Attribution bias

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 06 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

Teddy Sheringham at the WSOPE 2009

Attribution bias leads more players to play outside of their bankroll, stay in bad games too long, and lose more of their money than perhaps any other psychological effect except extreme tilt.

Attribution bias is a concept I was first introduced to formally by Nassim Taleb in his excellent book Fooled by Randomness; although most winning players will have thought about this concept at some point. It simply refers to how most people tend to blame their losses on luck, but attribute their wins to skill. Although Taleb uses this concept in the context of stock traders, it is equally as true in poker, and understanding the effect it has can really help take your game to the next level.

The basic point about attribution bias is that we seem fundamentally unable to attribute our wins to anything but skill, and to always lean towards luck as the best explanation for our losses. This can be extremely destructive for poker players, as the belief that simply running bad - as opposed to thinking that you may have developed leaks in your game that need fixing - can stop you from dropping down stakes or quitting bad games.

Although even the best poker players have extended losing streaks, most of these are no way near 100% attributable to luck alone - a player's skill level simply drops in the face of constant losses. Most players will tell you endless stories about the crucial hands they lost deep in a tournament, or how bad they ran in a cash game, but you hardly ever hear these stories in reverse, about how many times they sucked out on the way to that big tournament win, or how well they ran to amass that enormous stack in a cash game. They are attributing wins purely to skill, and attributing losses purely to luck.

This effect would not be that important to poker players be it for the simple fact that it often leads players to a state of self denial. Denial is an extremely dangerous state for a poker player to be in, because the reality is that there is basically always someone better than you, there is always a better game running somewhere, and often the correct move is to quit and evaluate your game.

Attribution bias leads more players to play outside of their bankroll, stay in bad games too long, and lose more of their money than perhaps any other psychological effect except extreme tilt. Being able to analyse your game in a calm and objective manner is critical to maximising your profits, and if you find yourself thinking about simply how unlucky you are, you probably need to step back and see if you are actually just running horribly, or whether attribution bias has crept into your game and kept you from seeing clearly.