Poker and Philosophy Read online

  Habituation becomes especially important when Aristotle describes how virtue becomes voluntary, if I am to be an excellent person. One of the Nichomachean Ethics’ key distinctions is between doing excellent actions by chance, and doing actions excellently. As Aristotle writes:

  Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.2

  It is possible to do something heroic or courageous by chance—say, knocking over a fleeing poker cheat as you struggle to reign in your horse. While this act would be heroic, you are not—you do not own the action, nor is heroism something you intended. This is obviously different from what a courageous person would do: recognize the situation, see the poker cheat flee, and chase him down deliberately. For Aristotle, it’s better to be good than to do good by chance, because chance is something beyond our control. When one has an excellent character, then one can voluntarily be virtuous.

  Voluntary actions require two key dispositions: 1) attending to particulars of the situation, so as to know what you’re doing and 2) finding excellent actions pleasant. The first disposition is to be attentive to the particular circumstances in which one is acting, so that one acts as a virtuous person would. “Since that which is done by force or reason of ignorance is involuntary, the voluntary would seem to be that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself, he being aware of the particular circumstances of the action” (Nicomachean Ethics, p. 52 [1111a22-5], my emphasis). Such knowledge, exercised in deliberating about virtue, constitutes practical wisdom, or phronesis. By developing a habit, we gain knowledge of how to act, as we learn from our senses, and can tell which features of a situation are most important for determining what we should do. As in the above example of the poker cheat, a courageous person recognizes the injustice of the cheat taking other people’s money, how to call him out, and the good of doing so. However, a courageous person (as opposed to a reckless person) would not try to apprehend the cheat on his own if doing so would put others in greater danger, nor would he randomly start shooting up the place. One must pay attention to the particulars of the action, for it to be fully voluntary. Character shapes how one sees the world, and thus what should be done.

  In poker, excellence develops over time; it isn’t won with a couple of monster hands. One’s goal, explicitly or implicitly, is to play in accord with the fundamental theorem. Thus, a player seeks to “act in accord with a rational principle,” so as to maximize the productivity of hands and minimize losses. It is only through practice, learning from experience, and seeing how various hands play out, that one becomes an excellent player. Excellence in poker, like Aristotelian virtue, is a habit that one develops through experience.

  When one is aware of the particular circumstances, one can then do the excellent action voluntarily. A virtuous person acts virtuously for the sake of the action, and this means that he or she will find it pleasurable because the act itself is seen as good. Character, then, shapes what we see as pleasant and painful. A courageous person risks injury, because she sees courage as a good quality, exercised on behalf of others. This becomes particularly important when the act requires sacrifice, as courage may cost one’s career, wealth, or even one’s life. However, even when circumstances lead the courageous person to feel pain, she does not suffer, because she sees the act itself as worthwhile and good. While, after knocking over the cheat with my horse, I may feel remorse for scaring the horse and losing my whiskey buzz, the person who intends courage will not be harmed by the inconvenience.

  Aristotle’s distinction between “doing excellent actions” and “acting excellently” is particularly pertinent for poker. I can win with great hands, without playing them especially well. For example (in a different hand than above), if I have 35, and stay in the game through several rounds of heavy betting, I may win a huge pot when two 5’s come up on the turn and the river. However, I probably appeared soundly beaten after the flop—and the percentages would say that I should have folded. Or, I may have pocket A’s, and betting first, bet so heavily that I force others out quickly, and therefore win less than if I had slow-played. In these examples, I have excellent cards, but my winning has more to do with luck than skill, and an excellent player could win more. Also, it’s doubtful that I would keep winning, when the cards go against me.

  To really be an excellent player, it’s necessary to have knowledge of the particulars. In the hands above, I didn’t really have full grasp of the situation, and therefore I didn’t play the hands as a rational person would have—Sklansky, Doyle Brunson, or Mike Caro would say that I played these poorly. Both Sklansky and Caro, after all, emphasize that the point is to make correct decisions, and I failed to do this. An excellent player knows which features are relevant—you become excellent when you understand and play as a rational player would. Through experience, you understand the pot odds (the ratio between the odds on the bet, and on making the hand you are playing), the tendencies of your opponents, and the likelihood of getting the card you need to complete your flush. By recognizing whether opponents are playing loose or tight, you can adjust your play to counter and take advantage of their tendencies. An expert attends to the flow of the game, remembering the hands played and considering the hands to come. She thus develops a sense for the unseen side of the game, which shapes how she plays the cards in front of her. This brings us back to the importance of character. So many details are important in poker that you really have to develop an intuitive knowledge, through practice, to understand the hand fully.

  Finally, excellence in poker changes how one enjoys the game. Here, we can see the effects of Aristotle’s first disposition. If, in another hand, I fold my 3-6 offsuit before the flop, I may take pleasure in knowing I have lost less than I would have in playing out the hand, rendering my neighbor’s K-K almost worthless. It’s as if I can see, in advance, that my cards will not win. Moreover, if I play my cards in a way that makes my opponent bet less than he should—so that I lose less than I should have—that can also be pleasant. Further, an “ace” player can better bear her losses. If, with three of a kind and a pocket ace, I lose to a full house that comes on the river, then even in losing, I know that I played the hand as well as I could—and that, in most cases, playing in that way would work in my favor.3 As compared with a novice like myself, whose fortunes rise and fall with each card dealt, an excellent player is not harmed when the cards don’t go her way.

