Sartre’s Gambler (3 of 3)

If you ever to listen to PokerRoad Radio, you’ve probably heard a clip of T.J. Cloutier from his appearance on PRR back in early March. They’ve been using it repeatedly as a bumper on all of their shows. The clip begins with co-host Ali Nejad asking Cloutier what advice he has for players who are running bad or “who feel snakebit.”

“I wake up every day with a new attitude,” Cloutier responds. “I’m not gonna worry about what happened yeseterday. I just go on to the next day.” Then he adds, “How can anybody who’s won about 11 million in poker and lost about 3 million in craps worry about what happened yesterday?”

That last question elicits laughter -- and a bit of sarcasm -- from the PokerRoad crew. It’s a very existentialist thing for Cloutier to say, actually. In fact, every time I hear that clip, it makes me think again about Sartre’s gambler.

By describing each day as a new one -- or, to say it differently, to distinguish between what one is or does today from what one was or has done previously -- is to regard the past as Sartre does, as an example of “nothingness” that Cloutier says he chooses not to draw upon as he endeavors to make meaning of the present.

Of course, it isn’t as though Cloutier is “reborn” each day. There’s obviously a lot that he has experienced during those previous thousands of days that does help him figure out what today means for him. But his “attitude” or philosophy is basically existentialist, at least in the way he puts it. And frankly, all poker players who have enjoyed long-term success almost without exception adopt a similar approach in the way they view and interpret the game.

As a way to close the discussion, let me refer to three examples of poker writers also evoking this very existentialist view of life in their discussions of poker.

One comes from one of my favorite passages in Small Stakes Hold ‘em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth, that short little section early on titled “Random and Independent Events.” After talking a bit about how the human brain has a remarkable capacity for seeking out and identifying patterns, the trio explain how easy it is at the poker table to make the error of seeing patterns where none exist. “When it comes to gambling,” they point out, “mistaking false patterns as real has led many to ruin.”

In particular, many sometimes falsely conclude that the cards dealt in one hand have something to do with what gets dealt in the next. The authors underscore the importance of avoiding such a fallacy by using italics: “The cards dealt on any poker hand are, for practical purposes, completely random and independent of the cards dealt on any previous hands.” Indeed, the cards are simply “existents,” or “pieces of plastic” with “no knowledge, no memory, no cosmic plan.” An obvious point, perhaps, but we’ve all made that mistake at one time or another. (He can’t have aces again, can he?)

The second passage I’ll quote comes from the first volume of Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold ’em. It’s a point he makes over and over again when talking us through sample hands, particularly when he is narrating one in which his player has made an error early in the hand, and now faces a new quandary later on. “Once you’re in a hand,” he explains, “every subsequent decision has to be determined by your hand, the pot odds, and the total table situation.” Like the authors of SSHE, Harrington brings in the italics to emphasize the point: “Every betting decision is a new problem. Don’t forget that.”

Finally, I’ll share something from Barry Tanenbaum’s epilogue to his terrific Advanced Limit Hold ’em Strategy (published last year). Tanenbaum is especially gifted at explaining poker-related concepts, and in fact a lot of them apply regardless of the game one is playing.

The epilogue is titled “Forgive Yourself” and there Tanenbaum stresses the importance of not brooding over yr screw-ups (which, for most of us, are inevitable) and instead focusing on the next hand. “A positive attitude is essential,” Tanenbaum argues, thus the need to avoid beating oneself up over that missed bet or incorrect fold. “The better you get at not dwelling on past mistakes other than to learn from them and move on,” says Tanenbaum, “the better your play will be.”

Sounds a lot like Cloutier. And Sartre, in a way . . . .

The point, I suppose, is to understand that as humans we necessarily allow a lot of stuff that isn’t really “there” -- a lot of “nothingness” -- to creep into our understanding of what is there, such as all the different “existents” (cards, chips, people) gathered around a poker table at any given moment. We take that “nothingness” (be it from memories of the past, or ideas of the future, or wherever) and make meaning of our present. We can’t help it. We’re human.

But as we do, we should try to recognize and avoid those circumstances when we might be tempted to make meaning and then apply it incorrectly (and thus go down that path that “has led many to ruin”), e.g., expecting the next hand to balance the previous one, allowing a preflop mistake to affect unduly a post-flop decision, letting a bad session affect our play in the next one, and so forth.

