My latest article, which is something like half tournament poker strategy and half navel-gazing in the tradition of Gray Friday and Three Days in Madrid, is now appearing in 2+2 Magazine:
A lot of people, in the wake of the Boston bombing, seem deeply troubled by the question of “How could someone do something like this?” One thing I’ve learned from poker is that pain makes people do crazy, irrational, sometimes hurtful things, and that doing crazy, irrational, hurtful things is a sure a sign that someone is in pain.
That’s absolutely not to excuse such an atrocity, nor to create any sort of equivalence between the pain that caused the bombing and the pain caused by the bombing. Quite the opposite: what I’ve learned from poker is that you can learn to control the severity of your pain, and that you can learn not to take it out on others or on yourself. For me, “pain” is an answer to the question of “How could someone do this?” that helps me come to terms with the tragedy.
Moreso than usual, I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
“How could someone do something like this?”
I do not know why but the video of Boston bombing remind me videos of places attacked by US drones.
I believe twice a week drones strike villages in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
It looks that the festivities are frequently used to increase the rate of success.
These events do not have the same press and tv-coverage.
The result are the same: surprise,pain,anger,questions,dead bodies of children and women.
There are plenty of valid criticisms to the reaction this event got in the US, and this is certainly one of them. I think there many non-mutually exclusive explanations for the disparity, none of which will be news to you but some of which are relevant to this article:
a) A means of (not) dealing with the pain. There’s so much suffering and so many terrible things being done in the world that most people ignore most of it and many people get angry or defensive if you try to bring it to their attention. For me anyway the pain is worse when the immediate cause of the pain is my government, acting in some sense on my behalf and in my name. It may not be a maximally ethical position, but I do my best not to cause pain and to alleviate the pain of those near to me (the poker player with the cigarette) and don’t go out of my way to invite in pain when I feel powerless to do anything about it. Although there was nothing I could do about it, this particular tragedy was something I couldn’t ignore because of how much attention it got.
b) The “this doesn’t happen here” phenomenon that, at the end of the article, I compare to not wanting to get it in preflop with Kings, trying to exercise absolute control over the uncontrollable. Obviously the struggle to wall off and secure “civilization” against chaotic “barbarians” is an old and complicated one.
c) Once people have some distance from their pain, I think that a tragedy like the one in Boston can be a valuable opportunity to point out these sorts of disparities and perhaps raise some awareness about things that Americans (in this case) could do if they actually wanted to prevent anyone, as opposed to only themselves, from experiencing this sort of pain. In the short term, though, I think that even the privileged should be permitted to suffer. People aren’t going to hurt or care less because you tell them that someone on the other side of the world hurts more or that this sort of thing happens every day. The ultimate goal shouldn’t be to invite indifference to the few instances of suffering that are still treated as the tragedies that they are.
You know Andrew when I was writing my comment I did not put much deep thought in it.
Lately I do a lot of self-observation.
The most important questions for me are questions about origins of my thoughts,recollections or association(drones-Boston).?
I try to ask myself in real-time who or what is the projector of this associations?
I did not find easy answer in this case.
I easily know who is the author(projector) of this question:“How could someone do something like this?”
There are elements in this question which identify the projector.
There is an element of judgment (me vs him),element of “justice”, values.
The question imply that I am not able to do such (horrific?) things.
I am not able to do such things because my high standards(nationality,education) vs his standards(religion,believes,IQ etc).
My point is that the projector is pure EGO.
I did not start decompose the origins of pain.
My self-observation skills are too weak to penetrate this aspect.
I have to take time to chew your comments Andrew.
Monkey tilt video shows that events are pretty neutral.(grape vs cucumber)
Inner mental commentary will make huge difference.(he got better deal).
Comments from Nomanr about premeditation, carefully planning made me to see more and more surrealistic differences, similarities of Boston bombing vs drones strikes.
I see a lot of premeditation and carefully planning in both cases.
I see young graduates from air-force academy,sitting in ergonomic chairs ,with cool joystick,big screens,somewhere in bunkers in Arizona desert.
I do not see much anger or pain.I am sure that all of them had specialized mental training which make them highly effective.
I do not try to say that this is easy job.OK.
I see the difference in intimidation level too.
The victims of Boston bombing received ultra fast help.
