I started playing poker for income when I was 18. In Vegas, it’s extremely easy to play underage if you just have a decent wardrobe and a friend’s player card for the casino you prefer. Once the employees know your face, you’re golden.
Back then, the fish were plentiful and profit came easy. I loved everything about it at first: the social interaction, the indifference to money, the ritual around the procedures, the complimentary bonuses like reserved parking and free meals.
Most of all though, I think 18-year-old me really enjoyed the feeling of superiority it imbued. I felt like I was more prepared due to having read and studied more, plus my background of playing Magic the Gathering and other card games where I honed my bluffing and deductive reasoning skills. When I won opponents’ money by performing better than them over time I felt rewarded, as I deserved. (This also made losing feel even worse.) It was meritocracy in action, in a way.
Poker lost much of its appeal for me right around the time I was developing my capacity for empathy. By then, I had moved on to no-limit games, and I started to notice some opponents who clearly were in over their heads. Either they were overestimating their skill and were now learning an expensive lesson, or worse, they were desperate. I lost some of the ability to feel superior taking someone’s money when I began to value the humanity of the people around the table, and found myself wondering how bad this loss would be for them.
I am not saying that other poker players don’t feel empathy. I still play occasionally, and can enjoy it when I do. Most players would probably tell you they would rather win money from someone who can afford to lose it than someone with a gambling problem, but you don’t always get to choose who else is sat around the table. It’s obviously possible to suspend the negative feelings from having empathy for someone else when participating in a consensual competition with mutually agreed upon rules, and poker is just that. I simply struggled to deal with those new feelings at the time. Hell, I still struggle with how empathy hits me at times.
Nowadays, I have a preference for “comradery over contrition.” Tabletop games (most of them, anyways) are the only non-team experiences that embody this, in my opinion. Having more fun yourself does not come at the cost of others’ enjoyment; in fact, it often enhances the joy for others. I want interactions that include competition, but only ones that are decidedly fun for all even if a winner was never declared.
(But it sure does feel good to be that winner anyways.)
