The Brain and Poker

Poker is a game that is taxing on the mental faculties. As evidence, consider that every player, from the greatest players in the world down through to the smallest fish, has at one point or another, gone on tilt, breaking their concentration and forgetting everything they know for a period of time. Any activity that requires concentration and focus, particularly in situations where there is something of value (ie. money) is at stake, is going to require a well-trained cranium.

When you are a losing or beginner player, your mind will play tricks on you. You will have a tendency to remember more vividly, the more dramatic events at the table and you will minimize those that seem trivial.

For example, you will remember more vividly a hand where you went in on a weak holding, but managed to hit a big flop to take down a huge pot than a hand where you win a decent pot with a solid hand. You also won’t remember the times that your weak holdings get beat, since you are not surprised to lose. Similarly, when you will remember those hands that you thought you had the best of it and got drawn out on, losing a large pot.

What is interesting about such a development is that the brain is not acting in a rational manner. Even though you are observing every thing that is going on the table, your memories are being filtered and the data distorted. This happens because your brain is responding to the physiological changes that occur when you are in a dramatic situation, regardless of whether it is dramatic for a positive or negative reason. Very quickly, your pulse starts to rise, your adrenaline starts pumping, and your senses become heightened. Your brain interprets all this to mean “what is going on now is IMPORTANT”.

These are dramatic events at the poker table, which, as a losing player, you will internalize. It is this combination of strong memories that creates the “fish” playing style – willing to go in on anything in case you hit something, but afraid to play aggressively for fear of getting drawn out on – and the maniac style – a pure gambling approach that is all about playing against the odds in hopes of getting lucky

However, as we all know, every play at the poker table is important. Every fold, call or raise we make carries with it some significance. The problem is that all this processing and filtering occurs on a subconscious level – so we can’t simply turn it off or on. This is why it seems to take so long for the lessons in poker writings to sink in. No matter how rational what we read may seem, once the brain has made up its mind, it is hard to change.

To overcome your mental response to your physiological reactions, you must overcome both ends of the mind-body connection. You cannot simply retrain your mind and you cannot simply retrain your body. What you must strive for a sense of purposeful detachment and surrender.

This is why bankroll management is critical to successful poker. If you are playing with money that you cannot afford to surrender, then it will be harder and harder to overcome your physiological reactions to those dramatic events. That is not to say that money should not be important to you. In fact, it must be important to you if you are to treat your game with the respect it will require. However, you must not be attached to your money. The more attached you are to your money, the more your body will react strongly to its gain or loss. And since we know that gains and losses are not necessarily connected to good play, these reactions must be overcome. You must be willing to let your money flow out from you to allow money to flow back to you.

But if you are to be detached from your money, to what should you be attached? Without an attachment to something, you would have no reason to be at the poker table. The answer, quite clearly, is that you must be attached to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Your goal at the table is not to make money, but rather, to attempt to make the correct play every time you are called on to act. In Limit Hold Em, you have 3 possible actions – call, raise or fold – and two of them are wrong. In No Limit, you have many more choices since you can vary your bets, and yet only one of those options is fundamentally correct.

By altering your attachment, and thereby, altering your focus and context for the game, you will flatten the emotional and physiological trend. Rather than the brilliant highs and sinking lows, each move will trigger its own response. Furthermore, the emotional and physiological highs and lows that do occur will be triggered by a different stimulus. They will be triggered according to whether you played correctly or not.

Attachment to the Fundamental Theorem means that you are striving to achieve complete information. Only with complete information of all the cards in play can you achieve your objective. And just as it is almost impossible for man to experience true transcendence in life, so to is it almost impossible to achieve complete information at the poker table; to actually play as if all your opponents had their cards face up. Nevertheless, your inability to ever achieve this objective should not dissuade you from undertaking this challenge, for what better challenge is there than to strive towards perfection?

[Dave H.]

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Any activity that requires concentration and focus, particularly in situations where there is something of value (ie. money) is at stake, is going to require a well-trained cranium.

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And it's quite taxing to boot. If you don't believe me, check out my avatar! I used to be significantly older!

[4_2_it]

NH