Poker Private Games (and University): The Death of a Great Meritocracy

When I first got into poker, I was attracted for a few reasons that I’d later put together into one idea. Simply, if you were better at poker than the people you were playing against, you eventually got rewarded with money. It was clean and simple. There were very structured rules. There was almost no nuance (aside from some luck, of course). You’re better; you execute; you win; that’s it.

I remembered thinking that the possibilities here were basically limitless, for once. There was no complaining about the high school baseball coach not liking you, no resentment that you couldn’t get a showcase with the record label because your dad didn’t work there. A meritocratic system will always eventually look like this: the best players play the biggest games; the next best players play the next biggest games, and so on. If there were ever a reasonable application of the absurd concept “to deserve,” this (poker) was it . . . I thought.

Only I didn’t consider one thing. You have to be allowed to play in the higher stakes games to keep ascending stakes.

Fast forward to semi-recently in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Some of the players who couldn’t ascend in the stakes the way they wanted to realized what everyone already knew about poker but didn’t choose to exploit. Poker is only about how good you are compared to your opponent(s). So, if you can’t increase your skill level, bring the opposition’s skill level down to meet yours. What these players started doing was to break an unwritten rule of the poker economy; they began cornering the “recreational players” (players who would play for fun and lose consistently). They would then convince the players to play in a private game where the predatory professionals would exclusively control the lineups in the game. Of course they wouldn’t allow any of the more skillful pro players. To make matters worse, they played the games in public Las Vegas casinos where it was supposedly a violation to run a game like this. This made for built-in advertising to any random losing players who would normally walk into a poker and play in the open, running games.

Now some people claimed that attracting these recreational players and building a game is a skill too, and maybe so in some way. Conning players to play in a private poker game, which also probably preys on addiction, has some unintended economy disrupting consequences though.

First, an individual approached and offered a private poker game by a bunch of players who appear friendly at the table is probably going to be a little miffed that all these “friends” are giving him the same pitch to extract the maximum amount of money out of his gambling-addicted self. The other part of this is that this is an example where the demand side of the market has no idea what it can afford. I’ve heard players offer rebates and cash stipends that the professionals can NEVER profitably overcome. The button every hand and a 30% rebate on losses and 30% add-on for their wins?? Offering an “action player” a $1000/hr stipend to play in a 9-handed poker game?? These things will sink the entire ecosystem of the money that goes into action in these poker games as a whole.

A similar example is that of universities adding features to their campuses, to attract students, without regard for whether the additions will keep the universities functioning profitably. In this example, of course, the issue becomes moot because the demand side (prospective students) is basically infinitely subsidized by government student loans.
Coincidentally, universities are suffering from a similar meritocracy devolution that has been in the news lately. Stories have recently reported that Lori Loughlin (Aunt Becky from “Full House”) and Felicity Huffman have been implicated in bribery schemes to get their children into universities. Of course, the joke is mostly on them, as a college education isn’t remotely worth the amounts they’re reported to have spent getting the children in.

The point is that subverting a meritocracy is generally bad. Improperly identifying merit is also bad. “Undeserving” people end up in positions of power through bribes or circumvention of agreed rules of the game, and even worse, the ecosystems that survive on a balance of competition and a shared notion that people should “play by the rules” are subverted and potentially destroyed. Either you let the people most willing to game the system get their way, and the most meritorious people pick up the scraps afforded them by not causing a stir . . . or the whole freaking thing comes down.