Winners Use Feedback Loops Well - Part II

"Feedback loops" acquire and use new information to make adjustments. Part I (which can be read at CardPlayer.com) showed how to use them to read your opponents' cards and assess their strengths, weaknesses, and styles. This column will discuss feedback loops' most important use - assessing and developing yourself.

Nobody is completely objective about himself. Since we want to believe that we play well, we naturally deny and distort conflicting evidence. To reduce this problem, winners get and use a lot of feedback. To preserve their illusions, losers avoid, ignore, or minimize feedback. A few steps can reduce this problem, but you can't completely eliminate it.

Keep Records

To protect themselves against wishful thinking, winners carefully record their results. "Record-keeping forces you to acknowledge the truth about your results." ("Shulman Says," Card Player, Nov. 24, 2000)

Because they delude themselves, some heavy losers pretend that they are "about even, maybe a little behind." They remember and exaggerate their winning sessions, but forget and minimize their more frequent losing ones.

Winners also record the conditions. They know how well they did in various kinds of games or conditions, such as limit versus no-limit, late at night versus during the day, or at full tables versus shorthanded ones.

These records help winners to choose the best games and adjust their strategies. They may see that they do better in full games than in shorthanded ones, or that their results deteriorate when they play longer than four hours. So, they play short sessions at full tables.

Because most players don't keep good records, they don't know how well they do in different situations. They therefore can't choose the best games, times, and other conditions.

Focus on Your Current Play

Winners constantly ask, "How well am I playing now?" Then, they quickly adjust their strategy. Occasionally, they reach a painful conclusion: They might usually be better than their opposition, but they are not playing well now. So, they stop playing or switch to easier games.

Let's contrast two friends with approximately equal skills. One had flown to Tunica to play in a game that he usually beat. He ran badly and lost heavily. After making a serious and expensive mistake, he quit and flew home. He hated taking the loss, but accepted that he probably would make more mistakes.

My other friend won't look at himself objectively. His A-game or B-game is good enough to win almost anywhere. Yet, he struggles to survive because he can't admit that he is playing badly. During a terrible losing streak, his play clearly had deteriorated, and I tried to make some suggestions.

He angrily interrupted, "I've never played more perfectly; I'm at the top of my game." He then told a long, angry, self-pitying story about rotten cards, incompetent dealers, and idiotic players. He was soon broke, trying to borrow a stake.
His pattern is extremely common, and most of us occasionally copy it. We constantly must fight against our natural desire to believe that we are playing well, but are unlucky.

Question Your Motives

Losers often pretend they are acting rationally - for example, trying to increase their profits - when they are really expressing anger, responding to fears, trying to prove something, or trying to impress other people.

Winners often ask themselves: Why did I do that? They know that anger, other emotions, or irrational motives can cause mistakes. If they see that irrational factors are harming their play, they take a break or go home.

Feedback From Other People

Many winners work hard and risk embarrassment to get feedback from various sources: Internet forums (such as the ones at CardPlayer.com), discussion groups, personal coaches, and poker buddies. Follow their example: Recognize that because you are biased, you need feedback.

Winners' Laws

These laws refer to both Part I and Part II. You need more than an intellectual understanding of how feedback loops work. You need a fundamentally different attitude toward information.

1. Keep your mind open to new information. Recognize that you can't completely prevent your biases from influencing you. Once you put someone on a specific hand or decide that he is a certain kind of player, you naturally will ignore or minimize contrary evidence. After deciding that you are better or worse than certain players, you may do the same with information about yourself or them. Until you have solid evidence, regard all of your conclusions as tentative. Keep your mind open to other possibilities and continuously look for new information.

2. Don't wait until your mistakes are obvious to everyone. Develop feedback loops to identify and correct small deviations before they become large enough for others to see them.

3. Keep accurate records. You need good records to reduce the effects of your natural biases and selective memory.

4. Develop all of the necessary skills. You need to master all four steps that were discussed in Part I: acquiring information, interpreting it, using it to revise your plans, and implementing those plans well.

5. Relate to people who will tell you the truth, especially when you don't want to hear it. Have at least one person who will tell you what you need to hear, especially the unpleasant information that you don't want to hear. It's been called "tough love," and it can prevent many mistakes.

6. Make arrangements to get frequent, honest feedback. Join discussion groups or online forums, or meet regularly with a poker buddy or personal coach. Because you change so rapidly, you need frequent feedback from someone who impartially looks at you.

7. Make it easy for others to provide helpful feedback. The easier you make it, the more feedback you will get. Unfortunately, most people do exactly the wrong thing. They communicate, directly or indirectly, that they really don't want to hear criticisms.

Communicate that you want honest feedback, not reassurance. Most people hesitate to be honest because you may become defensive. You may think that you are just trying to "explain" why you did something. Perhaps you're sincere, perhaps not, but explaining or otherwise defending yourself can destroy the whole feedback process. Just listen carefully, and then thank them for their honesty. You'll learn a lot more.

How Do You Rate?

This rating scale assesses how well you use feedback loops to correct mistakes. Circle the number that best describes your agreement with this statement: I am exceptionally good at using feedback loops. I always regard my first conclusion as tentative, actively seek contradictory information, and never reject alternatives just because they disagree with my opinion. (7) Agree strongly, (6) Agree, (5) Agree somewhat, (4) Neutral, (3) Disagree somewhat, (2) Disagree, (1) Disagree strongly.

The Critical Questions

Review both parts of this series, and then answer two questions:

• What are the implications of my self-rating?
• What should I do differently? List specific actions that you should take to improve your use of feedback loops.

Discuss your answers with someone you trust, and take good notes.

To learn more about yourself and other players, you can buy Dr. Schoonmaker's books, Your Worst Poker Enemy and Your Best Poker Friend, at CardPlayer.com.