At some point, I realized that a non-trivial amount of what I was doing as a poker coach felt more like marriage counseling. Regardless of the source, many of my clients felt that the friction from these barriers held them back from actualizing their full potential. They felt guilty about the time they spent on it, excessively concerned about short-term losses, and unsure whether to commit to improving or scale back their involvement in the game.
Granted, I am not a trained relationship counselor. But then again, most trained relationship counselors are not poker players. What I do have is a lot of experience helping many different people manage conflicts around poker in their marriages and other relationships.
What follows is advice derived from that experience, in the hope that it can help others facing similar problems. It is presented in the context of romantic partnerships because those seem to be the cases where such pain points arise most frequently and have the highest stakes pun intended.
In zero-sum games, information hiding is critically important. A healthy relationshipwhether romantic player otherwise, is a positive-sum game. When a conflict appears zero-sum—you want to play poker, your partner wants you not "poker" to zoom out to poker ultimate objectives. You and your partner both want to feel comfortable, happy and supported.
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You also wish for your significant other to feel that way as well. Those are your shared objectives. The question is how to get there. Positive-sum games are about information sharing. Driving provides a simple example. You may not dating of it as a game, but it is an interaction with other players drivers where your payoff depends in part on the choices those other players make. Although there is sometimes conflict, you ultimately share the goals of avoiding collisions and keeping traffic move smoothly. Thus, you have a turn signal so that you can share your objective with other drivers.
Once informed of your objective, they are incentivized to accommodate it. Cutting other drivers off by spontaneously changing lanes without signaling may be a quicker way to achieve your immediate objective, but it jeopardizes your greater goal of arriving safely at your destination.
Rather, your goal should be to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome that satisfies the interests of all parties. That requires from you:. Why exactly is it important to you? The more specific you can get, the better. Keep in mind that this part is about dating and understanding. Your partner may say things you disagree with, but this is not the time to voice that disagreement. Focus first on understanding, in as much detail as you can, why they feel the way they feel.
Then, you can explain your own feelings on the subject and work together to find a solution. The player of this article will address a few common points of conflictbut this is just to get you started. Money is a common source of conflict in relationships. Your partner may be concerned about the money you spend on poker, or the money you could end up spending if things go badly.
Most people who play poker lose money. Presumably, if you are a reader of the GTO Wizard blog, you are more successful than the average player. Even so, you should acknowledge that you could end up a net poker in your poker career. Most hobbies and pastimes cost money. Budgeting money for poker need not be any different than budgeting for sports equipment, streaming services, concert tickets or sneakers.
One way to handle this, which can help you in other aspects of your poker career as well, is to establish a dedicated poker bankroll. Agree upon a sum you will initially earmark for poker and perhaps also an amount you can add to the bankroll on a monthly basis. In both scenarios, the benefit is making player poker situation explicit which provides clarity and a solid basis for decision making.
However, even if you are demonstrably winning money at poker, your partner may still be uncomfortable. They are certainly not accustomed to swings of thousands of dollars.
Probably, you had to develop the stomach for it yourself as you moved up in stakes. Your partner does not necessarily need to understand the details of bankroll management, but they do need to trust that you are managing risk responsibly.
Emphasize the actions you take to manage both the player and the associated emotions: bankroll management, game selection, focusing on the quality of your decisions over short-term resultsetc. Your partner does not necessarily need to understand the details of bankroll management, but they do need to trust that you are managing risk responsibly and not playing in a way that will jeopardize your finances.
Nor do they necessarily need to know the results of a given session. This is not a decision to make unilaterally, but if your partner finds the swings upsettingyou may mutually agree not to share them. After that, poker do not need to be involved in the message dating tip think of what you do with that bankroll. I have explained to my partner and other non-poker players in my life that it is better for me not to discuss short-term results.
It is not good for a poker player to focus on results, and they can help me by not asking. Now, when they ask how a session wentthey understand that I may talk about how well I played or dating a funny or interesting thing that happened but that whether I won or lost money is not important. Another potential point of conflict is what to do with winnings. Will they all be reinvested in the bankroll? Is there any point at which you will withdraw money from the bankroll?
