FONK

Trying to keep up with social media acronyms makes me dizzy. My MAWG-ish-ness (Middle Aged White Guy) just gets the best of me. Thankfully, I have the UD (Urban Dictionary) app (software application) on my iPhone, giving me a fighting chance of keeping up. Otherwise I’d constantly be asking WTF (What’s That For)?

The FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is real, as I labor to decipher text messages and Tweets (short messages sent via Twitter).

FOMO comes to mind a lot while playing poker too, as it leads calling too much with losing hands, either chasing long odds or hoping against logic that the villain is bluffing.

All this comes to mind today when I saw this on Twitter:

My first thought was yes, I agree. My second thought was the term “hero fold” needs more use. Hero calling is a commonly used term in the poker-sphere. Hero folding… not so much.

When I searched it, I came across this excellent blog post from three years ago by none other than.. Andrew Brokos. It’s a small world after all.

At any rate, it got me thinking about the relationship between FOMO and hero folding. When we refuse to fold good hands when all the logic in the world tells us we are going to lose, is it because of a fear of missing out on a large pot?

No! Actually it’s a cousin of FOMO, which I’m calling FONK (Fear Of Not Knowing). The problem isn’t missing out on a large pot. In the hands I’m referring to, you already expect to lose. The problem is not knowing 100% absolutely for sure. This is what prevents more hero folding… the need to know your read was correct.

I once thought MUB (Monsters Under the Bed) was my biggest poker-related fear. Then it was fear of failure. Next came FOMO. Today I’m announcing the promotion of FONK as my new #1 poker-related fear.

CUL8R…

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