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The Wisdom that Comes From Losing at Poker
What I learned from a brutal poker loss recently
Two weeks ago I lost $300 playing poker at MGM Casino — the National Harbor location outside of Washington DC.
It was a horrible feeling…but not because of the money itself. I’ll win it back — hopefully. I mean, that’s the ebbs and flows of poker, right? No matter how good you are, sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you’ll lose. The key, to state the clear and obvious, is to maximize your profit on wins and minimize losses.
Anyway, the feeling of losing was especially horrible because poker has become one of my favorite hobbies over the past few years.
Though as I’ve asked myself many times, what other hobbies allow you to lose money so quickly? What other hobbies are this stressful? Why don’t you just take up arts and crafts?
(These are all valid questions that I’ve yet to find answers to.)
As most players will tell you, poker can be unforgiving. It can also be wholly demoralizing.
I’m what you’d call a low-stakes recreational poker player — I play poker for fun, maybe once or twice in a month, and relatively speaking, it’s not for a ton of money. This contrasts sharply to a pro poker player, who likely plays five or six days out of the…
