You're sitting at your desk when the telephone rings. You answer, and it's someone gawdawful boring and windbagly... a real and true time sink. No problem for you, though. You just pop up UltimateBet.com and jump into a poker game. This is multitasking at its most sublime: Some creep is killing your time, but you're playing poker behind his back and he has
no idea. How cool are you?
Or maybe you've called customer service at some airline or bank or utility company and they've put you on perma-hold, filling your ear and your brain with tinny muzak, probably something like A Thousand Strings' rendition of the Captain and Tenille's Muskrat Love. A fair working definition of hell, yeah? So you distract yourself with a quick hit of UB fun. How cool are you?
Or perhaps you've got the latest in tuner technology that lets you watch TV on your computer screen (I do, and let me tell you, it fricking rules!) The Big Game is on, and while you're completely spellbound by The Big Game, you're not all that interested in the commercials, being as you are not in the market for a new car or a sexual function enhancer. So you bip over to UltimateBet, and kill that commercial time with Texas hold'em poker at the limit of your choice. Seriously: How unbelievable super cool are you?!
Cool enough.
If you can manage it.
If you can concentrate on two things at once.
Where one of them might cost you money.
If you don't have to shift your concentration from the game at a critical moment because, like, your boss has asked you a question or you've finally gotten through to customer service.
If the Big Game doesn't come roaring back and steal your focus from your poker.
If you're sufficiently committed to playing your best that you don't treat this diversion/distraction as a throw-away session where it doesn't matter whether you win or lose.
It always matters whether you win or lose.
So here are some things to keep in mind if you're going to treat online poker like solitaire.
- First, it isn't solitaire. Not unless you've been playing solitaire for money somewhere. So remember to consider your decisions, even if you're just playing poker to stave off boredom or fill a waiting hole.
- Pick a full table. The point of multitasking your poker is to keep your mind engaged while something else is going on. I think you'll find that the action at a full table is sufficiently fast to serve this end. At a short-handed table, the pace of play is so fast - so many playing decisions will be forced upon you so relentlessly - that you run the risk of having your diversion overwhelm you.
- Consider your decisions. Just because you're playing "for fun" doesn't mean you get to play badly. Avoid reckless adventures (well, always do that). In a perfect world, you'd like this flash-session to result in a little profit for you. This will be more likely to happen if you restrict yourself to quality starts.
- Let decision-making be enough. After all, you're trying to give yourself something interesting to do here. Deciding whether to play a hand should be every bit as interesting as actually playing the hand itself. You'll feel much better about yourself and your short session if, among other things, you made a full set of correct decisions.
- When it's time to quit, quit! When the phone call or the commercial ends, get out. You were multitasking to a purpose, and now that purpose is complete. If you don't take this step of stepping off, you run the risk of turning your online poker session into a time sink of its very own.
Folks, I want to make one thing clear: I am not advocating that you treat online poker as a diversion or a distraction, or something to keep your ADD-addled mind happy while you're on hold on the phone or held in thrall to some yammerhead. That wouldn't be responsible of me, and I'm a responsible guy, you can ask anyone.
The fact is that online poker plays best when you give it your full and complete undivided attention.
The further fact is we're human. And if it's our mother, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, boss, bank officer or parole officer on the other end of the phone, we will be tempted to sneak a few hands of hold'em into this otherwise dry desert of time. Okay, then. Do it if you want to, or do it if you must, but remember that a short session, especially under these conditions, is a powerful force that can only be used for good or for evil. The last thing you want is to turn a ten-minute phone call into a hundred-dollar bankroll drop.
So play tight. Let the fact of not playing hands be as mentally engaging to you as the fact of playing hands.
Be thoughtful. Avoid costly entanglements such as raising wars which can kill hours of profit in a single hand.
And get the heck out of the game and go back to doing what you were doing before. Life is long. There's plenty of time to play poker. After all, the phone could ring at any minute now.
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