Embracing Uncertainty

Wow what a week- three straight flushes and jackpots at

The new Venetian Poker Room; a first place win at the daily
5K Tournement at Resorts World. Truly blessed. I'm on the divine payroll .

Poker makes a great second job and a lousey first one: So I have a role as an Instructional Designer that finances my poker side-hustle. My first job informs my second one.

In the poker arena, uncertainty reigns supreme. It's a game of partial information. Just as the cards fall unpredictably, so do the outcomes of our instructional design efforts. As an Instructional Designer, I recognize that not every learner journey follows a linear path. Some variables—like learner engagement, external factors, or even cosmic alignment—remain beyond our control. But fear not! We embrace the unknown, armed with informed decisions and a dash of courage.

Outcome vs. Decision Quality

Picture this: You’re at the poker table, eyeing your hand. The flop reveals its secrets, and you’re faced with a choice. Do you chase the flush, hoping for that elusive fifth heart? Or do you fold gracefully, preserving your chips for another round? Here’s the parallel: In instructional design, a positive outcome (say, stellar learner performance) doesn’t automatically crown our decision as brilliant. We evaluate our choices against broader objectives—the alignment with learning goals, engagement levels, and content quality. It’s not just about winning the pot; it’s about playing the long game.

Treating Decisions as Bets

Ah, the thrill of a well-placed bet! In poker, each decision—whether to raise, call, or fold—is a calculated risk. Similarly, when crafting an e-learning course, we’re placing bets on instructional strategies. Will gamification enhance engagement? Let’s bet on it. Is concise content the royal flush of comprehension? We’ll wager on clarity. And practice activities? Those are our chips in the middle. We assess risks, anticipate rewards, and play our cards (and slides) strategically.

Learning from Mistakes

Poker players wear their losses like battle scars. Each misstep is a lesson—a chance to adapt, recalibrate, and improve. Instructional design mirrors this resilience. If a module falls short of expectations, we don’t fold our creativity; we iterate. Feedback becomes our secret weapon. It’s not defeat; it’s data. So, let’s analyze those busted bluffs and turn them into winning hands.

Decision Transparency

Imagine revealing your thought process mid-poker hand: “I raised because I sensed weakness in their eyes.” Now transpose that to instructional design. Just as we explain our choices to learners—why we opted for scenario-based learning or chose that snazzy infographic—we do the same at the poker table. Transparency breeds trust. Whether it’s a royal flush or a humble pair of twos, we own it.

Continuous Improvement

Poker tables and design boards share a common trait: they’re never static. We’re perpetual learners, tweaking, refining, and adapting. Just as we study opponents’ tells, we keep an eye on industry trends, emerging tools, and learner preferences. Our playbook evolves. The river card may change, but our commitment to improvement remains unwavering.

So, fellow poker player and Instructional Designer, let’s shuffle the deck, raise the stakes, and create learning experiences that leave our learners feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot..

No-Limit Hold'em: Mastering the Chaos

In the dimly lit card room, where the air hummed with murmurs and the subtle clink of poker chips, a quiet truth lingered: No-Limit Hold'em (NLH) is a sport like bald is a hair color. It’s not about what’s there—it’s about what’s missing. The randomness, the chaos, the bold defiance of order—all of it melded into a game too unpredictable to be left to chance. And yet, every player in the room was chasing something: mastery over the uncontrollable.

Before the first hand was dealt, I asked myself the question that every serious player should confront: “Lucky or skillful?” Luck might win the lottery once, might grant you that miracle river card, but the law of large numbers—the cruel, unyielding math of the universe—had no mercy for the merely fortunate. Over time, skill is the only currency that holds value. Anyone can get lucky 100% of the time…once. But to thrive at this game, to truly excel, you had to make decisions so sound that the results—good or bad—were secondary.

“Whether my decision is good or bad depends on how I make it, not on the outcome.”

That mantra had become my north star. It wasn’t borrowed from poker so much as distilled from life. In poker, as in existence, process outweighed results. The secret of poker stood in stark contrast to the law of attraction. That self-help drivel obsessed over results; poker demanded you ignore them. Think about the process. Think about better decisions. Ignore the short-term noise—even if that noise was the sound of your chip stack evaporating.

The first hand was dealt, and the table’s collective intensity sharpened. I glanced at my cards and resisted the urge to dive into over-analysis. Paralysis through analysis was a trap too many fell into, especially the bloggers who would dissect this very moment from the safety of hindsight, sharpshooters descending the hill after the battle to take aim at the fallen. But poker wasn’t about retroactive wisdom; it was about the choices you made in the moment, armed with incomplete information.

There’s no prescribed way to play a hand, only ways to think about it. Every decision unfolds in two dimensions: the expected result, based on probabilities and analysis, and the actual result, dictated by chance. I thought about David Sklansky’s Fundamental Theorem of Poker, a paradoxical guidepost:

“Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose.”

Great in theory. Useless in practice. The theorem wasn’t about solving poker problems but about understanding results. It wasn’t a map; it was a compass. And in NLH, where variance could tilt even the steadiest of players, a compass was all you had.

I played my hand well, made the mathematically optimal move, and watched as the cards unfolded…poorly. My nut flush was obliterated by a straight flush on the river. The cruelest twist of fate. But instead of despair, I reminded myself: Good decisions in poker will not guarantee good outcomes. Bad beats happen more often to good players because they’re the ones consistently “getting their money in good.” The irony stings, but it’s also validation.

Poker, at its core, isn’t about winning or losing—it’s about excelling. Each hand is a lesson in humility and resilience, a challenge to think deeper, adapt faster, and focus sharper. Success isn’t measured by a single pot but by the cumulative weight of countless better decisions. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and the finish line isn’t where the chips fall but in how you navigate the chaos.

The cards don’t care. The chips don’t care. The only thing you can control is how you play the game. And in that, there’s a kind of freedom. Hold’em may be too random to leave up to chance, but in its chaos lies the opportunity to rise above it—not through luck, but through skill, clarity, and the courage to embrace uncertainty.

Right Now

Las Vegas-Infinite Patience Brings Immediate Results