The TAG Lifestyle
The game of poker has fascinated me ever since I learned how to play as a high school student competing for lunch money. It is a blend of math, psychology, endurance, and deception that is both eternal and constantly in flux — an ancient language spoken with continually evolving accents.
After first learning the game I spent hours poring over strategy books and internet forums, developing a fundamental sense of what works in the game. As I got older, my $2 games turned in $2000 ones. During the years I nominally went to college, my real passion was in the cardroom — both physical and virtual. I was never a special player, but I was around a few, and by studying their approach I was able to assemble a profitable, dependable strategy. The best players blend creativity and discipline, opportunism and patience, and learning to play strengthened all of those muscles in the rest of my life.
While my playtime these days (i.e. since having children) has steeply diminished, the experiences I’ve had in the game profoundly influence how I see the world. I am a creative person who has at some point dabbled in photography, copywriting, graphic design, coding, film, business, and more. Poker has taught me an important lesson: How to focus on my best abilities while not stifling my freedom to explore. If you have struggled to find your passion, poker reveals a strategic model for life that may help.
The game has evolved over centuries, from lawless saloons to modern casinos and now to the internet. As millions of people have played quintillions of hands, certain strategies have emerged as optimal. In the most common poker variant, No-Limit Texas Hold-Em, strategy can be broadly summarized along two axes:
- How many hands you choose to play: Whether you are “Tight” or “Loose”
- How you play the hands you do choose to play: Whether you are “Aggressive” or “Passive”
The combination of these two “personality types” yields four broad categories of player. Of the four, the most dependable is the Tight Aggressive player, or “TAG” for short. Most top players use this style, with their own particular nuances.
In poker, the first decision you make each hand is whether to participate or “fold”, giving up a small amount of money in order to avoid risking more of your stack. When you’ve been dealt poor cards, the best idea is to fold. Many newer players choose to play too many hands, overrating their strength against the disguised cards of the other players at the table. The TAG almost always folds unless they receive strong cards. Therefore, when they do choose to participate, they have an inherent advantage of a better hand than their opponents.
It’s difficult to play tightly. Most of the time, the TAG sits there doing nothing at all while other people have fun participating in the action. But the TAG derives their fun not from mixing it up but from being the one with all the money at the end of the night.
Choosing your spots is important in life as well. Identifying the things that you uniquely do well, the areas where you have an “unfair advantage,“ is a key starting point in deciding on your direction. Often this is accidental: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates grew up in the 1960s, when computers were rare, yet each of them had access to one. This unique edge manifested when they went to market as young tech entrepreneurs. Privilege is not the only way to have an advantage. Malala Yousafzai survived a horrific attack meant to silence her voice — yet turned her experiences into an irreplaceable aspect of her work. Nobody on earth knows better how costly it can be to fight for your rights, and so the fact that she continues to do so is uniquely inspiring.
In the internet age, it’s easier than ever to find ourselves overcommitted. New projects and opportunities abound, and it’s difficult to say “no.” My dear friend Alex Burwasser, with whom I’ve shared many poker nights, was also the captain of our high school baseball team (go Owls!). During batting practice one afternoon I told him that I always struggled to hit pitches in a certain area of the strike zone. He said something that resonated to this day:
“Just because it’s a strike doesn’t mean you need to swing at it”
— Alex Burwasser
I still think of that when evaluating new opportunities. You don’t need to accept every invitation. You need to accept the best invitation.
It’s not that the TAG never branches out, though. Bluffing in poker is essential, and a smart TAG will make their strategy unpredictable by mixing in holdings that are good but not good enough to play normally — a “Bluff Range.” Some TAGs will play virtually any hand in the right circumstances, even just to deceive opponents and throw them off balance.
The key to branching out is to do it strategically. TAGs don’t just bluff when they feel like it. They have a pre-designed strategy for which hands to bluff with and when. Likewise in life, it is essential to spend time on a variety of pursuits. Someone committed wholeheartedly to one pursuit with no relationships, passions, and hobbies is not only bound for misery, but for failure. The things some consider ancillary — meditation, craft, exercise — are not distractions from our work. They are the fuel that makes our work happen. They are the inspiration that makes it meaningful. Writers cannot just write, they must read. Athletes cannot just use their bodies, they must train and prepare their minds and souls.
When a TAG does choose to play a hand, they do so aggressively. In Poker, the best way to win a hand is when your opponent folds: you never have to show your cards, and you win the pot with no further risk. Therefore, the game is configured to reward aggression. Those who bet big and with purpose are rewarded when their opponents are too timid to keep them in check. So too with our lives. Once we’ve committed to something, we must commit wholeheartedly. We must trust that our decision of which path to take was the right one, and strive along it with vigor. As the great philosopher Ron Swanson says:
Timidity is safe. It’s often easier not to have that tough conversation or to stand up for what you believe in. But timidity will sabotage your fulfillment. I have an anxious inner voice, and my mind is constantly battling against doing things like write articles about the relationships between poker and life. But I know that in the final reckoning, I’ll be happy with the times I gulped and said “let’s do it,” no matter how it turned out. To act is to live.
In poker it’s easy to tell who has won and lost. Reality is much more complicated. Your goals and strategy in the game of life are yours to decide, but if you start by focusing on a few worthwhile pursuits and committing to them with purpose, you can beat the odds.
