131 - Poker Shrink

The Poker Shrink Volume 1 Too Much
Poker is no Good
August 13, 2006, Dr. Tim Lavalli
The 2006 World Series of Poker is forty-seven days

long. If you happen to be WSOP staff it's even longer. Some media jobs do not include days off
and for the players it can literally be more than six weeks of playing poker every, single day. Is
it any wonder that along about the end of week six a massive, pervasive clinical depression
sets in to all corners of the poker community?
The first day of the Series there is nothing but good thoughts, grand resolve and high hopes.
But a month or more later the reality is that less than forty players have 2006 WSOP bracelets
on their arms. Hundreds of recognizable professional players have exactly zero money finishes
and dozens more have some cash but no final tables and no championship. The dealers are
tired, the staff is cranky and overworked; the media, well these folks tend to work on the edge
to begin with, so it's no surprise that more and more harsh thoughts and words are
exchanged.
The number of floor calls seems to go up everyday, more player penalties are given, more
disputes at the registration window, the line grows at the player complaint desk, and I even
witnessed a nasty argument over cold French Fries in the Poker Kitchen. What is going on
here? Has this become the Weird Series of Paranoia?
Well, a group diagnosis is quite simple. A large group of people have been repeating the same
activities day after day after day for weeks on end. Over 90% of the one critical sub-segment
of this community (the players) is guaranteed to have a bad result every single day. This
result means not only the loss of money and therefore a negative salary but also the non-
attainment of their goals and even their dreams. Players are the dominant group in this micro
society and as a whole they will always have a bad result to cope with. Add to that the
complete lack of a support system for most of the players and is it any wonder that everyone
seems to be a bit out of sorts.
There - I have just diagnosed nine or ten thousand people as clinically depressed. Now clearly
this is not the case, there are many players and staff who are doing just fine and it is
interesting and perhaps informative to see just how these individuals are coping with the
depths of the World Series experience.
The high functioning sub-group who actually enjoy the whole Series experience has several
traits in common. First, they do not live poker 24/7; they leave the grounds of the Rio Suites
Hotel and Casino. They interact with people outside of the poker community and when they
are with members of this community they actually talk about things other then poker. They
generally eat well, exercise, get adequate sleep and limit their consumption of alcohol and
drugs. In other words, those who are not depressed put themselves and their well-being
ahead of the game of poker, whether that is their job or their hobby.
Depression strikes many people. Two of the most common manageable causes are job stress
and money stress. If your job is poker and your livelihood comes from poker winnings. You
just might be subject to job related depression.
Many people experiencing depression feel like they have no energy and can't concentrate.
Others feel irritable all the time for no apparent reason. These symptoms tend to build over
several weeks. Coping with even low-level depression is critical because it affects your work
and if your work is playing poker, a spiral of depression can be the ultimate "tilt" to your
game.
The very first question I ask a player who is experiencing any symptoms is: "Tell me what you
are doing besides playing poker?"
Many players move into the Rio for the duration of the World Series. They live here, they play
here, they eat here and they only go off-site to attend poker functions or to play poker at
another cardroom in town. Most days during the Series it's over 105 degrees in Las Vegas, so
there is a perfect excuse not to take a walk or get out in nature. Exercise is available in the
many hotel gyms and spas but "they are always so crowded." Finding healthy food is really
only a minor challenge these days but the fast food, fried food option is ever present and, of
course, drinks are free in any card room you choose to play.
Players get in a cycle of all poker all the time, which means in tournament poker, they have a
negative expectation of something like 91% every time they go to work. No wonder some
people are depressed after a month of this relentless series of tournament action. Depression
can hurt your game and begin a long, downward spiral that can affect every aspect of your
life. The cure is just outside the card room, the key is you have to get up and walk outside.
The Poker Shrink, Volume 2 Psychology at
the Table
I did a little psychological study at the just

