don't play on tilt! avoiding seven costly critical thinking errors in poker

Don’t Play on Tilt! Avoiding Seven Costly Critical Thinking Errors in Poker

Gregory Bassham and Marc C. Marchese

Skilled poker players seldom make the kinds of rookie mistakes unskilled players do—

drawing for miracle hands, playing predictably, bluffing too many players, failing to

correctly calculate card or pot odds, surprising their poker buddies with wine coolers

instead of their usual malted beverages, and so forth. But even expert players make

mistakes, and often these mistakes result from falling prey to certain systematic errors or

natural biases in human judgment and decision-making that we call “critical thinking

errors.” In this chapter we look at seven critical thinking traps that poker players often

fall into: self-serving bias, short-term thinking, the availability heuristic, the fundamental

attribution error, loss aversion, superstitious thinking, and the gambler’s fallacy.

Understanding and avoiding these errors is crucial to smart poker playing.

Self-serving Bias

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic

status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-

average drivers.

—Dave Barry

Self-serving bias is the tendency to overrate oneself—to adopt an inflated view of one’s

talents, abilities, know-how, or good fortune. We all known braggarts or know-it-alls who

claim to be more skilledtalented or knowledgeable than they really are. If you’re like

most people, you probably think of yourself as being an unusually self-aware person,

2

who is largely immune from any such self-deception. If so, welcome to the club! You,

too, are probably suffering from self-serving bias.

Studies show that self-serving bias is an extremely common trait. In one survey,

one million high school seniors were asked to rate themselves on their “ability to get

along with others.” Not a single respondent rated himself below average!1 In another

study, college students rated themselves 58 percent less likely to develop a drinking

problem and 44 percent more likely to own their own homes than other students of their

own sex and age, suggesting that these students thought they were better (or luckier) than

their peers.2 Ninety percent90 percent of business managers and more than 90 percent of

college professors rate their performance as better than average. Clearly, a lot of people

find it challenging to acknowledge their own limitations.3

As the authors of Poker for Dummies note,4 poker players are just as prone to self-

serving bias as anybody else. Overconfident poker players think that they’re better, or

luckier, than they actually are. This can hubris leads them to play with far superior

opponents, to stay in too many hands, and to bet recklessly. The result: players who

overrate their abilities can quickly become ATM’s for their tablemates.

Poker legend Doyle Brunson tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of

overconfidence. A cocky New Yorker calling himself “Rochester Ricky” and flashing a

big bankroll walked into a Ft. Worth poker parlor. Around the table sat Amarillo Slim,

Puggy Pearson, Johnny Moss, Sailor Roberts, Brunson himself, and a couple of Texas

1 Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (New

York: Free Press, 1991), p. 77. 2 Scott Plous, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 134. 3 Not us of course. To steal a line from Milton Berle, we’d gladly admit our faults if we had any.

4 Richard D. Harroch and Lou Krieger, Poker for Dummies (Forest City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide,

2000), p. 30.

3

businessmen. Two things quickly became apparent. Though he knew his stuffgame,

Rochester hadn’t played much no-limit poker, and he hadn’t a clue he was playing

against some of the best no-limit H‘hold’-em poker talent in the world.

Rochester didn’t realize that strategies that work well in limit games (for example,

calling frequently and bluffing cautiously,) often backfire in no-limit games. His parting

words as he gathered up the paltry remnants of his $10,000 bankroll were: “If you guys

are ever in Rochester, don’t bother to look me up. You won’t see me playing Hhold’ ‘em

against Texans as long as I live.”5

As the great American philosopher Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know

his limitations.”

Short-term Thinking

Money flows from the impatient to the patient.

—Warren Buffett

Short-term thinking is thinking that irrationally ignores or undervalues long-term interests

in favor of immediate, short-term pleasures and desires. In ancient times, the Greek

philosopher Aristippus (around 435 – 356 B.C.) advocated such a live-for-the-moment,

go-for-the-gusto lifestyle, arguing that you should grab all the pleasure you can today

because tomorrow you might get run over by a chariot. There are two obvious flaws with

this argument: (1) today we have busses rather than chariots, and (2) although it’s true

that tomorrow you might get run over by a bus and/or chariot, chances are you won’t.

5 Doyle Brunson, Poker Wisdom of a Champion (Cooper Station, NY: Cardoza Publishing, 2003), pp. 90-1.

Formatted: Indent: Left: 0", First line: 0"

4

Chances are you’ll still be around tomorrow, hopefully not feeling wasted after another

all-nighter in Margaritaville with Aristippus and his friends.

