Joker Journal
By Dave Cinch
(All Rights Reserved)

The Total Gambling Makeover

If you're a talk radio fan, you are probably familiar with syndicated radio show host, Dave Ramsey, and his Total Money Makeover plan. One of the cornerstones of his plan is to quit owing people (or banks or credit card companies) money because in the vast majority of instances, debt is not a wealth building tool, but a wealth squandering one. If you have no debt and even an average income, you've got a reasonable shot at financial success. But if you habitually go into debt, even with a prodigious income, you're at a greatly increased risk for financial disaster. Your income is your primary means of accumulating wealth, so why sign it away before you even have it? Such is one of the themes of Ramsey's financial makeover plan.

As obvious as that idea seems, a lot of people act like they have no clue about it. In fact, the average Joe racks up consumer debt like there's a prize for it (and unfortunately, often times there is). Often we become unwitting victims of a financial industry that sells debt harder than Las Vegas sells action, and that's hard. But being cash and carry by nature, most gamblers aren't so vulnerable to this come on. If we want something, and we have the cash, we buy it; if we don't have the cash, we don't buy it. We don't put it on a credit card and then spend 10 years paying on it and the ridiculous interest charges that go with it. In that respect at least, poker players typically avoid the trap of consumer debt - which is a good thing. By carrying a zero balance on debt, we are much freer to play responsibly with any surplus.

But too many poker players/gamblers fall into the trap of playing with money that should be budgeted elsewhere. They need a gambling makeover, as in: Don't bet a quarter until all debt and living expenses are covered, you have months of living expenses saved, and have a separate playing bankroll set aside. Then and only then, you are prepared to succeed. Buying into a $10-$20 game with your case $500 is not a strategy for financial success - it's stone cold gambling. You'll have maybe a 70% chance to win and a 20% chance to go broke, in which case you'll be looking for a place to borrow. That isn't a plan.

The biggest part of the gambler's makeover is, of course, to make sure you aren't really gambling. No craps, no video machines, no keno, no K-9 off suits in middle position, etc. Take a tip from David Sklansky and get the best of it. Let the other guy play his grocery money against you. There is a competing theory that recommends playing with the rent money, in the hopes that the must win situation and imminent threat of eviction will improve your concentration. But after 20 years of observing that approach in action, I've seen a lot of couches out by the curb. In fact, I used to run a second hand couch store that I stocked by staking out the apartments of all the bust out hold'em players I knew. It was a sweet little business, but that's a different story.

The next part of the gamblers' makeover is to buy some snazzy clothes to play in. With the proliferation of poker on television, you never know when you'll be the one under the lights at the final table. In this vein, trim your nose hairs, shave your whiskers, take a shower, maybe have a manicure. Poker is coming out of the back rooms and on to prime time, so spruce up a little. It won't kill you.

Of course I'm getting more into beauty makeovers now. If it seems my advice here is tailored specifically towards male players, that's because from what I've seen, the female players are a little ahead of us on this score. Just ask yourself "Who's more in need of such a makeover - Puggy Pearson or Ladies Night World Poker Tour winner Clonie Gowen? Which one is easier on the eyes? It's not a trick question. How about Doyle Brunson or Susie Isaacs? Phil Laak (poker's "Unabomber") or Cyndy Violette? Brian Zembic (see The Man With the $100,000 Breasts) or Mimi Rogers? Backgammon champ turned poker geek Paul Magriel or Jennifer Harman? Phil Hellmuth or Shana Hiatt? See what I'm getting at? The dudes lose across the board in the fashion comparison, and they lose bad. I mean it's not like you have to be a certified beautician to see what I'm talking about.

There's even a rumor that a group of male players threatened a revolt at having to wear the respectable threads furnished by the WPT; while, conversely, everybody knows women shop for new clothes every day. And boy does it show at the poker table. One side of the coin is chic and stylish, and the other side looks like they haven't changed their tattered jeans and "lucky" t-shirts since hold'em was legalized in California. Most of these jokers are about as fashion forward as Forrest Gump, and that's not being very kind to Gump.

But I'm trying to restrain myself and concentrate on financial makeovers. One of radio host Ramsey's wider themes in his financial plan, which is particularly apropos for poker players, is along the lines of the following: Focus, get a game plan for financial success. Quit drifting along with no plan, vulnerable to every message the culture throws at you. So many of us drift along with no coherent plan and never arrive at the success which can only result from the execution of such a plan.

