A Sisyphean Existence
In the first round of the WSOP $1500 Shootout, I got heads up with a young British pro. He was rather good, perhaps a little better than me, but I emerged victorious. He made a spectacular fold of KQ on a Q44dd24 board when I did in fact possess the fourth four. After the match he acted like that fold was nothing special. He was more interested to hear what I had on a hand I 4-bet him preflop, crestfallen to learn I had ace-eight offsuit. He was dismayed he’d missed an opportunity to five-bet-jam his king-seven suited. He was hard on himself throughout the round, bemoaning some hands he believed he misplayed.
He reminded me of me circa 2009. I have always used my mistakes as fuel for both learning and motivation, uploading them for analysis while striving towards perfection. One of the reasons I decided to go pro again is that mistakes are so fathomable now, between solvers and the expertise of friends.
But self-flagellation is not a sustainable operation for the poker professional, at least not one who strives for peace of mind along with precision. An expectation of impeccability isn’t rational for such a difficult game. This is the biggest reason why poker is so great, why so many of us have played millions of hands over multiple decades.
When a player opts to treat their mistakes critically, the line between scholarship and anguish becomes very thin. If we beat ourselves up over every blemish, we’re going to live in misery. We are inevitably going to make mistakes almost every session we play, so punishing ourselves emotionally for them cannot give us a sustainably happy existence.
I believe the key is acceptance of our flaws. We must accept that perfection is not attainable, even if it remains the goal. We must accept that our existence is Sisyphean.
Two things have really helped me on this go-round:
Stoicism. So much of Stoic philosophy is about acceptance, and I have accepted that mistakes will forever be ingrained in my play. It sure helped that I made a huge mistake at a big final table and won in spite of it.
Watching great players screw up. Top pros botch hands all the time and admit as much. Kristen Foxen, who’s one of the most successful players and much better than I will ever be, has made two titanic errors in high-profile, high-stakes spots within the last year. It’s reassuring to know the best aren’t invincible.
Having said this, I will still self-flagellate if I repeat a mistake I’ve made before. That signifies an inability to learn from the original mistake, evidencing an uptake problem that needs to be addressed. As the button in my mentor’s office at Bixby School said, “Always Make New Mistakes.”
Often, one, like myself, and perhaps yourself, Tom, wil blithely equate the adjective 'new' with different or unique, and then find ourselves on the short-side perceiving that we are repeating the same mistake again, and possibly even again, with all of the recriminations, judgements, and shame that can go with it. Setting aside the argument that once one has recognized making a mistake it is no longer possible to make the exact same one again, let's give 'new' a chance to do deeper work and explore some additional definitions (thank you Oxford American) that get at why I still follow this aphorism forty years on. Imagine 'new' as: 1. "Already existing but seen, experienced, or acquired recently or now." This gets at why repetitions happen, why they may need to happen. Mistakes (and their companions successes) are multi-layered, reflecting one's knowledge, experience, self-awareness, focus, skill, timing, perceptions, and beliefs along with that messy business of context/opportunity and relationships, the "you, me, us-ness of life" as I call it. No wonder it takes awhile to learn from them! No wonder what may be new about a mistake may be subtle and only revealed through seeming repetitions! Hence, the questions: What keeps me in this familiar state? Where is my learning now? 2. "Beginning anew and regarded as better than what went before." What a gift of grace this one is! Fuck up, start over. Figure something out, start over. Be changed/shaken/flattened, it will take time, but start over. The implication here being keep your new mistakes surviveable, which applies to successes as well. And, my favorite these days, 3. "Unfamiliar or strange." What if the new mistake is because of taking a chance, doing something that stretches one's sense of oneself, that is unpredictable? What if making the new mistake is fun, invigorating, or brave? Yes, indeed, Tom, keep making new mistakes and keep letting us know how it's going.
E.