Lawyers and Poker

In the 6-handed MATH this week, at one point near the beginning of the tournament I was seated at a table with four out of the six of us being lawyers. Someone commented to this effect in the chat, and what ensued was the normal dribble of lawyer jokes and some interesting conversation related to the number of lawyers in our ghey little group of poker bloggers. This got me thinking about a post a short while ago that Tripjax had written basically asking the same question: why are there so many lawyers who are also poker players and poker bloggers? In that post, there were something like 20 comments left, with many of the same answers repeated throughout, and yet in that many comments I could not believe that no one had posted what I think is a very simple answer. I think I've written about this before here in the blog but not for some time and maybe not as directly as this, but I'll get to my reasons in a minute. First I wanted to go through some of the answers given in the other comments to Trip's post and what I think about them.

1. One common comment to that post was that this is just selection bias at work, and that there are not really a disproportionate number of lawyers in our group. I believe this is false, albeit not hugely so. There are at least nine lawyers I know of among the poker bloggers -- myself, F-Train, CK, PirateLawyer, HoP Jordan, SoxLover, Pirate Wes, muhctim and LJ -- and that is without even stopping to think if there are any others (I'm sure I am forgetting one or two more). Offhand I can't think of any other profession of which there are nine among the blogger crew, other than IT professionals generally. Now #1 IT professionals is a very broad job range, much moreso than "lawyer" is generally speaking, and #2 I think that there is a disporoprtionate number of IT guys who are bloggers in my experience, so that's how I explain that one. But otherwise, I do think there are more lawyers in our group than one would expect from the random distribution of jobs out there in the world.

2. Another common theme there in the comments to why so many lawyers play poker was that it is a stress reliever for us lawyers, who need some outlet to let out our frustrations after a long day of stress. On this point I just have to laugh. I mean, I'm sure there is some of that for some of the lawyer poker players, but I would imagine just as much for plenty of the other non-lawyers involved as well. All of us have stress in our lives, and there are some doctors in our group who I imagine have some stress, some financial industry guys with some stress, and frankly plenty of IT and other employees who have stress. People write about their gheyass work situations all the times in their blogs, and if it's not work that is producing stress for their lives, then it's their health situations, or it's their famliy situations. I guess my point is, I think it is just a little too pat to just say that lawyers need more stress relief than anyone else and thus they play more poker. For myself, I have less stress than most people I know, and what stress I do have from work has very little to do with my legal work and much more to do with the jackfuckers who are supposed to be here working with me. And one other point to make here -- in a way I think playing online poker as a "stress reliever" is a kinda silly idea. I mean, I guess if all you ever play are ghey blonkaments for $11 a pop then maybe you might just not encounter much stress (speak for yourselves on that point though, blonkey poker drives me crazy sometimes as you all know well), but personally I run into more tense situations at the virtual tables on an almost nightly basis than just about anything I'm doing at my "other" job as a lawyer. So that point, too, I think is really not hitting home on the answer.

3. Some people wrote about lawyers just having a lot of money to lose as well. I think that is downright recockulous. While I won't deny having some amount of disposable income for poker, I'm not making money hand over fist by any means. I guess some of our large law firm friends might be in a slightly different situation on this point, but even those guys in the big cities are not exactly rolling in the dough. Now, if you told me that a bunch of cardiologists or investment bankers or traders at the big banks are all playing poker, then I think you've got a point there. But my sense is that the lawyer poker bloggers as a group are not anywhere near even the same league as the guys I mentioned above there.

So you see, I don't really think that any of the common responses to Trip's thoughtful post really capture the essence of why so many lawyers seem to play poker, using our small group of gheyness as a microcosm of the world. My theory, and again I think I've mentioned this before here at the blog but probably sometime a couple of years ago, is that I think being an effective lawyer and being an effective poker player involve many of the exact same skills. Thus, I see a natural overlap between the two professions / hobbies, in that someone who performs well at the one is already naturally inclined to perform well at the other as well. Let me explain what skills I mean:

1. Logical analysis. Generally speaking, lawyers use logical anaylsis as a way of life. This may be true about some kinds of lawyers more than others, but I'm sure your typical litigator type would agree with this statement as far as analyzing arguments and counterarguments, the best way to approach a witness during testimony, etc. And as a corporate / negotiator type of lawyer myself, I can say that all I'm doing all day is basically analyzing contractual terms and conditions, the best way to negotiate them, the counterarguments I have heard and similar things like that. It's what we as lawyers do. And as poker players, I find logical analysis to be at the heart of basically every move we make. Or every move I make, anyways. Basically no move -- be it call, raise, reraise or fold -- on no street is done without thinking through the reasons behind that decision and its likely ramifications.

