Ability to Predict a Players Skill based on Intelligence.

[PostalService]

First off I would like to state that my SAT score is 1290: 690 Math 600 Verbal, thus we can say I am of average intelligence.

SpiderMnke had made a previous post called: Intelligence Assessment vs Poker Skill in which he tried to determine a few different concepts, of which got replies from many people that basically muddled his original goals. So with this thread I would like to lay down the goals and the constraints, which if followed may possibly lead to either interesting discussion or some profound insights into poker itself.

Goals:
1. Can we predict the POTENTIAL of a poker player using some sort of test such as the SAT I: reasoning test or College GPA/College Attended. I would like to define potential as the max stakes a player will reach and still be a "winning player" (aka profitable) before they embark on their poker career.
2. Poker is profitable because one player has a higher ability than the other players at the table. Their ability is previously unknown to the other players and thus gives them an advantage. There is however a phenomena which Spidermnke spoke of, whereby a player knowing the ability of the other player/players will still believe that they are superior when in fact they are not. I believe this phenomena is what makes poker extremely profitable. I can recount this in many aspects of life other than poker, which SpiderMnKe already made 1 reference to:

"Also at what level does a person become aware of their own competence. I've talked to < 1000 [SAT] people that really can't seem to evaluate their own skill at anything accurately. One guy believes he is good at WarCraft and is a big time loser online. He doesn't feel the need to study the game whatsoever.. then will tell me that he isn't great at any one thing.. but is "VERY good" at a lot of things. I haven't seen any evidence of very good anything."

So Goal #2 is the determine at what level are people unaware of their own incompetence, thus making poker profitable.

I would like to institute with these goals some constraints:
1. We are strictly discussing online poker, this is in an attempt to throw out the notion of social skill, which I am assuming to be vastly limited in comparison to B&M play.

2. Intelligence will be defined by Robert J. Sternberg of Yale as:

"The theory suggests that successfully intelligent people are those who have the ability to achieve success according to their own definition of success, within their sociocultural context. They do so by identifying and capitalizing on their strengths, and identifying and correcting or compensating for their weaknesses in order to adapt to, shape, and select environments. Such attunement to the environment uses a balance of analytical, creative, and practical skills."

3. The SAT I measures:
"The SAT I was designed with question types that reflect or show your reasoning abilities, not just the amount of information you've accumulated during school. As an example, many math items can be answered by using complex equations, but they can also be answered correctly if you can reason through the problem. Reading passages don't just test that you can read but require extended reasoning in order to answer the questions related to the passage. This means that you have to be able to make inferences, assumptions, and interpretations based on the passage provided, in order to understand what the author is trying to say." -The College Board

After reading this I believe that the SAT does measure intelligence and reasoning which would be vital to the ability to play poker. You may refute this if you wish. One of the reasons I would like to use the SAT is that it is something that many people have taken and thus we can compare across the board. For all of those who wish to say that it doesn't provide a good way to measure intelligence please include your SAT score in your post.

3. We will assume that everyone person who we would like to predict their eventual peak of poker ability will start with the same drive and determination for the game. We will assume that they all would like to become online pros. Where Pro means the ability to survive off poker alone. This constraint is to get rid of posts saying that a dumb person may have more drive than a smart person, or something of that sort. Lets assume we don't care about the ultra smart people, who are just casual players. We want to find the potential that someone will have based on their intelligence if they are highly motivated to become a winning player.

Conclusion:

I am looking to see if we can somehow determine that, if someone has the drive and want to become a pro poker player, where they will eventually max out at. I am already convinced it is directly related to your intelligence in general. One particular way to measure this is the SAT test, because many people have taken it. Is there a lower bound at which some people will never even become a winning player at even the smallest of stakes? If you reply to this post, please include your SAT score or college GPA, and what stakes/game of poker you play, and tell us if you are a winning player or not. I believe one of the things we will find is that people who post that intelligence is not important to the game, will either have lower SAT scores, or lower poker profitability.

Discuss.

[toots]

There was actually some recent study that found that the people who are the most clueless are also the most clueless about their own lack of ability. That is, the more competent someone is, the less confident they are in their abilities, because they better understand the limits to their own abilities.

As for SATs predicting intelligence... well far be it for me to equate intelligence to IQ, but as it happens, I helped conduct a study at a private university where we tested 10% of the student population, administering a full WAIS-III to each of them (all subtests, all optional items), and we had access to their SAT, and where applicable, ACT scores.

The usefulness of this study was limited by the subject selection - being at a mid-tier private college, there was an obvious bracketing of the IQ and SAT scores we saw (lower scores probably didn't get in to this college, higher scores probably went elsewhere).

The correlation between the various IQ scores (as the WAIS-III produces three major scales - verbal IQ, performance IQ and composite "Full Scale" IQ - as well as four other indexes) and the SAT and ACT scores were significant, but not hugely so. I ought to dig them out again to refresh my own memory.

Anyway, I seem to recall ACT scores actually being a better predictor than SAT.

But, the thing about SATs are that they're just supposed to predict performance in college, and in specific, the first year performance in college. Historically, they've tended to fail to some degree in this area in that they fail to predict the fact that on the average, women do better than men in their first year in college, although I attribute that factoid to amount of partying.

I'll see what I can find.

[toots]

M'kay. Found an old powerpoint presentation that summarized the study. Understand that the stats are a bit weaker owing to the restricted variance due to the rather limited subject pool, but what we found are that:

Full Scale IQ correlated to SAT-Verbal at .43, to SAT-Math at .50, and to ACT at .72.

Note that while a correlation of .50 sounds big, what it means is that 25% of the variance in IQ scores are represented in the SAT scores. That means the other 75% ain't explained by the SAT.

There was a predictably stronger correlation between "Verbal IQ" and SAT-Verbal (.60), whereas Performance IQ was correlated with SAT-Verbal and SAT Math, r= about .41 in both cases.

