online poker psychology research

[Derek in NYC]

Poker Theory as Philosophy of Life
This is a testament to the fact that you can find powerful and useful ideas in the strangest of places. Now I've read more bloody philosophy and psychology books than you could shake any reasonably sized stick at, but one of the most remarkable ideas that I've come
across is from a poker book I read some time ago. It was in Sklansky's Theory of Poker, but can be derived implicitly from any poker theory book. I think that when extrapolated to a more general application it's very powerful. Here's my take on it:

Essentially it has to do with the temporal specificity with which we constrain our conceptualisation of success. That is, the time-frame over which we measure success. So what's the correct time-frame for
measuring success in poker? Well, I don't think that there's an absolute correct answer, I think it ranges from the inappropriate (silly) to the appropriate (sensible). Taking the former first. It is
obviously silly to constrain your evaluation of success to too specific a time frame, and by specific I mean a short time span. The obvious example is a specific individual hand. An excellent poker player may play a good hand perfectly, and yet still have some
thundering idiot make his hand on the river and beat you. This is mildly annoying, but normally you just shrug your shoulders. Poker is a great game for engendering acceptance of the vicissitudes of
randomness. Why do you just shrug your shoulders? Because it's only one hand, there'll be plenty more. Imagine a player who gets really upset or elated about each hand because they judge success based on
an individual hand. They'd be a mess. It's a silly time-frame over which to judge success. So what's a sensible time-frame in poker? Well, that depends on personal factors. Many judge the success of an
online session based on how much they have when they log out relative to how much they had when they logged in. That's sensible for many players. But for more dedicated or more professional players, a week, or even a couple of months may be an inappropriate time-frame to judge success. Most pros would probably judge it over a year. But the important point to note at this
juncture is that success or failure is very much a question of the time-frame over which you judge your actions. Related to this point is the fundamental issue of pot odds. Suppose somebody offered to play a game with you. They write down a number between 1 and 5, and you have to try to guess it. It costs you E5 to
play, and if you guess it correctly they will give you E50. Would you play that game? Well, it depends. On what? On whether or not you can play it more than once. If you could play it only once I wouldn't play it. I don't like only having a 1 in 5 chance of guessing
correctly, and I'm not prepared to pay E5 to have the chance to win E50. However, if you could play the game as many times as you wanted, I would play until I collapsed of exhaustion, or until my huge pile
of money toppled over and crushed me. You will guess correctly, on average, once every five guesses. So over the average five guesses you will hand over E25 (E5 per guess x 5 guesses), and you will get back E50 (because you will win once). Therefore the average net profit of five plays of the game is E25. So you will make an awful lot of money. This is because you have favourable pot odds. This is how you work out if you have good pot odds - if the pot multiplied by your chance of winning exceeds the bet that you have to make then you have pot odds. In this example the pot, so to speak, is E50, and you have a 1/5 chance of winning, and the bet is E5.
E50 x 1/5 = E10 which is greater than the bet E5, so you have good pot odds for calling. And you will make money by playing this game in the long run.


So a game that is silly to play once is sensible to play a lot of times. This is a fundamental aspect of poker theory. It is correct to call a bet even when the
odds are you will lose. If your odds of winning a hand are 7-1, and the pot is 9 times the bet then it is correct to call. This only makes sense because you will, on average, make money by playing this way IN
THE LONG RUN. By the way, I apologise to the many of you who are very familiar with all of this, but some may not be, and it is leading to a wider application. So in poker it is correct to do something knowing that you will probably not be successful, if the potential
rewards are worth it. All fine and dandy. But it is a specific mathematical and verbal way of expressing this over the long term that is remarkable...

Let's go back to the number guessing game. Remember on average you make E25 every five times you play it. But why take every five times to be the time-frame? Well, I just did it for simple mathematical reasons. In reality you can only play it once at a time. So how much
do you make on average every time you play it? Well you make E25 every five times, so every one time you make E25 / 5 = E5. Now we have moved from a perception that: 'if I play this game this time I will probably lose', to 'if I play this game this time I will make
E5'. Returning to poker, and to Sklansky's book, he expresses it in a way that I found remarkable when I first read it. Talking about correct decisions based on favourable pot odds, he said that every time you make the correct play, you win. The specific outcome is
irrelevant, just by taking the chance you have won money, because if you continue to do this you will be up. This is worth pausing on for a moment, so I'll repeat the point more generally. If the potential
rewards are worth the effort or risk then the maxim is: "EVERY TIME YOU TRY, YOU SUCCEED". The outcome doesn't matter. So let's extrapolate ...

Taking the lessons we've learnt from the above poker theory, let's reconceptualise the time-frames over which we judge success in other aspects of life, and then apply the above maxim. Let me don my psychologist's hat for a moment. The essential western intellectual zeitgeist that derived from the existentialist and humanist movements of the 20th century is the concept of self empowerment. Every two-bit pop psychology and self-help book in the western world seeks to teach people to empower themselves by overcoming their fear of failure. In
fact, in thinking about this topic I read Susan Jeffers's famous 'Feel the fear and do it anyway' the other day (it was in my house okay!!!), and it's actually not bad. But what it lacks, and what all these other books lack, is a fundamental expression of a
concept that will help people with a specific desire to
attempt something. In all of these works there is an implicit acknowledgement of what I have said about the time-frame of judging success. They make the point that life is a series of ups and downs, successes and failures, but you have to accept that, and try to make
good things happen because that is the only way that they will. This is true, but it doesn't go nearly far enough, and isn't nearly helpful enough. It encourages accepting fear of failure. The point to
be derived from all of what I'm writing here is that there is a way of thinking about things that obviates the possibility of failure. Let's say you're considering asking somebody out whom you think will
say no, or applying for a great job that you don't think you'll get. You will be anxious and fearful that you won't succeed. Susan Jeffers
would tell you to accept that fear, and do it anyway, because happiness is a long term game. But if you assimilate the maxim which we derived from poker theory into your fundamental way of thinking until you actually think in those terms, then you won't have to
accept fear of failure because ...EVERY TIME YOU TRY, YOU SUCCEED. Just as a particular poker hand is an inappropriate time-frame for judging success, so is any one incident in your life. Your whole life is the appropriate time-frame in which to judge success, success being defined as happiness. An acceptance of this, and of the maxim, could / should lead to a similar attitude to a specific or potential
life incident as we have to a poker hand. If the potential rewards are worth the risk, then you can happily, and without fear, attempt the unlikely, safe in the knowledge that just living this way
guarantees success in the long run. Any specific outcomes are irrelevant; you are successful every time you just attempt something. If something doesn't go the way you wanted it to, do what you do with
a losing poker hand, shrug your shoulders, be content that you played correctly, and be satisfied that because you did, you were, and always will be, successful. The only way to fail under this
conceptualisation of the nature of success in life is to not play the hands you are dealt at all.

I just want to end this with an expression of
the fundamental maxim one more time:
EVERY TIME YOU TRY, YOU SUCCEED.
And if that's not the most empowering concept that's ever been expressed, I don't know what is.

Rob.