completed 2006 World Series of Poker. This was just my own little inquiry but the results
surprised me so much that I thought I would share them with you. I wanted to ask winners of
events about psychology and poker. I used two key questions:
"Do you use psychology in your game?"
"Specifically how did you use psychology in your WSOP win?"
Logistically getting an interview with a WSOP bracelet winner can be difficult. After a win, not
only are they immediately pounced upon by official photographers and WSOP media staff but
they also have the ESPN cameras to deal with and then they have the small matter of getting
paid. So a bracelet winner is basically inaccessible for about two hours after their win and then
usually they would like to spend some time with friends and family. Since most final tables end
well after midnight, the winner is often just plain tired.
So I made it a practice to try to catch the champion the day after their win and I also
supplemented the interview pool with winners of the Second Chance events run each evening
at the WSOP. All together I was able to get interviews with 24 first place finishers; 12 bracelet
winners and 12 second chance winners. If I was not able to locate a champion within 24 hours
of their win, I decided the "How did you use psychology" question would not get a fresh
answer, so I let them go. I must admit I was surprised by the responses I received.
In all, 23 of the 24 champions responded with immediate "Yes!" answers to the question: 'Do
you use psychology in you game?' But most interesting may be the one player who said no. He
told me that he did not read books on poker and played the way he learned at home as a
youth and used what he had learned at the tables, no psychology, no system, no game plan.
Then he went on to describe how whenever he ran a successful bluff to break out of a run of
bad cards; he would always say while mucking his bluff: "It's about time I got some cards." He
said he always liked to give a misleading comment on bluffs or on monster hands he did not
show. He felt this put his opponents off any reads they were making on him. Now I don't know
about you but that tactic certainly qualifies under my definition of psychology.
The other players all agreed immediately that psychology was part of their game. Here are
what I thought were some great of the examples among the many they gave me in response
to the question: 'How did you use psychology in your WSOP win?'
Player A. This bracelet winner got moved to a table on Day One that he knew would break
very soon. At best he would get two rounds of blinds before moving to yet another table.
On the first hand he got a lot of his chips in with a top pair and flush draw only to find himself
out-kicked and drawing dead to the nut flush. He hit a runner, runner boat for the monster
suck-out. His opponent went on a major tilt. A few hands later our bracelet winner hit another
big suck-out and then hit a third before the table broke. Those he tells me were his only big
come-from-behind hands in the entire tournament until late in Day Three just as they got to
the final 27 players, he is reseated again with the player he had made the runner, runner boat
against two days earlier. On the very first hand, he has awful odds to a hand but he is up
against a short stack and "that" first day player has just joined the table. He thought was:
"whether I make the hand or not, I can reinforce my loose image against this one player and
dominate him if I get just one opportunity." He makes the play, does get the suck-out win,
knocks the short stack out and eventually at the short-handed Final Table springs the trap on
the first player to take 90% of his stack. That hand, he told me, was what won the bracelet.
Player B. This bracelet winner told me that he rehearsed four "false tells" the night before the
final table. One with chips, one with hand gestures, one voice and one with the use of time. He
used them all for the first two levels at the final table and then changed up one at a time. He
told me he did this because the three final table bubbles (10th, 11th and 12th) all were busted
after giving off obvious tells and he felt several of the other eight final table players were using
reads heavily to direct their game.
Player C. This is my favorite from a Second Chance event winner, who was playing in his first
live tournament and obviously first final table, first money finish etc. He was, by his own
admission, nervous as "a cat in a room full of rocking chairs." So he kept up a constant
conversation with his two buddies on the rail and the players at the table, and the dealer, the
floor, the cocktail waitress. He said he was so nervous that if he didn't talk, he thought he
might stop breathing. I got to watch this final table; I and everyone else thought this guy was
calm to the point of being disinterested. He would talk while in a hand, talk before the flop,
after the turn and even when he got bad beat. Fear qualifies as psychology too!
The Poker Shrink, Vol 3 - The 'Friendly' Home
Game
It's Friday night, the pretzels are in the bowl, the