Breaking things up by gender, the correlation between SATs and IQ was stronger among women than men.

I can't find anyplace where I wrote down the findings with the "Processing Speed" and "Working Memory" indexes of the WAIS, but I think they'd be interesting with respect to poker.

Then again, little of this post has anything to do with poker, so much as it's directed at the alleged use of SAT as a predictor of IQ.

[Justin A]

This doesn't have much to do with the actual reason you posted, but I don't think the SAT I is a very good indicator of intelligence. The SAT is a test that can be studied for and scored can be improved. My brother is a very intelligent person as it is, but he was still able to improve his score from 1380 to 1510 between the first and second times he took the test. He didn't get smarter, he just studied better and prepared himself more thoroughly.

As far as intelligence and poker players are concerned, there are alot of attributes that are not directly related to mathematical intellegence that make up a good poker player. I think it is more important to be level headed at all times than to be purely intelligent. I'm not too familiar with emotional intelligence, but from the impression I get it would seem to be a better measure of poker potential than a test like the SAT would be.

[ QUOTE ]
"The SAT I was designed with question types that reflect or show your reasoning abilities, not just the amount of information you've accumulated during school. As an example, many math items can be answered by using complex equations, but they can also be answered correctly if you can reason through the problem. Reading passages don't just test that you can read but require extended reasoning in order to answer the questions related to the passage. This means that you have to be able to make inferences, assumptions, and interpretations based on the passage provided, in order to understand what the author is trying to say." -The College Board

[/ QUOTE ]

I just don't believe this to be true. While reasoning can help you some on the SAT, most of it is being prepared for the types of questions they ask. I am confident I could teach a decent math student how to score nearly perfect on the math section.

I like the direction of your post though, it would be interesting to see what attributes to make up the best poker players from a purely potential standpoint.

Justin A

[PostalService]

I believe that preparation is important to intellegence:

"The theory views intelligence as a form of developing competencies, and competencies as forms of developing expertise. In other words, intelligence is modifiable rather than fixed." Robert J. Sternberg

So your comment about someone improving their score, just shows that they indeed did become smarter. I would like to suggest that anyones SAT score, should be considered as the best job they could possibly do after as much preparation was needed. I feel that poker requires a lot of preparation and so people with higher SAT scores show that they can thus have higher poker potentials.

[PostalService]

I think that if your study was conducted on a wider range of people, you might even find a stronger correlation, but the fact that a correlation exists may make the SAT worthwhile. The WAIS is taken by many fewer people in the US than the SAT. So using SAT as a predictor of potential poker ability may be worthwhile.

For example, maybe we could say that:
If you made less than a 900 on the SAT, it will be difficult to become a winning poker player.
If you made more than a 1500 on the SAT, it might be wise to find some other field that would be more profitable than poker, even though you have the potential to become a strong player.

[toots]

Or, a weaker correlation. Not clear to me which.

I mean, with a wider population, you'd have a wider variance in both scores. Wider variance often leads to weaker correlation.

There's some argument to be made that those correlations may be higher than the population norm.

[PhatTBoll]

[ QUOTE ]
This doesn't have much to do with the actual reason you posted, but I don't think the SAT I is a very good indicator of intelligence. The SAT is a test that can be studied for and scored can be improved.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why the name of the test was actually changed a few years ago, from the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to the Scholastic Achievement test.

Also, if all 2+2er's compared SAT scores, I would probably be in the 97th percentile or so, but if we compared poker skill, I would probably be around the 10th percentile (and I may even be flattering myself here). Take from that what you will...

[Blarg]

I really don't think SAT's correlate too determinatively to intelligence.

Here's the funny part. My SAT's were pretty mediocre, but I got extra marks for stupidity. I filled in all the blanks AFTER I answered the questions on the English part, I swear to God. I just didn't know better, and left more than a dozen questions I'm absolutely positive I got correct unfilled in. I sat there stupidly with my pencil in hand after the bell rang, and that was it.

I got plenty of awards in high school(and in college too), and had very good grades(and in college too). I took them in my junior year of high school, not senior year, and scores supposedly can vary on that basis. Plus, I've finally left youth behind, and when I took SAT's, there weren't any study courses that anybody I knew ever heard of -- at least not i Hawaii, where I took them. Nobody thought of test-taking as a skill, much less one that you could pay someone to help you develop. Now there are books that help you practice taking SAT's, that train you in test taking, courses of all types and all levels of expense that can make a enormous difference in your score. Especially if your family has the income to spare for you to take those courses.

You can't compare test scores from people in places or of income levels or from times when prep courses weren't available to the test scores of kids who have gone through prep courses today.

I used to take IQ tests all the time. Plus I kill at Jeopardy! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif But seriously, my first IQ test I ever took put me at 160, and since then I've probably taken 20 more. I just find them fun. I've gone as high as 172 and I think as low as 133, but with only rare exception do I come in at anything but 135 or 165, perhaps a point or two one way or the other. Mostly 165, but I don't know why so many 135's. Makes me think there's something in the test to make such a common difference of (mostly) exactly 30 points one way or the other. Perhaps a greater percentage or lesser of certain types of questions I either excel or stink at.

So, tests themselves can be quite variable even for the same person.

If you take an SAT once -- or an IQ test once -- are you really getting the full picture?

If you train in test-taking skills, is your likely much-increased score REALLY proof that you're that much smarter than the next guy who for whatever reason didn't? Well, it might prove that you're more practical or can afford such things....

Honestly, I think a disciplined mind is more important, and a keen determination to evaluate yourself thoroughly and often. Which is another way of saying you need a disciplined mind.

You have to be able to do the study needed to put the odds and basics of play in your noggin, and have the discipline to apply your knowledge under even the most stressful and emotionally-trying situations. Even when filled with self-doubt, you have to have the discipline to think straight, keep clear of superstitious changes in play style and belief, and constantly play each new hand fresh and emotionally unburdened.

