High On Poker posts about applying lessons learned in poker to real life, specifically regarding how luck is blind as much in poker as in life but how it’s harder to see it for what it is in life. I’ve often considered the same thing myself, and I’ve posted about a consequence of it in the past, too.

A related thought I’ve dwelled on recently is how we could perhaps also embrace another poker wisdom into everyday life: The really hard decisions are often the ones that matter the least. This is somewhat difficult to accept in poker, and it’s near-impossible to accept in life. Let me examplify what I mean:

Poker: A no-limit cash game. You’re faced with a deep-stack all-in decision, and try as you might, you can’t get a read on your opponent. You’ve been over the odds several times in your head and you’re close to certain that it’s a toss-up between a call and a fold because he’s either on a stone-cold bluff or he has the nuts and both seem about as likely. You antagonize over the decision.

Life: There are two houses for sale, one that has the upside of being closer to work but the other one has a nicer yard. You and your spouse have been over this many, many times and you realize that whatever house you pick you’ll stay in for a long time. You’ve weighed pros vs. cons. You can’t decide.

In case number one, we all know that whatever course of action our hero decides on isn’t going to be significant in the long run. If both calling and folding carry the same expected value, it actually doesn’t matter what he does. But it’s not quite as easy to carry the analogy over to a major real life decision like buying a house, probably because of a few factors:

1. In poker, especially online poker, we’re going to be faced with near-identical decisions hundreds of more times. Variance will probably “even out” over time (I happen to know how much Gary Carson dislikes the use of the words “even out,” so this one’s for him!) so even if you lose this one you’re not going to sweat it. Not so with the house; you’re perhaps only buying one in your entire life so if this turns out to be a disappointment - even if there was no way you could have known before-hand - you’re going to regret your decision.

2. Many of us live in an illusion of being able to foresee events that we have no control over. Not necessarily “I should have known that” but rather “I could have known that.” Sure, if you had thought to check. And while some things are reasonable to check, some things just aren’t. So you buy the one house and it turns out that it’s built on an indian burial ground and everything goes to hell. Literally. We can try to gather as much information as is humanly possible, but at some point we have to make a decision. If all available evidence indicates that it’s a toss-up, just flip a coin.

3. We feel responsible, I think, for our decisions in a different way in life than in poker. This is connected to both 1) and 2), but it appears easier to accept that sometimes it’s not “in the cards” (literally or figuratively) when it comes to poker. If we get all our money in with the best hand but the river kills us, we might get upset but we won’t blame ourselves for it. If we drive to work and some woman stumbles into the road right in front of our car, there may have been nothing we could have done about it - but it’s pretty human to assign some blame to ourselves for something like that. At least I’d imagine it would be.

Poker builds character, but it also teaches us valuable lessons about ourselves and the world. Don’t let your ego get in your way. Don’t let the world bring you down. Sometimes, you’re just lucky. Sometimes, you’re just unlucky.

“Luck is variance taken personally” seems a fitting quote.