Cort Heroy

In a game of incomplete information, like poker, what information you do possess becomes exceptionally important. Much time and energy has been spent deciphering the meanings behind a flick of the wrist or change in gaze. The knowledge that can be gleaned from small human tendencies can create the difference between a winning and a losing night at the table. Mike Caro’s seminal work on the topic, Caro’s Book of Tells, codified many of the ideas that are now considered part of the poker cannon; a shaky betting hand is indicative of strength, for example. Deciphering tells is not the only step, however, one must also determine whether or not the tells you are being given are conveying truth or lie. An example of this is a player acting strong because their hand is weak and vice versa. There is one aspect of reading tells, however, that seems to have largely fallen through the cracks. That aspect is the lack of absolute value in poker hands, and thus the lack of absolute truth in the game.

Now, at this point one may feel that “certainly there is absolute truth, facts are facts, I know what I know, and I know facts”. This statement is true to a point, facts are facts, but the problem comes into being when one considers we only know what we know to be fact. There are relatively few absolutes in life. Statements beyond the simple existence of something usually involve a degree of subjectivity, which necessarily limits the ability of something to be absolute. For example, the temperature in Murfreesboro, TN on November 7, 2007 at 3:20pm was 59 degrees Fahrenheit, this is absolute information. It is a fact. It can be measured independently with a thermometer. However, would it be truthful to tell someone that it was cold that day? Whether or not it was cold that afternoon is completely open to interpretation. A person from Sub-Saharan Africa would likely confirm that it was cold outside, whereas an Inuit tribe’s member might say it was quite nice. Both persons are telling the truth about what they know to be fact, yet the truths are different. As an added example, imagine hooking a small child up to a polygraph machine, an independent measuring device for truth, and asking the child if Santa was real. The child would likely say “yes”, and the machine would note that the child was giving a true response, because the child is simply repeating what he knows he knows. Truth is not absolute when we think we know everything, therefore it would be even more so the case when we know we don’t know everything, as in a game like poker.

In poker, the only absolute is the cards. There are 52 of them and in a game like hold ‘em, you are dealt two, and you know, absolutely, what those cards are. Your opponents’ cards are also absolute, however, the value of the cards is dependent upon perception, and as we have seen in previous articles, there are many things which can alter perception.

Games that do not contain a bluffing element, such as blackjack, remain relatively straightforward as to the value of each hand. This is not to say that there are not subtleties, strategies, and difficulty in blackjack, but the premise is relatively simple; one wants to get closer to 21 than the dealer without going over. If you have 20 and the dealer has 19, you win. In poker, unless one is holding the nuts for any particular hand, there is always a doubt as to how strong one’s hand is in comparison to the opponent’s, and statistically speaking, it is rare that either one will have the nuts in any given hand. It is for this reason that hand values in poker are relative and not absolute. A set of jacks is a very strong hand in a hold ‘em game with a board that reads J 2 5 Q 7 with four suits showing. However, the strength of that same set of jacks is significantly less on a board that reads A K J T 3 with 4 hearts on the board, including the jack of hearts. Furthermore, the strength of the set of jacks is also defined by what one “knows” the opponent has based upon their betting, body language, speech patterns, etc. In short, one “knows” the strength of the opponent’s hand based upon what the opponent “knows” about the strength of their hand.

Your opponent has based their perception of the strength of their hand upon their deduction of your holding as well as their natural tendencies toward personal attributes like temerity or timidity. A person who believes that there is a monster under every bed will appear quite weak with anything but the immortal nuts. Conversely, there are also players who look no further than their own cards. These people may see that they have top two pair on the board and completely ignore other possibilities. These tendencies should be taken into consideration when determining the strength of one’s own hand based upon the tells given by the opponent. In essence, one is looking for information, not truth.

