Enthnography of Poker Game Essays

Enthnography of Poker Game Essays Enthnography of Poker Game Essay Enthnography of Poker Game Essay Hunter Smith 11/04/2010 Anth- E 200 Ethnography Paper All-In: Americanization of Males around the Poker Table Card games have been a staple of many western cultures and historically equivalents are found across the globe. Poker, with arguably go-fish and, is the most popular and widely played game today. The old saying , â€Å"All you need to play this game is a chip and a chair† holds very true and has allowed poker to be played by pros, amateurs, and everybody in-between and the â€Å"Poker Boom† of the 90’s has expanded the game even further. People commonly seen as dead-beat, degenerate gamblers are now seen as legitimate professionals in the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Tony G. , and so on. A result of this â€Å"boom† has been a new generation, particularly high school and even more so college students, playing this game on a fairly routine basis with a small to moderately sized group of friends (Holden 35). The premise of the game is every player sets out with an amount of chips either an all equal amount or based on how much the individual player pays in (Cash game) and the point is to be the last man standing-you having all the chips and no other player remains. The most popular variant of this game, (And the one used in this ethnography) is No Limit Texas- Hold ‘em. Each player is dealt two cards; there is a preliminary round of betting and then three cards come out of the deck called the Flop and another round of betting; then if more than one player remain in another card called the Turn is dealt on the board out and another round of betting occurs; and if there is still more than one person still in the last card or the River is put on the board and a final round of betting occurs-best five card hands wins if two players or more remain in through the last round of betting. The No Limit in No Limit Texas Hold’em simply means that a player at any time can bet as much as he wants all the way to â€Å"going all in† or betting all this chips and the player can do this at any time during a round including pre-flop (Before the Flop is dealt). While the game does appear fairly simple, testifying from personal experience, it is very, very complex and much more complicated than what it appears on the surface with a very large set of vocabulary, rules, plays, strategies and I will keep the game-specific terminology at a minimum and see to it to give just the needed explanations when needed. This paper not about the game of poker itself but explores the interactions between participating members. The point of this research is to examine how the game acts as a medium for socialization. This idea is based on a symbolic-interactionism approach which is a widely accepted paradigm that argues that a culture of a society is maintained at a micro level through interactions between individuals and small groups. Now, that does not necessarily dismiss the large social structures and other more macro level influences and their impact on culture but that one can look at a smaller scale and see that culture not only plays itself out but that it maintains itself by having members of the society reiterate and play out the ideals of the culture when they are interacting with others. Key elements of what it means to be an American male are very present during this game and it’s very clear there is peer socialization occurring just in this informal five dollar card game. Now this paper is taking a very androcentric paper and that is not to say that female poker players don’t exist or that they are not as â€Å"interesting† but this is a very much a male dominated game (Which is changing) and gender socialization is so different between males and females that it would mandate two separate papers. It should also be noted that like many other activities people find it necessary get money on the line and turn it into gambling. Gambling will not be explored in this paper and the game used for this paper the participants did all put five dollars into a â€Å"pot† and winner takes pot minus five dollars for second place. The gambling aspect seems very minor and basically insignificant for the direction of this paper and really did not seem all too important to the players either, and more or less only seemed like a means to make the game more authentic feeling and add a dash of validity to the game. Nailing down a culture is silly. A culture is very large and general varies based on numerous factors including race, education, etc. etc. So all these â€Å"traits† of the typical American male are very â€Å"loose† and in now manner what so ever are they absolutes-found in every member of a society. They are general patterns found in a culture that sociologist, anthropologist, and other social scientist recognize in American culture holistically. The â€Å"traits† used is in this paper are beer, aggression, individualism, and a sense of â€Å"outsiders† and the paper will not argue if these are true or not-these are widely accepted characteristics found in American culture and particularly male culture and instead I show these things are literally being acted out by players in the game. On October 19th five of my close friends where at my house socializing and decided to play a game of poker and I had been waiting on this to happen so I could observe. I did not want this to be set up or planned and to have this occur spontaneously but purely by will of the players of the game. The five players will be referred to as D, J, S, M, and A. The living room is where the game is almost always held and tonight was no exception. D and J sat on one couch, while, S and M sat on anther and an office chair was pulled out of a room for A to sit. They all circled the table and played the regular game of No Limit Texas Hold’em, something that occurs about once a week. I a sat on a sofa chair about just outside the circle with paper and pen taking notes. Now a second game occurred where a dorm mate of M who found out about the game and wanted to play and this second game was played shortly after the first ended and this made for great observation because the dorm mate who will be called O had never meet anyone and M and O were not friends, with