;)
Arthur S. ReberI’ve spent over fifty years living two parallel lives. In one I am a semi-degenerate gambler, a poker junkie, horse player, and blackjack maven; in the other, a scientist specializing in cognitive psychology and related topics in the neurosciences, the origins of consciousness and the philosophy of mind. For the most part, I’ve kept these tracks separate mainly because my colleagues in each have little appreciation for the wonder, the complexities and the just full-bore fun in the other.
But over time these two avenues of my life have meshed. There’s a lot that we know about human psychology that can give us insight into gambling, especially poker and, of course, there’s a lot that poker can teach us about human psychology. It is quite astonishing how richly these topics interlock. I’ll also introduce you to some engaging characters I’ve known – bookies, con artists, hustlers, professional poker players and perhaps an occasional famous scientist.
This site will wander about in both worlds with new columns and articles along with links to scores of previously published ones. Now that I’ve retired I’ve become something of a political junkies and will go on rants on politics and economics, When the mood strikes I’ll share views on food, restaurants and cooking. Any and all feedback is welcome.
Money is funny stuff. Everybody wants it, most of us don’t have enough of it (or don’t think we do) and, oddly, when people suddenly manage to get a lot of it, they typically do not grasp what they have, do not understand it and don’t know what to do with it.
Ah, memory, our precious capacity. We recall past events, relive them, summon anew the emotions linked with them —- and, of course, conveniently edit them for future needs. Memory makes us human. No other creature can, with the flick of a neuron, revive the past, reignite old passions, reconvene special moments and treat these ephemeral visions as though they were real, palpable and not fleeting phantasms or illusions. Without a past, there could be no present.
I love titles that look like silly statements. Problems handling winning? How can this be? Isn’t like wondering whether one could deal with falling in love, hitting the lottery, finding a diamond under a bush on the lawn? How can there be problems here?
It occurred to me the other day that I rarely write about “good” things in these columns. In fact, without doing any careful analysis, my sense is that I write about “bad” stuff about ten times as often as I write about “good” stuff.
The title is either transparently true or patently false —- depending on your point of view, and the game you’re playing. I think it’s more true than false, once we specify the circumstances. In a live, cash game or a multi-table tournament played No Limit or Pot Limit, I think it’s deeply and importantly true, if not (yet) demonstrably so from a game theoretic perspective.
Arthur S. Reber