Monday, May 14, 2012

Motion Creates Emotion

Every hand of poker is a series of risk/reward decisions. Players cannot always figure out what is in their best interest. Money and risk are abstract, complex things. We act less rationally, less logically, and more emotionally when playing cards. When your left brain gets good at telling your right brain what to do, you even the score, and gain a competitive advatage.

Paper or Plastic? Live Cash game chips are not tournament chips! There is a difference between gambling and betting. Live "brick/click and mortar"poker is a game of money played with cards.

Yet, we tend to throw good money after bad---the sunk-cost fallacy is a common mental mistake. Just because we’ve spent money to see a flop doesn’t mean we should continue to spend money on it. It doesn’t even mean we should continue to play the hand . What matters is the hands ’s future value(flop-turn-river) to us, not how much we’ve “spent” on it.

The ability to take a small loss to avoid a big one is the hallmark of smart poker player. It's also the sign of a great investor. Great poker players lay down great hands. You have to reframe the situation and retrain your mind. In other words, you have to learn to love to take losses to be a long-term winner. Just like no one hand is going to make or break you, it is about exceling, about process, not results.

As in real estate, location counts-In Holdem it is position, position, position. The forced blind small bet is where most people call, even a riase, because they have money already in the pot. When you're in position, however, you have the luxury of getting the last action, when you're not you don't. It is that simple-yet common sense is not so common,e specially in the small blind.

Most people know hand values and preflop strategy, but post flop is where a bit of behavioral financing comes in: or The Power of Mind over Money. It is rooted in mental bias. It is our own idiosyncratic way to distort our map of reality. Just as the menu is not the meal, this map is not the territory--because everyone experiences gambling differently


I, for one, am guilty of the House Money Effect, with chip overload of playing loose with their money--actually it is ALL my money once won!

Poker is not a form of gambling---but gambling is a form of poker

Most wall street theories and models assume “investors” are rational decision makers who act in their own best interests. But, in reality, our investment brain often drives us to do things that are quite illogical, but make perfect emotional sense.

Poker's outward simplicity-The ability to affect the outcome is present, unlike roulette. If no one sees any cards, the cards did not play a role in the outcome. Thus, the outcome was determined by the betting of the players, clearly a process of skill or strategy.

Ipod Shuffle Mode-Delusions of Reference

Poker's patterns are not our own. Poker is more reflective of real-life "wild" randomness because that game has major strategic and tactical components to it that is mashed up with the quasi-dealer element of a shuffled deck. Makes me think of the ipod shuffle mode----the shuffle mode has an algorithm that randomizes the selection of songs that your IPod can select. Any 'pattern' you discern from what songs your IPod selects is illusory. Just because you lost five times in a row, doesn’t mean you are “due” to win one.

Any strongly held belief that random events, objects, behaviors of others, etc., have a particular and unusual significance to oneself or ones play or game is purely incidental. The Rabbit's foot-good luck? Not for the rabbit. More than that, the in to your sane, "ruunning bad" or "running good", that it reflect your situation or , in fact, communicates about you or your "predicaments" is usually accidental in nature- so reading too much into it is counter productive. Usually if things are really bad, there are probably leaks in your game-and the quest for "good luck" is usually in these questions:

1.) How much of your bad run is your fault? Anyalsis may be paralysis but the meaning of a poker life--is get one! and the unexamined poker life is not worth living! Assign blame-- Do you find yourself saying "should" I shouda raised, I shoulda folded that. Be honest




2.) Do you need to step down in limits? Money can't buy happiness but it can buy chips, which is kinda the same thing, and you can't play poker without money! It's better to step down voluntarily to a game you can crush than to be forced to because you lost all your bankroll playing above your head on a bad run

3.) Are you playing the right game? Without the right game, the right people don't show up. Game selection-(e.g. limit, no-limit sit-and-go tourneys, etc.) and also to choosing the right tables. The urge to "get back" when losing repeatedly can cloud your vision, leaving you stuck at an unprofitable table when there are plenty of loose, crushable games to choose from. Change Tables!

4.) Do you need to take a break? Well, I was joking the other day with my sister Kathy --You know why I won so much money the other night...It's like the Indian's and the Rain Dance. The reason it works---they never stopped dancing! I never stop playing poker! On the other hand , a broken clock is right twice a day---and because of the huge luck factor in poker, you can win lots of pots(not always chips). Clearing your head, getting away fromt eh game is not only useful, it is mandatory every once in a while.




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