Now, when you apply these patterns to new players, you’ll be taking a significant risk. There’s no way around it. There will be many exceptions to the patterns, and your application will sometimes backfire. The exceedingly cautious might choose not to make such applications, but this is a losing strategy: these players won’t be using information that their opponents will. In a way, to be risk-averse in poker is to take the biggest risk of all.
The same is true when constructing a schema for a player without employing such patterns, as I was trying to do with Larry. With Larry, I was in each case hesitant to conclude that Larry often bets A-K when the flop comes rags, because there were always other possible explanations of his behavior. Two very important points: First, if I had known that those other possibilities occurred relatively infrequently in poker (if people hardly ever play Woolworths that way), I would have been more justified to assume that Larry often bets A-K. Knowing how common particular thoughts and plays are among poker players is of decided significance, as it can allow you to ignore some otherwise worrisome possibilities. This too is available from experience. Second, since there will always be other possibilities (no matter how much evidence you’ve amassed), every adjustment you make to a schema will require assumptions, which could be false. Again you must embrace risk. Risk is required even to develop a schema. This might be especially difficult for the cautious epistemologist.
But here’s the really tough question. How confident must you be about a particular assumption for it not to be too dangerous for you to revise a schema in light of it? Intuiting this threshold is, I suspect, one of the great, unexplored skills of poker.
There is a happy note to all this. And it has to do with the shared belief and agreement that is guaranteed at the advanced poker table. I mentioned at the outset that poker has swept the globe in the last few years. Almost six thousand people traveled to Las Vegas in July 2005 to play in the World Series of Poker. And that was just for the Main Event. There were forty-four other events, including some for women only and some for seniors. Sitting at the tables were players from Vietnam, France, Lebanon, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Sweden, Costa Rica, India, Australia, Japan, Russia, and many, many other countries. And for the most part, everyone at these kinds of events is decent to one another, often friendly, chatting about past hands, discussing strategy, ribbing one another. There is a palpable camaraderie. I hardly place the solution to the world’s problems in the hands of poker, or poker players (though some are amazingly charitable with their winnings). However, it is at least worth noting that in our day it is a rare institution that places so many people from such disparate backgrounds in such amicable proximity. And an even rarer one that continually requires such deep agreement among them. It is nice to see. Or at least, I think I think this.14
________
1 T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy, Championship Hold’em (Las Vegas: Cardsmith, 2000), p. 202.
2 Since in this game there are only two possible moves (throwing one finger or two), being two levels of thought higher than your opponent will lead you right back to throwing what he wants you to throw.
3 Doyle Brunson, Super System (New York: Cardoza, 1978), p. 430.
4 Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, Harrington on Hold’em, Volume 2 (Las Vegas: Two Plus Two, 2005), pp. 435–442. I am indebted to Harrington’s work for the following analysis.
5 For the complex line of reasoning Harrington attributes to Negreanu for this conclusion, see Harrington, pp. 437–441.
6 Some of these thoughts are based on yet other attributions, again of the fourth order or below. For instance, Negreanu makes this last attribution on the basis of thought attributions such as: Deeb couldn’t think I have K-6 off-suit, because he has to assume I wouldn’t have called his pre-flop raise with that, or He couldn’t think I have pocket 5’s, because he’s got to figure I would have folded on the flop.
7 Kevin Conley, “The Players,” The New Yorker (11th and 18th July, 2005).
8 Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies, among other things, what is required for having justification to believe something.
9 Carol Vogel, “Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child’s Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale,” New York Times (29th April, 2005).
10 It should be clear by now that, contrary to a common supposition, what makes a good poker player is not solely or even primarily an aptitude for “math” or probability. Au contraire! It is necessary to be proficient with probability, but it is certainly not sufficient.
11 This is different from the kind of thought attribution I’ve been discussing so far. Here you’d be attributing to someone thoughts not about your thoughts but about someone else’s thoughts. This kind of attribution involves three people, not two. These are just two of the many forms of thought attribution human beings undertake. Self-attribution (attributing thoughts to yourself) is another.
12 You can’t judge a bag of apples from the apples at the top, for those at the top are the last to rot.
13 Another part of the answer involves physical tells (Larry may sniffle when he has a good hand). But many experts claim this is less significant an aspect of the game than is often believed.
14 Thanks to Darse Billings, Eric Bronson, Claire Ellis, Jennifer Ellis, James Engel, Preston Greene, Jed Grodin, Matt Manfredi, Tom McEvoy, and Alan Schoonmaker for their help on this chapter.
