My latest book, Real Poker Psychology, has now been out for a few months and, as expected, the reaction to it is both positive and negative. There are probably two reasons for this. First, much of what I’m saying is far different from what many people think. And second, some of the people who have objected to the book, most notably others in the field of poker psychology, have an interest in what I’m saying to be wrong.
Anyway, the purpose of the article is to clarify some of the ideas in my book so that those reading it will find it easier to understand and to also make it a little easier for me to address some other issues in the future. In addition, I expect this to be the first of a number of essays that will be published here on the topic of “real poker psychology.”
Idea No. 1: Exactly what do I mean by “real poker psychology?”
When I say “real poker psychology” what I’m talking about are those things that would come under the heading of poker psychology that have the potential to impact your expectation. Put another way, when playing poker you want your win rate to be as high as possible and anything that can stop this from happening which would come under the psychology umbrella is what I’m referring to.
Obviously tilt, or the loss of your ability to think rationally, is an example that everyone is familiar with. But players on tilt do sometimes win, but whether they win or not they are lowering their overall expectation and by continuing to go on tilt they can expect their long term results to be poor. So if you’re a player who suffers from tilt, being able to improve in this area should obviously also be good for your long term results.
But there’s also another side to this issue which is lacking from almost all of the poker psychology advice that I’m familiar with. It has to do with what adjustments you need to make in your game when someone else at your table is having a psychology issue which may be affecting the quality of their game. Obviously you would play somewhat differently if your opponent was on tilt than if he was playing his normal more solid game. But there are also other states, with the two main ones being “searching” and “pseudo tilt” that can also affect how they play, and if you think that this person is on standard tilt when instead he is in one of these other states, it can cost you if the wrong adjustments are made.
By the way, searching is when a marginal player, usually because he’s doing poorly in a game and also because he’s aware that a few other players have much better long term results than he has, begins to “search” for different strategies that just might allow him to win (or win at a higher rate). However, most of the time when players begin to search, they actually end up with inferior strategies that lower their overall expectation.
And pseudo tilt is discussed in more detail below.
Idea No. 2: A more general definition of “pseudo tilt.”
In Real Poker Psychology pseudo tilt is defined as, when losing in a session, playing in such a way so that the probability of finishing a winner is higher than it would be if you just played your standard game in the remaining time you have available. What this means is that by playing in a way that increases the already large short term luck factor (that’s present in poker) the probability of finishing a winner goes up, and this usually means playing additional hands than normal and sometimes playing them much more aggressively. However, when doing this it’s almost always the case that you’re also lowering your long term expectation which means that if pseudo tilt is something that you do a lot, expect your long term results to be poor even though you also can expect more winning sessions. In addition, notice that this is not standard tilt since the player has made a rational decision, though one that is incorrect from an expectation perspective, to play in this manner.
However, since writing the book, I began to realize that the definition of pseudo tilt should really be more general. So let’s redefine it here as pseudo tilt is when the player has decided that something else is more important than maximizing expectation (which is something that expert players try to do all the time.) And let me give two other examples.
The first is what is known as “money management,” and this is a topic that I have addressed before. Basically, money management is a set of contrived rules that helps you preserve a win once you have gotten ahead in a session. This can include things like a stop loss, playing tighter, and playing more passively. And yes, money management will assure that you’ll leave the table a winner more often, and it will also assure that your overall expectation is lower.
The second example is something that poker mental coach Jared Tendler calls “Revenge tilt.” And it’s exactly what you think it is. That is it’s adjusting your play so that you can target a particular player who for some reason has become someone you want to get revenge against. However, while revenge tilt does exist, the ability to target an opponent is a rational decision so it’s not standard tilt. However, it’s certainly pseudo tilt since the targeting of an opponent clearly will lower your expectation if it causes you to play a hand differently from the way you would normally play it.
Idea No. 3: The components of a game.
While this idea is addressed in some detail in Real Poker Psychology I don’t put it in these terms, and by doing so I think it’s a little easier to understand. Basically, you can divide almost any game into two components, the knowledge component and the execution component. And the following is from the “It’s Not What You Eat” chapter starting on page 142:
To understand this better, let’s take another look at tennis. Suppose you’re a good tennis player, are on the court, and your opponent hits the ball over the net and now it’s your turn to hit it back. What do you do?
