Lessons From My Father

In his youth, my father was flying officer in the Canadian Air Force. He often told me stories of those days and tried to teach me some of the life lessons he learned as a pilot. I remember two things very distinctly and both are lessons that poker players would do well to heed.

My dad liked to give me riddles to solve or pose problems to test me. I liked the attention and tried hard to show how smart I was.

Once he said to me something like, "Tyler, imagine you are flying an airplane over the mountains. A sudden freak storm has come up - unbelievably strong winds that could quite likely tear your wings off. You know you can get below the storm if you drop you altitude 500 feet, but according to your instruments this would put you in danger of hitting a mountain. You are an experienced pilot, and all your instincts tell you not to trust you instruments - that they have been effected by the storm and if you drop 500 feet you will save the plane and your life. The instruments say that if you drop 500 feet you will crash into a mountain. What do you do?"

I thought about it. Being a child, I thought more about what answer my dad wanted me to give rather than what the right answer was. I was pretty sure that my dad wanted me to say that when the chips were down, I had to follow my gut instincts and trust in myself.

"I'd drop below the storm," I answered.

"Tyler, if you do that you will crash into a mountain, killing yourself and everyone else on the plane. Always trust your instruments. Trusting instinct and ignoring your instruments will get you killed."

Lesson learned. At the poker table, if all the evidence says your opponent has you beat, but a small voice inside you insists that he is bluffing (even though he has never bluffed before!), do NOT listen to that voice.

Lesson two is simply a saying my dad repeated frequently: Attitude is altitude.

My dad explained to me that in aviation, a plane's attitude referred to the degree of inclination. It doesn't matter how high you might be, a negative attitude would eventually crash you into the ground. Conversely you might be at a low altitude, but maintaining positive attitude will pull you up.

You are having a bad session at the poker table. You started with $1000 in chips two hours ago and are down to $300. Guess what? The fact that you have lost $700 has no bearing on whether or not you win or lose from this point forward. But if your attitude is bad, like "I've lost $700, what's losing another $300 to me?", then you are almost guaranteed to crash into the ground. Catch yourself mid-fall. If you feel you can't shake your negative attitude get up from the table.

You must approach each hand fresh, unburdened by the events of the past- even the last hand. It doesn't matter what happened before. Each timer the dealer gives you cards you have the opportunity to make the best or the worst of it.