DIETROLOGY 6

DIETROLOGY
Poker Face

No limit hold'em poker's extraordinary surge in popularity was partly triggered by the 2004 NHL lock-out which resulted in TV sports channels having hours of empty time to fill. At the same time the game was becoming a very lucrative internet business, allowing cheap and fast readily-available games around the clock. And important, in the world of gambling (online and live), was the ability to play against other humans rather than against a distrusted casino, with all their guaranteed mathematical edge.

As a TV spectacle, since there's so little to see beyond the dodgy baseball caps and shades, poker would have been cripplingly soporific were it not for the innovation of the lipstick camera, a cunning way for the viewers to see the players' hole cards. Thus, the fascinating inner psychological world of body language and emotional response, that's so alluring to the game's participants, is beautifully contextualised. So essentially, for us the viewers, a delicious transparent concession becomes visible; a privilege to which the players themselves are, naturally, denied.

And it's this denial of meaningful information, other than who's winning and losing, that's an integral part of the appeal for the players themselves. Because it allows them to hold on to their most cherished superstitions about themselves and others. See, poker isn't what it at first seems to be: it's not a card game. It's a people game founded on probabilistic outcomes based on severely incomplete data.

It's rather similar to the attractive delusions us guys (typically) have about our alleged skills in the bedroom, or say, behind the wheel of a car. They're beliefs that, reassuringly, can't be challenged because neither we nor anyone else are permitted meaningful means of contrast, comparison, or calibration. It's a perfect breeding ground for zealously exaggerated I-thinks, and when added to the rushes and thrills to be had from gambling and Lady Luck, poker becomes all too irresistible.

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PRAVDA 7

Russia does not believe in tears: some of the latest, greatest news stories from Pravda.

Russia Loses Its Poker Face Entirely
Before the sad break-up of the Soviet Union, chess used to be a national sport, if not a valued art form. It was said that any Muscovite cab driver was of international grandmaster standard. So it's a bleak day for the Russian nation when, that most American of games, good ol' Texas hold'em poker has become so popular that steps have to be taken to ban it, and furthermore on the grounds that it's not a 'sport'. It reminds of that recent Haiti documentary I saw (whose name escapes me), whilst hoping to discover some new things about vaudou, learnt that all the kids wear baseball caps and Nike trainers, and are into Tupac, Shaq O'Neal, and drive-bys. So depressing.

Michael Jackson’s Bubbles Probably Became World’s Richest Chimp
If this is true, I don't care what you say about Jacko. I've absolutely no idea on what grounds he was ever hailed as a musical genius - but then the same could be said about Elvis 'The King Of Rock 'N' Roll' Presley (assuming he is in fact dead), Brian Jones, and Jim fucking Morrison. Aside from prurient curiosity, neither do I care what he got up to (or not) in his bedroom at Neverland, nor whether his children are really his, nor whether he actually had sex with a woman. However, if he's left $2,000,000 to Bubbles the Chimp, then he's a damn saint in my book.

Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport Ranked World's Second Worst
Thus one immediately wonders which could be the worst; and there are plenty of candidates that come to mind without ever having suffered the alleged indignities of Sheremetyevo. The joyless purgatory that is Heathrow quickly springs to mind for its universally rude unpleasantly inept officious staff, its unending corridors to nowhere in particular, its retail overkill, and the outdoor queueing; not to forget inevitable delays and guaranteed loss of baggage. Then there'd be Stansted or Luton (alternative so-called 'London' airports), both vortices to oblivion; the vertiginous nightmare landing strip at Hong Kong's Kai Tak (though now no more); O'Hare (Chicago's own version of the Gaza checkpoints on a bad day); and surely many other worthy nominees. Is Moscow's really that bad??

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STRAIN GAUGE

More often than not, games are not what they initially seem: chess is not a game of pure skill, nor bingo a game of pure luck. A game is essentially an exercise where success is dependent upon the probabilistic exploitation of the parameters of its rules.

The great game of poker is no exception: it is not a card game so much as a betting game played by people with cards. What makes it an especially attractive activity, in contrast with other forms of gambling, is how it elegantly allows a person to be hostage to their own vanities. If I win, it's due to my skill, and if I lose, it's due to bad luck. I'm safe in the knowledge that my performance can't reliably be measured because, since cards are only rarely required to be shown, not only is most of my decision-making invisible, everybody else's is too, thereby eliminating any form of comparative yardstick, by them or by myself. It's this lack of a visible performance indicator that allows me safety in my self-delusion: I'm a 'shark' while the other players are 'donks' and 'fish'.

Poker's invisible performance index is a powerful metaphor for many other major fields of human pursuit where an unjustifiable arrogance is the net result.

TEACHING
The autonomy granted in the classroom is a seductive cocktail to teachers, trainers, instructors, lecturers, and professors. They represent containers of precious information and the students are grateful empty receptacles ready to be filled, or at least that's the mirage - and teachers proceed to take full credit for the results of the learning process. The academic profession is one that naturally encourages self-delusion, the entire model implicitly constructed with the aim of endowing each teacher with illusory feelings of success.

MEN AND WOMEN
So wont to blatant obfuscating and lying with one another regarding our intimate relations with women, men are thus enthusiastic practitioners of self-delusion. When a woman says that men are stupid and useless, in this sense, I can see where she's coming from. She does have a visible comparative gauge to performance: her own experiences in addition to reliable detailed feedback from her girlfriends. We men can be eternally grateful that, for the sake of our fragile egos, the female gender only rarely give us negative comparative feedback - and, at least partly, that may be because the bar is set so dismally low.

ADVERTISING
I'm convinced this is what ultimately conspires to get even talented advertising executives so up themselves. The presence of the invisible performance index is a temptation to take full credit for the content of their graphic designs (CD and book covers, movie and theatre posters, political campaigns, commercial logos, and so on) yet none of the responsibility for failure. The effects of advertising and graphic design (as opposed to what they're aiming to sell) are extremely challenging to reliably measure. It's not that it can't be effective or ineffective, it's that it doesn't merit the revelling in reflected glory inherently encouraged. It's the food that counts, not how the cutlery is laid out on the table.