7
Don’t Play on Tilt! Avoiding Seven Costly Critical Thinking Errors in Poker
GREGORY BASSHAM and MARC C. MARCHESE
Skilled poker players seldom make the kinds of rookie mistakes unskilled players do—drawing for miracle hands, playing predictably, bluffing too many players, failing to correctly calculate card or pot odds, surprising their poker buddies with wine coolers instead of their usual malted beverages, and so forth. But even expert players make mistakes, and often these mistakes result from falling prey to certain systematic errors or natural biases in human judgment and decision-making that we call “critical thinking errors.” In this chapter we look at seven critical thinking traps that poker players often fall into: self-serving bias, short-term thinking, the availability heuristic, the fundamental attribution error, loss aversion, superstitious thinking, and the gambler’s fallacy. Understanding and avoiding these errors is crucial to smart poker playing.
Self-serving Bias
The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.
—DAVE BARRY
Self-serving bias is the tendency to over-rate oneself—to adopt an inflated view of one’s talents, abilities, know-how, or good fortune. We all know braggarts or know-it-alls who claim to be more skilled than they really are. If you’re like most people, you probably think of yourself as being an unusually self-aware person, largely immune from any such self-deception. If so, welcome to the club! You, too, are probably suffering from self-serving bias.
Studies show that self-serving bias is an extremely common trait. In one survey, one million high school seniors were asked to rate themselves on their “ability to get along with others.” Not a single respondent rated himself below average!1 In another study, college students rated themselves 58 percent less likely to develop a drinking problem and 44 percent more likely to own their own homes than other students of their own sex and age, suggesting that these students thought they were better (or luckier) than their peers.2 Ninety percent of business managers and more than 90 percent of college professors rate their performance as better than average. Clearly, a lot of people find it too challenging to acknowledge their own limitations.3
As the authors of Poker for Dummies note,4 poker players are just as prone to self-serving bias as anybody else. Overconfident poker players think that they’re better, or luckier, than they actually are. This hubris leads them to play with far superior opponents, to stay in too many hands, and to bet recklessly. The res
ult: players who over-rate their abilities quickly become ATMs for their tablemates.
Poker legend Doyle Brunson tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of overconfidence. A cocky New Yorker calling himself “Rochester Ricky” and flashing a big bankroll walked into a Fort Worth poker parlor. Around the table sat Amarillo Slim, Puggy Pearson, Johnny Moss, Sailor Roberts, Brunson himself, and a couple of Texas businessmen. Two things quickly became apparent. Though he knew his game, Rochester hadn’t played much no-limit poker, and he hadn’t a clue he was playing against some of the best no-limit hold’em poker talent in the world.
Rochester didn’t realize that strategies that work well in limit games (such as calling frequently and bluffing cautiously) often backfire in no-limit games. His parting words as he gathered up the paltry remnants of his ten-thousand-dollar bankroll were: “If you guys are ever in Rochester, don’t bother to look me up. You won’t see me playing hold’em against Texans as long as I live.”5
As the great American philosopher Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Short-term Thinking
Money flows from the impatient to the patient.
—WARREN BUFFETT
Short-term thinking is thinking that irrationally ignores or under-values long-term interests in favor of immediate, short-term pleasures and desires. In ancient times, the Greek philosopher Aristippus (around 435–356 B.C.) advocated such a live-for-the-moment, go-for-the-gusto lifestyle, arguing that you should grab all the pleasure you can today because tomorrow you might get run over by a chariot. There are two obvious flaws with this argument: (1) today we have buses rather than chariots, and (2) although it’s true that tomorrow you might get run over by a bus or a chariot, chances are you won’t. Chances are you’ll still be around tomorrow, hopefully not feeling wasted after another allnighter in Margaritaville with Aristippus and his friends.
You see the costs of short-term thinking all around us—in drunk-driving accidents, smoking, obesity, environmental destruction, poor retirement planning, failing schools, and the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior. In poker there are clear costs to short-term thinking as well. Allowing ego, resentment, or other passing emotions to obscure long-term goals and proven principles of sound play can be expensive. For example, many good poker players get frustrated when they’re losing to greatly inferior players and try to quickly make up their losses with overly aggressive play. As Doyle Brunson notes: “Poker is a game involving a lot of luck, and the road to winning is long and unpaved. It’s practically impossible to prove who’s the best player in a matter of hours, so the top professionals never try. They just count their profits at the end of the year” (Brunson, pp. 98–99).
The Availability Heuristic
Say the first thing that comes to mind.
—HERMAN “INKBLOT” RORSCHACH
Another critical thinking trap is basing judgments on evidence that is vivid or memorable rather than on evidence that may be more relevant or reliable. This is an error that social scientists who like impressive-sounding labels call the “availability heuristic.”
Here’s a short quiz to see if you’re really reading this book or just pretending to in order to impress your poker buddies. Please use a No. 2 pencil to record your answers.6
1. Which is a more likely cause of death in the United States: (a) being killed by a shark or (b) being killed by falling airplane parts?
