Road rage, and poker
by ~ October 5th, 2008. Filed under: Poker aggression, Poker and life.
I’m surprised that I haven’t noted this before, but maybe it’s because I was aware of it before I became active with this blog.
Road rage bears a lot of similarities to aggression in poker. People normally drive with varying levels of aggression present, from young testosterone possessed males in muscle cars, to retired folk who are just getting from point A to point B.
Drivers also have varying degrees of experience and pay varying degrees of attention to what they are doing. This affects carelessness, but also the degree of “buying into” the driving experience. For example, one of the reasons that with our recent car purchase we looked for manual transmission was the fact that I like to feel connected with the car and the road, rather than just aiming the vehicle which is what I feel that I’m doing when I drive automatic transmission. So I’m more “bought into” the experience of driving than most people.
And, like a poker presence, people are attached to their cars and to their driving personage. Endanger their car, challenge their driving and they can react as if you’ve personally insulted them. Like the player who can’t let go after they raise preflop even when they miss the board entirely, they can’t back down if they feel that they are being challenged.
I was particularly aware of this when I first started playing poker and was trying to add aggression to my game. Aggression is like a mental muscle that needs to be developed and managed. Adrenaline can power aggression, but adrenaline clouds the thinking and pushes us toward extremes of actions. Aggression needs to be developed on it’s own, without adrenaline, a mental habit that can be used and controlled. But for the inexperienced, aggression automatically gets fuelled by adrenaline making it hard to control.
If you’re an experienced, trained, top level athlete, actor, musician or other performer, you can learn to control the boost that a little bit of adrenaline will give you and use it to enhance your performance. And presumably the same with poker, though I haven’t achieved that level. Adrenaline can increase focus, awareness, and enegy levels.
But that same adrenaline reaction while driving in the city is unnecessary. Yes, if you suddenly have someone run a red light right in front of you, then the reaction time and decision making that adrenaline can speed up is useful, but to get angry and chase someone down honking at them because they cut in front of you while merging onto your street is overreacting, and is counterproductive to your general well-being and enjoyment of your life.
So let it go. Know that aggression and adrenaline have their place in life, while driving, and in poker, but just because the situation comes up where these things pop up doesn’t mean that it’s time to go with it.
~
The other funny thing about poker playing in connection with driving is my vocabulary. When someone makes a bad driving decision, my thinking is “what a donkey”. Not a standard description for the non-poker player. And over time, as I’ve worked on controlling my poker aggression I’ve also become less prone to getting angry while driving. Call them a donkey, and be done with it.