All important to keep in mind, I would think. I just hope I remember it tomorrow.

Sartre’s Gambler (2 of 3)

In the last post, I discussed one of the premises of Jean-Paul Sartre’s argument in Being and Nothingness -- namely, that the world entirely consists of “existents” that have “being,” but we humans who have consciousness are also aware of a lack of being or “nothingness.”

That “nothingness” of which Sartre speaks creates a lot of problems for us. Or should I say, we create a lot of problems, ’cause we’re the ones who “bring” this “nothingness” into the world. Says Sartre, “Man is the being through whom nothingness comes to the world.”

In a strange way, this “nothingness” is the means by which we all tend to make meaning of our lives. Think about that example of the fellow who looked in his wallet and found less cash than he thought he had. He “experiences the absence” of money, and it is this process of “bringing nothingness” into the world that subsequently colors (or makes meaning of) his experience. Sartre talks about different kinds of “anguish” we feel as a result of our experiencing various absences, including what we’re feeling when we worry about the future, or what we feel when we look back on the past and realize the difference between who we are today and what we were yesterday.

It is amid that latter discussion when Sartre’s gambler finally arrives. With Dostoevsky in mind, Sartre refers to the case of “the gambler who has freely and sincerely decided not to gamble anymore and who, when he approaches the gaming table, suddenly sees all his resolutions melt away.” Sartre then talks a bit about psychological explanations for this reaction, such as the one that suggests the mere sight of the table “reawakened . . . a tendency” already present in the gambler that is in conflict with the resolution he’d previously made not to play.

All applesauce, says Sartre. “In reality -- the letters of Dostoevsky bear witness to this -- there is nothing in us which resembles an inner debate as if we had to weigh motives and incentives before deciding.” Rather, what we have is our “existent” -- our gambler -- here today standing before the gaming table. Sure, he remembers his earlier resolution. It is “there,” so to speak. “But what he apprehends then in anguish is precisely the total inefficacy of the past resolution,” Sartre explains.

In other words, the resolution -- like all his past gambling activities and other experiences -- is “there” but it is not there. Not really. It is nothingness.

“The resolution is still me,” says the gambler, “to the extent that I realize constantly my identity with myself across the temporal flux, but it is no longer me -- due to the fact that it has become an object for my consciousness.” That is to say, “it is nothingness which separates him from himself.”

The gambler, then, is in a tricky spot. According to Sartre, he can’t really rely on his past resolution, as that was the past and is not, technically speaking, a part of his present “being-in-itself.” No, he’s gonna have to make that resolution all over again. “I must rediscover the fear of financial ruin or of disappointing my family, etc., I must re-create it as experienced fear,” says Sartre’s gambler to himself. “After having patiently built up barriers and walls, after enclosing myself in the magic barrier of resolution, I perceive with anguish that nothing prevents me from gambling.”

Sort of thing usually didn’t work for Dostoevsky, as he ended up back at the roulette wheel again and again. You can see how this way of looking at our experience tends to produce a lot of “anguish” or anxiety or dread about our existence. What does my present “being” mean, really, if it has no real connection with who I am going to be tomorrow (other than what I imagine, or create out of “nothingness”)?

You can also see how this notion that our present “being” isn’t necessarily related to previous versions of ourselves -- even though we often do color our experience with ideas drawn from the “nothingness” of the past -- can apply to the way things often go at the poker tables. Will try to make a couple of such applications in the next -- and last -- post on the subject.

Sartre’s Gambler (1 of 3)

There’s a famous (though brief) passage early on in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (originally published in 1943) in which the French philosopher uses the example of a problem gambler to help illustrate what he means by “nothingness” and how it differs from “being.”

I suppose Sartre could’ve used a different example to make his point, but I can see a couple of reasons why he chose the gambler. For one, doing so enabled him to acknowledge in a subtle way the influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’ve written here before about Dostoevsky’s 19th-century novel The Gambler and his status as a thinker whose ideas helped provide some of the groundwork for modern existentialism. Dostoevsky was also himself an inveterate gambler -- indeed, Sartre is referring to the Russian writer’s life (and not his fiction) when he brings him up here.

The example of a gambler who is trying to quit gambling also demonstrates in a particularly useful manner Sartre’s argument about existence. In particular, speaking of a problem gambler helps Sartre clearly distinguish the difference between who we are and our ideas about who we are.

