Books and Covers

If the phrase "You can't judge a book by its cover" was coined with any specific location in mind, my dough's on the poker room. There aren't many places where a CEO in a $2,000 suit has to take a back seat to the high school dropout in sweats seated next to him, but if the CEO's a piker, and the dropout's a whiz, a back seat he shall take. I know guys who couldn't spell "cat" if you spotted them the "c" and the "a" who regularly play rings around teachers, doctors, and judges. Truth be told, you can hold a bachelor's degree in math, a master's in logic, and a Ph.D in behavioral psychology, but if you're short on patience or perspective, you'll regularly be bested by people who possess a fraction of your knowledge but twice your self-control.

If surface appearances aren't unreliable enough, short-term results can also do a number on one's perceptions, even those of the skillful and observant. Take, for example, a confrontation between two opponents facing each other for the first time: a cagey tactician we'll call "Trapper," who exploits the tendencies of overaggressive players in his sleep, and a wartime consigliere we'll call "Bulldog," who sprinkles weak-tight players on his cereal in the morning. When, in the course of their first encounter, the deck slaps Bulldog silly and Trapper is repeatedly forced to white-flag it at precisely the moments he'd been planning to drop the hammer, an interesting thing can happen: The radar screens of both players may get a little jammed. Bulldog may, in fact, be an excellent player whose aggressiveness normally succeeds because of highly attuned people-reading skills; if Trapper dismisses his success against him as entirely deck-dependent, he may discover the next time they meet that he has seriously underestimated his opponent. On the other side of the coin, because of the lopsided way the script has played out, the normally people-savvy Bulldog may form an impression of his opponent as a pushover, an evaluation that couldn't be further off the mark.

If they do meet again, these impressions will likely get adjusted, but in the process, misperceptions by other opponents may form and multiply on any number of fronts. Let's say, for instance, that Trapper – as cool a player as you'll ever find – is playing the next morning against a different lineup, and early in his session his Big Slick gets snapped by an ace-rag that spikes a three-outer. Although the "beat" is so mild as to not even register in his consciousness, within five minutes his new opponents have mentally marked him down as a steamer and a goofball. Why? Because as soon as the hand ends, who should walk in and take the last available seat … but Bulldog, who, finding himself one behind the button, immediately posts his blind. When everyone in front of him mucks, his raise into a button player he's tabbed as timid and weak is as predictable as the Masters in April. But Trapper is neither timid nor weak; he is, however, both keenly aware of the skewed image yesterday's nightmare has created in his opponent's mind and keenly interested in correcting it – so when he looks down to find the J 9, he immediately makes it three bets to go.

Unfortunately for Trapper, a wrench is once again thrown into the works, this time in the form of the stalactite in the small blind who cold-calls both raises, and the rather loose big blind who likewise defends. No matter – after a flop of 10-8-2 rainbow, it's Trapper's turn to be "bullish" on his hand. When the small blind leads, the big blind calls, and Bulldog raises, Trapper once again makes it three bets to go. The small blind now asks for time, and proceeds to attach a frown to his face, the kind of frown you'd expect from an out-of-position rock with pocket queens looking at a zillion pre- and post-flop bets who suddenly figures he's beaten with no place to go. When he agonizes and releases, pocket queens is exactly what Trapper figures to have hit the muck, which is the good news; the bad news is that the big blind's crying-call now makes it certain he's caught something (most likely tens), and that something, along with the size of the pot, has its hooks in him deep. For Trapper to stack the chips, he clearly needs to catch at least a jack, so when the turn brings a blank and the others check, he taps along, and when the river brings another, it's once again tap, tap, tap. The suddenly hopeful big blind flips over an A-10, Bulldog mucks, and Trapper calmly flicks his cards away, at which point the small blind – a little less calmly – proceeds to jump out of his chair.

This is understandable since, as he now announces to all within earshot, he did indeed muck pocket ladies; equally understandable is the Monday morning analysis that now ensues, the hot topic of which is this new "maniac" in their midst – the cool, calm customer the armchair quarterbacks now figure is a tilter and a biscuithead. What on earth could he have had?! How could he be in for six bets by the flop and not beat tens?! He must be steaming from getting his Big Slick snapped … and on and on, and so on and so forth. If these reactions seem emotionally charged, remember that only one of these players folded the winner; the rest of them are simply using the available information to try to figure out this new player in their midst. Isn't that what we all do (albeit in the privacy of our own thoughts)? The irony here is that if they could manage to put him on the hand he actually held, their evaluation would be far more generous, but in fairness, putting a pre- and post-flop three-bettor on J-9 with a larger strategic purpose isn't exactly an automatic read. I mean, I know there are some psychic types out there, but you'd have to be the Amazing Kreskin to put someone on that with any degree of confidence.

Lots of actions that poker players take make sense in the context of strategies that extend beyond the scope of the current hand, but since that context is not in the public domain – and since those actions can backfire in pretty spectacular fashion – decisions that are perfectly reasonable can appear pretty loopy. Although sometimes things are exactly as they seem, much of the time they're not, and our conclusions about people and their motives are only as good as the incomplete information on which they're necessarily based. We have, of course, little choice but to form judgments based on the information at hand, but if we're too hasty in our conclusions, we can later find at considerable cost that the guy we had pegged for a pigeon isn't a pigeon at all, just someone we'd pigeon-holed a little prematurely. While the ability to get into our opponents' heads depends mostly on observation, to a certain degree it also depends on how much we're willing not to write in stone – that is, the degree to which we're willing to accept that legitimate motives of which we might not be aware may be in play.