If you can face each hand with clarity EVERY time, you're doing a lot, and that's well beyond what I think most players can do, even very good ones. Being able to do so is an enormous asset, maybe a critical one, and probably as important as any out there.

You need to have the discipline to evaluate yourself and your play constantly. Every tilt starts somewhere, on some hand, and you have to catch it fast. You have to recognize every learning opportunity that comes along while you're playing, and be sure you're aware when you're playing less than your best and do something about it -- either play right or quit for the hour, the day, the week, whatever it takes.

I think a certain intelligence being needed is a given, but that raw intelligence is probably exaggerated. There are and always will be extraordinarily bright people who make terrible poker players, and I don't think that's uncommon. And people of average intelligence who make surprisingly good players.

Raw intelligence counts for very little in the world.

I think it's the ability to actually apply your intelligence, with great and unfluctuating dicipline, even under stress and in emotionally difficult situations, that matters most in poker.

Maybe you can do it for only two hours at a stretch, and then your play starts to deteriorate, with or without you noticing or having the honesty to admit it. Maybe a bad beat throws you out the window, along with your intelligence.

Discipline and the self-insight to know when your discipline drops and you're not playing your best so you can wise up and snap yourself back to your best possible game are assets I would rank at the very top of poker skills, and well above having exceptional intelligence.

[PostalService]

Let me again post the definition we are using for intellegence:
"The theory suggests that successfully intelligent people are those who have the ability to achieve success according to their own definition of success, within their sociocultural context. They do so by identifying and capitalizing on their strengths, and identifying and correcting or compensating for their weaknesses in order to adapt to, shape, and select environments. Such attunement to the environment uses a balance of analytical, creative, and practical skills. The theory views intelligence as a form of developing competencies, and competencies as forms of developing expertise. In other words, intelligence is modifiable rather than fixed."

Quote:
"If you train in test-taking skills, is your likely much-increased score REALLY proof that you're that much smarter than the next guy who for whatever reason didn't?"

The answer is yes.

Quote:
"Maybe you can do it for only two hours at a stretch, and then your play starts to deteriorate, with or without you noticing or having the honesty to admit it. Maybe a bad beat throws you out the window, along with your intelligence."

Maybe this is why the SAT is 3 hours long. many test takers DO infact go on tilt in the exact way a poker player does.

Quote:

"I think it's the ability to actually apply your intelligence, with great and unfluctuating dicipline, even under stress and in emotionally difficult situations, that matters most in poker."

I believe that dicipline is intellegence. Talk to some intellegent people, and I bet you will find they are extremely diciplined, and most likely have the potential to be a good poker player.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
I believe that preparation is important to intellegence:

"The theory views intelligence as a form of developing competencies, and competencies as forms of developing expertise. In other words, intelligence is modifiable rather than fixed." Robert J. Sternberg

So your comment about someone improving their score, just shows that they indeed did become smarter. I would like to suggest that anyones SAT score, should be considered as the best job they could possibly do after as much preparation was needed. I feel that poker requires a lot of preparation and so people with higher SAT scores show that they can thus have higher poker potentials.

[/ QUOTE ]


My comment about the SAT is that the upperbound is too easily achievable. Many people getting near perfect scores does not make for a good correlation study.

You give one definition of intelligence, but it's hardly useful for predicting future potential. Your statement about these people actually getting smarter by preparing goes against trying to correlate future poker potential through current intelligence. A sixth grade student and a high school senior could be of similar brain power, but by your standards the senior would be much smarter because he has learned more. We cannot accurately predict a poker players potential through knowledge based intelligence.

Justin A

[felson]

[ QUOTE ]
This is why the name of the test was actually changed a few years ago, from the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to the Scholastic Achievement test.

[/ QUOTE ]

And a few years after that, the name of the test was formally changed to "SAT." Officially, the letters now stand for... nothing at all.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Let me again post the definition we are using for intellegence:
"The theory suggests that successfully intelligent people are those who ...

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not a definition of intelligence. It's relating a theory of what intelligence DOES when it is applied successfully. Pretty clear difference.

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:
"If you train in test-taking skills, is your likely much-increased score REALLY proof that you're that much smarter than the next guy who for whatever reason didn't?"

The answer is yes.


[/ QUOTE ]

The answer is clearly no. And not by a small margin.

[ QUOTE ]
I believe that dicipline is intellegence. Talk to some intellegent people, and I bet you will find they are extremely diciplined, and most likely have the potential to be a good poker player.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have encountered intelligent people myself. True story.

Many are extraordinarily undisciplined. (Frankly, some of them didn't have the discipline to shower -- much like Bill Gates.) With enough intelligence, it's possible to skate through a lot of one's early life without having to apply oneself much at all. And a great many very intelligent people I've met have none of the personal skills besides a certain raw intelligence that would make for a good poker player. Many were extraordinarily unadaptable to their surroundings. Then again, some were extraordinarily disciplined, and could really put in hours of great concentration when studying and working on projects.

Another take on equating discipline too easily with intelligence can come from the world of athletics. It's quite possible to be none too bright and still excel in sports. It's not even uncommon in the least.

The definition YOU(not WE) seem to be using for intelligence(not just the result of successfully applying intelligence, as the person you quoted is talking about) focuses on adaptability. But this is as partial a definition of intelligence as any other.

Adaptability itself can easily be thought of as an entirely separate issue than intelligence as it is usually thought of, and even quite dim people can be surprisingly practical and street-smart, adapting and functioning extremely well in their environments no matter how those environments change.

But that definition misses out on a lot of what most everyone would commonly consider a primary and at least very close to central definition of intelligence. The ability to learn things quickly is definitely there for most people when they think of intelligence, though perhaps most don't give credit where credit is due to those who through an enormous and genuinely clever adaptability manage to make their way in what can be a startlingly unforgiving world.

But so is the ability to tackle abstract problems and sustain concentration on them. It's not just how flexible one's mind is, but how deep can one's concentration go, and for how long?

