How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[Prevaricator]

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This is just flat-out wrong. You can certainly be struck with an epiphany of the correct move, and if you are, it's because your subconsciousness has filtered and processed the necessary factors to make the best decision. I really don't know what you mean by "brand new," anyway. It's poker, and there are always going to be lots of familiar elements.


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alright, i guess it can happen, but its unlikely and certainly not more reliable than actually thinking about your decision. in addition, the sudden gut reaction might just be that shot in the dark guess that i mentioned earlier, you end up convincing yourself of one option over another irrationally and incorrectly.

also, why are conscious thought and subconscious thought mutually exclusive. why cant you be thinking subconsciously about the hand at the same time you are actively deciding what to do -- why does requin have to unfocus his mind and focus it on something else? sometimes it helps when you are stuck on a problem, to stop and then approach it from a different angle but i dont think that is what is going on here. the answer that requin gave, that he stops so he can hear his 'gut' better seems to be more like using that random guess as his instinct, and is likely to be wrong a lot.

[DcifrThs]

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"i'll bring this up one last time and then im done...i'll do so b/c it still boggles the mind. i dont understand how somebody as logical and intelligent as you appear to be could possibly conclude that what you did was appropirate. and the statement you provided afterwards? just wow. ok, now that that's outta the way:"

DCIFRTHS, this has been adressed ad nauseam, it boggles MY mind that you feel the need to bring it up again.

EDIT: dcfirsths, don't respond to this point it will hijack ZJ's thread.

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im not hijacking his thread by responding to this bruiser.

it doesn't even need a response. whether it's been addressed ad nauseum or not, i dont feel i addressed it in my mind so i did. and now im done. i went on to acknowledge his contribution here.

Barron

[DcifrThs]

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Dcifr,

"as a result, you are one of the people with whom id love to play a session at yoru place."

Queer.

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yes mm, queer as it is i feel id have tons to learn. id obviously bring the wine. but id refuse to do the catching.

Barron

[jcmoussa]

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I’m a very logical person. I used to think that logical intelligent people will always do well at poker, and that people that are bad at math / logic that play by feel will do poorly. The super-analytical approach seemed superior to me in every way.
im not going to read any oif the replys in this thread, or the rest of your post. i actually stopped after you mentioned how you couldnt believe any of those players were winning players....shutup. note: im ddrunk and busto, someone plz stake me.

I would talk to players like H@llingol, MrSmokey1, Ozzy87, Sdouble, and even TheTakover and wonder how they had success. These are all great players, but their approach was so different from mine that I couldn’t understand it. None of these guys are particular adept at figuring out pot odds, or explaining the gap theory, yet they all do very well. I had to figure out why.

I recently read Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming by O’Connor and Seymour. NLP is essentially a psychological study of skills that lead to success in all facets of life, especially social interactions. I learned a lot about the learning process and the subconscious mind in this book. Namely the following:

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The Four Stages of Learning
1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence

Unlearning is 4 to 2.
Relearning is 2 back to 4 with more choices.

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To anyone that has studied psychology, it is probably very clear that the subconscious mind is a lot more powerful and capable than the conscious mind, which is why the learning process must work in the order listed above. Take poker for example.

1. At first it’s just a game. You might not realize how complicated it really is, and you certainly don’t realize how clueless you are.
2. Once you start with beginner strategy, you begin to realize how clueless you are.
3. After a while, the strategies you are learning start to sink in. You may begin thinking, “A8o in early position. The chart tells me to fold this, so I will fold it.”
4. You begin to fold A8o in EP without even thinking about it. Your subconscious mind has now taken over this step of the process, and your conscious mind now has more “memory space” to start thinking about other strategies.

The conscious mind is capable of between five and nine active thoughts at one time. The unconscious is capable of a lot more. It is integral to learning that we take our conscious thought processes and internalize them.

The first theory I came up with, is the “luck of learning” theory. One problem with the learning process in poker is that our brain is very results oriented. That doesn’t always work for poker. It is extremely hard to always be able to separate the results from our judgment in determining what is and what is not the correct play.