  Let’s return to the hand we began with. With two ways to make the best hand, and the game getting tighter, you put your phronesis to work: you call Dynamo. Your chances are good enough (fourteen cards could make your hand), that it’s worth taking the bet. No sooner are your chips down, than Two Pair throws you a curve, check-raising by 30 more. Dynamo folds—it now looks like he was bluffing, and it’s down to you to call or fold once again. But is Two Pair also bluffing, or betting on a really strong hand, to win the now substantial pot? To answer this question, you would have to know what Two Pair is thinking. Since it is a friendly game, torture and cheating are ruled out. Here, phronesis is little help; Aristotle has played all his chips. If, as he thought, all knowledge comes from our senses, then you are at Two Pair’s mercy. It is here that Husserl’s phenomenology, as a way for us to know other minds, becomes particularly helpful. By a detour through our own hand, Husserl will give us insight into our opponents’ thoughts.

  The Poker Phenomenon

  For Aristotle, knowledge of what we can’t directly see (character, circumstance, timing, and so on) shapes how we understand what we do see. For Husserl, what we see, and how we see it, lets us know what we can’t see. Husserl developed phenomenology as a response to the problem of relativism in th
e modern world—he was concerned that the natural sciences are losing their grounds for certainty. Because science deals with natural events, and things we experience, it may seem as if its conclusions are always revisable and thus contingent. Husserl argues that phenomenology can play a role here, by getting us to focus on how things appear to our consciousness, and become objects of our knowledge.

  Husserl’s key move is to distinguish objects themselves, which transcend or remain beyond our minds, from how things appear to us (phenomena). This is what he calls a reduction (epoché), a suspension of belief in the existence of the world. Rather than being concerned with what exists, I am solely concerned with what appears to my consciousness. When things appear to us, they can appear in different ways. For example, depending on my perspective, a card may appear to me as a geometric pattern (the back), a thin piece of plastic (side), or a collection of numbers and symbols (front). It is from the stream of appearances that I can discern the essence of the appearances—the essence being that which remains constant, throughout the shifting stream. I can also imagine the different appearances, even when I can’t actually see them. So, even though I don’t see the face of the cards my opponents hold, I can intuitively know what they look like, by analogy to how I have seen them before. The key point, though, is that my consciousness is what unites these appearances, and makes them into a knowable world. Through phenomenology, we now recognize that our consciousness of the world is a condition for its existence.

  A common criticism of Husserl was that this approach leaves us trapped in our own minds—unable to share the world with anyone else. This criticism led, in his later work, to a concern with intersubjectivity—how our mind relates to those around us. In his book, the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl argues that from our consciousness of the world, we can know that there are others who are also conscious of it as well. Here, I will translate the crucial steps of the fifth Meditation into the terms of poker, so that we may see more directly how this applies to our case.

  1. The game begins. I bring my body, my worldly experience and my poker experience to the playing table. I relate to the world around me and to the body I inhabit in a unique way. Moreover, in poker, I relate to the cards in my hand, and chips by my side, which I uniquely see, in a way different from how I relate to any other cards (and chips) on the table. I don’t bet others’ chips, and while I may share the potato chips, I will not share the stack of poker chips in front of me.

  2. Thus, my consciousness of the game, and my participation therein, occurs only through what I do with my body, cards, and chips.

  3. As I look around the poker table, I see other bodies like my own, with cards and chips that look like my own.

  4. I see that my body could be where they are—and they could be where I am. It is, in a sense, the luck of the draw that we have the cards we have.

  5. Thus, by analogy, I know that there are other players, who are conscious of the game through their bodies and their cards, much as I am through mine.4

  In Step 3, Husserl uses analogical appresentation—saying, that much as my thinking about the game remains concealed from my opponents, only obscurely available in the plays that I make, so too their thinking remains concealed in their actions as well. However, because I am aware of how my consciousness relates to my body, I can perceive that there are other minds related to the bodies and cards I see around the table. Strangely, I don’t know what the other players’ cards are, but I do know that there are other minds seated across the table from me, even though they aren’t directly perceivable.

  It’s at this point that consciousness becomes intersubjective: you realize that the players across the table see the same cards, and the same bets, that you do, though from a different perspective (in light of their pocket cards, stack of chips, and so on). From how you relate to the table in your actions, you can intuit what they are thinking through their actions. In a limited sense, you can know what they know, and ask yourself: what would I have to see, in their shoes, to make the play that he or she has made? If Two Pair is not bluffing, there are several possibilities: he may have two spades, one or two A’s, 7-7, or a 5-6 for an open-ended straight draw, needing a 3 or an 8 to fall. Even if he has the best possible current hand, you could beat him with one more card (and, the odds are under 4/1 that you would do so). With bet odds of over 4/1 (win 130 chips for a bet of 30), the pot odds favor you, and you call.

