There was something linguistically pleasing about the way this article concluded at exactly the right moment, wrapping up quickly and with zero fluff. In a world of slop the actual human writers start to become more noticeable
Back in 2008 there was a very good NPR piece contrasting McCain and Obama preferred games. McCain was an avowed craps player - not surprising for a highly risk tolerant guy who fundamentally was a bit of a lone wolf. As Nate notes, Obama was and is a poker player, but a social player not a tournament guy, he is comfortable with people but prefers to interact with them in more organized way - like at a card table. And he approaches risk in a very careful way, relying on analysis.
I generally find that to predict the positions someone will take on an issue, conservative/liberal is less useful than basic outlook. Policy wonks talk about positions--"Trump supports tariffs," "Elizabeth Warren supports wealth taxes."
Other people base positions on the psychology they imagine behind the policy positions, "Trump is vindictive and ego-driven," "Elizabeth Warren is an elitist hoping to gain power stirring up class resentments." Often they even imagine groups behind the politicians like "billionaires" or "cultural Marxists," to avoid discrepancies between their psychological beliefs and actual politician behavior.
Even bad poker players learn skepticism about what people try to communicate about their hands and intentions, and that people's self-image about why they do things has little correlation with what they do. They concentrate on observed reality--what do people actually do, not what they say or what they think, and what is the actual result, not what was intended.
That puts most poker players I know in the realist camp. They talk about whether things were good or bad in New York under Adams, de Blasio, Bloomberg, Giuliani, Dinkins--could you walk alone in the parks at night, were there garbage piles on the sidewalk, could you find affordable apartments in pleasant neighborhoods, did sirens keep you up at night.
But most realists focus on their personal experience and don't think about crime in neighborhoods they never visit, or what life in the city is like for people they never meet. I find most good poker players go deeper in their realism. What positive aspects are illusory and unsustainable bluffs? What negative aspects are necessary for a livable equilibrium? How will future events change the equilibrium?
This does not shake out to reliably conservative or liberal opinions, but the poker players I know tend to talk about things in terms of everyday experience and how events will evolve rather than policy positions or psychology of people in power.
“How would anyone with the intelligence to play poker well ever me a socialist?”
I play poker well, I’m a democratic socialist. We have the intelligence to proofread our statements before we ask unintelligent, vacuous rhetorical questions with typos in them.
Also IQ in general is different than specialized intelligence of a specific domain. Many folks can be many things, some of which are contradictory. Poker IQ is different than what most general IQ tests test for (which are flawed anyway).
That doesn't even make sense. Mamdhani won a tough mayors race as an extreme underdog in the primary, then consolidated support to get above 50% in a 3-way general election. He is clearly smart enough to read the room and respond accordingly to what NYC voters want.
Like many things, political opinions are not arrived at as rationally as we’d like to think. For better or worse, they are largely a mix of incentives, personality, social circles and personal happenstance. There are plenty of very intelligent young earth creationists, so I don’t see why it’s that surprising for there to be intelligent socialists.
Can not say the poker player profiling is correct or not but I think this certainly is: " Democrats may also alienate other constituencies like small-business owners when they behave like nits who take an overly prescriptive approach toward government and don’t respect American values like entrepreneurship."
although "nits" is not the most transparent nor convincing term
I have to imagine poker players are much more analytical, abstract thinkers and much less emotional thinkers than the average person, too. And while I have no opinion on what that means for their politics, I suspect it must mean something. I’d guess they are equally suspicious of both the woke left and the “-ism” right; they probably aren’t motivated by racial animus or immigrants taking jobs or whatever. To the extent they were MAGA curious it was almost certainly only a reaction to leftist excess and not because they actually identify with the MAGA ideology.
I’m highly analytical and work in a technical field. Not suspicious at all of the “woke” left, in fact probably would be called woke by many. The thought police, with power, are on the right. The thought police on the left are annoying and on twitter, i.e. not politicians.