beer is on the ice. You have two new decks of cards, Dave is bringing his ammunition box full
of those heavy clay chips and all of the wives and girlfriends are somewhere else (except
Leslie who plays golf from the Men's tees and generally goes home after from these games a
tad richer). Just like in thousands of other basements, rec. rooms and garages across the
country, it's time for a nice friendly game of poker.
A friendly game of poker?
I have some friendly advice based on some sound psychological research. If you are a serious
or semi-serious poker player; stop playing these friendly home games immediately. Walk away
and never come back.
Why?
Because the friendly home game can cost you lots of money.
Here's how.
See if this sounds familiar. You start the game after you have traded kid stories, work stories
and talked about the Tigers or Devil Rays or Seahawks. The beers come out, except for those
guys who have been on the wagon for a decade or more, and the games begin. Fifty cent/a
buck stakes; maybe $1 & $2. Even though John will deal Seven Card high all night, the other
games start fairly soon: Black Mariah, Follow the Queen, Spit-in-the-Ocean, Six Card Push-Pull
with a Shuck at the End for a Buck (my olde favourite).
If you fall asleep and call every hand other hand at random you might lose a hundred bucks
until the "burn" games start around midnight. This is a friendly home game that you have
played off and on for years with guys (and Leslie) you went to high school with, you golf with,
were in the Men's Group at church with. This is actually fun and relaxing and a good way to
harmlessly blow off some steam and enjoy a night away from the work and family life. It's fun.
It's harmless.
Unless you are a serious poker player.
The problem is that you have trained yourself to make correct odds bets in a cash game or
tournament setting and now you are going to "play for fun" you are going to "make the crying
call for the last buck" you are playing "friendly." I am telling you those loose-friendly calls are
going to creep into your real game and cost you money.
This is an old sports psychology axiom about muscle memory. Simply stated you do not train
against your best stroke. Tennis player, golfers, basketball players all get into a "groove" and
know that is where they want to be. Why would you then purposely play outside your optimal
game?
Fuzzy Zoeller tells the story of playing a charity event with three other pros and as part of the
celebrity entertainment factor, the pros all played with no woods and opposite handed wedges.
One of the other pros, whose name you will no longer remember, lost his entire short game
after 18 holes with a lefty pitching wedge, and was never heard from again.
Could that be true for poker, you ask? Let's ask the professionals.
Recently I was at a Charity Poker event with some of the biggest names in tournament poker.
There were several bracelets in attendance and a goodly handful of Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet and
Doyle's Room professionals scattered around the room. Most of the pros were either playing
their hands blind or looking at just one card or signing autographs and not playing their cards
at all. Yes, they were having fun and yes every pro who made the money donated their
winnings. So, they were just joking around and having fun for a good cause, right?
Well, I asked. Sure they all said it's for charity, until one of my friends took me aside and said:
"You know that's not the only reason we don't play these cards. You see we are just like
everyone else, if we play we play to win but if we play and don't play to win, don't play to trap
the other charity guests or don't read tells or do any of the things we do in a real game, then
we can lose our edge."
When I then asked a few more professionals if that was indeed the case, they all agreed.
You don't ask a professional to play down, to do less, to ease up. Not in poker, not in flying
planes or driving race cars. When you are fine tuned to high level of competition, you don't
run a race in second gear.
"Why do you think we play Chinese Poker on the sidelines of all the events? You can still
gamble, you can still bet, but you can turn off the reads and the moves and the strategy."
These final words from a two time WSOP bracelet winner:
"Don't ever do for fun, what you do for a living, it dulls the edge."
Pass the Pretzels. Deuces and One-Eyed Jacks are wild!

The Poker Shrink, Vol 4 - Anxiety and Fear
September 01, 2006, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Last night I heard a yelp from the kitchen, I went

to discover my significant other, the cat and a tiny grey rodent in a frozen mnage a mouse
scene. I dropped a dish towel on the mouse and transported Mickey outside (we do catch &
release at my house).
Later, my lovely "other" said: "I can't believe I was afraid of a mouse."
Well, she wasn't. You are afraid in a war zone or when you come around a curve on a rainy
dark night and there is a semi-tractor trailer in your lane. She did have some anxiety over the
rodentia commonalus in the kitchen and its impending doom in the jaws of our domesticated
tiger.
But how many times have you heard or said: "I was afraid of his big stack" or "I was afraid of
that flush draw on the board." Now fairly obviously we do not experience "real" fear at the
poker table. However, whether we are talking anxiety, trepidation, angst, apprehension,
consternation, distress, doubt, faintheartedness, jitters, misgivings, suspicion, timidity, unease
or worry; we are talking about thoughts feelings and emotions that can and probably should
affect your poker game.
Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, whether it be a real risk or an

