Inspired by another Jose Mourinho moan and groan, Lee Davy examines the world of complaining to offer some advice on how best to approach in when you’re playing poker.
Manchester City has just treated Manchester United like a cat paws a mouse. The cat doesn’t want to eat the mouse; I’m not even sure it means to kill it. The mouse dies of fear. The cat just wants to play, like City, who won 2-1.
To make things worse, the pawing happens in Old Trafford, a fortress for the past 40-games. United, one of the best sides in Europe, only had 35% possession, a stat that has never been as low since Opta began making a living by recording such things when we were all fretting over the world ending when 1999 turned into something else.
After the match, Jose Mourinho, one of the most respected managers in world football; the Commander-in-Chief of one of the world’s most iconic football teams; the Special One – takes his post-match interview with the BBC and continues to spew forth bile with more heat than liquid magma.
Rather than give praise to the side that has just made his team look like a bunch of mannequins, Mourinho calls them lucky and says that they have the Gods on their side. The Portuguese manager then blames referee Michael Oliver for not granting United a penalty, an incident that Ander Hererra made easy for the man in black because of his exaggerated dive.
The Wiki definition of integrity reads:
The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles
The condition of being unified, unimpaired, or sound in construction
And I don’t think Mourinho’s behaviour fits this mould. And he’s not alone. Almost every Premier League manager will at some point lose all sense of reason in a post-match interview.
And the majority of poker players are the same.
Bad Beats: a Lesson in Communication
I fall into the category of a recreational poker player, and that’s pushing it given how little I play these days. But back when I was spending more time on the felt, if someone were to bounce me out of a tournament AK<AQ then someone would have to hear about it.
There are always two things going on when I blab on about my bad beats.
1. I want people to know that although I lost, I’m excellent at poker.
2. I am just complaining for the sake of complaining.
I want to focus on the second aspect of my inability to manage bad beats because buried deep within the integrity challenged rants of Jose Mourinho and a beaten up yours truly lies a lesson in how to better communicate a complaint.
We often rage when someone or something has hurt us; been unkind, unthoughtful, or offensive. How we respond to these injustices drives at the heart of who we are. It’s doubtful that Jose Mourinho acts like a spoiled brat in front of the BBC and doesn’t behave this way in other areas of his life, in the same way, I doubt Phil Hellmuth can keep his frustrations on the felt.
There are three ways in which people complain.
1. Anger
I’m an angry poker player. When someone I perceive I am more skilful than, makes an incorrect play, and gets lucky, I have been known to berate them verbally.
On the face of it, I seem like a bully, but deep down I am behaving this way because I don’t have the skills to communicate how I feel more effectively. My anger comes from a place of extreme vulnerability. I panic, I feel hurt, betrayed, and imagine someone laughing at my lack of dignity.
So, I explode.
Of course, when you behave like this, your complaint is rarely heard, as the person receiving your slime is often in defence mode by this point. A deep resentment emerges on both sides, with neither listening and no hope of ever getting to the root cause of the issue.
And if you are like this at the poker table, it’s likely you are like this in your relationships.
2. Shut Off
The other way of dealing with a complaint is not to deal with it. Rather than spurt a red mist in someone’s face, you withdraw and act quietly.
You don’t think people understand you. You have low self-esteem. Why would anyone listen to you?
So you withdraw.
You swallow your pain like a pill that’s too wide and quietly seeth inside.
The problem with using these first two mechanisms to communicate a complaint is they lead to tilt. It’s essential for your game that you are of sound mind and reasoning, and this doesn’t happen when you behave in this way.
3. Grow The F**k Up
During the recent Poker Masters at the ARIA, Daniel Negreanu commented, with some humility, that he had fallen behind the true greats in No-Limit Hold’em tournaments before reeling off a whole list of stars who frequent the High Roller schedules around the globe.
There are many reasons why Fedor Holz, Adrian Mateos, and co., are so talented, but one of them is their ability to rationalise situations and use logic to bring a peaceful calm to a situation.
This zen-like state doesn’t mean that these players don’t feel angry, disappointed, unheard, etc., They do. But they have developed a better way of handling the speed bumps than bottling emotions or spewing them out.
There is a self-confidence within then that screams we do not deserve to be the victims of meanness. They embody a strong sense of self-respect and love, morphing into a confidence and likeability.
When the inevitable AQ beats their AK, they don’t feel like a victim. Instead, they understand that it’s a consequence of pure mathematics, and if they keep on making the right decision at the moment, they will benefit from the math.
By deploying these emotional constraints at the poker table, they become better communicators in life when it comes to delivering a complaint. They can do so from a foundation of restitution. There is an element of strategy to the calm manner they utilise. They respect people first and foremost and that respect prevents them from belittling people and leads to an assurance that the other person can have their say while they hold space.
By behaving in this way, the elite in the game can deliver a bad beat story without the recipient heading for the exit. They can complain to those they love with integrity intact on both sides. And we should have a lot of compassion for people like this; hold them up as role models, and the next time Jose appears on the BBC for an aftermatch interview switch it off.