Many of the clues about a player’s natural tendencies occur when the hand is not occurring or has recently finished. For example, a reliable source of this information occurs right as a hand ends. A person who regularly asks questions like “flush?” or “got the straight?” right before turning over the hand is likely a more timid player, always expecting to see the monster. Regard tells on this player as underestimations of hand strength and increase the relative strength that is assumed. Just because they don’t look comfortable with their hand doesn’t mean they can be bought off of it. If this player gets sticky, slow down. Conversely, the player who makes statements like, “How can you have the flush there?” or turns over their cards with much bravado regardless of their holding likely has the kid of temerity that will allow them to seem confident regardless of what they have. Tells given off by this opponent will always look strong, and that’s because this opponent genuinely thinks they are strong. By realizing this, you can adjust your impressions of the relative strength of your hand and act accordingly.

So, when playing tells should not be read in an effort to determine the truth about the hand. Read tells in with a consideration for the opponent’s underlying beliefs and personal tendencies. Even though it is incomplete, information abounds in poker. However, the truth, it would seem, is not necessarily out there.

Why do people play poker? For many, specifically the professionals, money is the reason and the most important return from the game. Sure, there is a definite social aspect, but generally money is considered the main benefit of poker. Ideally, every decision one makes at the table will ultimately result in an increase in money. However, there are certainly times when it would seem that one makes decisions that are decidedly against the primary objective of making money. Often these decisions are made because we are getting a secondary, emotional benefit. This article will endeavor to examine how emotional benefits can affect one’s game and deplete one’s bankroll.

            Few things in life are straightforward; perhaps least so being the actions of humans. That being said, seldom do people do something without some benefit being involved, and while many benefits are obvious, some are not. Why does one strive hard to get a promotion at work? Often it is to get more money and/or power. However, if these were the only motivators in the world, people such as Ghandi or Mother Theresa would certainly never have achieved prominence. With that promotion also comes a sense of happiness and fulfillment for a job well done and recognized. Praising someone gives them no monetary reward, but it works well as a motivator because of the emotional benefits that accompany it. So why write an article if all of these things seem positive right? You’re thinking, how can something called a benefit be detrimental? Well, unfortunately those things at the poker table which fulfill our emotional needs do not always coincide well with our financial ones.

Imagine for a moment you’re playing poker at your local casino, and at your table this evening is one of those people with whom everyone has a love/hate relationship, the calling station. He’ll call any bet to the river in hopes of catching a flush, straight, or even sometimes a pair. These players can be very beneficial for your bankroll on the whole, but catch them on a lucky night, and they can be the source of some of the worst play from otherwise learned players. So on this night everyone has folded to you on the button and you look down to find two shiny, red aces. You make your standard raise to three times the big blind, the calling station calls you from the small blind, naturally, and the big blind folds. The flop comes out Ac 10h 4d, giving you a gorgeous set of aces on a very non-scary board. The calling station checks to you and you make a bet of around half the pot because you expect him to call anything and you want to get paid off. Not surprisingly, he obliges. The turn brings an 8 of clubs, putting two clubs on the board, again the calling station checks, and you bet your three of a kind more aggressively now by betting ¾ of the pot, getting yet another call. The river brings a 3 of clubs, putting a dreaded third club on the board. Suddenly, the calling station moves all-in for well over three times the amount in the pot. Now, you’ve read all the books, you know that when this type of player makes a big move like this, he has something big. You know in your heart that this donkey made his runner-runner club flush, you can feel it in your bones that you’re beat, everyone at the table knows you’re beat, your infant nephew, who has never so much as seen a playing card in his life, knows you’re beat, and yet, despite all of this, after agonizing for what seems like an eternity, you find yourself saying, “call”. To no one’s surprise the calling station turns over a 4c 2c, and rakes in a huge pot of YOUR money. You show your aces while spewing a tirade of obscenities and insults that makes, “You don’t even know how to spell poker” seem like a friendly hug. The table groans, tells you how unlucky you were, reassures you of your play, and shoots mean looks at the calling station as the words donkey and fish begin to fly around the table.

