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,
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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—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.
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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.