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“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
-- Fredrick Douglass
I do like my little quotation thingees at the beginning of my columns. Usually I come up the quote first and then
build the poker concept around it. I’m not going to say that all poker concepts offer us life lessons, or that all life
lessons offer us poker concepts, but it really is often the case that something as trivial as poker mirrors some of the
great and challenging struggles in our lives.
A challenge facing the entire world arises from September’s terrorist attacks. I don’t mean to trivialize that challenge
or the tragedy itself by jumbling it up in a poker context, but in the aftermath I thought a lot about the Fredrick Douglass
quotes here. He was obviously also speaking of something much greater than poker, but I have always found his words to be
directly applicable to how I approach poker as a game played in conflict with opponents. At the same time, I think his words
go directly to the heart of what it takes to make the world a better place, what it takes to fight those who use terror to get
their way, what it takes to curb boorish behavior in the poker world, and what it takes to be a winning poker player.
It takes some pretty strong words to do all that! Here is more:
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must
be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will
quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the
endurance of those whom they oppress.... Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all
they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this
by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."
Poker is a struggle. In fact, poker begins as a struggle for the blinds/antes. While some of our opponents are weak
cupcakes just waiting to be ravaged, many of our opponents are aggressive bullies. (I don’t mean personally, although that
might be true too. I mean strong, tenacious players.) These players simply will not leave our blinds alone... unless we
resist and fight them. Tough players will not just “concede” pots to us. They will bluff us. They will checkraise us.
They will try and trick us, confuse us, intimidate us -- anything to take “our” money.
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to" and these players will steal every single pot right up
to that limit. Poker players "may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get."
Very seldom is anybody going to hand you a pot on a silver platter. Very seldom will you get a no-brainer hand that gives
you a pot as leisurely as a day at the beach. Sometimes winning is easy, but in the
long run it is a difficult struggle
where you are in conflict not primarily with the weaker, losing players, but the stronger, tougher ones. These folks are doing
their darndest to not just take the money of the other folks who are going to lose it to somebody, but they want to take your
money. The nerve of them! We must fight them. We must fight them on the beaches, and in the fields, and in the cities and in
the air... and in the blinds, and on the turn, and when it comes a flush card on the river.
You can’t expect to be a winning poker player and be a doormat too. You can’t expect to be a winning poker player and not
get involved in the thunder and lightning. Poker is conflict. Poker is a struggle. Don’t let the tyrants take what is due you.
Don’t let tyrants push you around. Anywhere.
See also Manipulating Opponents and
Poker Empathy
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