Lifting those with the least up is good for everyone is a very analytical view. If more folks have more opportunities, more education, less fear of bad health outcomes, better infrastructure, etc., then we can a more thriving economy that works for more people than those who already well off. It’s the greedy folks afraid of more taxes and “immigrants” (which are also good for everyone and the economy) who are emotional and not analytical. But the zeitgeist likes to define left/right in propagandized ways that regurgitate simple narratives that don’t actually reflect their policies or their representatives in power.
While you emphasize how little poker players matter in the scheme of things, their approach is probably representative of a larger group of Riverians (pretty much anyone who lives on commission).
You hinted to the answer a few times, which is neither. If one had to assign a political party label to the community, poker players undoubtedly would be LIBERTARIAN.
Wait! Nate was friends with Steve Albini? That means I am only three degrees of separation from Nate. A friend was Albini’s roommate in college and the subject of a Big Black song.
Maybe, just maybe gambling shouldn’t be a livelihood? And that’s most likely a conservative view. To profit off gambling you have to have losers in the process. Sure playing a game should be allowed and fun, but poker is primarily a gamblers game and in my humble opinion, gambling in all forms should be illegal. That is from my conservative Southern upbringing. Libertarians have far too much sway in the Republican party. Most of their views jive better with “liberal” or anti-paternalistic parties which is not conservatism in the least.
My personal impression from my limited anecdotal experience is that poker players lean rather left, but left as anarchist left alternativists, that has quite a strong ideological overlap with the right-wing libertarian movement, much more than both would admit.
There was something linguistically pleasing about the way this article concluded at exactly the right moment, wrapping up quickly and with zero fluff. In a world of slop the actual human writers start to become more noticeable
Back in 2008 there was a very good NPR piece contrasting McCain and Obama preferred games. McCain was an avowed craps player - not surprising for a highly risk tolerant guy who fundamentally was a bit of a lone wolf. As Nate notes, Obama was and is a poker player, but a social player not a tournament guy, he is comfortable with people but prefers to interact with them in more organized way - like at a card table. And he approaches risk in a very careful way, relying on analysis.
Mamdani also played scholastic chess in NY!
As for cards, he sure kept that poker face with Trump. 😳
I generally find that to predict the positions someone will take on an issue, conservative/liberal is less useful than basic outlook. Policy wonks talk about positions--"Trump supports tariffs," "Elizabeth Warren supports wealth taxes."
Other people base positions on the psychology they imagine behind the policy positions, "Trump is vindictive and ego-driven," "Elizabeth Warren is an elitist hoping to gain power stirring up class resentments." Often they even imagine groups behind the politicians like "billionaires" or "cultural Marxists," to avoid discrepancies between their psychological beliefs and actual politician behavior.
Even bad poker players learn skepticism about what people try to communicate about their hands and intentions, and that people's self-image about why they do things has little correlation with what they do. They concentrate on observed reality--what do people actually do, not what they say or what they think, and what is the actual result, not what was intended.
That puts most poker players I know in the realist camp. They talk about whether things were good or bad in New York under Adams, de Blasio, Bloomberg, Giuliani, Dinkins--could you walk alone in the parks at night, were there garbage piles on the sidewalk, could you find affordable apartments in pleasant neighborhoods, did sirens keep you up at night.
But most realists focus on their personal experience and don't think about crime in neighborhoods they never visit, or what life in the city is like for people they never meet. I find most good poker players go deeper in their realism. What positive aspects are illusory and unsustainable bluffs? What negative aspects are necessary for a livable equilibrium? How will future events change the equilibrium?
This does not shake out to reliably conservative or liberal opinions, but the poker players I know tend to talk about things in terms of everyday experience and how events will evolve rather than policy positions or psychology of people in power.
How would anyone with the intelligence to play poker well ever me a socialist?
Any data on what Mamdani or Elizabeth Warren's IQs are?
“How would anyone with the intelligence to play poker well ever me a socialist?”
I play poker well, I’m a democratic socialist. We have the intelligence to proofread our statements before we ask unintelligent, vacuous rhetorical questions with typos in them.
Also IQ in general is different than specialized intelligence of a specific domain. Many folks can be many things, some of which are contradictory. Poker IQ is different than what most general IQ tests test for (which are flawed anyway).
