Money Blindness

Money blindness is a serious illness that affects most poker players. Especially when they move up and down in limits.

Let me ask a question. How much is 100 bucks worth to you?
Your answer could be:
a) a good sum of money. I can buy a lot of stuff for $100 bucks,
b) not much considering I play in a $10-20 game, or
c) a decent bankroll for my $0.5-1$ game.

In other words, the value of money depends pretty much on the situation. Money blindness is the condition where you confuse these different situational values of money.

The first thing to realize is that the moment you start gambling, chips will (usually) represent a much smaller value to you, then when you are out shopping. For some odd reason chips don't feel like real money that you can spend and most people tend to spend them more recklessly than they would elsewhere. This "chip illusion" is still in effect when people go to the ATM machine to buy more chips. It's still only chips you withdraw from your account. It is not before the next day that you realize how much you have spent in terms of what you could have bought for this sum. Therefore, leave your credit card at home/in another room, and only bring the sum you can afford to lose. Gambling is fun if and only if you can be disciplined about it.

But apart from this overall consideration about gambling, I also think that money blindness has some important implications for poker strategy, especially when you move up and down in limits. Say you are used to playing $2-4 and decide to move up to $5-10. In a $2-4 game a 100 bucks will go a long way. With average pots of say $30, you need to win quite a few pots to win $100, and you need to lose quite a few to lose $100. In a $5-10 game two rounds of blinds cost you the value of an average sized pot in a $2-4 game. Usually, this does two things to your game; it makes you defend your blinds more than you should, and it makes you gun shy (you need a better hand than in your usual $2-4 game as you risk a lot more chips then you're used to). These two effects of money blindness can be pretty hard to overcome, especially when you add the fact that the table usually is more aggressive than what you are used to.

Money blindness is also a factor when you move down in limit trying to contain the damage when you are running badly. If you are used to average pot sizes of $100 and session wins in the =/-$500 range, then you probably will find yourself playing like a maniac in a $2-4 game trying to win a vast number of pots so that you can make a decent session by the $5-10 scale. And this is a recipe for disaster. Often, you find a high limit player playing a waiting game at a lower limit than he usually plays, and you will find him playing extremely recklessly. and often being the whale at the table.

In order to overcome money blindness, I have come up with a trick that has proven awesome results for me. Instead of thinking in $-values, I simply think in terms of average pots for the table I'm playing. If I'm stuck $250 in a $5-10 game, I don't think of what I could have bought for that money, or how long it will take me to win that money back at a $2-4 game. I simply consider myself stuck 3-4 pots - a situation I have overcome several times. The Average Pots Concept is a measuring stick that doesn't change depending on the limit you play and focusing on this unit when evaluating your situation will allow you to escape the most common effects of money blindness and will help to keep you from going on tilt whether you are stuck a few pots or ahead a few pots. As a matter of fact this little trick will go along way in removing focus from short-term swings to long term hourly rate. You don't feel the sense of desperate urgency when you're stuck and you don't feel the sense of invulnerability when you're ahead. And this should actually allow you to be in a good frame of mind for playing more often.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Leigh Lightfoot for taking the time to proof reading my articles.

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