2. Risk analysis. This one is closely tied to #1 above, but again, as a corporate lawyer type I find that almost more than anything else, I am asked to analyze risks. This involves thinking about the odds of a certain outcome occurring (i.e., my client being sued because our supplier's product infringes a third party's patent), and then sizing the likely impact to my client of such a negative outcome occurring (i.e., the likely size of such a patent infringement lawsuit, given the extent of our usage of the vendor's product and the price we are paying to use it, is, say $1 million), and weigh it against the relative expected positive benefits to my client of any other options available to us with a given contract. Again, this is what I do as a corporate lawyer all day long. And it's the exact same thing in many ways as the kinds of calculations I need to do at the poker table, basically all night long. Analyze the risk associated with a certain play, make a good estimate or calculation of the likely downside and weigh it against the likely upside if it works out. Then assign probabilities to the likely outcomes, and just do the math. For example, the calculation I mentioned above regarding the risk of an infringement suit against my client is almost the exact same calculation that I would do when determining my pot equity in a given hand. With my open end straight draw I know I have 8 outs if I call my opponent's flop bet, and if I don't hit on the turn, which will happen roughly 83% of the time I will likely have to fold and lose the amount that I called on the flop, since my opponent is likely to bet again, say, 90% of the time. And if I do hit one of my 8 outs on the turn, which will happen roughly 17% of the time, then I am likely to win the rest of his stack. So much of both fields involves doing analyses just like these, doing them accurately and quickly, and making quick decisions based on those results.

3. The importance of aggression. This one may be stretching it a little, but really, I do all of my negotiations exactly the same way as I play poker. In negotiations just as at the tables, aggression is king. If you consistently take passive stances and offer up less than what your client really wants, you will see comparatively negative results over time your results in negotiations. That's just the way it is, and it's not a debatable point. Poker in many ways is exactly the same way. Play passive poker -- call a lot, decline to bet when you "should" because you have a strong hand but on a draw-heavy board -- and you're going to find yourself a loser over time. This is just one of the fundamental precepts of playing poker -- aggression is king. Good lawyers, again in particular I can speak for the corporate side of things because that's what I personally am familiar with, are simply more predisposed to using aggression and to even being comfortable being aggressive, and thus I think good poker tends to come easier to them and might even be more attractive as a hobby than it is to someone who is not used to the wonders of aggression all day every day already.

4. Bluffing. Chad made a comment to this effect in Trip's post the other day, and it was done tounge-in-cheekly I think, but I really think there is something to it: lawyers, in all walks of the profession I think, are just much more used to lying / bluffing than in many other professions. While I'm sure the doctors and firefighters and IT guys and financial professionals among our group all have occasion to tell a bit of an untruth in their professional lives, as a lawyer I can say that lying it is almost a way of life. I don't want to paint a bad picture of lawyers here, and I certainly don't think there is anything wrong or unethical at all about what I'm describing, any more than it is wrong or unethical to lie at the poker table, but let me give you an example of what I mean. Recently I was trying to renegotiate a very poor contract that one of my predecessors had put in place a few years back. I had a new lawyer on the other side, someone who himself was not involved in the original negotiation, and I was pushing hard (aggression) to get a certain provision included in the agreement. At some point, the other side's lawyer asked me if this aggressive pro-my-client provision had been included in the previous contract (because he had not seen it), I almost instinctively told him that I didn't know, and that it would not matter to me either way because we needed to get a better provision in place between us now. In fact I had seen a copy of the old agreement and surely could obtain it again if needed, but why would I admit that to him during our negotiation now when I knew that the old agreement did not say what I wanted it to say? I surely would not tell him a big whopper and claim that it affirmatively was not included in the old agreement, because that is to me an outright lie that I don't really like to tell in my job, and of course he could easily find a copy of the old agreement and know that I was wrong anyways. But that doesn't mean that I need to volunteer him the complete slate of full information that I have on a topic, at least not the way that I approach my job.

