SERIOUS PLAYERS READ THIS POST (also posted in poker theory forum)

[deacsoft]

You obviously have missed the point.

[ctv1116]

It would seem that the insurance claims investigator is able to get a lot more information out of a person than a poker player...you don't get to interrogate the guy. You say something, he just doesn't respond. For insurance claims, the guy has to respond, and make up a good story. It just doesn't seem like it would be all that useful.

[PDosterM]

I remain skeptical that people (or machines) can ever do a great job (as opposed to a slightly better than chance job) of detecting lies. There is an excellent book on the subject of lie detectors by David Lykken, A Tremor in the Blood: The Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector.

He points out early that the premise on which the entire industry rests is the belief that there is a unique and detectable biological lie response in humans. There are no credible data to suggest this is the case, and this means people and machines will have a difficult task getting good at this.

People, of course, can detect errors in logic that can establish a lie, but I believe this post refers to other traits. People, and particularly people from different cultures, react in ways not to our expectations. It will be a rare player indeed that can rightly claim high levels of success in this area. I’ll believe we can do slightly better than chance, but true success will be illusive.

There is also the problem that getting really good at this may not add huge amounts to our win rate. See especially John Feeney’s Inside the Poker Mind, as well as others’ comments on the subject.

[WDC]

I am an divorce attorney. Over the course of my education and experience I believe I have honed a pretty good bullshit detector. In the copurse of a deposition or settlement discussions or trial or client interview I have a pretty good idea when someone is lying to me. However, I do not think this correlates to my ability to pick up tells or bluffs in a poker game (I think I lawyer much better than I play poker.) I think the difference is that in poker your decisions need to be made more quickly and with less information. I would suggest that you pick up Caro's book of tells, I think it will help more.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
I remain skeptical that people (or machines) can ever do a great job (as opposed to a slightly better than chance job) of detecting lies. There is an excellent book on the subject of lie detectors by David Lykken, A Tremor in the Blood: The Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector.

[/ QUOTE ]
Once you realize how lie detectors work it is clear how useful they can be for many applications. It goes something like this:

Right: 5%
Wrong: 5%
Subject is intimidated into being candid: 90%

I firmly believe this is why so many organizations that "should know better" continue to use them in the face of the scientific evidence. It simply doesn't matter much that they don't work very well.

[Punker]

I worked with Blue Cross and knew some of the adjusters, including one who had taken this course (or some derivation of it). He described it to me and most of the things (at least the things you would find applicable to poker) were very similar to material in Caro's book.

[southerndog]

[ QUOTE ]
All law enforcement groups showed this pattern and the only group better than the average untrained student, was the Secret Service (although they were still only about 2/3 accurate). Most were no better than random chance.

Dr. Milo, a real life Psychologist with big beitzim to boot!

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw sopmething like this before too. The interesting thing was that the people that told the lies the most successfully were also the ones that were the most likely to take a leadership roll in a group setting. So, in other words, the bullsh***ers are the ones that end up taking the lead cause they convince everyone they really know what they're talking about.

[StellarWind]

Getting people to believe you is an extremely important leadership skill. Just keep in mind that being correct/truthful/wise often doesn't make it any easier.

A natural leader is not just better at getting you to believe lies. He is also better at selling the truth.

[deacsoft]

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to vote and post your comments. Here are the results of the survey from both forums (psych & theory).

From 165 total votes (as of 11:30 am CST 6-3-04).
try it/look into try: 5 or 3.03%
good but more info: 50 or 30.30%
good but won't try: 31 or 18.78%
undecided: 12 or 7.27%
over kill: 23 or 13.93%
bad idea: 9 or 5.45%
what did you say: 5 or 3.03%
deacsoft lost it: 30 or 18.18%

Judging by the figures shown above, I concluded that more infoprmation on the classes and the possible applications to poker were needed. I have found that the amount of information on body language that can be found on the internet vastly out weights the amount you could be given in a class that went on for days. Doing a simple search for body language at www.google.com can point interested parties in the direction of many sites that I have reviewed and found to be interesting. These site covered much of what I was hoping to learn through the class. I am not going to look any further in to this matter at this time. I found that I have a free and vast supply of information right in front of me via internet. I'm going to further explore that information first.

For those of you who learn more effectively in a classroom setting the class may be worth further exploration. Anyone who wants to or already has looked deeper in to it, please post your findings so others who are interested can learn from them. I still believe this to be a valuable resource but when seeing the amount of free infromation via internet I almost have to say it seems to be over kill at this time.

Thanks again all!

Cheers,

deacsoft

[jasonHoldEm]

thanks for the follow-up.