O more an acquaintance of M’s. A major issue with this methodology is a small sample space-this was a small group 5-6 people been observed for around 2 and half hours one time. One could seemingly right a much longer paper on all the limitations but a lot of them originate from not enough date and not enough study. Four of the members are self-described Caucasian and the other two are self –described Indian-Americans but one could write all day about what about representation for other races, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic statues, and so on and so on, but this was what was available to work with and attempting to â€Å"create† a better scenario is very unscientific and very wrong to the core of what you are attempting to do. It’s analogous to studying bird behavior-you can’t artificially force a flock of birds to move to a new area because it is interference and you can’t claim a â€Å"natural result† Also, I was not a complete participant as in the players all knew I was observing them and would on an occasion reference me, usually jokingly, and what I was doing and attempt to talk directly with me. I did not have a set of cultural traits I was going to examine before the observation so that is a major constraint on information I collected during the research. I did not count a specific time something occurred or how what exactly was said something occurred because I was not specifically looking for it but I can approximate and at least make confident statements about what happened. There is also the common problems with doing a ethnography for example lack of quantitative data or requiring one to almost get into the operation of one’s mind in order to understand what is going on. Humans are very difficult to read and you can’t confidently say â€Å"This is what he/she was thinking† or â€Å"This is what he/she felt† even if that person tells you that. This road bump holds especially true with observing poker- a game founded on deception, lying, and intimidation. While the five members of the first game got the chips counted and everything set up I noticed the first trait to present itself and this before the cards even hit the air. S had gotten some Chicago Ale a few days earlier and when he came out and opened one he asked if anybody else wanted one everyone else said yes but J sort of moaned and really didn’t see that interested. I am good friends with J and know he does not like to drink beer-he hates the taste but after S sort of looked at him and asked with a slightly angry tone asked, â€Å"What? † J shrugged and said, â€Å"Ahhh why not†. If someone asked you if you wanted a Coke and you hate Coke you wouldn’t say yes, so why did they say yes? What is odd is S also does not like to drink since he is a smaller guy and it fills him up quickly, but as soon as everyone was seated and the first dealer was about to be picked he lifted a bottle and grinned and said, â€Å"A manly, man’s drink† in a slightly comical tone but it says something about how the players seen beer/ale. Gregg Smith writes on Beer is very much an art form-from its production to different flavors and how particularly in Europe localities had their own unique beverage and it acted as an agent of social cohesion and that American was founded by these very diverse peoples and groups had to try and retain their identity and, †Immigrants had their own language but they also had their drink of choice†¦{and} and a very good way to get a community to rejoice and praise their heritage is to get together and drink all night† (Smith 55-56). The American male has had a long relationship with beer but I also think beers persistence as a cultural staple also has to be credited to genius marketing. Coke a Cola can thank a century worth of fantastic marketing to its undying success. Coke’s greatest strategy is connecting itself with other aspects of people’s lives-a great example being Christmas. Coke has intertwined itself with Christmas so when the average American is getting set for Christmas Coke is an automatic part of Christmas. Beer has done the exact same thing most notably sports. Beer companies have advertised so much and so well that drinking a beer is just an automatic part of enjoying sports. The players followed suite exactly. They always had to have a beer at hand, and it was almost always was in their hand. D and S in particular would go long times without drinking but would still have the beer in a hand most of that time. Inebriation was not a part of it since none of them had anywhere hear enough to anything but very slight effects of alcohol, to them the drink is an intricate part of the game and being social; if you don’t do it then you are just not acting right. If poker was all about who got the best hand this time around if would not be much of a game at all. Bluffing or intimidating an opponent (s) to fold a hand and win the pot is a central aspect of the game. Doing so means being aggressive; you can’t get someone to fold if you never bet or If you always call and never re-raise. What was intriguing about the game is players would make an aggressive move apparently not for the sake of the game but purely being aggressive to be aggressive. Early in a game blinds are low and the pots are very small and the game is much less serious-players don’t bluff, little intimidation, and even for someone who has never played it is very easy to see that at certain hands nobody has anything and one player obviously has the winning hand. This is common for even professionals for the first five to six hands, but what happened in both games was the player who very obviously had the best hand when the others had nothing at all would make a large, large bet. During the first game blinds were at 50-100 and nobody had bet all the way to the turn and it clear D had caught something (Turned out to be a straight) and he made a 800 chip bet and he said it very sternly, he even appeared to sit more erect when he made the bet. You can’t argue that this was long term tactic to show aggression early so that when the game became serious he would be more intimidating because none of the other players even seemed interested or took notice at all. A actually folded when he could of just checked-and M had his cards already in hand ready to throw them to the next dealer