Does winning money make you reckless?
Does winning big at poker make you irresponsible with money? Or is it the big risk-takers who win the most at the game?
This week we brought you the news that One Drop runner-up Sam Trickett has crashed his £275,000 Ferrari. Crashes happen every day, but when it is a car worth more than a house, people take notice.
It was actually one of our most commented on articles so far this year across all of our language sites, and also on other poker sites and forums I visited. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that it was a case of a young guy with more money than sense driving recklessly.
My limited experience of Sam is that he is a very grounded and level headed guy, so I personally don't think he will have been driving dangerously. I did find it interesting, however, how human instinct jumps to the conclusion that just because someone has a lot of money, we assume they are reckless.
Don't hate the player
I’m no different to anyone else in this regard. If I see a Porche getting clamped my visceral reaction is usually to laugh and assume that the person somehow deserved it. Unfortunately, it’s a natural human predisposition to dislike it when someone has success, which a fast car usually is a sign of.
It reminds me of a quote from Bertrand Russell: “Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.”
We see someone like Trickett, who seemingly has it all, crash a car and it can bring out the jealousy in even the best of us. Life seems unfair that somebody who has a car as nice as that would be so carefree as to crash it. Really, we should be asking ourselves what we can learn from Trickett to improve our own chances of being able to afford such a car, rather than rejoicing when he wrecks it.
Recklessness is inevitable
Despite all this, it is hard to deny that as a group, we poker players are reckless with money. Go into any casino and you will see it for yourself. Everyone walks around with bundles of cash, passing it around to each other, staking people we don’t know all that well etc.
Just check out the infamous Phil Ivey cash picture (Right) for the embodiment of that. You would also be surprised at how many tournament winners lose their winner’s cheques (I know several six and seven-figure examples).
Online we are no more shrewd. I know players who still keep their entire net worth in one online poker account, like Black Friday never happened. A well-known player once asked to borrow my laptop to check his Betfair sportsbook account, and when I opened it up the next day he had forgot to log out and I was staring at his £300k balance. He was obviously very lucky I was honest enough to log out and point it out to him.
You have to speculate to accumulate
In a game where money is the way of keeping score, it is no wonder that we treat currency differently to the rest of the world. We almost treat money management as much as a game as anything else. There is also no wonder, therefore, that online poker scams and things like the EPT Berlin robbery, are always going to happen.
Does winning lots of money make you reckless with cash and expensive items? It might well be the other way around. The fearlessness with which some people treat money is perhaps why they are able to accumulate so much of it in the first place.
It takes a big heart to make a six-figure bluff on the river, not all of us can do it. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that big winners are potentially irresponsible with cash away from the tables, simply that it is perhaps an inevitable side effect of being the type of person who can thrive at the highest stakes.
Does winning money make you careless, or does making money require you to be a risk-taker? Let us know in the comments.