You see the costs of short-term thinking all around us—in drunk-driving

accidents, smoking, obesity, environmental destruction, poor retirement planning, failing

schools, and the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior. In poker there are clear

costs to short-term thinking as well. Allowing ego, resentment, or other passing emotions

to obscure long-term goals and proven principles of sound play can be expensive. For

example, many good poker players get frustrated when they’re losing to greatly inferior

players and try to quickly make up their losses with overly aggressive play. As Doyle

Brunson notes: “Poker is a game involving a lot of luck, and the road to winning is long

and unpaved. It’s practically impossible to prove who’s the best player in a matter of

hours, so the top professionals never try. They just count their profits at the end of the

year” (Brunson, pp. 98-99).

The Availability Heuristic

Say the first thing that comes to mind.

—Herman “Inkblot” Rorschach

Another critical thinking trap people commonly fall into is basing judgments on evidence

that is vivid or memorable rather than on evidence that may be more relevant or reliable.

This is an error that social scientists who like impressive-sounding labels call the

“availability heuristic.”



5

Here’s a short quiz to see if you’re really reading this book or just pretending to in

order to impress your poker buddies. Please use a No. 2 pencil to record your answers.6

1. Which is a more likely cause of death in the United States: (a) being killed by a

shark or (b) being killed by falling airplane parts?

2. Which is a more likely cause of death in the United States: (a) dying in an

accident or (b) dying of asthma?

3. Which is a more common cause of death in the United States: (a) homicide or (b)

suicide?

4. Which is more likely: The authors of this chapter are (a) obsessed with death or

(b) just trying to sound deep?

(OK, Question 4 was a trick question to weed out those who switched from Really

Reading this book to Just Pretending because they got sick of all the death questions.

Actually, the authors have a very healthy attitude toward death and wouldn’t dream of

trying to make this chapter sound deep.)

TIn each case the answers for to Questions 1-3 is (b). The chances of dying from

falling airplane parts are is 30 times greater than the chances of being killed by a

shark. It is 16 times more likely for a person to die of asthma than it is for them him

to die in an accident. And suicides are 40% more common than homicides. (At press

time, the authors still debated the answer to question 4.)

6 Unless of course you’re reading this in bookstore and have no intention of buying it. In that case, use a

No. 3 pencil.

6

If these answers surprise you, blame the availability heuristic. Shark attacks,

accidental deaths, and homicides typically receive a lot more media coverage than

deaths from falling airplane parts, asthma-related deaths, and suicides, respectively.

For that reason, it’s easier for most people to recall to mind examples of the first sorts

of events than it is for them to think of examples of the second. And it’s a natural

human tendency to judge the frequency of a class of events by the ease with which

instances of that event can be brought to mind.

How can the availability heuristic trip up even skilled poker players? One way is

through selective memory. A faulty memory can lead to a faulty poker strategy. For

example, research shows that people naturally tend to remember “hits” (occasions

when strategies or predictions succeeded) more often than they remember “misses.”

So you might remember vividly the one time you bluffed the socks off Sammy, but

have forgotten the ten other times your bluffs failed.

The availability heuristic can also give us a false sense of how our cards stack up

against our opponents’. Consider this example offered by Doyle Brunson. You start

off a Hhold’em game with two red eights 8’s in the hole, and the flop comes 8,- 9-, 10

of clubs. Brunson writes:

At first you’re going to like this flop, but the more you consider it, the more you

realize there’s a hailstorm full of trouble here. If someone’s holding J Q, you need

to make a full house or four-of-a-kind to win. The same is true if someone has

two clubs. Also, you’d better worry about just one other club falling on fifth or

sixth street and about someone having three 9’s, or three 10’s. All this spells

caution. (Brunson, p. 113)

Because of the availability heuristic, we can easily focus on what a great hand we have,

overlooking the very real, but less readily imaginable, possibility that others may have

even stronger ones.

7

The Fundamental Attribution Error

I am firm; you are stubborn; he is pigheaded.

—Bertrand Russell

Critical thinking requires intellectual integrity, and intellectual integrity demands that we

hold ourselves to the same standards to which we hold others. This isn’t easy, however.,

Pfor research shows that people have a strong disposition to (1) take credit for their own

successes while blaming external, uncontrollable factors for their failures, and (2)

overestimate the role of internal, controllable factors in explaining the behavior of others.

A basketball coach, for example, might explain his successes as due to his own brilliant

coaching, rationalize his failures as due to bad officiating, and attribute other teams’ poor

records to their lack of discipline and hard work. Social scientists call this biased double

standard the “fundamental attribution error.” 7

The fundamental attribution error comes into play in poker mainly in the way

personal successes and failures are attributed to “luck” or “skill.” When players win big,

they tend to attribute this to their own skillful play. When they lose big, they tend to

blame bad breaks or other factors outside their control. It’s hard to think objectively

about our successes and failures, but in poker, as in the philosophy, “Know thyself” is the

beginning of wisdom. If you lose consistently to the same bunch of guys, most of whom

7 For good discussions, see Plous, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, pp. 174-88; David A.

Levy, Tools of Critical Thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology (Needham Heights, MA, Allyn and Bacon,

1997), pp. 83-89.



