Life Is Not Fair--Poker Can Teach You Some Hard Truths

If you're a striver like me who always thought that good things come to those who wait (and work hard), I hate to tell you, but that's not always true. And one more thing, there is no Santa Claus, or Tooth Fairy, or free lunch. What a bummer, I know, but we're talking hard truths here.

Poker will show you these truths faster than you can say "bad beat" twenty times. More likely you will be using more colorful language than that, but you get the point. You can work hard and read all the books and do everything right and then the dealer can lay down that one card, that one-outer, to take it all away. And in poker, as in life, it seems to happen when the stakes are the highest, too. When it's a cheap little "for fun" tournament (or a job application that you don't really care that much about) the cards (or the interviews) seem to run my way and my luck is golden. But when it really matters, when there's huge money on the line (or a huge job), that's when it always seems to go south.

I can get lucky in those low stakes tournaments easily enough, but when it's a $10,000 buy-in, like the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure a year-and-a-half ago, my cards will turn to luck deflectors that have been cursed to appear only with no faces, no aces, and boring off-suit color combinations. [Bad beat story coming here, I warn you. You can skip this part if you want to.] I swear to you, during ten hours of play at the PCA I never got aces, only got a pocket pair of any kind five times, and ninety nine percent of the time they were as described above--no aces, no faces, boring, boring, sad . . . sad . . . I didn't make it to the money in that tournament, but I lasted a long time, even with bad cards. So that was something, I guess, but it was just so disappointing to have my luck desert me at the most inopportune time. But, in poker, and in life, we can whine about it all we want, but it won't change anything. You just have to get up and shake it off, and then come back again the next day and try again.

That's one of the character qualities that poker helps you develop. If you don't have the perseverance and the emotional fortitude to keep trying, to keep coming back, you will never succeed. And that is what separates most successful people in any walk of life, isn't it? The ability to get up and try again after the most disappointing failures. I tell the students at the school where I work, "The most successful people are the biggest failures." This usually gets a blank stare. Then I say, "You have to be able to fail over and over again to be able to win sometimes. You have to try ten things that don't work to find the one that does. Ten interviews to find the job that's perfect for you. You have to go out planning to win each one, and it doesn't always work out, but when it does, it will be so great it will wipe out all the other losses in a matter of seconds."

My experiences with poker have taught me this over the last few years. I started out just winning a few tournaments here and there, then sometimes I would go on losing streaks for weeks at a time and I would get really frustrated and disappointed. (I HATE to lose.) Then when I would be just about ready to give up, I would win something big and get excited again. When I won the tournament that awarded the PokerStars trip to the Bahamas and the $10,000 buy-in event, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me in my life. I still can't believe it sometimes. Then that led to other wonderful things that have opened up a new page in my life that is all about poker.  I write about poker, interview some of the biggest names in poker, and sometimes even get to play in those great events. And it's all because of that one time when it all came together to work for me, and I was there at the right place at the right time. Jung called it "synchronicity," some call it "The Secret," I just call being determined, hard-headed, and stubborn.

Life is not easy and it's not fair, but in the end, the luck evens out, and the ones who keep trying are the ones who will be around when it decides to circle back around your way. Hang in there for the long run and keep doing your best and give luck time to catch up with you. We can't win every time, but when we do, it is all worth it.