Costco, you could come back some other time. Play another day.
My kids were playing some pandemic poker.
My younger son was playing it pretty close to the vest. Lots of online stuff. Sometimes he’d go out walking or play some tennis. Small bets.
My older son was running every day with a couple of friends. He was going over to Rutgers with his buddies and doing Rocket Propulsion stuff. He was playing video games in his friend’s backyard. Also smallish bets.
But like I said, my older son Alex was a real teenager. Half man, half child. He needed more action than that.
On a hot day in June, he went over to a friend’s house, ostensibly to play Spikeball. Thunderstorms were in the forecast. The lockdown had been going forever. No school, no organized sports, no graduation parties, no hanging out in an air-conditioned house with friends.
Around noon, Alex called and told me the two older boys — seniors — had decided to bike to Princeton. Alex was going as well. They were going to take the towpath (a.k.a. D & R Canal State Park) from New Brunswick to Rocky Hill and then bike into Princeton proper and eat lunch. It’s a long way there. Twenty-five miles. And then you’ve got to get back . . .
I told him this wasn’t a great idea and listed the reasons:It was too late in the day.
It was hot.
The forecast called for thunderstorms.
He wasn’t wearing spandex bike shorts . . . he would chafe.
He was using his younger brother’s bike, which was too small for him.
Essentially, I was explaining that this was not a great hand. Sometimes, you’ve got to be patient and wait for another.
Pete Townsend explains this in the song “It’s Hard.”
Anyone can do anything if they hold the right card.
So, I’m thinking about my life now . . .
I’m thinking very hard.
Deal me another hand, Lord, this one’s very hard.
I didn’t tell him he couldn’t go. I just clearly laid out the problems. I assumed he was bluffing. This is one of the holes in my poker game. I often think people are bluffing, pretending that their awful hand is good. I assume they will come to their senses soon enough. I want to see what happens because I think I know more than they do.
This kind of curiosity is costly.
Most of the time, people are sincere about their bets. Bluffing is counter-intuitive and feels wrong. People generally believe their hand is good enough, even if their hand is bad. They just think it’s better than it is.
My wife asked, “Did you tell him he could go?”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s going. I just told him it wasn’t a great idea.”
My wife shook her head. She hates my wishy-washy parenting. But there’s no rule book for these situations.
I should point out: this is a kid who never bikes anywhere. God knows why, but he’s opposed to biking. He likes to ride his skateboard. He borrowed his younger brother’s mountain bike for this adventure, which was too small for him. So I assumed he’d be turning back sooner rather than later.
I should have considered his company. Alex was a sophomore, and he was going on this adventure with two athletic seniors. Guys about to graduate, guys ready to leave home and go to college. Guys with a bigger bankroll than my son. There might be some peer pressure to not fold.
When Kenny Rogers sang “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” he skipped all the psychology. You’re not playing in a vacuum. There’s pressure not to fold them! Your friends never want you to fold them. They want to see some action. Especially some action with your money. Vicarious action.
I told Alex he could turn around at any time. He was NOT all in. I would put the bike rack on the van and pick him up anywhere along the route. No problem. I would give his friends a lift as well, if they wanted to bail. I could fit all three bikes on the rack.
I figured at some point on this ride — or perhaps even before they set off — he would fold his hand. It was a bad hand, for the reasons I listed above. But I wanted him to figure that out.
Alex told me that they packed some food and plenty of water and some rain gear.
Helmet?
No helmet.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail is a flat path that lies between the Raritan River and the canal. It is all called the tow road because mules used to tow barges and canal boats up and down it. The canal is just a foot or two below the level of the path, but there are often cliffs down to the river. It’s not dangerous in the daytime — the path is well kept. There are occasional ruts and roots, and plenty of poison ivy on the sides of the path, but no terrain that warrants a helmet.
The no-helmet-bet is one worth making on this kind of trail. The chance you’re going to fall and crack your skull is minuscule. The pleasure of the wind in your hair is definite. And it was hot.
When’s the last time you fell while riding a bike on a straight path?
At the start of their trip, luck was on their side. They got a good flop. They made the long haul to Princeton without mishap, and the storms didn’t hit until they got into town. They grabbed some lunch, waited out the rain under an awning, and then decided to take the bus home.
They were giving up on the turn, and that was fine. Typical of so many poker hands. You open with a big bet, continue to bet on the flop, and then take stock of the situation and decide to fold. Quit before things get too intense. They could do the entire fifty-mile there-and-back-trip some other time.
My wife and I were happy with this decision, it was getting late and we figured we were going to have to drive to Princeton to give Alex a ride home. The bus was a great call. Saved us a trip in the car. The bus was supposed to leave at 6:15 PM.