I think, like the person you quote in your definition does, that intelligence is indeed trainable. People can be trained or train themselves to concentrate and apply their thinking to tough, abstract problems, and do so for longer periods of time. But at some point, even a genius hits a brick wall. When that happens is a good measure of intelligence.

Some people who are extremely adaptable have little ability to concentrate and work through abstract problems, or do so for long. Yet you could drop them in many real-world situations and see them doing infinitely better than people who test as far smarter than they are. Does that mean they are any smarter than a guy who can even remember the names of his own family members but can figure out the theory of relativity?

There are definitely different kinds of intelligence, all valuable. I think the definition you're working with is as both as useful and as limited as any.

[SpiderMnkE]

"I believe that dicipline is intellegence. Talk to some intellegent people, and I bet you will find they are extremely diciplined, and most likely have the potential to be a good poker player."

Discipline and Intelligence are very different. One can easily be intelligent with no discipline... and visa versa.

[SpiderMnkE]

"My comment about the SAT is that the upperbound is too easily achievable. Many people getting near perfect scores does not make for a good correlation study."

This is not true. Clearly you are coming from a good high school... were in honors classes... and went to college. As this is the norm for you and I, it is not the average. There are many more students that score poorly and even with study wouldn't score high. The upperbound is NOT easily achievable for MOST people.

[SpiderMnkE]

So... can we start creating a list of skills needed to play poker? I will just throw something out there to build on.

1: Self Control - Emotional Indifference

2. Basic Math - Understand simple probabilities

3. etc etc etc

Something sort of like that... I know it is very crude... the things I put can be edited... or even removed.. the format must change as that is horrible... but I'd really be interested in suggested skills/traits a good poker player needs.

[PostalService]

First of all, the definition I used for intellegence was a "WE" because a few people said back in SpiderMnKe's original post that Robert J. Sternberg of Yale would be a good person to look at with all the research he does with intellegence. Ill give the link to his website again:

http://www.yale.edu/rjsternberg/index.html

This is maybe not the definition I would choose to use, but we have to have some basic idea of the word intellegence before we can start applying my question to poker.

Quote:
"Many are extraordinarily undisciplined. (Frankly, some of them didn't have the discipline to shower -- much like Bill Gates.)"

The fact that bill gates doesnt shower, does not prove that he is undisciplined, because showering is not his area of expertise. I would feel safe saying that he is probably extremely disciplined when it comes to his company and the decisions he has to make for microsoft to be profitable. As far as other intellegent people I have met, you can look at their lives and find that they seem to be very undisciplined in many areas, and seem to float through life, but are hyperconcentrated on one particular area, even if it happens to be WarCraft. Although WarCraft may be a huge waste of time, they are incredibly good at it, because of their discipline. As far as the word intellegence relating to discipline, I dont know if they are the same thing, but I would like to think that they go hand in hand.

Quote:
" People can be trained or train themselves to concentrate and apply their thinking to tough, abstract problems, and do so for longer periods of time. But at some point, even a genius hits a brick wall. When that happens is a good measure of intelligence."

I completely agree with you here, the question now becomes, is the SAT a good measurement for this? I would say yes, because you have to have adaptability, you have to concentrate, you have to solve abstract problems, and all for 3 hours long. If we assume that the SAT is a decent tool for measurement of that brick wall, how then does this relate to future potential poker playing ability? Does the brick wall of the SAT match up in some way to the brick wall of poker? This is the question i really want to get at.

[SmileyEH]

I didn't know what an SAT was 2 months before I took it. I did a few practice tests and got 1430. Didnt open a single study book for a month, wrote them again and got 1560. 800 verbal, 760 math and i'm a physics major.

I dont put too much weight in SATs.

[SpiderMnkE]

What you don't realize is that to you it is cheesy. It doesn't seem to measure anything and is easy.

Do you guys forget that the majority of the population does not go to college. That they bomb the SAT. That they probably don't have a chance to do well at the SAT even with study.

You live in your little worlds surrounded by college educated and think of your dumbest college buddy as average. He is above average.

Joe Blow Construction Shmo is less likely to be good at poker than your friend. The janitor at your elementary school is not likely to understand strategic concepts.

There are many more of these people than you think. They will play poker... and will likely lose. Its funny that you forget the whole spectrum of people considered.

Someone tell me what the average SAT score is just so I know.

[toots]

Well, SATs were never meant to be studied for, as they're supposed to measure what you've learned in school. This is distinct from intelligence, which is a measure of many things, including what you've learned, your ability to learn new things, your ability to problem solve, etc.

A real IQ test (like Stanford Binet, WAIS or KAIT), as opposed to one of those silly "measure your own IQ" tests (always inflated by 20-50 points to make you feel real good about yourself), attempts to measure intelligence from several angles. Interpretation of how a person does in each domain is often of more interest than the rather meaningless net "Full Scale" number.

Taking the one I have the most personal experience with (WAIS), we see it broken into two major halves (Verbal and Performace), with four sub-scales (Verbal-Comprehension, Perceptual Organization, Processing Speed and Working Memory). Comparing a person's scores in those domains is often the point of the test, rather than obtaining a simple "IQ."

The SAT, by contrast, only measures one subset of what a real IQ test measures. The closest it comes is in the "what you've already learned" (or the WAIS Verbal-Comprehension subscale). In that respect, it's no surprise that an SAT score can only predict about 1/4 of what goes into the IQ score.

To be sure, there is often a correlation between "what you've learned" and "how easily you learn" - a person who has an easier time learning will probably learn me - although there will always be those who can overcome one shortcoming and excell in other areas. Like the person who "isn't too smart" but who studies like a demon and manages a 4.0 GPA and an SAT over 1400.

With respect to poker, I think both IQ tests and the SAT are woefully inadequate.

The SAT's the worst since, being a measure of what you've learned, it doesn't really have much to say about how you're analyzing your position at the table.