So why did you make the call? You made it because of the benefits you knew you were going to get. Now, you’re probably thinking, “But I lost a lot of money, how am I benefiting here?” This is where the insidious nature of emotional benefits can come in. By calling the other person’s all-in bet, you were in essence ensuring yourself of a benefit of one kind or another. If the calling station suddenly acted out of character and made a ludicrous bluff at the end, you win a huge pot and a lot of money, primary benefit. However, in the situation described, you lose a lot of money, but get the sympathy, empathy, and comradery of the other people at the table. Remember, poker is not a game played in isolation. There is a very large social aspect to poker, and as social animals, humans inherently want to be liked and accepted. By making what you knew was a bad call, you ingratiate yourself to the other players, bask in their sympathy, and get the emotional goodies of having people feel sorry for you and getting to join their club of bad beats. So in a very twisted sort of way, it can feel good to feel that bad.

Poker is a game in which the primary benefit, the main goal, and the grease that keeps it moving is money. Money is how you keep score, money is how you attain power and prestige, and most importantly, money is what allows you to keep playing. You can’t ante-up with empathy, and happiness still buys you a heaping cup of jack squat at the table. When playing, one needs to make sure that they are making decisions that continue to follow the path to money, and are not meant to garner fleeting emotional goodies. Commune with people between hands, say nice things, ask about their families if you wish; but when the cards are in front of you, remember, the money is all that matters.

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In my last article , I discussed delay discounting and how your environment can affect it. One of the key concepts in that article was the indifference point. As a refresher, the indifference point was the point at which two monetary values cease to illicit the same reaction because one has gotten big enough that you are willing to alter your behavior to attain it. In this installment, I will continue the discussion of limits and thresholds by reporting on the work of one of the foremost poker theorists, Mike Caro.

In life there are a few things that act as natural reinforcers; the most basic of which are pleasure and pain. If a person does something and receives a pleasurable return, that behavior will often continue, and should a person do something and receive a painful response, the behavior will naturally decrease. This is why most people continue to eat cake but haven’t stuck a penny in an electrical outlet since they were three years old. Poker can work in much the same way. When we make good plays, usually, we are given a pleasureable response by raking in a pot, and when we make poor plays, again usually, we painfully watch our money go to someone else at the table.

In Doyle Brunson’s (2005) New Testament of poker, Super/Sysytem 2, Mike Caro outlined what he called his Threshold of Misery. Caro stated that the threshold of misery was the point at which further losses no longer registered as being more painful. So to put this in perspective, imagine a person has their hand in a pot of slightly too warm water. If they were to turn up the heat, pain would increase as the water’s temperature increased. However, at some point, probably somewhere past scalding, increased temperature no longer registers with increased pain, i.e. 600 degrees is just as bad as 800 degrees. The point at which increased heat no longer increased pain is the pain, or misery, threshold.

Poker can work in much the same way. Imagine your worst night of poker. All of your straights lose to rivered flushes, your bottom set always runs into top set, top two pair runs into trips, etc. Each time you lose a pot and ship money over to someone else, it hurts, and if you continue to lose, it should hurt more. However, at some point the pain can stop increasing. For example, if you have a $1,000 bankroll, and due to unfortunate circumstances have run through it and borrowed from someone else, there may not be much of a pain difference between being down $10K and $30K because you hit your pain threshold when you lost double your bankroll. Natural consequences no longer matter, so there is little to promote good play or discourage bad. Passing the Threshold of Misery is a very quick way to go from having only a moderate loss to having a life-alteringly shattering one.

This concept once again stresses the importance of taking time while you play to take stock of yourself. If you find you’ve hit a point where losing more no longer hurts more, then perhaps stopping for the night would be a good idea. At the very least, take some time to regroup and get yourself into a better frame of mind. Taking a moment to consider whether or not you have passed the threshold of misery can be one of the single most bankroll saving things you can do at the poker table.

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References:

Caro, Mike (2005) Super/System 2, Doyle Bruson, ed. Cardoza Publishing, 121 – 178.