In 2013 people do not hurry to help victims of drone attacks except “crazy” family members.
All neighborhood goes to sleep night in a desert.
Andrew you should have split this into two articles.
This is probably the first thing I’ve read that you’ve written I’ve really disliked.
I nearly did. There’s a bunch of material I deleted that I might just publish on the blog. I doubt it would address whatever you didn’t like about the article, though. Can you elaborate?
I know that you say you aren’t giving advice, but you do comment on it, and given the audience, I just don’t feel that it works. An article commenting on the hysteria of the reaction, or the motivation of the perpetrators is fine and I think you’d cover them well, but then I think the tone of that piece and the context has to be more serious. Otherwise the juxtaposition really jars.
Thanks for the feedback and the elaboration. I think a lot of people probably read it, didn’t like it, and didn’t say anything – I appreciate that you took the time to write.
I wonder whether there isn’t an important difference that you’re overlooking here by connecting the poker scenario and the bombing through “pain”. The bombing was premeditated, carefully planned to cause maximum suffering and confusion and to draw maximum attention. I don’t know that you can draw a direct parallel to the instantaneous reaction to pain at the poker table, which seems to me to be a subconcious first-response – ie fight, instead of flight – to an adverse situation. Planning and carrying out murder on the scale of the bombings requires active conscious involvement which, I think, can only come from a deeper and cultivated hatred of your perceived enemy.
It’s not a knee-jerk reaction in the same way that cursing when you get sucked out on is. But I do think that pain/suffering will be at the root of any hatred, even if the object of your hate has nothing to do with your pain/suffering.
I have a few thoughts but the most striking is that this piece seems so forced. I recall another piece (maybe it was just a blog post?) where you said you thought that after 9/11 America “went on tilt.” There was some sort of similar analogy made. And while you yourself might have questioned the strength of that analogy in this piece, I thought that was just a good cue to not put it out there.
You don’t need to be told this of course, but 90% of what a good writer writes (if not more) should be left on the cutting room floor.
I will state by particular bias, which is on account of my lack of specific interest in the tragedy in question. To be even more blunt than Andy, it happens every day.
The most salient thing to me about it was it just highlighted how parochial the average American mindset remains. I realize you have an angle, having lived close to there, so don’t in any way take me to be saying that your article strikes me as piggybacking or opportunism — definitely not something I want to give the impression of. Could write more, but time is short! Apologies.
Thanks, Gareth. I wrote a long response to Andy, just wanted to flag that here in case you wouldn’t otherwise see it.
My point with this piece wasn’t to suggest that poker was the best, or even a very good, frame for understanding pain of the sort caused by terrorism and murder. Rather it was to chronicle the rather odd experience that I had of playing a card game, watching people get murdered and legs blown off in a place that still feels like home to me, and then playing a card game again the next day. For better or (and?) for worse, poker has shaped the way that I think about almost everything.
That’s really interesting. I guess that’s another bias of mine, since I don’t, or at least, I think I do, take that same shaping view of poker. Coming from a math background I guess I already knew about variance from the get go, as well as our natural inability to judge probabilities. A lot of my personality and goals and habits fit poker.
Personal digressions aside I guess I agree with BRaven. I like your responses to Andy’s post and your responses in this thread. Seems like your thoughts could all just stand alone on it — and obviously I have no issue with making poker connections, I just had a hard time seeing them in this effort. I guess sentences like “My reign of terror continued.” is where I found things forced. Just a device that’s a bit incongruous with your usual authorial voice. But maybe that’s a sign I’ve been reading too much Brokos 😉
Consider the other deadly event in the US that week, the explosion at the Texas fertilizer plant. That event killed 5 times as many people and injured the same numbe as the Boston bombing. The coverage by the media and the attention paid by the public was quite different for these two events of similar scale. While there are likely several explanations for this discrepancy, one key reason is the distinction between accident and deliberate act.
I think it is natural for us to seek the motivation for the deliberate act. We have all asked the questions Andrew asks in his article. In that sense, he is doing what a writer does: addressing in his own way what many in his audience are thinking or talking about.
I am not sure I agree with Andrew’s answer (pain) but I was pleased to read how he asked the questions.
Thanks, Russ.
