How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[Worm75]

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"Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking"
Is this book still a good read or are better books around now?

[/ QUOTE ]stumbling onto happiness was better imo.

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Interesting read....but that is about it,if you are trying to understand how intuition works, and how to make yours function better this book pretty much doesn't do that. It breaks down why certain snap decisions are made by people, and describes a process the author calls thin slicing....but as for useful info for a poker player it's not really there other then to trust your gut more than you do. But basically the author comes out and says that the reason that some people have better intuition then others is there ability to trust their gut without having a rational answer behind it, because it is so difficult to put a quantitative measure on your gut feeling.

[Leptyne]

A recent article in Scientific American discussing this very subject concluded that to be successful you must act in a non-rational manner. The basis of acting rationally is the assumption that your opponent is also rational and will always act in a manner that will maximize his gain. Countless studies have proven that this is not true. Even advanced game theory students, who you would think would always act in the most rational manner, as dictated by game theory, do not act rationally during some games. The game that demonstrates this over and over, with large sample sizes, is called Traveler's Dilemma. The conclusion the author reaches is that it is a fallacy to assume that your opponent always acts in a rational manner.

[Ctrl.Dominate]

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they multiaccount?

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LOOOOOOOOL

[Leptyne]

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Being intelligent and logical are characteristics of a great player.

What makes someone "intelligent". If someone is bad at math, does that mean they are not intelligent.

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Mathematical intelligence is simply one form of intelligence, it is not to say someone is generally intelligent or not because they are particularly adept or insufficient at one particular area of study. Different people will have different types of intelligence and be exercising different parts of their brain, be it more analytical and practical areas of thought or more emotional and sensory higher levels of thinking.

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Although everyone agrees there is such a thing as intelligence, there is very little agreement on what it is. Scientists insist since it exists they can measure it. Maybe.

[Johan L]

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almost reflexive adaptive ~ unconscious reasoning?

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[RarocASP]

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"Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking"
Is this book still a good read or are better books around now?

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Def worth the read IMO.

[dividius]

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A recent article in Scientific American discussing this very subject concluded that to be successful you must act in a non-rational manner. The basis of acting rationally is the assumption that your opponent is also rational and will always act in a manner that will maximize his gain. Countless studies have proven that this is not true. Even advanced game theory students, who you would think would always act in the most rational manner, as dictated by game theory, do not act rationally during some games. The game that demonstrates this over and over, with large sample sizes, is called Traveler's Dilemma. The conclusion the author reaches is that it is a fallacy to assume that your opponent always acts in a rational manner.

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This is what I've been saying all along, and is the main problem I have with the strictly math/logic players. All of their fancy algorithms and logic chains are based on presuppositions and assumptions that will often not hold true. Most, if not all, of the tables where they do hold true, it's because said table is populated with players who believe the same thing and play the game of poker the same way that they do (This seems obvious, but it wasn't to me.) It creates this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that the instinctual players are a dying breed, soon to be replaced by a bunch of math nerds. It also explains why when a good LAG shows up at the table, the rational guys run for the hills.

I am most certainly an instinctual player who plays by feel, as I'm sure you could have guessed. I got off to a great start when I began in 2003 and fooled myself into thinking I knew what I was doing. My leaks weren't just leaks; I'm talking Titanic-into-the-iceberg. I had some painful memories when I read ZeeJustin's quote:

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I am often shocked at how many terrible plays the successful non-rational players are capable of making.

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Well, just imagine the plays they made before they became successful.

Predictably, I lost everything I had won and then some. It was only when I started reading poker books and learning the more analytical side of the game that I started to become a consistent winner. That, and I realized I'm much more suited to live ring games than online games or tournaments. (Guess I'm a throwback.)

I like to compare the "logic vs. instinct" debate in poker to the "scouts vs. stats" debate in baseball. You had this long tradition in baseball of scouting and believing what your eyes told you. Then Sabremetrics came along, and everyone started poring over stats. Nowadays, the real smart teams, like the Red Sox, are synthesizing the stats with the scouts and are forming more sophisticated opinions than either camp can do by itself. I believe that poker is headed in the same direction.

It's easier for those like me, who can read the 2p2 books and learn all we need to learn. For the math guys, learning poker instincts is much more difficult. I wish I could offer greater assistance in that regard, but I can't really explain some of the plays I make or even how I decide to make them. The math guys see some of my lines and think, "What is this fool doing?" The best way for me to explain it is to use a conversation from Seinfeld. The instinctual player is represented by Kramer, the rational player by George:

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Kramer: "Now, what does the little man inside you say? See, you gotta listen to the little man."

George: "My little man doesn't know."

Kramer: "The little man knows all."

George: "My little man's an idiot."

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The analytical player has been taught not to go with gut feelings because they aren't reliable in their minds, hence their misguided idea that they should not listen to their instincts. As a wise, old puppet once said, "You must unlearn what you have learned." Don't fight against your instincts; embrace them. That's probably the best advice I can give anyone.

[paulnic]

some very insightfull things mentioned there. makes sense though, good post.

[kotkis]

Leptyne wrote:

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A recent article in Scientific American discussing this very subject concluded that to be successful you must act in a non-rational manner. The basis of acting rationally is the assumption that your opponent is also rational and will always act in a manner that will maximize his gain. Countless studies have proven that this is not true. Even advanced game theory students, who you would think would always act in the most rational manner, as dictated by game theory, do not act rationally during some games.

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This reference is a little out of context but I assume it's talking about using exploitative vs. optimal strategies in the Game Theoretical sense. I have no problem with that, but it's important to not mistake using "exploitative" strategies as non-rational as dividus did below:


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This is what I've been saying all along, and is the main problem I have with the strictly math/logic players. All of their fancy algorithms and logic chains are based on presuppositions and assumptions that will often not hold true. Most, if not all, of the tables where they do hold true, it's because said table is populated with players who believe the same thing and play the game of poker the same way that they do (This seems obvious, but it wasn't to me.) It creates this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that the instinctual players are a dying breed, soon to be replaced by a bunch of math nerds. It also explains why when a good LAG shows up at the table, the rational guys run for the hills.

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Your whole posts seems to assume that what we call "handreading" is strictly a quality of an instinctual player. The way I see it is that everyone relies on their intuition when it comes to gathering information about our opponents, and it's the way we use this information that separates instinctive players from more math/analytically oriented ones. For some reason you also appear to confuse tight/predictable play with being math oriented, and loose-aggressive play as being characteristics of an instinctual player when I see no reason for doing that. In fact I believe many of the wildest and most relentless winning players in todays games are math oriented (BLd vs. H@ll seems like a perfect example of what I mean).

[dividius]

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For some reason you also appear to confuse tight/predictable play with being math oriented, and loose-aggressive play as being characteristics of an instinctual player when I see no reason for doing that. In fact I believe many of the wildest and most relentless winning players in todays games are math oriented (BLd vs. H@ll seems like a perfect example of what I mean).

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I was trying too hard to use different words to express the same thing, and it ended up sounding like I thought all math/logic players play close to the vest and all instinctual players play loose, which is clearly not true. Looking back at the way I wrote it, I could see why you would think that. My apologies. I understand that many wild and loose players are math oriented, and some players that rely more on intuition are tight. I could edit it but...you know....laziness...and such. Just replace "math" with "logic" and "loose" with "intuitive", and that's what I meant. Didn't mean to get caught up in semantics. I stand by the rest of the post.