What can games of all kinds (and poker in particular) teach us about balance?

I love games. Always have. Sports games, board games, word games, puzzles, you name it. Maybe that’s why despite going to college to earn a business degree, I instead spent most of my life playing a game (poker) for a living.

One of the most interesting things about games is that to play most of them well, you have to really focus on finding the right balance between offense and defense. Screw this up, and you won’t do very well.

This concept applies to almost all games — and all the great ones, in my opinion — whether team sports or one-on-one matches, or games you play as an individual but in a group setting (again, like poker).

In football, playing too defensively would be like running it up the middle three times and then punting. Way too conservative. Too offensively would be airing it out with fancy trick plays and never punting. Play this way and you are sure to turn the ball over quickly, either by interception or on downs.

In boxing, playing too defensively would be just turtling up against the ropes and trying to not take any damage. Muhammad Ali famously made that work once, but in general that’s way too defensive a strategy.

And of course, every counter-puncher knows how vulnerable a fighter is when they just swing wildly and try to get a knock-out with every punch.

Even a game like chess requires a balancing of offense and defense to be a great player. Will you patiently construct a fortified castle and hide behind it? Or will you go rushing across the board striking terror in the heart of your opponent?

Too much of either and you will be exploitable. Balance is essential.

This concept of seeking offense/defensive balance comes up in card games like gin, too. You’ll make melds more quickly (offense) if you simply discard blindly, paying no attention to which cards might help your opponent.

Alternatively, if you focus on defense too much, cluttering up your hand with “useless” cards, you will have no way to make gin.

A brief aside for a promotional link: There is a super-fun “gin-like” game called Lost Cities that I play all the time with a friend. The offense/defense concept I’m describing really shines in this game. It’s magnificently fun (and frustrating). I love it. I hate it. You should try it!

So, again, you have to find balance.

Poker, of course, also has this same offense/defense balancing dynamic, except its way more fun and complicated because chips (and money) are involved!

Do you want to play very aggressively, focusing on offense? If you do, you’ll bet and raise liberally, you’ll play more hands, and you’ll win many more pots! Heck, playing this way allows you to win pots you “shouldn’t” by bluffing out the competition!

On the other hand, you’ll lose a whole lot of chips too.

Or do you want to play defensively, folding most hands, checking or calling rather than betting or raising? This strategy will keep your chips safer, but it will also severely restrict how much you win when you do win a pot.

And of course, you’ll never bluff anybody out of a hand this way.

So what you want to do is construct a strategy that is a nice balanced approach to the game of poker — or any other game you play. You want to “have all the gears” as we say.

But it gets more interesting. You also want to have the ability to switch up these strategies. Not only for deceptive purposes, but to adapt to varying game dynamics.

You want to have a general balanced strategy that you’ll employ absent any other information. Call that your “ABC strategy”. But then, as you observe the characteristics of your opponents, you’ll want to alter your strategy to capitalize on the specific errors that specific opponents are consistently making.

In more “scientific” terms, it’s nice to have a Game Theory Optimal (GTO) strategy in your pocket, but if you’re sitting in a poker game for longer than a half hour and you still think GTO (very balanced) is the best strategy for this table, the game is too tough and you should find a softer one!

Ideally, you’ll never actually play GTO for very long. What you want is to find games (this won’t be hard) where opponents are making mistakes such that your optimal approach is to play an exploitive strategy — one geared on their particular vulnerabilities.

It’s fascinating — and counter-intuitive. To be excellent at poker, you have to study and study and study to discover perfect balance — and then work just as hard to figure out when and where to deviate and play in an unbalanced way!

It’s all very intricate. And it’s one of the many reasons why poker is such a fascinating and fun game.

And of course, one of the reasons we love games is because of the way they mirror and magnify important aspects of our regular lives. We need to seek balance between work and home, between fun and discipline, between thrift and investment.

Heck, economizing on every aspect of our limited time and resources involves balancing various trade-offs. Even the way we stand and walk and move involves constantly focusing on balance. Bipeds are inherently a balance-focused species.

It’s no wonder our games and sports embrace the concept so totally and beautifully.

So, take some time to think about the various aspects of your own life that require balance. Think about them. Be mindful of them. Construct a balanced strategy.

And then look for the right times to deviate from it!

If you want my help finding balance on the felt (or anywhere else), just reach out. I coach now!

Naturally,

Adam

Connect with me on Twitter(X)! “@rerazer”