The Psychology of Poker: Part 2

Psychology of Poker: Successive Approximation:

The other night, I was seated at a poker table when the young player who was sat next to me, and who had just lost a pot, said "I just can't manage to put the old man out of the game".

 

I was a bit surprised because the man to whom he was making a reference to was fairly active, had shown quite a few hands during the past couple of hours, With regards to myself, I was fairly sure that I had played well.

 

I then asked him: "On what did you play him with?"

 

And the player, in a despondent voice answered: "Ace-King or Ace-Queen".

 

That was not a bad choice in absolute terms, except for the fact that the gentleman in question wagered as he should have done had he had a medium pair, and subsequently served a pair of nines. Later in the game the younger man once again folded his cards, this is what he said to me: "Another bad call on an Ace-King". Strange because I thought the older man wagered, once again, as if he had a medium pair, and bam! He served a pair of sevens.

 

Stop self-criticism (or more precisely, auto-denigration):

I then asked myself why the younger man did not adjust his game relative to the hands that were being dealt, and did not account for the possibility that his opponent had a medium hand. Following the game several players stayed behind to discuss the game, and I took advantage of this to speak to the younger player and talk about the way in which he was analysing the other players. From what he told me I understood that he did not know of any good techniques for reading the other players, and that as a substitute he was just recollecting the past mistakes he had made without trying to rectify his past mistakes. This is something that I have often noticed with amateur players.

 

In order to be able to read the game effectively you do not have to be able to estimate exactly the two private cards of your opponents. In fact, what the younger player was doing had more to do with self-criticism (in psychology this is technically known as auto-denigration) in his attempt to obtain information regarding his opponents.

 

Using Successive Approximations:

The young player clearly missed a stage in his apprenticeship, a stage which in psychology is referred to as ‘successive approximations', and apparently he is not the only player to have missed this stage, it is a very common error when learning to play poker.

 

Using successive approximations allows people to refine their decision making skills. If you congratulate a child for learning to read, they will continue to try hard to read. We will congratulate them on their ability to decipher meaning from symbols, culminating in the understanding of words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. We congratulate the behaviour that represents the stages in the apprenticeship of learning to read. And for each stage that we successfully complete, each small victory, we approach closer to the final goal.

 

For example, if you call a player and you have an Ace-King and you notice that he faltered under the gun, then wagered at the flop. If he returns a pair of 8's, simply adjust your game. The next time that he falters at the gun, call him as if he has a medium hand; if he then shows an Ace-King, then refine your game again, you have thus far worked out that he plays medium hands or an Ace-King when he falters at the gun. The important thing is not to know if you are reading the situation brilliantly and how many adjustments it took for you to get it right, but the fact that you got there in the end.

 

Reduce the scope of your opponents:

Through the use of successive approximations you can begin to increase your range of understanding the different hands that your various opponents are likely to hold, and then tighten them during the course of the round, in the attempt to ensure that your guesses will permit you to better know the tendencies of your opponents.

 

Psychology of Poker: ‘Just World Hypothesis':

The ‘Just World Hypothesis' is the psychological tendency to believe that there exists a natural order of justice in the world and that in consequence people will always get what they deserve. Everybody believes this to a certain extent. In fact, you may believe that when something positive happens to you, you deserve it because you are a good person. And in the same fashion, when something bad occurs, a sort of unconscious reflex will push you into believing that you merited it.

 

The greatest poker players are not exempt:

Professional poker player for several years, Phil Helmuth is a ‘Just Order' type personality; he will invariably tell you that he deserves to win a certain hand because in a just world the best player deserves to bring home the pot.

 

Mike Matusow was, to the extent that he could be, his antithesis; he would talk of bad runs as being representative of the fact that the world is ultimately unjust. But he managed to reverse this belief and now his thinking is more aligned to that of Helmuth.

 

And you, where are you placed? Do you believe that poker is indifferent to a higher universal ordering?

 

Poker is an indifferent game:

All poker players will by now have realised that having a pair of Aces at the start of the hand is the best situation to be in. Poker players will also have realised that the worse hand from the start is a pair consisting of an unmatched seven and two. You should also be aware that in a head-to-head at the pre-flop, an Ace will win the pot 88% of the time. In a ‘just world' the best hand should win the pot 100% of the time, whereas in reality the pair of unmatched sevens will win 12% of the time.

 

But if you win 88% of the time and lose 12% of the time, why does it occur that you will be angrier when you lose, than happier when you win?

 

After all, you do not become a better person for having won with the best hand, no more than you will be a good-for-nothing if you lose on the best hand. The problem is that your game can subsequently suffer following a bad run if you develop a profound sense of injustice.

 

Take a step back:

If life was as easy as the odds and percentages in a 52 card game, we would live in a ‘just world'. But life is not as simple to predict as a game of poker. This brings us to the next question: if poker can be deconstructed into mathematical probabilities, then why are players so often irritated and why are they so numerous in tilting after the river, to such a degree as to prove fatal to their game?

 

The answer is simple. We think that a certain amount of natural justice exists and we believe that justice is balanced in the long-run. We know that we will win 80% of the time. But we also have a tendency, because we are human, to focus on a hand, tournament or session (in cash games particularly), and not take time to step back from this mode of thinking. The probabilities work out over the long term, not over a simple hand.

 

Thus, for your own good, for a healthy psychological balance, remember that at the poker table things are certainly balanced and just, but that this does not necessarily mean that a pair of unmatched twos and sevens will win against a pair of Aces...

The Psychology of Poker: Part 1 The Psychology of Poker: Part 2 The Psychology of Poker: Part 3 The Psychology of Poker: Part 4

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