I believe that two things happen. First, you instantly know what you want to do. That is, you’ll decide what spot on the court you want to hit the ball to, how hard you’ll want to hit it, how much and what kind of spin you’ll want to put on it, and so on.
Notice that so far we’re talking about the knowledge component. Continuing with the excerpt:
Next you’ll have to do this, and that requires timing, speed, and coordination.
And now we’re talking about the execution component. Continuing with the excerpt:
Now let’s look at poker. It’s your turn to act and you have a decision to make. Suppose your opponent has bet and you have to decide whether to fold, call, or raise, and if the game is no-limit how much to raise. Of course, a good player will know what to do in almost all situations quite quickly, and the remaining spots will take a little more time
Clearly, this is the knowledge component of poker. Continuing with the excerpt:
but will he need timing, speed, and coordination to get it done? That answer is no.
And again this is the execution component of poker.
However, notice something interesting, the execution component in poker doesn’t exist, or if it does exist, it must play a minor role compared to the knowledge component, while in an athletic sport like tennis, the execution component is quite important, and in my opinion in many athletic sports it’s probably more important than the knowledge component.
So why is this important? Well, the answer is that when I read the poker psychology books, and I also assume this is true of the coaching/counseling that many of these people sell, there’s a ton of stuff that clearly comes from the execution component of the sports world and is essentially worthless in poker. So we hear about unconscious competence, how it takes 10,000 hours of study and play to be an elite player, taking deep breaths (which I assume makes you more relaxed), and of course being thankful for the hot shower that you took in the morning which has something to do with gratitude which I assume is supposed to reduce stress. But I also don’t see how any of this helps to improve your knowledge of the game which is what you use to make your playing decisions.
Idea No. 4: Does tilt cause emotion or does emotion cause tilt?
Another idea that seems to permeate the poker psychology literature is that tilt is caused by being overwhelmed with emotion. But if you read “A Mathematical Model of “Tilt” — Cause and Cure” starting on page 9 in Real Poker Psychology you’ll see that just the opposite is true and that tilt is actually a processing problem. So why am I so sure of this when others in this field say the opposite?
The answer to this is what happens when a difficult situation occurs that will cause some players to go on tilt but others don’t? Or more specifically, what happens to those players who don’t tilt? Well, in the above mentioned chapter, I show that tilt is closely related to humor and that those players who are able to process the difficult information that poker has just presented to them will usually laugh or chuckle, and this clearly means that tilt is a processing issue.
Here’s an excerpt from page 12:
It’s my contention that instead of humor, the brain sort of shorts out, or perhaps gets caught in an infinite logic loop similar to what can be caused by some sort of bad computer programming. This leads to frustration, and in extreme cases, irrational decisions.
Thus when viewed this way, it’s easy to see that tilt is caused by a processing problem and not by being “overwhelmed with emotion.” It also means that much of the advice given by some of these mental coaches about learning how to control your emotions to avoid tilt is worthless. And the answer is to improve your knowledge of all things poker so that you brain can process those difficult issues where it currently gets hung up.
Idea No. 5: What do the mental coaches get wrong about variance?
There is a lot of luck in the short term in poker and the poker mental coaches like to describe this by using the term “variance.” In fact, if it wasn’t for variance, I wonder if there would be any poker mental coaching at all. But I also object to the way this term is used and believe that it leads to many misconceptions in the world of poker psychology.
It turns out that variance has a very precise statistical meaning and certain statistical properties, and without being specific, it also seems to me that the way the poker mental coaches use this term is to imply that the luck factor has no end and never seems to stop. And of course this is not the case.
I much prefer to use the term “standard deviation” which in the world of statistical theory is the square root of the variance, or just say “short term luck factor” which is an accurate description of what really happens when it comes to statistical fluctuations that are present in poker. The reason for this is that your results are proportional to the number of hands that you play while the standard deviation is proportional to the square root of the number of hands that you play. Put in English, what this means is that the short term luck factor, which can be quite large in poker (in the short run), will also dissipate over time relative to your overall results.
This is a highly important idea. It means that after a fair amount of play, your best predictor of your future results are your past results, and if your past results are disappointing, it almost always means that your knowledge of all things poker needs to improve for you to be a successful player. This misconception is also a possible reason why the required bankrolls that I see recommended by some of these mental coaches are way too high, and it also can lead a struggling player, who has hired a poker mental coach to think that mental coaching is the way to improve his results at the poker table and thus neglect the hard work of improving the strategies that govern his game.