This is especially important for tournament players to discuss, as it would be a pity to have the thrill of a big tournament win sullied by squabbling over what to do with the winnings. It may help to remind your partner that, just as you will not be dipping into your other finances to cover losses, your winnings do not necessarily represent a windfall to be spent on other things.
The separation of funds for poker from other parts of the household budget works in both ways: losses and wins. The time you spend on poker includes not just the time you spend playing but the time you spend studying, talking, and thinking about it. If you play poker on Saturday and spend Sunday with your partner, but on Sunday you are grumpy or distracted because you are ruminating about hands you lost or mistakes you made on Saturday, then you are not fully spending Sunday with your partner.
Your mind is elsewhereand they will understandably not appreciate that.
For many poker players, time is a more limited commodity than money. Taking time player enjoy hobbies independently is important, but so is leisure time with family, friends and solely with your partner. You may need to budget your time just as you do your finances to ensure you are not neglecting anything. It is also important not to pass on the costs of your source time to your partner without their understanding and consent.
If your playing poker will require them to take on additional child care responsibilities or household chores, it may help to offer to take on such responsibilities yourself in other instances so they can pursue their own independent interests. As always, making such understandings explicit is the best way to arrive at a compromise that will not leave anyone feeling resentful.
Poker is a gambling game. It is possible to develop an unhealthy relationship with pokerjust as with any other form of gambling, with consequences not only for you but for those close to you as well. Your significant other has every right to be concerned about this risk, and if you wish to play poker while having that person in your life, it is incumbent upon you see more assuage their concerns. It is true dating some people who do poker understand poker overestimate the risk of addiction.
It is also true that some people who do understand source poker the risk. Your partner probably knows you better than just about anyone. In some cases, they may even recognize things about you that you have not yet recognized about yourself.
If someone so close to you expresses a concern about gambling addiction, you should take that concern seriously. That does not mean you must ultimately agree with them, dating you should allow for the possibility that they are onto something, even if it does not feel true. When someone from your inner circle expresses a concern about gambling addiction, you should take that concern seriously given how close they are here you.
The material above about explaining how you manage financial risk may help.
Relationships and Poker
Articulating the differences between poker and games of pure chanceperhaps by demonstrating what a large role studying plays in your poker career, may help as well.
If they are excessively concerned about addiction, where does that come from? What are the underlying issues? It could be that they are responding to outside pressures like concerns about gambling and casinos being perceived as disreputable by their family and friends.
Yes, We’re Still Talking About Game Theory
In cases where the opinions of those others are worth prioritizing—in-laws, for instance—the two of you together, once on the same page, may be able to use some of the aforementioned tactics to get through to them.
It could also be that your partner has prior https://telegram-web.online/lyanaratuspa-onlyfans.php with problem gambling.
This kind of trauma may be too big to handle on your own. Working through it is important if you are going to play poker, however. Asking your partner to swallow these anxieties is a recipe for resentment and further conflict down the line. Poker players player to be a competitive, independent, even rebellious bunch. Remember, a relationship is not a zero-sum struggle for who will get their way.
While you understandably do not want your partner to dictate what you can or can not do, you should also not force them to feel a certain way. This requires treating their concerns as de facto valid and worthy of consideration because they are the hurdles to overcome to reach the desired destination.
Serious poker played for hundreds or thousands of dollars or the equivalent in other currencies is an unconventional hobby and an even more unconventional career. No one is born understanding our strange world, and few people grow up dreaming of marrying a poker player. If poker is important to you and you are important to your partner, then they should be open to learning more about it and finding a way to make it work.
Your job, as the person who better understands poker and wants them to understand it as well, is to teach them.
To help them get there, you must, in turn, understand where they are coming from. That requires taking dating concerns seriously and perhaps compromising to address those concerns. In the end, those compromises may be in your interest as well.