What is fun? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.
Yesterday night I played a bit of poker, then stopped.
I wasn’t obviously playing poorly.
I just wasn’t enjoying it.
What is fun?
Why is poker more fun when you’re winning?
Part is the monetary aspect: it’s not enjoyable to lose money. And while the monetary aspect in this case is not large enough to be life-affecting, it’s still relevant to the pleasure.
Poker is an intellectual exercise that I enjoy attempting to do well. It’s fun circumstance in which I strive to do something properly. That’s part of the joy that I get from sharing my hands with a professional poker playing friend: the interestingness of improving.
It’s also a naturally exhilarating game. You can play well – perfectly, even – and still lose.
Is fun just the distraction from suffering? That’s the etymology of at least one french word and one spanish word for fun.
If so, are the times when I stop enjoying poker the times when it becomes too serious? When I’m taking it with too much heaviness? (Alternate hypotheses: my suffering outside of poker is too great for the distraction to work, or I’m not suffering enough outside of poker so the distraction doesn’t give me additional pleasure.)
I think it’s closer to: I’m feeling fear. I don’t enjoy poker when I’m feeling a lot of fear. When the fear prevents me from playing well, I stop enjoying the poker. I clam up and that’s no good.
Solutions:
- Don’t play poker games where the stakes cause me to feel fear.
- When you feel fear, notice it’s fear. Then put it in its place and make the right decision.
Amusingly enough, when I wrote that my today’s pokerplaying went from playing my B game to my A game. That’s nice! 😀
Julian Wise 