How Real is Your Brain

I’d been having a bad run of cards and found myself “paying off” loads of situations with the worst hand. During that terrible run, like most people, I didn’t have my usual high level of confidence in my decisions. But, I certainly wasn’t on tilt.

I had made numerous payoffs because the Bellagio $40-$80 limit hold’em games had been playing fast and furious with numerous big pots. And you don’t want to lose big pots by folding a winner for one bet. Additionally, many of the $40-$80 Bellagio players have extremely larcenous hearts; they’ll try and rob you every chance they get.

Intuitively, I thought that I was “paying off” too much, losing too many bets in situations I felt I should have been able to read better. I was associating my lack of success paying off with myself misjudging situations. Then, feeling a situation didn’t “smell right” I paid off a $2,000 plus pot with deuces on a 9-8-7-6-3 board and won the pot. Getting better than 25-to-1 on the call, it made up for a lot of lost bets paying off opponents with the worst hand. A couple of hours later I “paid off” another situation, winning with 3-3 in a $1500 plus pot, making up for even more $80 lost calls. All of a sudden my “paying off” didn’t feel to be as much of an error as it did a couple of hours previously.

The human mind instinctively associates events to similar events. In doing so, it often misinterprets situations that occur significantly outside the realm of normalcy. I had paid off in a series of circumstances in which I was receiving long odds from the pot and seemingly never won. After many such plays, it intuitively appeared to me I was misreading the odds the pot was furnishing me.

However, if the pot is laying you 10-to-1, and you are correct in calling when you have a 10 percent chance to win, it’s highly likely that you will run into stretches in which you will pay off 25 situations in a row and lose. And when that happens, you’ll likely misinterpret the pattern as an error in your thinking.

Although you may think the human mind is a logical instrument, it’s not. As a poker player, you need to consciously make sure that your brain is interpreting situations realistically. When you’re running exceptionally well, you’re likely to think you are playing much better than you are. There is kind of a “placebo” effect on your brain: Your results pattern makes you think you are great. And you’re likely not all that you think you are.

Conversely, when things go badly, you’re likely to think your decisions are incorrect, when in reality they may or may not be. We’ve all been there: You’ve been running terribly, and your lost confidence in your decisions is causing you to play more hands incorrectly. Great players are highly adept at shaking this off. But, in actuality , how much of your losing is really attributed to errors and how much is attributed to bad luck? Psychologists often point to “confirmational bias,” the tendency to favor information that confirms your emotionally based beliefs while ignoring any contradictory evidence. I’ve seen both sides of this issue.

Some very poor players overstate to themselves and others the effect of bad luck, because they don’t want to take personal accountability for their losses. And I’ve seen others understate their playing ability when losing by beating themselves up mentally for situations they couldn’t control.

Every poker decision is an independent event, with an assumption of risk and a potential reward. Having the foresight to accurately analyze that equation is essential to becoming a great player. Additionally, being able to review past events accurately, without inserting any fictitious components into your mind will be instrumental in creating consistency in your game.

If you allow non-standard runs of cards/situations to affect your thinking, your game will get thrown off often. And that being the case, you’re unlikely to survive the test of time that poker places on all of us.

Did I pay off too much during my bad run of cards? I probably did, and it undoubtedly caused part of my losses. But, though I try to keep them at a minimum, I make mistakes every time I play poker. When I’m running bad, the emotional impact of getting ripped to shreds makes me think less efficiently and reduces my expectation. That said, I feel like I am one of the more emotionally controlled players around. Letting losses affect me is just part of being human.

You just try to control it the best you can. Be self conscious; don’t let your mind think illogically. Don’t let statistical aberrations alter your thoughts. Instead maintain sound strategic concepts in your decision making. Accurately analyze your plays after the fact, rather than rationalizing your poor decisions.

In short, don’t ever deceive yourself. Be real! Always base your decisions on sound, logical and rational concepts. Don’t let emotions or irrational thoughts control your play. Execute every decision as best you can and see how the chips stack up at the end.

If you do that, they’re highly likely to stack up in front of you! ♠

Roy Cooke played poker professionally for 16 years prior to becoming a successful Las Vegas Real Estate Broker/Salesman in 1989. Should you wish to any information about Real Estate matters-including purchase, sale or mortgage his office number is 702-396-6575 or Roy’s e-mail is [email protected]. His website is www.roycooke.com. You can also find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @RealRoyCooke.