The traditional "real" IQ test is a little better, in that it attempts to measure some components of your analytical style, but it still completely misses on your social abilities.

For instance, I've run into a few kids with Asperger's Syndrome (sort of autism-lite), who could (and did) absolutely rip the lid off a formally administered IQ test, yet I'd still bet they'd have a hard time at poker, since Asperger Syndrome types generally have a poor ability to read someone else's emotions or facial expressions. You might expect the person to do very well at straightforward ABC play, but hit a plateau when they get to the level where people reading becomes the skill that makes a difference.

Which is why I personally would keep coming back to Sternberg's work as possibly being a better way to conceptualize the sorts of "intelligences" that you'd be looking for to predict poker skill.

[playerfl]

I think some people really want to believe that smart = success because they believe they are smart and they wish to avoid uncertainty.

I think its more like:

(statistics and basic math skills) + (discipline) + (emotional control) + (people reading skills) + (constant learning) + (experience) + (luck) = success.

If this were not the case your freshmen stats proffessor would be rich.

[bernie]

Many very sharp people can't handle the swings of the game for whatever reason. Which is one factor that you can't really measure in a test until you're in the thick of it.

If cards were played without monetary investment, you might be right. Money changes quite a bit. It can go very deep psychologically. To become a pro, you not only have to be at least somewhat sharp, i think you have to have the right psychological make-up for it also. Which to me, would be a big factor longterm in their success.

b

[SpiderMnkE]

Ok... so that is the rough list... now we should rank them.

1. Experience

2. Constant Learning

3. Emotional Control

4. Discipline

5. Statistics and Basic Math Skills

6. People Reading

7. Luck

[SmileyEH]

SpiderMnKe, I meant in no way for my post to be naive or express my distaste for the general population. I grew up in a working class mining town - most of my friends will never go to college and I would never hold that against them. I am aware the my experience with the SAT is extremely rare and I am thankful for my genes.

I wanted to show how arbitrary the SAT seemed to be - I jumped 130 points without any further study (this is way outside the accepted 50 point error range the collegeboard claims). As well I got only 1 question wrong the entire verbal section on my 2nd attempt (down from something like 13 the first time)....yet I have never, and will never be anything better than a decent writer and a competent reader.

The SAT is an extremely artificial test and I really hope colleges take scores with a grain of salt for admissions policies. As to its application to poker I could see it as a rough guide (+-100 points) toward a player's potential, but beyond that I think it would be entirely worthless.

-SmileyEH

[Dan Mezick]

There are many old-time pros (and maybe many new pros) that are very "poker intelligent" and have no GPA and no SAT grade. Indeed, many quite successful pros have had neither. Stu Ungar comes to mind.

Poker and Intelligence and a very interesting topic, because Intelligence has many definitions and facets. Emotional intelligence for example is a facet that has received alot of press in recent years.

We can debate various tests and measures of "intelligence facets" that may apply to poker. These may include the college GPA and SAT, etc.

I suspect poker (NL and PL in particular) is a game that vigorously exercises ALL the facets of human intelligence.

Thus, poker itself becomes a kind of grand measure of all the various and generally agreed-upon facets of human intelligence such as verbal, math, emotional/social and so on.

Perhaps "poker intelligence" is a category of human intellect, like emotional/math/verbal intelligence measures.

In any discussion about Poker and Intelligence, Stu Ungar certainly comes to mind as a topic for serious discussion.

I'm pretty sure Stuey didnt have a GPA or SAT grade.

[PostalService]

SpiderMnKe: for 2003 the national averages on the SAT 1 were

507 verbal 519 math 1026 overall. I imagine the test takers attempt to make 1000 the average every year so that you can compare year to year scores.

I guess we can assume that half the people in the US get below a 1000. And if that is the case, seems to me like many of the 2+2ers are much higher than the average person just based on their SAT scores alone.

I think many people posting here are ignoring the general public, and I think that probably many people you sit down with at the poker table would have an SAT score <1000. I agree with you that it seems many people are just closed off in their little college educated worlds and dont recognize this general public.

Also, I really like your list of attributes:

1. Experience
2. Constant Learning
3. Emotional Control
4. Discipline
5. Statistics and Basic Math Skills
6. People Reading
7. Luck

I like experience being the #1 attribute. Many people seem to believe that they SAT measures what you have already learned. So the test shows how well you can apply your experience to those type of questions. I would also think that when you sit down at the poker table it shows your ability to apply your previous experiences. Maybe this will allow some people to agree that SAT may be a good general measure of potential poker ability.

[imported_stealthcow]

i hav ebene in the situatoin of evaluating talent in terms of being successful at poker, as me and my friends have played since sophomore year of high school (and are now onto being freshman at college).

in terms of the better players, i feel there is no correlation to verbal sat scores and poker ability. as for sat math, i think that does* show some analytical ability, but in a very condensed way. i consider myself one of the better players in the poker group i play in, but my no means the best, and i did better than any of them on the sat math section.

i think if you want to try and correlate intelligence with poker, you should start backwards (with things that make a poker player successful, and then tie tihs in with a test that measures these abilities)

so it would include
1) analytical skills

quick mind for math
theoretical understanding of pot odds, implied odds and so forth.
also, an ability to process different ideas at once, not just focusing on what they are doing, but how what other people are doing affects the situaiton

psycological skills
reading poeple, understanding emotions, psychology.

patience. being able to control ones own emotions (read not going on tilt)

feel free to add more. i think that you can meet someone and be able to tell whether or not they would make a solid player ( or even a great one ) but i dont think there are any tests ( or cominations of tests) that could do this.

[Blarg]

I think we really need to add the ability to think to a certain depth in plys.