I’m probably asking for all sorts of trouble, but I thought it’d be worth trying to take a shot at presenting Sartre’s gambler. My main motive here is just to try to sort out what Sartre is saying in order to understand it better myself. But I also thought others might be interested, too, as some of what Sartre says about his gambler seems to prefigure certain ideas I’ve seen explored from time to time in discussions of poker (both strategic and theoretical). That is to say, whether or not you buy Sartre’s explanations of existence, I think poker players might at least be somewhat intrigued by some of the various implications of what comes up in this here passage.

Gonna try to pull this off in three posts. In this first one, I’ll see if I can present in at least a semi-coherent way Sartre’s general argument about “being” and “nothingness” in order to give us a context for reading the passage. In the next post, I’ll do my best to summarize what Sartre is saying in that passage about the gambler. Then, in a third post, I’ll try to connect Sartre’s gambler to certain ideas I’ve seen specifically expressed by a few poker players.

Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness is a big, thick, imposing book. And making matters worse, it begins with a very hard-to-read introduction in which Sartre explains what he thinks “being” is. A lot of readers never get beyond the first few pages of this introduction. It’s understandable -- the prose is very rough-going, and the arguments not really as conclusive as what one finds elsewhere in the book.

Sartre starts out by rejecting “the dualism of appearance and essence” that he says has long “embarrassed” philosophy. According to Sartre, there is no such thing as “essence” (or “soul” or a “noumenon” or whatever you want to call that stuff that isn’t really there but which many philosophers insist is somehow accessible to us). No, says Sartre, “the being of an existent is exactly what it appears.” There is no “interior” or “secret reverse side” or whatever.

Of course, when it comes to us poor humans, we have this thing called “consciousness” that tends to complicate our experience of the world. Consciousness is what makes me different from, say, a poker chip or a playing card or all of the other stuff that exists but lacks consciousness.

Everything that exists -- me, the chip, the card -- has what Sartre calls “being-in-itself.” Of each of these “existents” we can say “it is what it is.” But unlike the chip and the card, I also have consciousness, which means I am also aware of all sorts of stuff that is not -- i.e., that is not there, that is not me, etc.

This leads to a distinction that Sartre is willing to make, and which is fairly important to everything else he has to say in Being and Nothingness. There’s “being-in-itself,” which I have, but which the chip and the card have, too. That’s a kind of being that is “unconscious” or “unaware.” We can only say that “it is” and nothing more.

Then there’s “being-for-itself,” which I have but which the card and chip do not -- namely, a kind of being that is “conscious,” but we’re not talking merely self-consciousness. Rather, says Sartre, “being-for-itself” is “consciousness conceived as a lack of Being.” To put it broadly, it is being conscious of what I am not. And that is “nothingness” -- the idea, I mean, not the “being-for-itself.” Nothingness not a type of being; rather, nothingness is brought into the world by those of us who are conscious of our being.

So unlike a lot of earlier philosophers, Sartre is not a “substance dualist.” There’s just the one substance for Sartre, and that is “being-in-itself.”

After that difficult introduction, Sartre gets into part one of the book where he addresses “The Problem of Nothingness” and this part is much more accessible. He presents some examples to illustrate nothingness. (This is the part of the book where his discussion of the problem gambler comes in.)

One such example involves a person looking in his wallet and expecting to find 1,500 francs, yet only seeing 1,300. As he “experiences the absence” of 200 francs, Sartre would say, he “brings nothingness” into the world. He gives another example of going to the café to meet his friend Pierre at four o’clock and discovering he isn’t there. Again, he experiences the absence of Pierre, or, to put it differently, he brings “nothingness” into the world.

Notice how both of those examples involved expectations being foiled. In other words, unlike “being-in-itself” (that mode of being that exists without needing anyone to be aware of it), “nothingness” is wholly dependent on our awareness.

Sartre goes on to talk about some other aspects of nothingness, but I’m going to leave it there. You can probably already see how this way of explaining our experience of the world -- talking about “being” (all the stuff in the world, including ourselves) and “nothingness” (all the stuff we imagine about the world, including what we imagine about ourselves) -- potentially relates to poker.

As I said, in the next post I’ll see if I can summarize Sartre’s portrait of the gambler, then add one more where I’ll try to make a connection or two to poker.