High IQ dosen't help much in poker, confirmed.

I have been reading, or actually listening to while I play on Full Tilt, a book called the Social Animal. It has some very important information to poker players, pretty much the same info that was in another book I read almost exactly 2 years ago called How We Decide. Both have a lot of filler and How We Decide had some confirmed BS, at least in the section where it profiles Michael Binger, even though I would say it is the more entertaining read of the two.

The good news is I can give you the most important info right here. The subconscious brain is thousands of times more powerful than the part that we think consciously with. This confirms what I have always felt/known about poker play and why my reads were usually right even though I never actually picked up a specific tell, accept for once at the very beginning of my career. This is why the great poker theorists are usually mediocre players. It is also why players “on a roll” who just start playing by their instincts do well and once they suffer some bad results and start trying to rethink their game go into a slump.

One poker related thing that I got from The Social Animal that wasn’t mentioned in How We Decide is that this doesn’t mean snap decisions are good, the subconscious still works best when given some time to decide. So even though you don’t know what you are thinking about it is good to take a little time on a tough and important decision. I very often have almost decided on one course only to change my mind after a a little time, for no reason, and am usually right in doing so.

Also what I got from both books is that, after a certain level, IQ isn’t that relevant to good decision making, thank god. That is to say a reasonably intelligent person is just about as likely to be a good poker player as a super genius.

This is not to say you shouldn’t read these books if you have the time. There are lots of interesting facts and anecdotes in there. Its just unfortunate they have to add so much boring filler to make it a “book”. Something I will try to avoid here.

Please come to the page Full Tilt set up for me on facebook and join me in a little freeroll tournament they set up for my friends on that page.

http://www.facebook.com/Lee.Watkinson.FullTilt