    One of the favored expressions by professional poker players regarding their vocation is that “poker is a tough way to make an easy living”. With the poker boom in the last few years, many aspiring players have failed to realize that long-term poker success is not like the lottery. Sustained success at the poker table is gained through long, grueling hours of grinding it out. One impulse that you must control in order to be a successful poker player is the impulse to win what’s in the pot right now as opposed to waiting and working to extract as much value as you can. Your willingness to control your impulses is something that must be examined prior to your decision to quit your job and make a living on the green felt.

             Imagine for a moment that someone were to offer you this proposition, “I can give you $5 now or $20 in a week”. What would you do? Many things will obviously factor into your decision, “do I know the person, do I believe their offer, is it worth it to risk the $5 now for the potential for $20 later?” Would it be any different if the person offered you $100 in a week? What about a thousand? Your willingness to put off the immediate reward for a larger reward later is called delay discounting. The degree to which you delay discount is determined by the minimum gap between what is being offered now vs. what will be offered later. For example, if you are willing to forgo $5 now for $7 in a week, you have a very low degree of delay discounting. In this example, $7 is called the indifference point. Basically, the indifference point is the amount at which the two numbers stop being the same, and there is a big enough perceived difference in the larger, delayed amount, that you are willing to wait for it.

The concept of delay discounting can be applied to poker as follows. By considering the above example, one can determine their indifference point, and by examining the gap between the initial offer of $5 and their indifference point, one can have a better understanding of their level of impulsivity as well as their ability to delay gratification. If the gap between those two numbers is low, then you likely have a mindset that will work well as a grinder. However, if the gap between the initial offer and the indifference point is large, it may be advisable to take an extra moment in each decision you make at the poker table to think about whether you are acting optimally or simply out of impulse. This is in no way saying that a large gap is the end of a poker career, but it is good to note where our weaknesses are so that we may compensate for them at the table. When you consider your ability to delay gratification and reward at the poker table, remember that in poker, money is not the only gratification. For example, there is also the rush of winning, or the congratulations of those around the table for playing a good hand. Keep these thoughts in mind when you consider what your level of delay discounting is.  

So the premise of this article seems pretty straightforward, impulse control and gratification delay are important factors to playing successful poker. However, our brains can do funny things to us when we get near a poker table, especially when we look at our willingness to delay rewards. Dixon et al. (2006) found that when a person is engaged in a gambling activity, such as poker, they tend to discount the value of the amount being offered later to a greater degree than if they were not in a gambling environment. In English, the researchers found that for you to wait and take the amount being offered later, that amount must be much larger if the wager is proposed in a casino rather than if it were proposed in a café. So while you might wait a week for the $7 at the café, it might take someone offering you $300 for you to wait a week for it in a casino. So when you are considering how well you feel you can delay gratification, you must keep in mind that your perception of reward will likely change when you sit down at the table.

When we play poker, we hope to get as much from it as possible. We want money, fame, prestige, or any number of things. It is important to remember, however, that the simple act of sitting down at the table may change how we perceive those things, and we must keep ourselves in check to make sure that we are getting as much as we can.

References:

Dixon M., Jacobs, E., & S. Sanders. (2006) Contextual control of delay disounting by pathological gamblers. Journal                 of Applied Behavior Analysis. 39. 413 – 422.

In the last installment, I discussed how the availability heuristic can alter your perception as to how often certain events happen based upon how easy they are to find or how emotionally powerful they are to you. This time we will discuss how your brain can alter how you feel about those events that actually happen to you.

Often in self-help books there will be a section about “You are the master of your universe” or “you control your own destiny”, and to some extent this is true. However, it may be more appropriate to say that your are in control of your feelings about your own destiny. Have you ever entered a poker game after having a bad day or perhaps a run of bad sessions sure that you were going to do poorly? Were you disappointed by your results at the end of the session? Now this may be because you actually did have a bad session, but it is also a possibility that you were having problems with selective perception.

