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Zen and the Art of Poker
Zen and the Art of Poker is a wise and useful book. The author, Larry Phillips, is a long-time winning poker player who applies timeless wisdom from Zen masters towards the game of poker (he actually quotes Chuck Norris and his book, The Secret Power Within, several times). It’s clear that Zen and poker are in many ways diametrical opposites, but the book offers a practical perspective of how internal mastery (Zen, often dismissed as escapism) can be applied to success in real-world pursuits.
The book essentially comprises an outline of 100 “Poker Rules” and fleshed-out explanations of each rule. I’ve reproduced the list of rules here, as a summary.
1. Learn to use inaction as a weapon.
2. Don’t get irritated or angered by long sessions of folding.
3. If you’ve been folding a lot, for a long time in the game, and you’re starting to think that maybe it’s time you got in and played a few hands again–that’s not a good enough reason. Keep folding.
4. Don’t feel like a martyr when folding.
5. Sometimes others get to play and you don’t.
6. To win at poker you must embrace the idea of breaking even.
7. Regard patience as a central pillar of your game and strategy.
8. Keep plugging away. Expect nothing.
9. Don’t fall into the “Now Trap.”
10. The long run is longer than you think.
11. Don’t defend patience too strongly.
12. Don’t be impatient about being patient.
13. Occupy yourself while you’re not playing.
14. Learn to play against other patient players.
15. Begin by playing tight, but don’t forget to stay tight.
16. Stick to the best starter cards.
17. Learn to control chaos.
18. Don’t be drawn in by sudden frequently play on the part of another player.
19. Discipline your game.
20. “The true journey of mastery is in each moment.”
21. See poker as a continuum that goes on forever.
22. You cannot apply the principles of Zen until you know the game perfectly—inside and out.
23. Practice.
24. Arrive with a system.
25. Operate out of wholeness.
26. Learn from your mistakes.
27. Know all the ways you can lose big.
28. Know the range of what is likely to happen to you in a game.
29. Expect the worst—why gamblers are pessimists.
30. Don’t expect a certain card to appear.
31. Don’t get overconfident.
32. Learn how to avoid a losing streak.
33. When things start going right for other players and wrong for you, back off.
34. Detach yourself emotionally from the game.
35. Develop a true indifference to the game.
36. Don’t take the game personally.
37. Nonattachment.
This book contains a really good description of attachment, which is linking of our emotions with some desired outcome. My summary of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Buddhism has some tips on cultivating nonattachment.
38. Don’t accept your opponents’ idea of nervousness.
Sometimes your opponents will try to hype up a situation that actually does not phase you. However, occasionally their frame can be so strong that we fall into it, and consequently err. I will expand more on frames and their definitive importance in a future post.
39. When you take your emotions out of the game, other players’ emotions become visible.
I am interested in Vipassana Meditation. I was reading a review of the free 10-day course- a woman wrote that her husband went on a retreat and afterwards, his approach to anger completely changed: although he could generate anger in order to establish boundaries, he was no longer caught up in the emotional turbulence. Zen and the Art of Poker recommends a similar approach to poker, where you want to be aggressive at times, and even appear emotional to your opponents, but remain centered internally.
40. Play “within yourself.”
41. Master yourself, not the game.
42. Your biggest opponent, and worst enemy, is always yourself.
43. Be wary of pushing forward aggressively when encountering resistance.
44. Join the rhythm.
45. Observe the rhythm of the wall.
46. Wait your turn.
47. Fit yourself into the flow of the game.
48. Become aggressive within the openings that appear.
49. Pick your times of confrontation.
50. Adjust your game for how much competition you have in the hand.
51. Learn to play up and down the ladder.
52. Unlike many games and sports, poker has a third factor: the cards.
53. Include Failure in the System.
54. All hesitations are noted.
55. Prolong the time spent looking at your cards.
56. Resist your first impulse.
57. Be flexible.
58. Don’t out-clever yourself.
59. Perfect the poker face.
60. Determine whether an opponent is acting.
61. Learn to read your opponents’ voices.
62. Good poker is not a gentleman’s game; it is a war.
63. You’re never going to win at poker by calling.
64. Minimize your losses; maximize your gains.
65. Play tight and defensively until you have something—then bet a lot.
66. Learn how to bet extravagantly and wildly at times yet be able to turn it off completely at others.
67. Learn the language of betting.
68. Higher betting levels often induce a new emotional range on players’ faces.
69. All other things being equal, big money can run you out of a game.
70. Get out when everything is going against you.
71. Know your game so well that you can act without thinking.
72. As you become a more experienced poker player, try turning your game over to your instinct.
73. Get to the point where you “put someone on a hand” and proceed on that assumption, then take the penalties that accrue from beign wrong and the profits that accrue from being right.
74. Try playing on instinct.
75. Play on your second set of emotions, not your first.
76. Join the flow.
77. Don’t brag.
78. Don’t rest on your laurels.
79. Don’t refer to your past as somehow giving you an edge.
80. Don’t become overconfident.
81. Your edge is small.
82. Be very careful when you are flush with money from a big win.
83. Don’t steam.
84. Don’t complain when you lose.
85. Don’t be mean-spirited.
86. Eliminate macho.
87. Don’t develop a personal vendetta against a certain player.
88. Show your opponents that you can’t be baited.
89. Resist the temptation to develop a theme to the game.
At this point, Phillips delves into “Eight Final Reasons Not to Whine or Complain in Poker”:
- You Look Kind of Silly When You Win.
- Not Whining Adds to Your Personal Invincibility Quotient.
- Complaining Implies That You Have Problems in the Game but Other Players Don’t.
- What Is the Whine-ee Supposed to Do? How Is He Supposed to Act?
- Whining Practically Shouts “Lack of Experience.”
- Your Opponents Don’t Care.
- It Can Set Off a Chain Reaction.
- It’s a Waste of Energy.
90. If you lose the Zen, at least continue to play your cards right.
91. While being in a good mood doesn’t guarantee success at poker, being in a bad mood almost always guarantees that something is going to go wrong.
92. Skip the last two hours of the game.
93. Don’t Panic.
94. The cards will tell you how much money you are going to win.
95. Don’t get in touch with your victim side.
96. Don’t succumb to victim thinking.
97. Resist the allure of failure.
98. Don’t give in to the death wish.
99. After a major poker failure occurs, resist the temptation to do something big, dramatic, and fatalistic.
100. Make sure you know when you’re on a cold streak.
The book concludes with a section encouraging you to examine your motives. To me, this is huge – it reminded me in the section on the Inner Game of Tennis which discusses the psychological games people play when engaging in sports. Common reasons people play poker, besides to play the game and win money, include:
- Looking for a group of friends
- Looking for confirmation that things go wrong for you
- Trying to enhance a vision of yourself as a wild, dashing gambler
- Insecure and looking for an occasional big pot and congratulations to raise self esteem
- Trying to use the table as a punching bag to rid oneself of the day’s frustrations, or creating an opportunity for others to use you as a punching bag
- Hooked on the adrenaline of the action (kind of like The Hurt Locker)
When you play the game for hidden motives, your play is going to be subconsciously affected so that you achieve the hidden motives instead of optimizing your play for maximum success in the game. This applies not just to poker, but to anything. (For more information, see Eric Berne’s Games People Play and Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics).
You can get Zen and the Art of Poker here. Readers looking for more information should check out Zen in the Art of Archery and Mastery. Poker players might benefit from reading my review of What Every Body is Saying.
(If you want me to expand on any of the rules, just leave a comment.)
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