  With the hand played so far, the cards have fallen in such a way that I have not really had to consider the possibility of an opponent bluffing. Even if Two Pair is not bluffing, the cards are still such that it’s worth staying in the hand. However, for many other hands, bluffing would greatly complicate matters. Bluffing also makes things more complex for both Aristotle and Husserl, so we’ll have to consider how deception shapes our ability to know what’s going on.

  The Bluff of the Century

  One of the most famous hands of poker—the “Bluff of the Century” at the 2003 World Series of Poker—demonstrates both the risks and rewards of bluffing. Chris Moneymaker, the soon-to-be champion, was an amateur player from out of nowhere, having only played on the Internet before the tournament began. He was so green that he only learned about his own tell (a sign that he was bluffing—in his case, flaring his nostrils) a couple of days before he reached the final table. But, as a virtual unknown, he bluffed a professional, going all-in on the river, when he had nothing in his hand (his opponent had a pair). Startled by the play, Sammy Farha folded—and Moneymaker won the game on the next hand, when he made a full house. In part, Moneymaker was only able to bluff, because he could read Farha’s tell, and knew Farha’s hand was not so strong.

  As a novice, one might think that the point of a bluff like Moneymaker’s is simply to win the hand the only way he could. But if this were the case, then whenever people had weak hands, they would try to bluff, as their only chance to win. Rather, the importance of a bluff is clearest when we consider its impact over the course of a game. Careful bluffing makes one’s play virtually impossible to predict—an effect Moneymaker achieved, in part, by being an unknown. Bluffing, when done properly, randomizes your play, and makes it impossible for others to know with adequate certainty what cards you are holding.

  When you bluff, you are doing several things: 1) You give the appearance of having cards that you don’t have. 2) You make it more expensive for your opponent to stay in the hand than it should be. 3) You make it more difficult to discern a pattern to your betting—whereas, if you never bluff, an opponent can always tell if you have a good hand, by how and when you bet.

  The value of such randomization is illustrated by the following example.

  Let’s say that Mastercard bluffs, and bets 50, though he doesn’t have anything. Two Pair raises him, while you, Dynamo, and the Prof fold; Mastercard has to fold off of his bluff, giving Two Pair the hand. Three hands later, you see a similar hand come up. After you and Dynamo check, Mastercard bets 50 again. The Prof immediately folds. When Dynamo calls, your attention to the pattern of the game (in Aristotle’s sense of phronesis) suggests that Mastercard is bluffing again. You call as well, and then raise 20. But this time, Mastercard raises 20, and after you both call he makes a full house on the river—and you and Dynamo are both out more than 100 chips.

  Of course, bluffing is risky. The main goal, though, is to randomize your play, so that your opponents cannot tell from your bet what you are doing. They no longer know the particulars of the situation as well as they thought, nor can they tell what your alter ego is thinking. For example, my “2004 World Series of Poker” hat intimidates opponents, even though they know I bought it at the mall. To paraphrase Billy Crystal, it’s better to look good than to be good, and this really throws your opponents off. However, there are limits to how effective this approach can be. One problem is that when everyone’s wearing hats and sunglasses, you no longer look as quirky or cool as you think. Also, you must choose your hat carefully; wearing a “McDonald’s” ha
t can easily lead to a long night of heckling and “Do you want to supersize that?” whenever you bet.

  Why the Best Philosophers Are Bluffing

  While our alternatives to bluffing have their strengths, bluffing has a significant advantage: it helps you to shape the truth of the game, clarifying it for you while obscuring the truth for your opponents. When you bluff, you control what is happening—you draw out your opponents’ responses, making them call or fold, thereby helping you to attend to particulars, and to grasp their thoughts from the plays they make. Moreover, you know that you’re bluffing, while your play is unpredictable from their perspective. Your opponents cannot know the particulars (because what they see is illusion), nor can they tell what you are thinking, as it randomizes your play. By analogy, good bluffing on your part may help you to recognize when others are bluffing as well. Bluffing, then, when done voluntarily and excellently, helps you to be an excellent player, in the Aristotelian sense, and to perceive others’ thoughts, as Husserl thinks we can do, while making your opponents weaker in both ways.

  This brings us back to the question we raised earlier: what does it mean, philosophically, to say that in poker deceit is the best way to know the truth? The deceit is significant, mostly, because it creates a disparity in knowledge: it increases the difference between what you know and what your opponents know. More fundamentally, bluffing is an active form of play, which requires that others respond. Like a scientific hypothesis and experiment, bluffing does not simply wait to see what presents itself, but creates conditions under which reality can be tested. And, like many experiments, it may fail in the particular exercise—but, over the course of a game, these failures can lead to greater knowledge and success. Losing the battle may help you win the war, unless you run out of chips. What bluffing shows us, then, is that our pursuit of the truth shapes the truth that we seek—the world is transformed, in our seeking to know it.