Selective perception is another cognitive bias in which a person’s perception of an event is altered by preexisting notions about the outcome of that event. In English, if you enter something convinced that it will turn out one way, you will pay attention to only those aspects of the thing which support your presupposed feelings, and you will come out of the event with the impression that you were right, regardless of the actual outcome. For example, think about that oft repeated high school story/parable about the kid at the party who, after drinking a copious amount of beer, proclaims, “I am so drunk!”. It is at this point that someone informs him that he has been drinking non-alcoholic beer, and therefore his reported level of inebriation is impossible. Much laughter is usually then had by all. This is an example of selective perception because the kid drinking the non-alcoholic beer was expecting to feel drunk. That expectation led his brain to only pay attention to those parts of the way he was feeling naturally that would correspond to feeling drunk.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t we just go over this with the availability heuristic?” The two concepts are very similar, but with one important difference. The key difference is that the availability heuristic describes how your feelings can affect how often you think something happens, whereas selective perception describes how your feelings can alter your perception of what actually happened, regardless of whether it happened once or a million times.

Imagine for a moment that you have had a terrible day, and despite all advice to the contrary, you decide to enter a poker game that evening. You come into the game with the idea that, since the rest of your day has gone so badly, your poker session will also go poorly. Now it is no secret that we, as humans, like to be right. Well, our brains like to be right as well, and they will selectively attend to those aspects of the game that support your earlier belief that the game will go poorly and ignore those events which challenge your belief. So in essence, you brain will notice and stick to your cracked aces, the flops that your AK missed, and your flopped straight that became second best when someone rivered a flush. You could even finish the night ahead, but feel like you had a bad night of poker, because you didn’t finish way ahead. Your brain will find ways to validate the way you feel, and make you right, even if the facts of the situation do not necessarily warrant these feelings.

It is important to point out, however, that the converse of this last example can also be true. Imagine this time that you have been on a run of great sessions like you’ve never seen. You come to this session feeling good and you have no reason to believe that it won’t go well. Once again though, you have your aces cracked, your AK never gets you anywhere, and your opponents still manage to make your straight second best. At the end of the night, you can even find that you’re stuck a goodly sum. However, if you come in with the belief that it will be a great session, you may find yourself saying things like, “well I should have lost a lot more with those aces” or “it’s a good thing I was able to get away from that straight before I went all-in”. You can come away from the exact same set of outcomes, but by only attending to the positives, your brain is able to support your “it will be a great night” belief.

Now while it’s nice to always feel like a winner, it can be hazardous to your bankroll. We are supposed to be disappointed when disappointing things happen and happy when good things happen. However, having a bad day or running bad doesn’t mean that a bad session is imminent any more than a wonderful day implies a great poker session. Selective perception highlights the need for all poker players to keep detailed records of their wins and losses, so as to have an objective idea of just how well they are doing. Our brains want to be right just as much as we do, however, it is better to be realistic than right, especially if being right means ignoring some of the facts that could stop you from being a successful and profitable poker player.

“Poker is a game of incomplete information”. This is a statement that anyone who has ever picked up a poker book is bound to have read, and while it is true, there are certain bits of information in poker which are complete. For example, when you play poker, you know what your cards are, whether you are up or down in a session, and how well you have been doing overall; or do you? These are all facts that can be recorded, seen, and studied; yet, your mind has amazing ways of transforming these cold hard facts into things that can ultimately damage your poker game. In this series, Poker is in the Eye of the Beholder, I will endeavor to explain how the one thing that is involved in every pot you play, you, is sometimes the least reliable source of that most valuable commodity in poker, information.

“My aces always get cracked”, “that card-rack always hits his flush”, and “I never get there on my draws” are terms many of us have heard at the poker table numerous times and have probably uttered ourselves on occasion. However, is any of it really true? Sure, we’ve read the books and articles that assure us that there are laws of averages and percentages associated with each hand, and we try hard to believe what they tell us. Yet, even when we believe it, and know the odds, we still have a tendency to hold deep seated beliefs in things like “The Withdrawal Curse”, in which you are doomed to bad sessions of online poker after withdrawing money from your account. So this discrepancy in logic begs the question: why do otherwise rational, intelligent people hold these beliefs which even they, in more lucid moments, can agree are unfounded? One possible explanation for this is the availability heuristic.

