How Experts make split second decisions/ reprint

[PokerHorse]

There have been some interesting studies released recently on how fighter pilots and top athletes make split second decisions under uncertain conditions. I believe these will
help many poker players as well.
I originally posted this the other day on the mid limit holdem page, but it was suggested I reprint here. Please excuse the mis spells
When situations come up at the table, there is not suffient time for calm reasoned thought. Your subconsious takes over and must make a decision based on the relevant variables before any explicit reasoning occurs.
The first item that researchers found is that, whatever the endeavor, a prolonged learning period of at least 1000
practices needs to take place before someone can start to accurately make correct choices at the unconcious level.When subjects have been exposed to complex patterns, eventually they are able to learn those patterns and make choices that are far above the levels of chance, yet they cannot verbalize why or how they make these decisions.The learning is truly implicit, processed entirely by the subconsious mind.
When subjects were presented with new uncertain information
that contradicted the information they had previously learned,they weighted the information in a manner consistent
with BAYESIAN MATHEMATICS!(move over Chris Ferguson)
Subjects gave increasing weight to the new information over time , revising their estimates to gradually integrate the new info with the already learned information.What this confirms is that people can process information in comple mathematecal ways without knowing bayesian math in the first place. The findings suggest that for our game of poker , that at the expert level the line is very fine between a totally math based plyer such as a Chris ferguson, and a TJ Clouter for example.

When people encountered the new information, they were able to put aside their expectations based on the prior learning and create a new basis for decision making.
This what seperates the experts from us wantabes, because there is a natural "confirmation bias", that we humans have that leads us to seek out information that confirms our original expectations and causes us to ignore contradictory information that goes against what we believe.
(you have a strong hand but ignore the fact that your being re-raised etc etc, you have to call because....etc)

Our confirmation bias is what keeps us from making more accurate decisions in a Bayesian fashion when the new contradictory info hits us. The experts are able to make lightning fast decisions and integrate new info . Fast and Flexible are the keys, along with alot of experience.
We all knew this unconsiously ...right??
But the main conclusion is that there is a much smaller line bettween expert intuitive, and totasl math based ev players, than once thought.

These findings explain to a certain degree why, for example
you may correctly be thinking that someone is bluffing although you can't quite put your finger on why at the consiopus level. Your subconsious is picking up on some info that doesnt quite fit the pattern of 10000s of trials.
We need to learn to act on these situations. The experts do.
I will write another post on how we can all become better bayesians in order to improve our poker .
Hope this gets some of you thinking.

[krazyace5]

Great post, look forward to your next one.

[RydenStoompala]

Cool. I thought it was all the caffeine I was drinking.

[PuppetMaster]

Instinct after awhile, especially reading bluffs.

[naphand]

Excellent post. Strangely not that surprising but, very interesting reading nonetheless.

I know from past experience of competitive sport that you "learn" the moves after a lot of routine practice and repetition, and that these moves eventually (after further practice involving direct competition, rather than practise) becomes "automatic".

What happens when you hit the so-called "jaded" response? That is, when you are over-pracrticing or over-competing? and you have becomes jaded and start losing your edge? We all know there is an optimum practice/compete/relax ratio that varies with each individual. Any theories on why this happens - you would think it would be just practice and more practice with more mental endeavours like poker, barring too high stress levels or physical exhaustion.

[poker-penguin]

I would also add that "experts", especially at Limit Holdem, often have a conscious reaction mapped out before it's their turn to act.

But yeah, so often we're just running pattern recognition. Which isn't a bad thing - learning the right patterns is something I concentrate on mastering. Especially because I want to multi-table at higher limits.