I texted Alex at 6:20 PM to see if he had caught the bus. No answer. Twenty minutes later, I got a text. They missed the bus. They had decided to bike home. I called him and told him he wasn’t going to make it before dark. He insisted they would make it. If not, he said, they would get off the towpath and ride on the road. He said that his friends had flashlights. Alex did not have a flashlight, nor did he have a light on his bike.
He also wasn’t wearing a helmet, so we didn’t want him to ride on the road in the dark. We told him once it got dark, that we wanted him to stop riding the tow road — regardless of what his older friends were doing. He agreed to this. A couple of hours later, it got dark. We got in touch with him. Alex said they were near Manville — about ten miles from home — and we instructed him to get off the tow road at the nearest exit. There was a D&R Canal Trail parking lot right in Manville. We hoped to find him there. We headed west in the minivan, traveling parallel to the canal.
This where poker becomes a psychological game. Logically, he should have backed out. Folded. He had put a lot of time and effort in, it was a lot of fun, but it was over. Pitch black and he was riding along a river. But many people — including myself — often have trouble leaving an interesting hand. You’ve invested so much. People throw good money after bad. Alex decided to go all-in on the river. This was a bet we didn’t want him to make, but circumstances pressured him into it. This happens sometimes. You should know when to fold’em, but when no one else is folding their hand, sometimes your last card doesn’t matter. You blindly bet the last card because you are married to the bet. You can’t back out . . . even though you can. How could he leave these two senior boys? They were pot-committed into biking from Highland Park to Princeton and back, and they were going all-in. Alex told us they discussed the risks and rewards of this play. He knew he was going to get grounded, but wanted to make the entire trip. This is what separates the best players from the good players. They can back out of a hand even when they’ve invested a great deal of time and energy into it. Alex knew the right thing to do but still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
So my wife drove the van, while I navigated a route as close to the river as possible. I texted Alex. No answer. And he didn’t have his phone location on. We lost touch with him. He wasn’t at the Manville parking lot, so we started driving around, finding places where the canal path intersected with the road. I could see the path through the trees, and occasionally make out the silhouettes of fishermen or hikers. No group of kids on bikes, though. It was getting darker and darker.
We were hoping to stumble on him at one of the bridges or park entrances, but no such luck.
My wife and I both certainly had some grim thoughts running through our heads. While the path was easy enough to navigate in the daytime, at night it was a different story. There were roots and occasional potholes and it was surrounded on both sides by water. There were steep drops to the river, which was rocky. The canal is deep. And our son wasn’t wearing a helmet. If he fell, hit his head, and slid into the river or the canal, that would be an ugly situation.
My wife decided if we didn’t get in touch with him by 10 PM, we were calling the police. I agreed.
We finally heard from him at 9:30. The nick of time. He told us they had screwed up the location and were closer than they thought, well past Manville. We found him and the other boys in Johnson Park, which is a mile from our house.
Alex was grounded for the week. He had a list of chores longer than his arm (sometimes it’s nice when the kids get in trouble).
It’s too bad because he almost didn’t get into any trouble at all. He would have had a great story and been on an epic adventure, and suffered no consequences. He just needed to use his poker logic.
I told him this was a situation where he “stayed married to the bet” and “threw good money after bad.” One of the most important things in Texas Hold’em is to be aggressive — to go for it — and then if you know you are beaten, get out of the hand. Fold. He did the reverse, he went all-in with a questionable hand.
Alex understood this. He made a sequence of bad decisions, starting with taking off towards Princeton at noon. But if he quit the sequence at any point . . . if they all turned around earlier, if they took the bus, if he got off the path and called us with his location before the sun went down, if he did any of those things, he would have been a hero. When you make a really difficult fold, they call it a “hero fold” because it’s so difficult to back out of a situation like this. Understanding this and actually making the fold are two very different things.
This is what he needed to do . . . he needed to recognize he was with two eighteen-year-olds that were headed to college and didn’t have to live with their parents for the foreseeable future. They could go all-in with fewer consequences. They had a bigger bankroll. The peer pressure got to him, and that’s fine. It happens. I did plenty of stupid stuff like that as well when I was young. There were plenty of times when I should have folded them, but I didn’t.
So Alex paid off his bet, cleaning cabinets in the kitchen, weed-whacking, etc. Maybe he learned a lesson? I also didn’t mention that his buddy Liam — the younger brother of the senior wrestler — wisely decided to stay home. He didn’t even play that hand. When you’re dealt a lousy hand, sometimes you fold immediately — you don’t get on a bike on a hot humid stormy day and head to Princeton without a helmet. But then, of course, you’re not gambling. And what fun is that?
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