8

couldn’t figure out a 15% tip on a bar tab to save their lives, “bad luck” probably isn’t to

blame.

Loss Aversion

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

—Proverb

Talk-show host Ellen DeGeneris has a funny line about the bags of peanuts served on

airplanes. Why is it, she asks, that we look forward to getting those peanuts with such

greedy anticipation when most of us would likely say “No thanks” if offered the same

bag as a free sample on the street? Answer: the cognitive bias psychologists call loss

aversion.

Loss aversion is the tendency of people to prefer avoiding losses rather than

acquiring gains. If we think that something is ours, that we’re entitled to it, we tend to

value it more than we would if it was merely something that we might come to acquire.

That’s why marketing gimmicks like free trial offers and buy-now-pay-later deals work;

that’s why we keep sending the same bums back to Congress (as bad as he isthey are, the

other guy jokers could be even worse); and that’s why we greedily cherish our little bags

of airplane peanuts (“they’re ours dammit; we paid for them!”).

Problem is, our tendency to prefer avoiding losses to making gains can lead us to

do some pretty dumb things. Suppose, for instance, you have to choose between the

following gambles:



9

Alternative A: A sure gain of $1,000,000

Alternative B: A 10% chance of getting $2,500,000, an 89 percent chance of

getting $1,000,000, and a 1 percent chance of getting $0.

Which would you choose?

Most people prefer the sure gain of $1,000,000 even though the expected value of

Alternative B is $140,000 higher.8 D’oh!

Poker players afflicted with a bad case of loss aversion tend to become “rocks,”

that is, tight-passive players who fold hand after hand, bet cautiously, and in general play

very conservatively. Their motto is: “Better to be content with small gains rather than risk

big losses.” In the long run, however, such a strategy is bound to increase losses. As Alan

Schoonmaker, author of The Psychology of Poker, points out, “nearly all successful

professionals are both tight and selectively aggressive.”9 In other words, they play

conservatively until they’ve got primo cards, and then they bet to the hilt.10

To win

money over the long haul, you’ve got to win big pots. And to win big pots, you can’t be

held back by loss aversion.

Players with acute loss aversion also tend to buy into the popular poker myth that

“you should quit while you’re ahead.” Why should you? If you’re ahead, it’s because

you’re either lucky or good. If you’re lucky, there’s no reason to think your luck’s

“bound to change” (see our scintillating discussion of the gambler’s fallacy below). And

8 Plous, Psychology of Judgment and Decision Theory, p. 85. The expected value is obtained by

multiplying the probability of each possible outcome against the payoff if that outcome were to occur. As

our colleague Dan (“The Man”) Ghezzi, reminds us, however, Alternative A would be a rational choice for

people who absolutely, positively need the million bucks (for example, someone who owes large gambling

debts to a dude whose middle name is “The Fish.”). Buttoned-down academics who study these sorts of

things tend to overlook exceptions of this sort. 9 (Las Vegas: Creel, 2000), p. 19.

10 Taking care, however, not to play overly predictably.

10

if you’re good, chances are you’ll win some more. So if the poker’s good, you’re feeling

sharp, and there’s still beer in the fridge, feed the pot ‘til you drop.

Superstitious Thinking

I don’t believe in superstitions. They’re bad luck.

—Bobby Valentine

“Hey Joe, let’s go to the casino tonight.” “No way, can’t do it.” “Why not?” “It’s Friday

the 13th

, too much bad karma.” Let’s hope this dialogue isn’t a reflection of how you

decide when or how to play poker. Superstitious thinking is commonplace in our society.

It cuts across all types of behavior. Hall of Fame baseball player Wade Boggs was widely

known to eat chicken before every game. Keep in mind his career lasted 18 years and

approximately 2,400 games. That’s a lot of chicken. Baseball players are renowned for

their superstitious behaviors. OAs another example, one baseball player was known to

wear the same jock strap for four years in a row because he thought it brought him good

luck.11

You also may be familiar with stories of professional athletes who must have a

certain jersey number to play, or with craps players who must blow on the dice before the

roll, or supervisors who must wear their “lucky” tie before giving any big presentation at

work. From the time we are kids we are bombarded with old wives’ tales and

superstitions that get passed on from generation to generation. Step on a crack and you’ll

break your mother’s back. Break a mirror and you’ll have seven years of bad luck. This is

the Cubs’ year.