Or let's take an even easier example -- I know my clients have told me that they absolutely, positively need to sign a contract with a particular customer by this Friday, or my company is going to miss its earnings estimates and they will all be in hot water. That is good, crucial information for me to know as I negotiate the contract with this customer during the week, but do you think I'm going to tell the Customer on Tuesday that we have no choice but to sign the document on Friday no matter how much they have agreed to our suggested language by then? Of course not! If anything, you might easily find me in that situation telling the customer that a particular provision is of the utmost importance to my clients and that we might not be able to sign with them if they do not agree. Of course that is a lie, but it's just part of doing my job and doing it well, just like lying, deceiving, misleading and bluffing are part of playing poker well. A necessary part in fact. So my point here is that lawyers by their nature and by virtue of what we do in our daily professional lives are simply more suited to, more accepting of, and more willing to bluff (and probably better at it, too). We tend to accept that "lying" or at least bluffing can be an accepted and useful part of our jobs, so we tend to have an easier time and probably more experience as a profession in many of the nuances of bluffing when it comes to poker than most other people who are not lawyers by trade.

5. Reading people. To me this is the key area where being a lawyer and being a poker play tend to merge to the same crucial skill. Much of what I do in my job is negotiate contracts. It's not all that I do, but it's a lot of it. And when I negotiate, maybe 20-25% of the skill involved I would say is actual legal knowledge, knowledge of contract law, knowledge of the business details of the deal in question, etc. But to me, the real skill and expertise that I personally bring to the table in my job is the other 75-80%, which is reading people. It's reading the other side and their attorney. When I tell the other side's lawyer that my client will flat-out require a certain provision in our contract, and she responds by telling me that her client is probably going to refuse, the real value-add from me is being able to tell, to know, that she is going to give in eventually, just from the way she presents her argument to me. Similarly, when I ask for a certain security-related protection for my clients in a vendor contract, and the vendor hesitates a bit before saying they'll have to look into it, my value add comes from being anbe to decipher the meaning behind that hesitation, to notify my clients that perhaps they need to investigate the security of the vendor in a bit more detail themselves before agreeing to this contract. This is what I do, and like I said above, most (not all, but most) trained lawyers could learn the bases of contract law that comprise that 25% of the skills I mentioned above, given enough time and training. Only a small percentage of lawyers could really learn to excel at this key ability to read between the lines, to pick up on small nuances and hesitations and to accurately determine their meaning.

This, ultimately, is exactly what playing poker comes down to. Even online I feel like I can often tell from the timing and amounts bet by other players what the real strength (or lack thereof) of their hand is. It's a "feel" thing, something that often cannot be taught, as opposed to a knowledge thing that could be learned by most people with enough training and time, and I think this is something that lawyers as a group are a lot better-versed in than the public at large. And don't get me wrong -- I know plenty of guys who are not at all lawyers and have never negotiated anything in their lives yet who are still great poker players and awesome readers of other people and their hands. So I'm not trying to say at all that one has to be a lawyer in order to have developed this skill. But it definitely helps IMO. And this is true whether you are a corporate lawyer, negotiating contracts or negotiating for a big merger deal to go down, or if you are a litigator cross-examining the other side's witness on the stand. The ability to successfully and comfortably make on-the-spot reads of one's "opponents" and act effectively based on those reads is one of the things that makes someone a great lawyer, and this skill ends up being one of the most crucial parts of being a great poker player as well.

So there you have it. I think the biggest reason for the overlap between lawyers and poker players is not the stress or the money coming from being a lawyer, as there are just too many other professions with equal or more stress, or with equal or more money, who are just not represented at all or at least way less represented in our ghey group of poker bloggers. While I definitely buy into F-Train's comment on Tripjax's post that most lawyers are used to using the written word in their jobs quite a bit, and that may therefore explain the attraction to the blogging part of poker blogging (not that I know any wordy lawyers, but that's what I hear about some of their blogs....), to me the reason that so many lawyers seem to be attracted to poker is not the above but rather that by their very nature as lawyers, they already have the comfort and acceptance, if not the facility and skill, with many of the exact same attributes and actions that make up a good poker player from what they already do in their daily lives. I am still surprised that not one of more than twenty comments to Trip's recent post about this topic mentioned this overlap of skills, but hey I guess if other people don't realize this to be true then that doesn't hurt me at the tables so I can live with it.

I would be interested to hear from some of you litigation-type of lawyers if you really do see this same skills overlap that I clearly do when it comes to negotiation on the corporate law side.

Don't forge the Mookie tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). All are welcome to the biggest and baddest gathering of poker bloggers this side of nowhere every week to donk it up and see if the biggest jackass can win yet another Mookie before me. And dammit I never spoke to Mookie today about our prop bet -- Mookie what's the word? You wanna say the loser buys the winner into the Mookie for a month or something when one of us (you) finally wins the Mookie before the other (me)? Maybe that, plus a special profile of the winner on the loser's blog, since lord knows I'm never getting a Mookie profile up on your blog any other way? What do you think?