The LOSE has been busy here of late, cranking out a magazine at the office and writing up a draft of a new novel. But the LOSE took time out to travel to Las Vegas, where I participated in the National Scrabble Championships. And as resistant as I am to the idea, I will be a dutiful reporter here and go into some sort of detail about this tournament here in the coming days.
But before I do that, it's important to bring a concept into play here which was all of my gambler friends know about. This is a snippet from Mike Caro's "Threshold of Misery" theory, which I vaguely knew of in the past and was then reintroduced to by my good pal Jason Hlady up in Saskatchewan after I had a truly dreadful tournament in Albuquerque in 2009:
Few
concepts have resonated with students more than Caro's Threshold of
Misery. I continually receive letters, e-mails, and face to face thanks
from both poker players and people in the "real world", telling me how
much this simple truth has meant to them.
Here's how it goes:
suppose you're a small to medium limit player, and you can envision
yourself comfortably losing a maximum of $1,500 today. I'm not
suggesting that you'll be happy about losing that much, just that you
can comfortably handle it and that anything more will begin to feel
uncomfortable.
Okay, now you find yourself down $500, then
$1,100, then--before it registers, you've zoomed past $1,500 and are
losing $1,800. You've entered dangerous territory. And it gets worse.
And worse. Hours later, you find yourself losing $4,530. Now, your mind
is numb. I believe that most people at this point can't mentally
comprehend added losses. It all feels the same. You've crossed into
Caro's Threshold of Misery, which is the point where mental and
emotional pain is maximized and anything further won't register.
You
must be aware when you cross that threshold, because beyond it
decisions don't seem to matter. This is true in real life, too. When
romances unravel or businesses fail, you might cross the Threshold of
Misery and stop caring about making critical decisions. That's because
the pain is already maximized and anything else that goes wrong can't
add to the agony ... at these times, in poker and in life, the secret is
to keep performing like you care.
How'd I do in Vegas? Well, I wouldn't be explaining the threshold of misery theory if it went well, now would I? This blog is intended to be an act of somewhat creative nonfiction, because truth is stranger than fiction. And I couldn't have invented this tournament in my head if I tried.