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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

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Dec. 23, 2008

Gambling with a Handicap

I'm reading "First Daughter" by Eric Van Lustbader. The book has nothing to do with gambling, but I learned something that may be very applicable to gambling. The main character, undercover agent Jack McClure, is dyslexic. (Dyslexia causes a person to have difficultly recognizing written and/or spoken word patterns. A common example of this learning disorder is the inability to distinguish "dog" from "god.") To survive his dyslexia, McClure is able to pick up non-verbal and non-written clues 400 times better than most other people. As an undercover agent, or the hero of a thriller novel, this ability can pay dividends.

I haven't heard before that dyslexics have these special abilities, and I'm not sure how closely this part of the novel is based on fact, but I've heard that blind and deaf people have developed extraordinary sensory abilities to help them cope, so why couldn't dyslexic people do likewise?

While I don't see this as a useful "tool" in video poker, it's easy for me to imagine how this ability could pay dividends in regular poker. I find myself wondering how many of the top poker pros are dyslexic, and how much that helps them figure out what's in their opponents' hands? This learning disorder would limit what they could learn from reading books by poker experts, but these people become very good at learning in other ways. The best of worlds, of course, would be not to suffer dyslexia, blindness, or deafness, but still be able to develop the compensating senses of someone who had these limitations.

Certainly blindness and deafness are easily simulated should you wish to. Being blindfolded or wearing effective earplugs for six months at a time would very possibly enhance a lot of your sensory perceptions. It would also make your life "super interesting" for those six months. Would it be worth it for a poker player to go through this in order to enhance his poker-playing abilities? I suspect it would, but few if any players would be willing to go to this extreme technique to improve their game. (I'd love to hear about any player who decided to give this a try.) I don't know how you could simulate dyslexia.

Several women have told me through the years that men tend to be extremely insensitive at reading "obvious" body-language signs and other clues. Whether that's true for men as a whole or not, it's definitely true for me. It's one reason why I never have been successful at poker. (There are clearly many other things that make up successful poker players. A very small percentage of top professional poker players are women.)I'm assuming that this sensitivity to reading "obvious" body-language and other clues is part of the ability that McClure developed as a dyslexic.

Upon consideration, however, I realized that dyslexia definitely does play a role at video poker --- and not in a positive way. Consider hands that start out K 'JT', where the quotation marks indicate that the jack and ten are suited with each other. In a large number of games without wild cards, whether you hold the KJ or the 'JT' depends on the other two cards. If a person confused K 'JT' with J 'KT', then obviously it would be difficult to learn the correct plays. I'm not sure this would be called dyslexia, but it seems related to me.

In general, I've considered limitations such as dyslexia, blindness, and deafness to be handicaps --- some unfortunate disability to be pitied. What is clear now is that many of these people have extra powers and perceptions that I can only dream about. Perhaps they should pity me!