2. Which is a more likely cause of death in the United States: (a) dying in an accident or (b) dying of asthma?
3. Which is a more common cause of death in the United States: (a) homicide or (b) suicide?
4. Which is more likely: The authors of this chapter are (a) obsessed with death or (b) just trying to sound deep?
The answers to Questions 1–3 are all (b). The chance of dying from falling airplane parts is thirty times greater than the chance of being killed by a shark. It is sixteen times more likely for a person to die of asthma than it is for him to die in an accident. And suicides are forty percent more common than homicides. (At press time, the authors still debated the correct answer to Question 4.)
If these answers surprise you, blame the availability heuristic. Shark attacks, accidental deaths, and homicides typically receive a lot more media coverage than deaths from falling airplane parts, asthma-related deaths, and suicides, respectively. For that reason, it’s easier for most people to recall examples of the first sorts of events than it is for them to think of examples of the second. And it’s a natural human tendency to judge the frequency of a class of events by the ease with which instances of that event can be brought to mind.
How can the availability heuristic trip up even skilled poker players? One way is through selective memory. A faulty memory can lead to a faulty poker strategy. For example, research shows that people naturally tend to remember “hits” (occasions when strategies or predictions succeeded) more often than they remember “misses.” So you might remember vividly the one time you bluffed the socks off Sammy, but have forgotten the ten other times your bluffs failed.
The availability heuristic can also give us a false sense of how our cards stack up against our opponents’. Consider this example offered by Brunson. You start off a hold’em game with two red 8’s in the hole, and the flop comes 8-9-10 of clubs. Brunson writes:
At first you’re going to like this flop, but the more you consider it, the more you realize there’s a hailstorm full of trouble here. If someone’s holding J-Q, you need to make a full house or four-ofa-kind to win. The same is true if someone has two clubs. Also, you’d better worry about just one other club falling on fifth or sixth street and about someone having three 9’s, or three 10’s. All this spells caution. (Brunson, p. 113)
Because of the availability heuristic, we can easily focus on what a great hand we have, overlooking the very real, but less readily imaginable, possibility that others may have even stronger ones.
The Fundamental Attribution Error
I am firm; you are stubborn; he is pigheaded.
—BERTRAND RUSSELL
Critical thinking requires intellectual integrity, and intellectual integrity demands that we hold ourselves to the same standards to which we hold others. This isn’t easy, however. People have a strong disposition to (1) take credit for their own successes while blaming external, uncontrollable factors for their failures, and (2) overestimate the role of internal, controllable factors in explaining the behavior of others. A basketball coach, for example, might explain his successes as due to his own brilliant coaching, rationalize his failures as due to bad officiating, and attribute other teams’ poor records to their lack of discipline and hard work. Social scientists call this biased double standard the “fundamental attribution error.”7
The fundamental attribution error comes into play in poker mainly in the way personal successes and failures are attributed to “luck” or “skill.” When players win big, they tend to attribute this to their own skillful play. When they lose big, they tend to blame bad breaks or other factors outside their control. It’s hard to think objectively about our successes and failures, but in poker, as in philosophy, “Know thyself” is the beginning of wisdom. If you lose consistently to the same bunch of guys, most of whom couldn’t figure out a fifteen-percent tip on a bar tab to save their lives, “bad luck” probably isn’t to blame.
Loss Aversion
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
—PROVERB
Talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres has a funny line about the bags of peanuts served on airplanes. Why is it, she asks, that we look forward to getting those peanuts with such greedy anticipation when most of us would likely say “No thanks” if offered the same bag as a free sample on the street? Answer: the cognitive bias that psychologists call loss aversion.
Loss aversion is the tendency of people to prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring gains. If we think that something is ours, that we’re entitled to it, we tend to value it mo
re than we would if it was merely something that we might come to acquire. That’s why marketing gimmicks like free trial offers and buy-now-pay-later deals work; that’s why we keep sending the same bums back to Congress (as bad as they are, the other jokers could be even worse); and that’s why we greedily cherish our little bags of airplane peanuts (“they’re ours dammit; we paid for them!”).
Problem is, our tendency to prefer avoiding losses to making gains can lead us to make poor decisions. Suppose, for instance, you have to choose between the following gambles:
Alternative A: A sure gain of $1,000,000
Alternative B: A 10% chance of getting $2,500,000, an 89 percent chance of getting $1,000,000, and a 1 percent chance of getting $0.
Which would you choose?
Most people prefer the sure gain of $1,000,000 even though the expected value of Alternative B is $140,000 higher.8 D’oh!
Poker players afflicted with a bad case of loss aversion tend to become “rocks,” that is, tight-passive players who fold hand after hand, bet cautiously, and in general play very conservatively. Their motto is: “Better to be content with small gains rather than risk big losses.” In the long run, however, such a strategy is bound to increase losses. As Alan Schoonmaker, author of The Psychology of Poker, points out, “nearly all successful professionals are both tight and selectively aggressive.”9 In other words, they play conservatively until they’ve got primo cards, and then they bet to the hilt.10 To win money over the long haul, you’ve got to win big pots. And to win big pots, you can’t be held back by loss aversion.
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