This is a traditional direct measure of the power of chess-playing computers. It is also sometimes used to talk about an aspect of the abilities of human chess and Go players. Chess computers are getting more sophisticated, but for quite a while all they did was apply brute force calculation and then, importantly, extend the path of each calculated move out many steps into the future to see as many outcomes as possible for those moves, and then choose the correct play depending on which moves panned out best. Computers were discussed in terms of the number of "plys," like the layers in plywood, or numbers of steps ahead, that they could see. The further ahead they could see the results of each move(in an acceptable span of time), the more reliable their choices and rejections of moves would be.

Poker players often can be seen to fall into certain levels of competency based on their ability (or perhaps desire, too) to think ahead and keep those thoughts coordinated.

Terrible players don't really think much about the next move, or the one after that. Better ones do, but only think about their cards. Your actions don't matter to them, because that's not part of the play of the game they recognize. Better players think about your cards, too.

Still better players think about what you think, and what you might think they think, and what you might think they think you think, and so on, even including what still others think. And they use all this information or hypothesizing, when they can, to make better moves.

This involves chaining a lot of steps and "if-then" problems together, all dependent on one another, with no breakdowns in memory or understanding of what every step in the chain means as it is assembled. Slower thinkers might take so long to think through these things that it becomes too cumbersome to do, and less bright ones or ones with poorer memory might simply screw up the chain at some point in its construction, or not realize there is a useful chain of thinking to go through.

The best players can keep many things in mind at once as they construct detailed understandings of the situations they're faced with, and do it without the whole edifice crashing down in confusion. Odds, general psychology and mind games, strategy...the best players can see many steps ahead and keep those steps clear enough to be useful.

So, the depth to which one can reason ahead -- the plys or steps one can work through -- is I think a definite ability that is very valuable in poker.

And the ability to keep many thoughts stuck in one's memory and awareness while sorting through them until something useful might be made of them.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
So... can we start creating a list of skills needed to play poker? I will just throw something out there to build on.

1: Self Control - Emotional Indifference

2. Basic Math - Understand simple probabilities

3. etc etc etc


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and I also agree with the ordering of 1 and 2.

Justin A

[ACW]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Experience
2. Constant Learning
3. Emotional Control
4. Discipline
5. Statistics and Basic Math Skills
6. People Reading
7. Luck


[/ QUOTE ]

So how are these related to intelligence?

Experience

Gaining experience doesn't require intelligence. But the ability to sensibly record and apply the experience does require intellgence.

Constant Learning

Indirectly. Well educated people tend to be more inclined to buy books to improve their knowledge, and better at absorbing and applying that knowledge. Recognising the need to read books on poker is the biggest single step in turning a losing player into a winning player, IMHO, but it won't turn you into a great player.

Emotional Control

Not significantly correlated to intelligence.

Discipline

Not directly related to intelligence, but certainly improved by a good education.

Statistics and basic math skills

Big link with intelligence, but note that the math skills required aren't that great. Being able to identify the nuts requires some intelligence. Being able to calculate pot odds requires a little more intelligence. Being able to understand and apply game theory requires still more intelligence. Beyond that level, any additional intelligence doesn't help much. Being able to perform complex integral calculus is of no benefit in poker.

People reading

Definitely related to intelligence. Requires good observation, memory and logical deductive reasoning.

Luck

Actually intelligence might hinder you here. Being intelligent enough to identify purchasing a lottery ticket as a -EV decision, and declining so to do as a consequence, will definitely destroy your chances of getting lucky and winning the jackpot.

[TomCollins]

I'm not sure I buy expirience as the top factor. Why do you think we see dinosaurs who have been playing years and years being destroyed by the young gun quick learners. Winning without expirience is unlikely, but I would say the correlation between expirience and degree of winning is one of the least linked factor.

I would replace expirience with something that actually accounts for serious studying w/ expirience or something that actually matters.

[SpiderMnkE]

I have no problem with removing experience from number 1. The reason I put it there is because it is the reason most of the other factors get perfected. Especially the emotional control issues.

I can tell a noob immediately in a chatroom when they blow up after a bad beat. I've been playing a lot for about a year now.. and I'm just getting to where a bad beat means nothing to me. The only time I really get mad is when I believe I have made an incorrect play.

So experience encapsulates the time you've had to practice you pot odds calculation, hand reading, bad beat experiences, it sort of sums up all you know about poker to that point.

So maybe a young gun can become great with little experience.. but it is the little he has had that made him great.

But if this isn't a big deal.. then certainly something else could argueably be numero uno.

[Toonces]

Perhaps, a better way to look at it is with a required foundation, then add-ons. For example, Willingness to Study (Constant Learning) is a minimum requirement to play the game at all well. Without that, none of the other factors are likely to help.

[Blarg]

Book-based learning can be a direct substitution for experience. It can substitute someone else's experience - a huge amount of it, plus their careful thought about their experience -- for one's own. A book can be a free ride that way.

The 2+2 books and some other books I've read can shorten everyone's learning curve enormously for just 25 bucks a pop or so.

I was up from a $200 bankroll at the 7-stud live tables in Commerce and the Bicycle Club in Los Angeles to the 10/20 in just a couple of months, and got to the 15/30 not too long after. That was only possible because of the experience of Chip Reese, Ray Zee, Mason and David Sklansky. They didn't make me great, but I could have lived a lifetime without stumbling across the concepts they got across, or figuring out exactly how to apply them and how seriously to take them.

I think experience can be an astoundingly minor factor. For 25 bucks, you can just buy a book and profit off someone else's experience.

Of course, for some people experience will much more critical, because they won't be readers, or maybe they don't have access to good books in their language.

I'd drop experience way down, and keep discipline at the top.

It is a kind of over-arching virtue that controls whether other virtues even come into play. It's very different from many other abilities, in that even very stupid people with perhaps little to recommend them sometimes have enormous amounts of it, and the most brilliant, beloved and admired people sometimes have almost none.

