Poker & Personality Type POLL

[mike l.]

im a Champion Idealist ENFP. just like phil donahue.

[DPCondit]

Me too, another INTJ. Are we really only 1%? Are analytical poker types that read and post to forums like 2 + 2 that much more likely to be INTJs than the rest of the population?

Don

[Filip]

I was an INTP.

This part sure fits to me and my poker:

[ QUOTE ]
A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

[/ QUOTE ]

[donkeyradish]

I'm an INTJ

Thanks for posting this test, I never knew I even had a personality, [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] never mind one especially predisposed to playing poker. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] But its good to know.

[Saborion]

ISTP...
Hums. I need to retake that test some day soon to see how accurate that was.

Only 2.01 % of you guys are ISTP's. I wonder if I'm broken.

[Dan Mezick]

If this poker+personality hypothesis is legitimately correct, it means some of us have some specific things to manage if we want to play winning poker.

That is valuable to know and probe further and if correct, that knowledge and your response to it (ie managing certain tendencies in your personality while at the table) may be able to up significantly your game.

At a minimum, if the theory is right, you will know what to focus on managing about your "type", very specifically.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
If this poker+personality hypothesis is legitimately correct, it means some of us have some specific things to manage if we want to play winning poker.

That is valuable to know and probe further and if correct, that knowledge and your response to it (ie managing certain tendencies in your personality while at the table) may be able to up significantly your game.

At a minimum, if the theory is right, you will know what to focus on managing about your "type", very specifically.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is the part where things become very tricky.

It is not surprising that certain MBTI types are heavily overrepresented among successful poker players. The trouble starts when you ask "why" and gets worse when you continue with "you should do this to succeed ...".

There will be as many ideas about why certain types do well as there are people thinking about it. It's fun to speculate but we should be extremely skeptical of anything that isn't supported by meticulous research.

The end result of this research if it is ever done may not offer much of value to someone who is already a successful player. What should we say to a successful ESFP, the apparent MBTI anti-poker, about how to overcome his poker-defective type? Quite possibly nothing. Maybe he has already done it. The research may well boil down to (e.g.): most ESFPs hate intellectual games, feel bad about taking money from other people, wouldn't read a gaming book if you paid them, and think clubbing is much more fun than socializing with gamblers in a casino or sitting in front of a terminal.

That our hypothetical ESFP is playing, winning, and reading this forum means he is beyond all of those "problems". A stark reminder that the MBTI test is a blunt instrument and no two people are alike.

Probably the best advice we could give him is to think less about MBTI types and more about Sklansky's theories.

Dan, I think the work you are doing is worthwhile and interesting. I just want to caution you that I see real potential for misinformation and harm here. I already sense that the poll results may be discouraging some people who don't conform. There is no reason for that. If you are doing well then you have a suitable personality for poker. If you like playing and studying it does not matter that most people who have your MBTI type don't like poker. If you don't tilt it does not matter that your type might be tilt-prone. Equally, if you do tilt then it is no consolation that your type is supposedly tilt-proof.

The only way to improve is to focus on your individual self and deal with what you see.

[for teh win]

I think I'll be the complimentary party pooper here. This is a really interesting topic/idea, to find out if successful players share some traits. But I am not so sure a poll like this will give the answer. Or, rather, we do get an answer, but what is the question really?

Last time I did the test I belonged to the rare INTP group (the MBTI scoring is not very stable over time). Does that make me a successful poker player? Or is it just that it explains why I, a grown up person, can sit for hours on end and play a stupid card game instead of getting a life - which of course would be a prerequisite for becoming successful at all since practice makes perfect.

The description of the INTP/INTJ type sounds flattering to us. It was written that way. But you should also be aware that those are types that some claim are correlated with psychiatric disorders such as Asperger syndrome and Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD). Does that mean that all INTP/INTJ's could be diagnosed as such? Of course not, nor vice versa. But it's an interesting angle. Let's take a look at the diagnostic criteria psychiatrists use to diagnose SPD:

[ QUOTE ]
A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

- neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family [because he prefers to sit at the table instead]
- almost always chooses solitary activities [like internet poker]
- has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person ["Get laid? Hey, watch it! You think I'm sitting here for fun? I'm making 4BB/hr here!"]
- takes pleasure in few, if any, activities [other than poker]
- lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives ["I don't socialize with the fish..."]
- appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others [except when he's on tilt]
- shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affectivity [Poker face anyone?]

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the forum readers are SPDs or anything, that's not the point. But maybe it takes a certain personality to enjoy a peculiar hobby such as poker to the extent that you start taking it seriously and spend a considerable amount of time with it (and SPD would only be the very end of the spectrum here). A prerequisite, yes. But is it also predictor for future success in poker? I guess the only way to find out is to compare good and bad players. A hypothetical experimental design could be something like 40 pros, 40 net losers, 40 non-players. Then you could run MBTI on those, but there are many other tests of potential interest here as well.

[stripsqueez]

i dont have much faith in the view that good poker players are easy to categorise - i did the test out of boredom to discover i am a "ENTP" - the description of ENTP fits me horribly well

i am an addicted and sh1t-hot player of games - i adore gambling and do it daily often in several different forms - i destroyed pinball machines and arcade games when i was younger, i have played bridge for my country, backgammon at a high level, and when i expect to win gambling (i do it just for fun sometimes) i win well - i regularly write about the games i am expert at for newsletters and magazines - i also teach

hard for me to conceive that there is a better personality type than mine for playing games - all these years of thinking i was living the dream and now your telling me i should be doing something else ?

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

[jdl22]

I have similar thoughts and also am an ENTP. While I haven't had nearly the success that you have in games I am currently in grad school in Economics - a field I don't even really like that much (by which I mean traditional Economics, it is better now that most Microeconomics is now game theory) so that I can study games.

There have also been many extremely successful poker players that are ENTPs most notably the two Nguyens. While many such as Harrington and Lederer are apparently INTPs it seems all are not.