The Pitcher Plant

In my last post I highlighted ten dos and don'ts that are generally known by half-decent players yet ignored by the majority. I noted, prior to writing the list, that repeatedly ignoring these tips or not following them regularly enough is partly, precisely why poor players exist. Why do poor players fall into the same trap time and time again and why are they happy to stew in their ignorance?

Above is a picture of a pitcher plant. A pitcher plant attracts a fly or an insect by the enticing smell emanating from its pores. The fly lands on the rim of the plant before feeding on the sweet nectar further down on the inside of its funnel. As the fly laps it up, it moves further down inside the plant gorging away. At some point the fly will attempt to lift-off back into the wild - but of course, it can't. The nectar has done its work. It was merely a trap that caused the fly to become stuck and which will, eventually, cause the fly to be dragged deeper and deeper to the bottom and to be consumed in a stewy pit of filth.

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This explanation is actually the way Allen Carr illustrated why so many people get drawn in to the allure of alcohol. Alcohol is not "the elixir of life" that many think it is; seen at its most sinsister, it is an insidious poison that entices and traps people, and once caught by the spell, never lets them go. The fly, of course, is the innocent youngster attracted to the alcohol while the alcohol itself is represented by the nectar. The whole trap itself is constructed by the media and marketing men who work their seductive charms by selling us the whole spiel.

Losing / break-even poker players and even the marginal winners who take home peanuts are the flies that get caught in a web and who are unable to escape from the chains. Like heavy drinkers who believe nothing is wrong, they'll carry on regardless happy to play poker in their mediocre, treadmill-like way. They have been sold a strategy, a way of playing and ultimately a mindset that is dragging them down and which will continue to mark them out as average players for the rest of their lives. 

The successful poker player might land on the rim of the pitcher plant when he first starts out but will see what is going on down below beforehand and fly away to freedom well before the damage has been done. He'll see the usual ABC lines, the usual tried and tested strategies along with the typical run-of-the-mill attitudes of the masses and he'll want no part of it. True, he might feel superior, get the odd rush of arrogance and may even think himself super-human on the odd occasion but this is the small price to pay for this type of freedom.

Personally, I know I was way down there stewing with the rest of them both in terms of my struggle with alcohol and my average poker-playing skills. Thankfully, after my spring-time epiphany I like to think I've reversed the trend and have finally escaped from the dreaded pitcher plant. Sure, it's taken me up to my mid-forties to see all this and I'm doing the whole thing in reverse (quitting the career and then playing poker seriously rather than playing poker seriously and then getting the career) but I really, really don't want to go back.

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The pitcher-plant analogy signifies not how we get better and better at poker (that's a different analogy altogether and for another time) but why most of us seem happy to shuffle along in our blinkered way, accepting the tried-and-tested routes and formulae that the masses have been fed over and over again by popular wisdom. True, it is "wisdom" that has been passed down by experts but it's a path that too many players are cureently on and which just ain't gonna cut it in today's modern game.