Discipline says whether or not you pay attention every hand during a session or just go numb after a while and play mechanically; whether you tilt and how badly, and how quickly you recover from it; whether you have the patience to sit through readings and re-readings of books and learn the numbers; whether you have the present-mindedness to remember to bring in all the mathematical and other ideas even under stress or when thrown off your usual track by self-doubt; etc. And it takes discipline to walk away when you know you're not playing your best game and will likely just make things worse if you continue playing. It takes discipline to keep your ego in line and not be crushed by defeats or made stupid by victories. You can have all the abilities and virtues in the world, but it takes discipline to apply them and keep applying them. And to admit it to yourself when your discipline has slipped and you're screwing up.

I've seen quite a few bright, capable poker players without the discipline to consistently win. Sometimes you feel almost obligated to call those guys with nothing just so they go on tilt.

[sherbert]

[ QUOTE ]
...a list of skills needed to play poker? I will just throw something out there to build on.

1: Self Control - Emotional Indifference

2. Basic Math - Understand simple probabilities



[/ QUOTE ]

Here's a few random thoughts:

Memory. This is twofold; remembering how particular players play in different situations; remembering individual hands. I'm reasonably good at both of these, whereas I often find players can't recall hands they played against me.

Sadism. You mentioned emotional indifference, but I think it may be slightly more subtle than that. I'd say many good players have a slightly sadistic edge. Let's face it, playing winning poker is not a very nice way to go on, is it. Or perhaps it's a substitute whereby one's sadistic instincts can be expressed in a vaguely socially approved or subliminal fashion.

The logic which leads to making good deductive reads. Not only the ones that go, 'he must have the A of diamonds, King of hearts,' but also where you eliminate hands, so, 'he can't have top pair'. I'm fairly sure this improves considerably with experience.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Sadism. You mentioned emotional indifference, but I think it may be slightly more subtle than that. I'd say many good players have a slightly sadistic edge. Let's face it, playing winning poker is not a very nice way to go on, is it. Or perhaps it's a substitute whereby one's sadistic instincts can be expressed in a vaguely socially approved or subliminal fashion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is saying much more about you than about poker.

In my view, you just do what you have to do to win in poker. There's nothing particularly sadistic about playing poker; it is just the exercise of skill and often a good bit of luck, and it all falls within the scope of the game. Everyone knows the rules going in, and they can hardly feel it is cruel that they're losing instead of doing the winning. And they're not cruel being the one who doesn't lose, either. SOMEBODY has to win, after all.

I have no issues with that, and think it's as fair as fair can be, and as logical. It's not a game where every player wins.

If you're going to feel bad about winning, you pretty much can't play any game or sport at all, or compete in any way ever. That would be hard to do without maybe just digging your own grave and then jumping in.

[sherbert]

I was wondering if this would provoke any reaction. Does it say more about me? If you say so. Since you don't know me, I suspect that's a bit presumptuous, but still...

This is just my take, but after years of playing in casinos, I think that a lot of poker players - not necessarily just good ones, will take some vindictive pleasure in the discomfort experienced by the loser.

Don't forget - sadism is to a greater or lesser extent, a part of human nature. We are a very destructive species with very destructive tendencies. There is absolutely NO reason to suppose these tendencies are less likely to surface at the poker table than they do anywhere else; quite the reverse. However poker is a pursuit where they surface a lot more than say, crochet, to pick an absurd example. Sit down in a big game and watch the amount of needle that goes on.

You say the losers can hardly feel it is cruel that they are losing... well, who knows. Nor is it, per se, as you point out, thereby cruel to win. That doesn't negate the fact that poker may well bring out what could be called sadistic traits in some players. The descriptions of Johnny Moss certainly tally with a somewhat sadistic take at the table - or emotionally indifferent.

Or read a few of limon's posts. The mentality of a lot of winning players is of how to best exploit the weaker players. It's certainly not a life is lovely kind of mentality. I'm not making a value judgement here - I'm just reflecting on what I see with my own eyes. The notion of emotional indifference was I thought a good one; I just thought an extension or subset of that would be a sometimes or somewhat saidistic pleasure in the suffering of others. Let's face it - all winning players rely on people losing money. I don't think many of the losers particularly enjoy the experience - which raises a separate (to this thread) question, of why on earth they continue in this vein. It's always been a mystery to me. Masochism? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[DPCondit]

[ QUOTE ]
Or read a few of limon's posts. The mentality of a lot of winning players is of how to best exploit the weaker players. It's certainly not a life is lovely kind of mentality. I'm not making a value judgement here - I'm just reflecting on what I see with my own eyes. The notion of emotional indifference was I thought a good one; I just thought an extension or subset of that would be a sometimes or somewhat saidistic pleasure in the suffering of others. Let's face it - all winning players rely on people losing money. I don't think many of the losers particularly enjoy the experience - which raises a separate (to this thread) question, of why on earth they continue in this vein. It's always been a mystery to me. Masochism?


[/ QUOTE ]

I was sitting in a game, and this guy says "do you know why people gamble? It's because they need to feel the pain it gives them" with a straight face. I guess that's true for some people, although they probably don't admit it consciously. He was admitting this consciously, and still kept playing, I just said "really, that doesn't sound all that wonderful", and grinned to myself, because I knew why I was there, for quite a different reason.

Don

[Blarg]

There's nothing presumptuous about it at all. You're the one who said it, nobody else.

If anything is presumptuous, it's the use of the word "many" in describing the number of poker players who have or exercise sadistic tendencies. Many people believe the earth is flat, but I think you were trying to get beyond simple numbers and describe something more like a relative number, as a percentage would. What does "many" mean to you when you use it here? You didn't say "most," but you probably meant some sort of significant percentage of poker players are sadistic. A greater percentage of them than, say, of regular people all over the world who believe the world is flat.

That strikes me as unfair.

"Many" people who do all kinds of things or profess all kinds of ideas may have this or that characteristic, but that doesn't make that characteristic itself characteristic of the particular thing they are doing.

You're kind of tarring and feathering according to some pretty loose standards there. Sadistic is not exactly a term to use too breezily.

I certainly don't think it makes sense to extend your hypothesis even further by supposing that "good" players might be sadistic.

