On the latest TheCutPodcast, professional poker player melanieweisner joins ascentofjazmin to share how she uses her card-playing skills to navigate life decisions and understand her emotions. Listen here
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images The Cut A weekly audio magazine exploring culture, style, sex, politics, and more, with co-hosts Jazmín Aguilera and B.A. Parker.
POKER COMMENTATOR: And Vicky once again really taking her time in one of these huge moments just to make sure she has the situation assessed correctly.POKER COMMENTATOR: Oh boy, two pair for Vicky.JAZMÍN: While Giacomo Fundarò — the only player between her and a multimillion-dollar pot — had a pair of aces.
But could it be that getting caught up in what I want to happen and what I’m afraid might happen is actually messing me up? Is it possible that getting in my head like that might actually prevent me from getting what I want?MELANIE WEISNER: To build this skill set that I think women are actually rarely exposed to: raising the stakes, negotiating, strategizing, understanding risk, capital allocation … I feel very strongly that poker is very much a vehicle for the skills to predict success — in...
JAZMÍN: Poker is a card game, but it’s also a mental sport. A show of psychological gymnastics, probabilities, and risk. It’s betting on how you read people. How you can control yourself so you can’t be read. It’s math and it’s performance and it’s chance. It’s up to the player to make the best out of it. And from the very beginning, Melanie was hooked.
MELANIE: My friends and I ran a game in our dorm. I think it was one of these small-stakes games — I’m talking about like 10-, 25-cent poker. I had a great night once, and I won like $300. I remember the next day I bought that Motorola Razr phone. I was just like, This is what I want. I want to play poker! And I want to win! And I want this to be how I make money.
MELANIE: The whole idea of poker is that you don’t know what I have, and I don’t know what you have. So we’re operating under this information asymmetry, this lack of information. But whoever can get the most information — whether I’m using your betting patterns, whether I’m reading your face, whether I’m understanding how you’re feeling about a specific moment. Maybe I remember something you did in the past that makes it more likely you’re going to do something else in the future.
So in the same vein, in the game of poker and also just in life, you got to “know when to fold them.” Folding to me feels like a failure. When I play, I’m just like, Oh I hate this, I hate this. Do you get that feeling still or have you learned to accept folding as part of life in poker? And in your life?
JAZMÍN: Early spring in New York City can be absolute misery. You’re ready for picnic blankets, blunts, and rosé out of a can, but a lot of the time it’s just puddles of sewage water. So I thought I’d outsmart the weather and fly out to California, my home state, to ride out the last of this damp, cold New York spring with some West Coast sunshine. Seems like a safe bet, right?
MELANIE: Because in poker, you’ll fold. Maybe you’ll make a discipline fold. You’ll fold a hand you shouldn’t have played. And it’s like, Oh, I would have had a full house. I would have had … whatever.
JAZMÍN: So in your life, are you just cool as a cucumber all the time? Are you levelheaded? Like, nothing can rock you? Because it seems like you would just be amazingly good at processing your own feelings and being like, Well, shit, somebody broke into my car. But that’s the tax of living and wherever. Does nothing rock you?
JAZMÍN: Because you don’t like uncertainty and risk! There’s no risk there. It’s whether or not you know the information or not.JAZMÍN: That’s the point, Parker! That’s the whole point of this program is living life is already a risk — so learn how to do it better.
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