Ability to Predict a Players Skill based on Intelligence.

[Justin A]

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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.

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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]

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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.

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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]

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

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

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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.


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

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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.