while he had a conversation with A about something regarding the Library at night. All the players did this at some point D was just the best example. Aggression heavily culturally influenced and the work done by Richard Snipes shows that cultures do greatly vary in terms of male aggression (Trotter 251). Aggression is ingrained in American culture. Benjamin Franklin once commented that Americans were a more aggressive people than their European counterparts. Explaining why America has instilled an element of personal aggression in its culture mainly is answer by evolution-America was a frontier and the first settlers had to be aggressive, hardy, and resilient to survive a new world (Burchfield 175). It may seem that this is not really an example of interaction considering that it is 100% full sided-one individual doing something and no one else responding, but it still a social behavior. D and the others did this for a reason. What they got out of it is entirely different-it could be to get sort of emotional boost or maybe it a sense of competition among males. The point it’s not to explain why there is aggression in American males; the point is that a group of men engaging in a common activity are, seemingly unaware, practicing socialization. Aggression is correlated by another characteristic of American culture that being individualism. American culture and particularly the American male has very commonly been illustrated as the man. Pulling himself by his boot straps and no concerning himself with any other man’s boots† (Burchfield 35). Having a strong individualist spirit only requires a strong personal work ethic and putting yourself and your interest before that of a larger group-that being society. The commonly used antithesis of this is early 20th century Japan which is the textbook example of conformism and lived by the saying, â€Å"The nail that sticks out gets the hammer† (Burchfield 41). This American ideal also mandates for, in simple terms, a person to mind his own business. I found that very prevalent looking back on my notes. Occasionally there would be disputes over someone not shuffling well enough or lifting the cards to high or when someone was out of a hand and would make a noise of anger or relief (This helps someone still in the game know that one less card is out there. If you think that you opponent caught a set of threes and then someone out of the hand says â€Å"Guess who had a three† then you know there is a less likely chance your remaining opponent(s) have a three in their hand). These disputes could get heated but never anything potentially volatile. What I noticed is that when two members would start up any attempt to drag a third or more member to your cause was always unfruitful. Nobody would ever get themselves involved in the quarrel. They were as Burchfield puts it, â€Å"combative neutrals† (Burchfield 48). They would not just sit quietly with their eyes on the floor acting as though they were playing opossum, but if things got heated they would either start a conversation with somebody else or would laugh at the two quarreling players. Anytime a quarreler tried to pull them in they would immediately get scornful and say â€Å"Shut the hell up† or â€Å"I don’t give a s#^t†. The most interesting point was during the second game M and A were arguing because M had gotten the same cards from his last hand and the flop had two of the three same cards including suite. M started to call A out for never shuffling the cards and every time he deals cards repeat. They kept bickering all the way till the next flop of M’s deal came out and then D started to harass A and agree with M and what was so odd was that S instantly told D to basically mind his own . That is downright amazing. America is the poster child for an individualist culture and yet we seem to forget that a nation is made up of people and that one can see the key traits of an entire nation on the personal level right in your living room and see that we encourage this practice and also chastise anyone who deviates from that. The second game with O was a first and I wish I could have done more with it but it was sort of out of the blue and I really did not come up with a concept until after the research. When it was announced O was coming there was groans and moans but then someone said that â€Å"We can take his money†. There is a sense of â€Å"us and them†. He is seen as an outsider-someone not part of the group who is invading the sanctity of the game. There is definitely something to be studied there. Most of American history the US was not a world power and very much an isolationist nation. It seem somewhat paradoxically to have a individualistic nation that also sees itself as â€Å"us and then them†, but just because a culture puts emphasis on the individual does not mean that there is content or dislike between that culture’s members or that they also lack less unity and oneness and I think this can be expanded much more. During the last 10-15 years there has been so much talk about the globalization of culture and how technology is making the world smaller but this very small bleep of an ethnography illustrates-culture is acted out and starts with individuals doing common activities-not the internet or global institutions. A poker game acts as a great medium for the American male culture to be reaffirmed. The players are not puppets to some great all powerful â€Å"Culture† but are behaving as they have been socialized to behave, but humans are not programmable machines and culture is able to perpetuate because through our interactions with other socialized members we are constantly being retaught the values, symbols, norms, etc. that our culture has evolved. Burchfield, Henri. Stripes: What American Society Does. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Press, 1985. Print. Holden, Anthony. A Bigger Deal: Year Inside the Poker Boom. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. Print. Smith, Gregg. Beer: A History of Suds and Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbreweries. New York: Avon Books, 1995. Print. Trotter, Robert. â€Å"War: Anthropologists and Sociologist Ask Whether Warfare and Aggression Are Inherited or Learned† Science News 104. 16 (1973): 250-251. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2010