How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[ZeeJustin]

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.

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:

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[Ansky]

you got cut off there.

[thejerkface]

keep going, this is interesting.

[ZeeJustin]

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 intelligent” players rely less on luck, and are able to logically analyze situations well enough to somewhat remove the results from the equation. The non-logical players are not able to remove the results in the same way. They often don’t read the books that explain they must play tight, calculate pot-odds, and abide by other guidelines to do well. These fundamentals are the ones necessary to win, especially at low stakes. Essentially what I’m saying is that these players need a lot of luck to do well early on in their careers to learn the fundamentals internally. Getting past this seemingly trivial stage is very hard for many of these players. The few that do break through, will often have a natural tendency to read people, and will therefore do well relatively easily at higher stakes games, assuming they were “lucky” enough to learn the proper fundamentals.

I am often shocked at how many terrible plays the successful non-rational players are capable of making. I think my “luck of learning” theory explains this. They often have gaping holes in their fundamentals because they weren’t “lucky” enough to learn them properly. However, these poor fundamentals are often overshadowed by expert hand-reading skills that allow these players to do well in high stakes games. This is obviously not always the case, but I believe it is very often the case for the successful non-rational players.

I also find that the logical-intelligent players will often break through the low limits very easily. The fundamentals come quickly to them, especially if they are taught to them in a conventional manner (note that the logical players are much more likely to learn via traditional means like reading, rather than the non-rational players, many of whom have never read a poker book). After low stakes, these players often hit a brick wall that they can’t get past. Did you move up easily to 15/30 LHE or 3/6 NL online? Did you have trouble getting far past those limits? If so, this probably applies directly to you, and I know this applied doubly to me.

Often times these players will have had great success due to their logical intelligence, and they don’t realize, the main skill they need to master to start playing higher stakes games is that they need interpersonal, or hand reading skills. It is a very hard and slow process to develop these skills purely analytically. The subconscious mind will be much better able to recognize the patterns of their opponents.

For me, I first learned to play small-stakes LHE 6 handed. I then switched to Sit’n’gos. In both of these games, hand reading skills are very unimportant. When I moved to cash games, at first I struggled a lot. I didn’t have the proper hand reading skills.

The turning point for me was when I learned to trust my gut. When I say gut, I am talking about a very specific subconscious inclination, and it is much better than I am at telling me what hand or hand-range my opponent has, and how he will act with certain hands on future streets.

I find the most successful players in the world are the ones that are able to master both of these extreme opposites in skill that are both of paramount importance. You absolutely must learn the fundamentals, and this is best done through an analytical step by step process. After this, you must learn hand-reading skills, and the best way to do this is through natural practice, and distinguishing which “voices” coming from your unconscious mind you should listen to, and which ones you should ignore.

The unlearning and relearning processes I briefly mentioned above are also crucial. The “voices” are developed from reaching stage 4 of the learning process, but sometimes in poker we learn something that is incorrect. If we are able to pinpoint these mistakes in our game, and then properly unlearn and relearn the appropriate situations, we will always be one step ahead of the game. So if you have a little voice in your head that says “call, the pot is big” that happens to talk at the same time as your voice that says, “it’s a value bet, he has the nuts for sure”, you must try to externalize which one of these unconscious thoughts is more apt. In my personal experience, I have found the voice that tells me my opponents hand to be far more accurate than any other voice or inclination I have at the table.

When learning something as complicated as poker, I think it is extremely helpful to first take a look at the learning process itself and get a better idea of the intellectual journey you are about to embark upon. I made the mistake of trying to externalize all my thoughts, without realizing how powerful my unconscious mind can be. There is a reason that many poker players that play by feel will be successful. They have interpersonal skills that allow them to understand not only their opponents, but the overall flow of play in a particular poker game. These skills are rarely talked about in poker circles, because they are hard to rationalize.

The reason why the unconscious mind works better at this task is because of the sheer amount of information being processed. We could analyze our opponents play analytically: “Ok, he raised preflop, and he’s a tight player, so he has a decent hand. He bet the flop, but that could just be a continuation bet. He bet smaller on the turn, so maybe he has a good hand and is afraid of the flush, or maybe he’s milking a really strong hand. It’s also possible he has a pair and a straight draw, or some kind of combo hand. I don’t think he’s the type of player to fire a second barrel often, but maybe he’s doing it here because it’s unlikely that I hit this board hard.” Going through all the possibilities could take a long time, and I find that it is too hard to keep the many factors involved in a read active in the conscious mind. This is why this process is best internalized.

In the end, there should be a balance between the analytical mind, and the unconscious mind. I find it rare for people to maser the use of both of these. Most players can be summed up in one of the two categories I have laid out. However, if you want to be a truly versatile player, it is important that you learn to utilize both of these techniques constantly. The balance will not be easy to find, but it is a goal that every poker player should aspire to.

[ZeeJustin]

[ QUOTE ]
you got cut off there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, I had no clue I had written that much.

[yoursmine]

Great post Justin!! Have to read that one a few times to really let it sink in.

[goose58]

Good post, Ive thought about this a little bit too.

I think they win because:

hand reading
strong mentality
willingness to gamble, etc.

IMO, calculating pot odds to the 5th decimal isnt that important.

Good post

[T-God]

Awesome post, I really ejoyed reading it. This is something I've been thinking alot about lately.

[goose58]

To your 2nd post, it rings so true.

I breezed through micro limits easily, but once I got to 5/10NL, I did hit a wall. The donks werent spewing chips nearly as much as 3/6, they werent paying off my tight conservative strategy.

I've been relearning the game since, and I think I might be ready..

[Niwa]

ZJ,

This is one of the best posts this year imo.