That doesn't even make sense. Mamdhani won a tough mayors race as an extreme underdog in the primary, then consolidated support to get above 50% in a 3-way general election. He is clearly smart enough to read the room and respond accordingly to what NYC voters want.
Like many things, political opinions are not arrived at as rationally as we’d like to think. For better or worse, they are largely a mix of incentives, personality, social circles and personal happenstance. There are plenty of very intelligent young earth creationists, so I don’t see why it’s that surprising for there to be intelligent socialists.
IQ: GIGO
Can not say the poker player profiling is correct or not but I think this certainly is: " Democrats may also alienate other constituencies like small-business owners when they behave like nits who take an overly prescriptive approach toward government and don’t respect American values like entrepreneurship."
although "nits" is not the most transparent nor convincing term
I have to imagine poker players are much more analytical, abstract thinkers and much less emotional thinkers than the average person, too. And while I have no opinion on what that means for their politics, I suspect it must mean something. I’d guess they are equally suspicious of both the woke left and the “-ism” right; they probably aren’t motivated by racial animus or immigrants taking jobs or whatever. To the extent they were MAGA curious it was almost certainly only a reaction to leftist excess and not because they actually identify with the MAGA ideology.
I’m highly analytical and work in a technical field. Not suspicious at all of the “woke” left, in fact probably would be called woke by many. The thought police, with power, are on the right. The thought police on the left are annoying and on twitter, i.e. not politicians.
Lifting those with the least up is good for everyone is a very analytical view. If more folks have more opportunities, more education, less fear of bad health outcomes, better infrastructure, etc., then we can a more thriving economy that works for more people than those who already well off. It’s the greedy folks afraid of more taxes and “immigrants” (which are also good for everyone and the economy) who are emotional and not analytical. But the zeitgeist likes to define left/right in propagandized ways that regurgitate simple narratives that don’t actually reflect their policies or their representatives in power.
While you emphasize how little poker players matter in the scheme of things, their approach is probably representative of a larger group of Riverians (pretty much anyone who lives on commission).
You hinted to the answer a few times, which is neither. If one had to assign a political party label to the community, poker players undoubtedly would be LIBERTARIAN.
Wait! Nate was friends with Steve Albini? That means I am only three degrees of separation from Nate. A friend was Albini’s roommate in college and the subject of a Big Black song.
Maybe, just maybe gambling shouldn’t be a livelihood? And that’s most likely a conservative view. To profit off gambling you have to have losers in the process. Sure playing a game should be allowed and fun, but poker is primarily a gamblers game and in my humble opinion, gambling in all forms should be illegal. That is from my conservative Southern upbringing. Libertarians have far too much sway in the Republican party. Most of their views jive better with “liberal” or anti-paternalistic parties which is not conservatism in the least.
Didn't Trump build a bunch of casinos? Would that have any impact by association?
“Tried” to build a bunch. They failed.
How someone could run a casino that badly boggles the mind.
From my qualitative experience, the fish in games I have played are overwhelmingly republican. The pros/good amateurs have been fairly split.
In my family, it's an intergenerational phenomenon. Nate had a great uncle Caswell Silver who was a gambler at heart. Most of his gambling was as a geologist and an oilman (e.g., owner of Sundance Oil Co.), exploring for oil and other minerals (uranium, etc.) in the Southwestern US. But he was also a poker player. That spirit flowed through the family line to Nate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caswell_Silver?fbclid=IwY2xjawOcAbVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETF3czExVkZUa1pVeEVHalo3c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgzSuEB9zrp3RwrH8ZnjWFuwQrElUSzKLHtgMGCoAtzShQAzDhNgo2AwE9tJ_aem_SdrnRf325DzGUriOZY0xFg
Maybe the main reason I seldom play poker is that although I'm liberal I'm not inclined to give away my wealth. i.e., I lose at poker.
My personal impression from my limited anecdotal experience is that poker players lean rather left, but left as anarchist left alternativists, that has quite a strong ideological overlap with the right-wing libertarian movement, much more than both would admit.