[ QUOTE ]
You say the losers can hardly feel it is cruel that they are losing... well, who knows

[/ QUOTE ]

I meant, of course, that they couldn't FAIRLY feel it is cruel that they're losing. After all, they knew the possibilities going in and the only reason they're not winning is because they'd have to turn someone else into a loser, so...while it's easy to feel empathy there, sympathy comes a little harder. It's less cruel for me to beat you than for you to beat me.

[ QUOTE ]
The descriptions of Johnny Moss certainly tally with a somewhat sadistic take at the table - or emotionally indifferent.

[/ QUOTE ]

He's just one guy. I don't think we can use one guy's personality as a fair stand-in for the hundreds of millions of other people who play poker.

[ QUOTE ]
The mentality of a lot of winning players is of how to best exploit the weaker players. It's certainly not a life is lovely kind of mentality

[/ QUOTE ]

This is how competition works. It's morally neutral, as long as everyone is playing the game voluntarily and can leave whenever they like.

For many people, it's quite an enjoyable challenge and a positive thing. Is tennis cruel because you try to outfox your opponent and take advantage of his weaknesses? Is anybody who picks up a racket a masochist?

I'm thinking you're looking at challenges, especially voluntary ones where all the rules are known and completely above-board, very much in the wrong way. You seem to be supposing unjustifiably negative things of both the game and its players.

That's why I said your suppositions seem to say more to me about your own personal view of things than poker or its players.

[Blarg]

By my guess, well under 5% of poker players are there for the money.

[sherbert]

I'll agree with you on some of your points. I was hasty to use the word many - of the winning players I know it would only apply to a small percentage. But, I think it is a trait that emerges frequently at a table, whether it is from winners or less good players. In that sense, I think I was, on reflection, wrong in ascribing it as a trait that goes with winning players. However all of them tend to be ruthless, and morally indifferent. (That's somewhat different from emotionally indifferent although I think the two are linked). If you think tennis and poker, or tennis and chess are comparable in this sense, I think you have a remarkably rose tinted view. Poker, from what I've seen - and I have plenty of experience - brings out the worst traits in people. Tennis, when played socially, quite the opposite. Of course I'm talking about casino poker here; it's different online. Although even there you come across some truly appalling lines in chat.

Often times poker isn't a particularly pleasant game - doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, but it's very different from most other games.

[Blarg]

I don't think it really is.

People always talk about sports as "character building," but I think one of the first and one of the most valuable and lasting lessons kids get out of sports is how the world really works. You're supposed to cheat. All the talk to the contrary is baloney when it interferes with getting your way.

People cheat in sports all the time, and if it's your team, you damn sure don't say one word unless you want to be the pariah of the team, school, district, state, whatever. You don't want to be the guy who finds out what happens when you don't go along with the crowd, no matter if it's stupid, dishonest, crummy or even violent.

Is the ball in or out of bounds? Who cares! If it's better for your team that it's in, then you all shout it's in. If the opposite, you all shout the opposite. The truth couldn't be more meaningless; it only matters if you can't get away with denying it or covering it up.

Kids find out in sports that all the talk they constantly get shoved down their throats about being good, well-behaved little boys and girls makes for a great cover story, and you're supposed to pretend you believe it just like always, but when it comes to cheating, you're expected to hold up your end and either contribute directy or not rat out your friends. Parental behavior and the behavior of coaches is often incredibly nasty even in little league games for the youngest level of children. Even the most innocent seeming sports are where kids find out a lot about what their parents and neighbors are really like, and what competition more often than not is all about.

I really don't think tennis or other adult sports don't bring out the worst in people either. There are fights at baseball and basketball and football games all over the country, and riots at soccer games all over the world, and even among just-for-fun leagues.

If you don't play chess or other games with every intention of beating the daylights out of your opponent, I'd suggest you're not really playing the game. You're playing your own imaginary version of the game.

But since everyone knows what the real rules really are, even if they pretend they are playing differently or wish it wasn't so, they can hardly feel bad about being under the same rules as everybody else.

Poker is not a game where every player wins. That doesn't make it a negative game.

It just makes it yet another game full of the exact same negative potential that people themselves are.

I do think a descent to the lowest common denominator is the norm in most human endeavors, though.

[chezlaw]

Hi

I only post occasionaly outside the HUSH forum but this is the sort of stuff I find interesting so I thought I throw my oar in. I think there's another factor that hasn't been mentioned which is to do with belief.

I believe in rational analysis and that the laws of probability apply to poker. This seems obvious but I really believe it and always have, I'm sure all good poker players believe this as well.

The thing is that most people don't believe it, some may pay lipservice to it but deep down they believe in lucky seats or lucky people or astrology or fate or ...

In my experience there is litle if any correlation between intelligence and believing probability applies to poker. I know folk with good degress in maths/statistics who deep down believe that if they have been having a bad night then their aces are going to lose this time - and they change their behavior accordingly.

A dangerous related question is: is it rational to belief that probability applies to poker? - do we have a philosophy forum /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

We don't have SAT in the uk but I would claim to be well above average intelligence, highly educated and about average for 2+2. As well as having the right sort of beliefs, my next biggest advantage is recognising my limitations.

Thanks for listening

[bigpooch]

So what aspects of poker turn a good player into a great
player?

1. Reading Hands
2. Psychology
3. Exploiting Mistakes

Intelligence will most definitely help in these three areas
and thus, it is likely that those that excel in poker are
intelligent.

Excelling does not equate with merely winning.

[limon]

exploiting an opponents weakness' has no other side motivation for me than to play proper poker. the same way I always make my brother go left in one on one basketball. it's just the proper play to win. i dont get extra happiness from their loss, my happiness is purely rooted in playing properly and to the best of my ability at all times.

now i do think some of the people at casinos are complete morons and love to see them go berserk but that has nothing to do with poker its just entertainment cause playing cards for days on end can get really boring.