Poker and delusion

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 25 November 2009 / Leave a comment

Whilst nobody doubts Phil Hellmuth is a great player, he is deluded if he honestly thinks he is the best in the world

The key reason that poker is profitable for so many players is the simple fact that it is a game where it is very easy to delude yourself into thinking that you are good at

It is very easy to delude yourself in poker and just start playing on auto pilot in the belief that you are somehow innately superior than those around you.

As most of what is happening in poker is going on under the surface, weak players can easily believe that they are good players, as they are missing a whole host of flaws in their game that are hidden by the secluded nature of the game, as well as the massive amounts of luck involved.

Compare a game like poker to another of the great skill based gambling games - backgammon. One of the oldest games in history, backgammon is an extremely complicated skill game with a large chunk of luck thrown in like poker has.

Vastly fewer weak players are attracted to backgammon than poker though, as it is a game where you can see everything that is going on. You can watch all of your opponent's moves, with the result that if they are a lot better than you, it becomes obvious to you much quicker.

If you sat down and played a few matches against a world class backgammon player and a world class poker player without knowing how good they were, you would quit the backgammon game much earlier than you would the poker match, as the gulf in skill would become obvious much more quickly.

As a result, vastly fewer professionals can make a living at backgammon, simply because they do not have anywhere near as big a group of weak players who are deluded into thinking they are good.

There are two key lessons we learn from this about how we approach poker. Firstly, it is critical to try and get underneath the skin of poker as much as possible. You have to be able to be spotting mistakes that people are making that are largely hidden from you, such as general hand selection and calling/folding habits. These are often hard to spot, but are the factors that separate strong and weak players.

Secondly, it is critical that you do not fall into the trap of ignoring this hidden aspect of the game. It is very easy to delude yourself in poker and just start playing on auto pilot in the belief that you are somehow innately superior than those around you.

This nearly always ends in disaster, and it is crucial that you keep focused on all of the information around you, not just that which is on the surface, as a failure to follow the game in totality will very quickly end in disaster.

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