11

Amanda Shank, “Superstitious Players Tend to Wear Same Undergarments for Long, Long Time,” USA

Today, April 27, 2005. But inquiring minds want to know: Was he also lucky with the ladies?



11

Superstitious thinking occurs when a person forms an irrational belief resulting

from ignorance, fear, or belief in magical causes. “I can’t believe I was the big winner at

cards last night. I never beat these guys. It must be this lucky shirt I was wearing. From

now on I’m always going to wear it when I play cards.” Games in which chance can play

a significant role, like poker, tend to produce more superstitious thinking than other

challenges that are based primarily on one’s skills and motivation, such as driving a car

or trying to open a beer bottle without showing your cards. Gamblers in general are

known for various types of superstitions, such as lucky numbers or wearing a certain

article of clothing. The seasoned poker player understands the role that luck can play in

poker rather than looking for causes of good or bad fortune.

Doyle Brunson tells a funny story that illustrates the dangers of superstitious

thinking. He describes a young poker player from Canada named Alexander who came to

Vegas with $200,000. He got upset when anyone called him as “Alex” because he

thought it brought him bad luck. He wore a shirt that “had pockets everywhere: little

pockets, giant pockets, pockets made out of felt and pockets made out of paper!”

(Brunson, p. 66). Every time he saw a poker hand he liked (whether it was his or another

player at the table) he would rip off a pocket. He believed that if he ripped off a pocket,

those hands would come back to him sooner or later. Not surprisingly, he left Vegas a lot

poorer than he came. So please, next time you play poker, leave your lucky underwear (or

jock strap) at home, and play smart.

The Gambler’s Fallacy

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Formatted: Left, Indent: First line: 0"

12

—Joseph Stalin

Let’s say you take a quarter out of your pocket and flip it. It comes up heads. You flip it

three more times, and each time it comes up heads. Before you flip it a fifth time you ask

your friend to predict the next flip. What do you think he’ll say? What would you say?

Most people will predict tails. When you ask people why tails, the typical response is that

tails is “due” to come up. “After four heads in a row, the odds are way in favor of a tails

coming up.” This answer is an example of the gambler’s fallacy. People incorrectly

believe that the odds change because of the previous events. In flipping a coin, previous

flips have no effect on the next flip. The odds remain at 50-:50 (assuming the coin is

fair). Gamblers too often allow prior independent events to affect their betting on future

events, which is why this cognitive error was named the gambler’s fallacy.

The gambler’s fallacy extends to other arenas as well. For example, in basketball

imagine a player who is a career 70% free throw shooter and has gone 5 for 5 from the

line so far. He goes to the line again. You might hear the TV commentator say he is due

to miss this one, which implies that he is more likely to miss his next free throw rather

than make it. Wrong! The odds say he will probably make it (70% chance he will make

the shot). Another example of this error occurs in baseball, particularly when a batter is

struggling in a game. A .300 hitter who is 0 for 4 for the day comes to the plate in the

ninth inning. You may hear people say that the manager shouldn’t pinch-hit for him

because he is due for a hit. In reality, the odds of him getting a hit haven’t changed

because of his 0 for 4 performance so far.

Formatted: Left, Indent: First line: 0"

13

In terms of poker, if you are holding a pair after the flopplaying 5-card draw and

you are dealt a pair, what are your odds of getting three of a kind by drawing three more

cardson the turn or the river? Experienced poker players may know that the answer is

slightly above below 10%. Knowing this statistic should be helpful in playing this game.

However, knowing this percentage can also lead to committing the gambler’s fallacy.

You’ve been playing 5-card draw all night with your buddies. For the last several hands

you’ve been dealt a pair but so far you haven’t been able to land trips after the flop on the

draw. On the next deal you get a pair of 10’stens. You decide that you are long overdue

for the trips, so before the draw turn you bet high. You have just committed the gambler’s

fallacy and most likely you won’t get the third 10ten that you are desperately hoping for.

In playing poker knowing the odds of various poker hands can be a strategic advantage

over your opponents. However, if you believe these odds change over the course of the

night, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Better Poker Through Better Psychology

Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!

—Sigmund (“Vienna Dolly”) Freud

Good poker players know odds, strategy, and how to read faces. Great players know, in

addition, that they are human, and thus subject to all the frailties to which human flesh is

heir. Among these frailties is the tendency to fall prey to the seven critical thinking errors

discussed in this chapter. As research has shown, these errors are both pervasive and

deeply rooted in basic human emotions, drives, and cognitive biases. Smart poker players

need to understand and avoid these errors. And please, no wine coolers.

don't play on tilt! avoiding seven costly critical thinking errors in poker

Documents