I agree that the distinction you mention is the primary reason for the disparity in the coverage, but I also think it’s ultimately a false dichotomy. There is a sense in which the fertilizer explosion was deliberate, in that it’s well-known that this sort of thing can happen and no amount of safety measures can entirely prevent it. The plant is constructed anyway, with the understanding that its eventual, deadly explosion is one possible outcome of that construction, just as the death and maiming of dozens is one possible (albeit more likely) outcome of planting a bomb.
I believe it was Bart Hanson who said something to Tommy Angelo about how he didn’t get upset about bad beats but he did get mad if he lost to a guy who played his hand badly, maybe made a bad call, because then it was someone’s fault rather than just a random thing that happened. Tommy told him that he should think of the other players at the table as no different than the cards in the deck, just random elements beyond his control.
Random … Saw our flag at half-staff the other day and didnt really blink. Was it a State, Federal or local ‘event’. Where do I go to find out? Or do I just accept that ‘some random event’ took place and nod my head or ‘cross’ my chest in appreciation at both the efforts of someone else and the fact that I didnt have to deal with it directly.
It is not wrong to try and find ‘understanding’ in an event in other areas of our lives that we are more comfortable otherwise. When talking I am always trying to ‘dumb down’ conversation so that those with less expertise can ‘relate’ to the subject (could be me who needs the dumbing down, but hey, that’s my story). We all try to postition ourselves in life (at the poker table) where we can best take advantage of opportunity (or avoid loss) and sometimes we get hit with a bad beat.
I once burst a younger basketball players bubble when I told him that it did him no good to only play in pick up games he knew he was going to win and that I had accepted that I would have a ‘lifetime losing record’ in such games but learning to deal with the loss (pain) was far more valuable than living in a fantasy world of ‘wins’.
Last night I saw a player who was absolutly crushed after losing 70% of his winnings 15 minutes from closing after inducing QQ to call into a J-high board holding AA. This player didnt know how to handle the loss (pain) and donked off another piece of profit to me in the next hand. The winnings had been built by keeping pots small and stealing PF. After closing I bluntly ask them why they had ‘exposed’ themselves to such a risk so close to the closing bell after applying such a successfully different approach all night and all I got was … ‘It was a 2-outer!!’ and ‘How could this happen to me??’
Not sure where I wanted this to head … but is “That’s poker” really too far from “That’s life” and the more bad beats we take the easier they are to deal with? I tend to agree that the more times we expose ourselves to ‘random’ the more we are prepared to deal with similar events regardless of their serverity.
I am way more interested in whether or not you run towards or away from such events as they occur as opposed to your ‘take’ on them from afar. I have long thought that the brunt of someone’s actions (final straw) are from a long build up of many other actions that we may never understand or know about. Random … GL going forward.
i read this one a while ago but didn’t know how to respond. It was right after i took two consecutive bad beats on Saturday night. One with AK < AT preflop all in and another with over pair < open end str8 draw. I was very new to live poker and it was hard not to feel the pain. Esp. when other people at the table are all watching you. I went back home frustrated and after i turned on my laptop i saw Andrew's article.
I once heard if one feels pain it's because of his lack of ability to change the situation. If i was capable of crushing the game i wouldn't feel angry at all because i'd know it's a matter of time to take their money. The money they temporarily take from me by making -EV plays are coming back to me as long as they keep playing the game. However, I wasn't the best at the table, not even close. I was able to win some money by just waiting for good hands and getting paid off by even weaker opponents. "I'm sitting here for two hours and finally got a good hand. Stick the money in with a solid favor, and lost." That's what was going on in my mind that night…
Thanks for the story, Mr. Wrong. As I see it, the central problem here is that you went to the casino with the goal of winning money. That’s not something you can control, and when it doesn’t happen, it can lead to you feeling bad about a session that went well. Your goal should be to play well, to execute the right strategy for the game and to practice the skills you need to be practicing right now. If you do those things, the session is a success. Money will follow from that more often than not, but it shouldn’t be the criterion by which you judge success.
Waiting for good hands and finding ways to put your money in when you’re ahead is all it takes to be a winner in that game. It may not make you the best player at the table, but it will make you a profitable one. You need to learn to look at a session like that as a victory. When you show your opponents that you care about playing well, not about getting lucky or unlucky, you show them strength and earn the right kind of respect, the sort that helps you to win pots against them in the future.