How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[Cali4niaRaisin]

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Very nice post. Does anyone else do this when faced with a tough decision? I go to each of my other tables and deal with whats going on there, maybe pop up my poker tracker browser, anything to distract myeslf from consciously thinking about the hand. Then when my timer is almost done I go back and find the answer to my decision is in my head. I agree 100%, I think the unconscious mind is a much better decision maker in poker than the conscious mind.

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I do this.

Also, I think it's important to develop both the analytical and feel areas of your game so you can handle both types of oppents. If you know you are up a/g a analytical thinking villian, you play that strategy back at him. Like maybe he's a nit and he raises PF, c-bet the flop and you are floating im in position on a scary board because you know that he's thinking "well he called my PF raise and he's calling my bet on the flop so I should probably give up now". However with a feel player maybe you approach it differently. Sorry this is kinda rambly. Essentially, it's always helpful to know what level your opponent is thinking on (obv).

[spino1i]

I agree with a lot of your post ZJ, particularly the part about how intuitive players develop and how many of them can move up to higher stakes while still thinking "illogically" and having gaping holes in their game.

I disagree that subconcious is so much more important at higher stakes than logic. What is the subconcious mind good for anyway? Its good for making logical conclusions that the concious mind already knows so well that you conciously dont have to even make them anymore. I feel like a good logical player will internalize their logic overtime making room for "new" logic in their concious mind.

You also say "hand-reading" abilities are very intuitive and by feel and not by logic. I feel like with internet poker this is completely false (and not that true with live poker). I feel like even at the highest stakes you still must approach hand-reading logically, only the logic must be much more sophisticated than at lower stakes. This is where the subconcious mind works, it takes care of the elementary logic for you, allowing you to focus on making more sophisticated logic at higher stakes. Obviously you can only do this after you have a lot of experience making the elementary reads of hands.

The reading patterns part is very true, reading patterns is very important and often people that are very logical are crappy at recognizing at patterns. That isnt true with everyone though, and some people are still very good at recognizing patterns and are very logical. Recognizing patterns is actually probably the thing you unconcious mind does best. It keeps "tally" of different outcomes and then sends off an alert if anything is abnormal. This is how you physically read people as well in live poker and why the unconcious mind is so important when reading people's strength based on what you see physically.

Perhaps the reason the subconcious mind is so important then at higher stakes is because of the vast amount of knowledge needed to be successful at that level, anyone who is a success will be forced to have a good amount of their knowledge placed in the subconcious mind, or they simply would be overloaded with information. However, this paves hope for the logical person, who can simply amass knowledge and continue to place it in the subconcious. My advice to any logical player hitting a brick wall at 3/6 nl is simply to continue amassing knowledge and continue letting it get more and more into your subconcious allowing you to make the more complicated decisions neccessary to beat higher stakes. As long as you make sure you learn all knowledge conciouslly first and make sure that it is correct, you can then put it in the subconcious mind and no longer have the need to focus on it.

[VanVeen]

fwiw, pattern recognition is subsumed under the heading 'logic'. pure intellectual problem solving is inductive reasoning and nothing else.

the 'pattern recognition' used at the tables, however, isn't done by the prefrontal cortex and isn't purely intellectual. you're making decisions involving risk and your personal well-being. how you evaluate success and failure isn't determined entirely by your assessment of EV - it is your EV interpeted within the value schema of your serotonergic and dopaminergic systems (and a bunch of other emotional circuits). successful players aren't simply better at analysing poker or finding patterns or estimating EV or any of that. a cursory perusal of the forums would dispell that supposition (most posts w/articulated analysis are awful). what they do seem to be able to do is understand the fundamentals of the game to avoid saliently exploitable errors AND, more importantly, their emotional circuits give them feedback conducive to success within the current environment. behavioral economics covers topics pertaining to this.

anywho, the gist of my post is that the line of demarcation should be b/n analytic thought and emotional evaluations, not 'conscious' and 'unconscious' (arbitrary distinction if ever there was one w/no basis in reality). many of the donkeys who are losing money are in fact quite a lot better than most professionals at thinking analytically. that DOES NOT mean they'll make better decisions as measured by an objective metric like EV. risk assessment isn't mediated by the intellect.

[gball]

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fwiw, pattern recognition is subsumed under the heading 'logic'. pure intellectual problem solving is inductive reasoning and nothing else.

the 'pattern recognition' used at the tables, however, isn't done by the prefrontal cortex and isn't purely intellectual. you're making decisions involving risk and your personal well-being. how you evaluate success and failure isn't determined entirely by your assessment of EV - it is your EV interpeted within the value schema of your serotonergic and dopaminergic systems (and a bunch of other emotional circuits). successful players aren't simply better at analysing poker or finding patterns or estimating EV or any of that. a cursory perusal of the forums would dispell that supposition (most posts w/articulated analysis are awful). what they do seem to be able to do is understand the fundamentals of the game to avoid saliently exploitable errors AND, more importantly, their emotional circuits give them feedback conducive to success within the current environment. behavioral economics covers topics pertaining to this.

anywho, the gist of my post is that the line of demarcation should be b/n analytic thought and emotional evaluations, not 'conscious' and 'unconscious' (arbitrary distinction if ever there was one w/no basis in reality). many of the donkeys who are losing money are in fact quite a lot better than most professionals at thinking analytically. that DOES NOT mean they'll make better decisions as measured by an objective metric like EV. risk assessment isn't mediated by the intellect.

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I had to look up 10 words in a dictionary (yes, I counted) to read this post, so I am impressed. Also, please update your blog [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[timex]

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I had to look up 10 words in a dictionary (yes, I counted)

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Thinly veiled brag much?
Not only is your vocabulary much better than mine, so are your counting skills.