The availability heuristic is a cognitive presumption error in which a person incorrectly estimates the likely occurrence of an event based on ease of access or emotional saliency. In English, you will see more of something if you know to look for it and/or it is easy to find, or if it is more emotionally powerful. For example, consider this question: Are there more words in the English language that begin with the letter “r” or have “r” as the third letter? Most people, if asked this question out of context, would say that more words start with the letter “r”; however, in reality many more words have “r” as the third letter. Since it is much easier for us to think of words that start with “r”, we assume that there must be more words start with “r”.

An example of emotional saliency and the availability heuristic was seen a few years ago with the D.C. sniper attacks. While the shootings were happening, the police announced they were looking for a Caucasian male between the ages of 25 and 40 driving a white van. The age, race, and gender of the suspect(s) was due to years of studying serial killers and finding that this was the most likely possibility without any other information upon which to base an assumption. The van description, however, was added after a white van was mentioned by someone at the scene of the first two shootings. Soon, each shooting was detailed with an eye-witness stating that they saw a white van. It was much to everyone’s surprise that the shooters turned out to be two men of Caribbean decent in a blue sedan. If the shooters were in a blue sedan, why then was a white van seen at all the shootings, was each eye-witness lying, mistaken, or possibly crazy? Unlikely. Prior to the shootings, no one noticed the multitude of white vans that populate the roadways. Everyone from soccer-moms to painters to construction workers is likely to drive a white van; they just blend into the background of “cars on the highway”. Following the shootings however, the white van suddenly had emotional significance and every white mini-van, painter’s truck, and delivery van, which had been there the whole time, came under suspicion and stuck out like a sore thumb. Yet, while this is interesting, how does this relate to poker?

First, think of your beliefs about something like the “withdrawal curse”. Hopefully, you have performed well enough online to have the need/desire to withdraw funds. If you have heard about the curse, whether you believe in it or not, you will be paying more attention to your results, especially the losses, for a period of time following the withdrawal. Good and bad sessions are a part of any poker player’s career. However, with the idea of the curse on you, you are now looking for those bad sessions, practically expecting them, and while they’ve always been there, you now see them like a white van on I-395. Also, losses following a withdrawal can be more emotionally salient because you no longer have as a big of a bankroll as previously, and every loss accounts for a larger percentage of your bankroll than it used to. Again causing the loss to hurt more and stick out more.

Another example is with a hand like pocket kings. Many people have a love/hate relationship with pocket kings because it is generally a very strong starting hand in Hold ‘em, but “whenever I have kings, an ace ALWAYS hits the flop”. According to the statistics provided by Brunson et. al (1978), the odds of an ace hitting the flop is only 22.55%, less than a quarter of the time. However, for many people it genuinely seems like more times than not an ace does hit. Are the statistics wrong, are all players delusional? Again, unlikely. This is most likely due again to the availability heuristic. When the flop comes and your kings are an overpair to the board, which they will be more then ¾ of the time, you barely take notice because that is how it “should be”. You started with a great hand and it more than likely continues to be (for the sake of argument we are ignoring instances in which the board is coordinated or there may be some other factor which would threaten your mighty kings). However, when you have kings and that dreaded ace does hit on the flop, your stomach drops, you feel ill, and suddenly ever memory of that donkey who stayed in with ace rag comes rushing back into your head. You feel cursed and start to say to yourself, “This always happens”. It is that emotional saliency that causes you to multiply the number of times the less likely event of an ace hitting the flop happened and discount the much more frequent times when it didn’t. This example can even be taken a step further when you consider the fact that not only does an ace have to hit the flop, but your opponent must also have an ace in their hand, which we frequently feel also “always happens”..

So the next time you’re considering the withdrawal curse, or pocket kings, or perhaps playing your “favorite hand” of jack – three off-suit, because of those two times you won big pots with it, take a moment to consider the availability heuristic and how your beliefs may not be in line with what is actually happening. Hopefully by doing this you can keep your mind clear and be more sure of the “information” it is sending you.

References:

Brunson et al. (1978) Super/System, B & G Publishing Co.