This leads to luck, or maybe I should say randomness, being involved in the learning process. Some players will 3-bet AK 4 times in a row, and lose all 4, and may start playing it slower, be it consciously or subconsciously. If this happens enough times, a bad habit may reach stage 4 of the learning process, where it is internalized. Once this stage is reached, it becomes a lot harder to go back and fix the problem, because at that point, it’s no longer thought of as a problem, but a solution.

I think that logical, intelligent players are a lot less likely to be affected by “bad luck” in the learning process. By thinking logically, they are able to better separate themselves from the results.

In general, only a very small percent of poker players are both logical and intelligent. However, a very high percentage of winning players are logical and intelligent. This is for fairly obvious reasons, so I won’t get into it.

What I want to talk about, are the non-logical players that do very well. But first, I guess I should quickly say what I mean when I refer to intelligence. When I say logical and intelligent, I am assuming the person has a very specific kind of intelligence, namely a mathematical intelligence. These people will do very well on the math portion of the SAT’s for example.

When I talk about non-logical players, notice I am not mentioning intelligence. I do believe intelligence is absolutely necessary to be a great poker player; however, these non-logical players have a different kind of intelligence. According to Dr. Howard Gardner there are seven forms of intelligence. “Logical intelligent” players will have Logical-Mathematical intelligence and often spatial intelligence. I find that the non-logical players that are successful often have a great deal of Interpersonal intelligence, and to a lesser extent, spatial intelligence.

Disclaimer: I am not well versed in psychology. The above is opinion based on my limited observation. I can not say with confidence that this is all accurate.

I’m getting slightly off topic here, so let me get back on track. What other traits do successful non-logical players have? I find they often play by feel, and can not properly externalize their plays. They have a feel for pot odds, but often can’t calculate them on the spot, even when the calculations are very simple. They often have poor bankroll management skills, and do not make good grinders. Some of them are actually losers at low stakes, and winners at high stakes. How can this be?

I believe that the biggest difference between low-stakes and high-stakes games is the importance of hand-reading skills. This is why some of the non-logical players will inevitably do extremely well.

The truth of the matter still is that most non-logical players, even intelligent ones, will fail early on in their poker career. I think this goes back to the “luck of learning” I talked about above. When learning, the “logical

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[ZeeJustin]

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in practice i find there isn't enough time during a hand to really logically analysis it so it's pretty much instincts for every hand, then save the hand and analysis it later so your instcints can use it next time around.

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Yes. By going through and analyzing hands, you are also feeding your unconscious mind, and your instincts will be better as a result. Your unconscious mind feeds off information that you recieve both consciously and subconsciously.

[DJ Sensei]

I definitely file myself under the mathematical/logical heading as a player... but I also think the best hands i've ever played (at least in my opinion) generally happen without me thinking long and hard objectively about the action. I just feel that a particular action is very, very good in a certain spot, and I squeeze the trigger in a big spot. Usually, it works, and its awesome.

Later on I can go back over the hand and analyze it more thoroughly, and the math or objective analysis is generally there to back me up.

But I think the ability to make these subconscious comes from tens of thousands of hands of varied situations which I've experienced and internalized. I don't think theres any way to specifically teach that ability, but if there was it would be very valuable.

[ZeeJustin]

Prev, FF, and Cero

1) I am certainly NOT advocating turning off your analytical process. This is very important.

FF: You are right that it usually (if not always) kicks in practically instantaneously. I'm not sitting there looking up at the sky waiting for information to come to me. It just comes to me.

Prev: It seems to me like you really underestimate the power of the subconscious mind. Do you feel that your hand reading skills are as strong as they could be?

[Yeti]

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Z Z FUKIN Z FOR ALL OF THIS

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hahah my favourite post of yours, ever.

[Prevaricator]

i dont think i underestimate it, i think that i know its limitations.

grand masters in chess can feel the right move most of the time simply because they are so experienced and can just tell what works and what doesn't, but when something tricky comes up they must buckle down and make some serious calculations. i believe poker is the same way.

by the way, your example with the "will he fold TT, nope" is not an example of subconscious, because you are aware of the thought process. if it was actually subconscious you should be aware of the right answer but not the thought process.

[ZeeJustin]

Timing is another thing that the subconscious mind analyzes better. This is probably because very few schools of poker look at opponents timing when making a decision, so this type of analysis is almost completely internalized.