[Jordan Olsommer]

John Allen Paulos had a great bit about this type of phenomenon regarding the stock market in his book "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market" - the market rewards you for being right, not for being right for the right reason. He was telling the story of a grade school teacher asking around the room for anybody to give her two examples of pronouns. She calls on an aloof underacheiving boy, who when he hears his name, replies "Who, me?"

That person is rewarded in the market (and in poker) because he got the correct answer. It doesn't matter at all whether or not he got it for the right reason (to further clarify this principle, ask yourself how many times you've had to submit an essay justifying every move you made in a hand before the dealer would push you the pot).

The reason we try to make theoretically correct plays is because those plays correlate with "the right answer" much more often than any other method of playing (e.g. going all-in with nothing but a two-outer and hope) - nevertheless, a person who makes the right theoretical play 100% of the time doesn't stand a chance against someone who continually goes all-in with two-outers and hits them every single time.