A lot of poker players, and damn good ones, sit down at the table with the ability to beat the game AND THAT IS THE EXTENT OF THEIR FINANCIAL STRATEGY IN LIFE, as if the ability to beat a hold'em game is a plan for financial success. It isn't. When success strikes suddenly for someone who wasn't consciously working towards it, he lacks respect for it. He never had it as a goal to start with. He just goes looking for a place to fritter it away. Even edge players, let alone true gamblers, often lack a businesslike plan towards money and incremental success. That is the makeover that many players need. Without such a plan, success can only happen by accident. And accidents don't last. People with the ability to beat the game but with no coherent plan for financial success are as plentiful as the grains of sand in the Mojave Desert, and they get buried just as regularly.

If financial success arrived and you didn't respect it (i.e. you immediately blew it off), THAT MEANS YOU DIDN'T HAVE FINANCIAL SUCCESS AS A GOAL. Hello. You were really gambling - even though you had the best of it. You just love to play and can beat the game - but lack a plan to succeed with money in a wider sense. Just think of the countless times players took off monster scores and it immediately evaporated. They need a businesslike attitude towards the money they win - and a wider sense of what it can do besides buy chips - or any success they achieve is an accident that won't last. Unfortunately, many of us got into gambling because we had no knack for more conventional business. That's where the makeover comes in. If sound business principles (saving, budgeting, planning) are adopted and combined with a positive expectation at the table, that's a winning formula. But just winging it as the chalk at the table is not enough. Chalked up poker players have been retiring to destitution since Doc Holliday was a pup. Card sense will suffice at the poker table, but it takes money sense to succeed away from it. The poker player's dilemma is that those are two very different skills.

I'll take an assist from renowned poker scribe Lou Krieger here. If you merely make a commitment to save 10% of everything you win or earn, you have a promising plan for success. But if you just keep moving up in limits when you're winning, keeping virtually all of your bankroll in action at all times with the idea of getting staked by someone if you get broke, all while leaving a string of personal debts behind you whenever it's convenient, you'll be doing that exact same thing in 30 years. And success, not so mysteriously, will never have arrived.

People who succeed with money tend to keep succeeding with money. People who lose with money tend to keep losing with money. It doesn't matter if you're a hold'em player, a house painter, or the President of the United States. Succeeding with money is a decision. The biggest step is making the decision. That's the Total Gambler's Makeover.

So when a makeover candidate calls Ramsey's show and says "I've got $50,000 in student loan debt, $100,000 in credit card debt, I'm upside down on two brand new vehicles, a boat, and my lawnmower, I got lucky and qualified for a 200 % mortgage on my house to help out with cash flow, I hired a debt consolidator to clean up my credit, I cosigned a loan for my 14 year old daughter's jailbird boyfriend... What am I doing wrong?" Just once I'd love to hear Ramsey say, "It'd be easier to just tell you what you are doing right. Nothing. None of the above. Have a nice day." But the longsuffering Ramsey walks them through his "baby steps" of financial fitness with the patience of Job, every time, even when they're upside down on their lawnmower and have cosigned for half of San Quentin (some of which are hold'em players).

Likewise, when some hold'em sharpie acts like there has never been a rainy day, puts his entire net worth on the line every week, leaves a string of personal debts behind him that would bankrupt a small country, plays high limit slot machines compulsively when success threatens, tips showgirls purple chips, won't shave or take a bath when he's in a casino town because he has to be gambling 24 hours a day, thinks money management is for Smith Barney, whose only experience with a "budget" is the $800 a day Lamborghini he got from the rent-a-car company to push the envelope on his high-rolling vacation, who laughs his ass off at someone who puts $100 a week in a savings account (it's just so small-time and conservative) - I don't give a damn how good he plays, he needs a makeover.

That's why a businessman who leaks some money playing poker is often wildly successful, while the edge player who preys on him at the table can't succeed with money. He could take a lesson from the businessman on how to manage his money. It's about investing, budgeting, planning, building. That doesn't mean for everyone except gamblers. There's a whole breed of hold'em players out there who never once in their lives saw money as anything but the chips it could buy. Well that might be romanticized in the poker culture as "having heart," but it will not produce financial success.

Throttle it back a little bit is the idea. Set a few black chips aside each month. Get them outside of the gambling environment into a financial institution, where some day 25 years in the future, it's waiting for you in the form of a nest egg to take care of you. THAT'S money management. Meanwhile, by all means, live it up. Just chill on the Lamborghini rentals and the high limit slots. There's not a financial plan on earth that can overcome that.

After all, you don't want to be telling your grand chillums gambling stories some day and wind it down with this: "Boy, that was the good old days. By the way, can I borrow $50?" That ain't no kind of grandpa to be, and it could happen to you if you don't watch your money instead of just your chips.