First, faithful readers forgive me for what is destined to be dull read with no visual enhancement. For a few of my readers I suspect that starting the previous days post with the origin of ‘fusis’ was a harbinger of the post to come. Every once in a while I enter into a very reflective state, I will attempt to apply this reflection to poker and keep the content focused on a particular area, but I’ll make no guarantees. Brace yourselves, for I’m feeling philosophical; we're off the map and there be dragons here.
Topic of the day: Growth and experience
Poker is an interesting game, it’s never truly mastered, it’s a game in which a dedicated player will always find new ways to grow, adapt and evolve. So, we being in a state of utter immaturity and experience allows us to diminish that immaturity though its two-fold passive and active state. The passive state is undergoing the experience, taking the sensory input and storing it for later use. TJ Cloutier is a master of undergoing a poker experience as he said on the WSOP “If I played poker with you 20 years ago I might not remember your name, but I’ll remember how you played”. The other intrinsic aspect of experience is active, the trying. This is what enables the growth, to try something for the first time for that particular instance. Even if everything else in existence were to remain unchanged; there exist the necessity of the existence of two things that change; the time in which it occurs, due to our linear experience of time and the additional memory, for this will be recorded when we undergo the experience. Trying something we have experienced before and undergone allows us to build a set of memories to draw upon which in turn allows for a more accurate prediction of the outcome of what is being tried. Hence; we learn. Every moment of our existence, every breath, every heartbeat we learn, for by our very existence we are in a state of perpetual experience.
Now, as we build our reservoir of experience, our opportunity to focus our learning on specific elements increases. Once the basic of poker are mastered, we can direct our energy to learning pot odds, value betting, specific elements of the game that become part of our nature. Next, comes the aspects that are never truly and totally mastered, the qualitative aspects of the game that require trying every time, bluffing, reading tells, deciding how much to bet in order to garner or suppress a call/raise. These are the elements that a lifetime of devotion will, for the skilled and devoted allow self-mastery, but never total mastery for poker is a game that operates outside of our personal experience and interacts with the experience of those around us. Each and every player undergoes and tries, learns and adapts. Even after a totality of self-mastery has reach the point of diminishing returns, pot odds are second nature and the bet is exactly the right amount our opponent can make the most improbable of moves and catch a two-outer to make the nuts. This aspect of the game, however, should not put us on tilt or effect future judgment; the improbable and unlikely events must be over ruled by the total mastery of the underlying statistics and the reservoir of experience that creates sound and reasonable judgment, with the emphasis shifting to the latter as the well of experience we draw upon grows deeper.
In considering the nature of experience as it relates to poker, I consider the totality of the game to be one of the truest representations in microcosm of the larger whole, that is, life. This is not to say that to master poker is to master life, but rather, that both have limitless possibilities; which, as we evolve from a state of immaturity to maturity become a finite set of at least a smaller infinite set; which allows for success by what ever stick our personal development establishes or, as Suzuki said “in the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the masters few.”
Now, please don’t consider this an in-depth examination of this topic; for the nature, the fusis, of experience, action, memory, sensation, quality and about dozen over interrelating elements would need to be considered in depth. Quality was a focal point of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Sensation can be looked at from numerous philosophic schools, from rationalism to empiricism (thank the Brits for that school of thought) to existentialism to Classic Aristotelian. And experience was not only the focus of a book for John Dewey’s works, but his life’s work (by definition I suppose, okay, bad pun).
Well, I refuse to end a post on a bad pun, so I guess I’ll wrap up this cursory look at growth and its relationship to experience with a pertinent quote on the topic from Mr. Dewey.
This is humorous, for I realize now; that, I have basically written about the synthesis of experience and growth as I set out to do and looking at Dewey there is a single word to sum this up: education.
So a short and sweet from Dewey: “Education is the process of living, not preparation for future living.”