imagined danger. Fear also can be described as a feeling of extreme dislike towards certain
conditions, objects, people, or situations such as: fear of heights, fear of snakes, fear of a
one-outer on the river, etc.
For those who are ready to say: "I am never afraid at the poker table." Let me ask you to
imagine this situation. After the flop you make a sizeable bet on a semi-bluff. You haven't got
a made hand but you clearly have outs, lots of outs and outs to a big hand. Just as your raise
hits the table, the player to your left says: "All-in!"
Feel that? Come on..Feel that?
Whatever you want to call that feeling that is what we are talking about here. Call it fear. Call
it unease or dis-ease. Call it what you like, it happens at the table and you should know how
to deal with it because that feeling can help your game or cost you all your chips. Call
anything you like, just don't be afraid of using it to win.
Fearing objects or contexts can be learned; in animals we call this fear conditioning. Humans
are animals and we learn fear, we learn to be anxious in certain situations when confronted
with certain stimuli or events. We can also unlearn fears that we have been conditioned in our
life to have. You are holding pocket Kings, on the flop an Ace hits. What do you fear? Well the
Ace, of course. But if you don't lead out with a bet holding Kings then won't the other player
bet to confirm your worst fears? And won't a good player always bet into an Ace flop when
they see you check-fold to that bet? Replace that fear of the Ace with a better more profitable
fear: I fear that no one will call my pre-flop raise and I will only win the blinds with my Pocket
Kings.
Fear of success and fear of failure also come into play at the poker table. Fear of failure,
includes doubts about your own worthiness for success and/or fears of what success will bring.
Want evidence that everyone doesn't really want to win.
Jamie Gold, 2006 World Series of Poker No Limit Hold 'em Champ said during the final days of
the Series that he was terrified of winning--not because of the twelve million dollar prize but
because he fears the fame that a victory will bring. In an interview with ESPN.com, Gold
explained the idea of instant celebrity was so overwhelming that he considered dumping his
chips to finish second.
"I don't want it,'' Gold said, "I've seen what it's done to other people."
Say what you will about Mr. Gold. Fear of success and fear of failure and just outright fear
haunt every table in every poker room on the planet. Trust me; I am really afraid it's true.
I'll have more on fear and anxiety in my next article, when we deal with how your fears can
give off costly tells at the table.
The Poker Shrink, Volume 5 - Responses to
Fear
I want to thank several readers who wrote me

about last week's article on 'Fear at the Tables'. Apparently I had played down actual fear a bit
too much for some poker players. Fear or anxiety is a real occurrence will playing poker and
this week I will address the primary effects those psychological states can have on your play
and your presence at the table.
Its worth noting that my own reluctance to call mild anxiety during a poker game actual fear is
a personal trait that I myself have cultivated when playing poker. I am not afraid at the tables,
I do not experience the increased heart rate when I make a big bluff or flop a monster. But
that is learned behavior. I recall how I felt the first time I shoved over 100,000 chips into a pot
on a stone cold bluff; I thought my heart would jump out of my chest, hit the table and
bounce over to my opponent beating out: "Bluff! Bluff! Bluff!"
Now, years later, and with a good deal of psychological training I mostly register
somewhere between disinterested and asleep at the tables but that is a poker behavior that
serves me well. I only have increased heart rate and agitated behavior when a certain red
head walks into the card room. As a first step in managing your own table fear, you need to
notice your own reactions to fear, anxiety and cocktail waitresses and learn either to control
those reactions or use them to your advantage.
Let's take a look at the some of the physical and psychological reactions to fear and anxiety.
Increased heart rate is most common physical reaction to stress, fear, happiness, a loud noise,
watching your favorite team on TV, or meeting a loved one at the airport. Increased heart rate
supplies more oxygen to the brain and other organs and prepares you for any eventuality;
fight, flight or straight flush draw.
We have all heard of the "Fight or Flight" stimulus response, which supposedly links back to
the days when we were cavemen/cavewomen. There is no reason to link increased heart rate
just to our neanderthal days. We are just as likely to need more oxygen as Fred Flintstone
was. The key at the poker table is to notice if you have this reaction only when you bluff or
only when you hit a big hand. If it's one or the other then you need to do something to
prevent giving off a tell. If your heart starts banging at the back of your ribs anytime you are
in a big hand bluff or monster, then don't worry about it. A tell needs to mean something
specific the others players can get a read on.
Heart rate registers in many physical and psychological ways. The most common readable tell
are the actual veins standing out on your forehead or neck. Followed by increased in
respiration, rapid eye movement and/or pupil dilation. Next, the tension produced by fear or
anxiety can cause nervous movements, most often with the hands or an overall increase in
what might be called fidgeting or muscle flexing. The increased circulation causes us to "wake-
up" just a bit and we then want to move or talk. we have nervous hands. If you "know" you
will fold your bluff to a reraise or that you will push all-in with your made hand then you may
actually appear calm - even too calm, which can also be a tell.
The first step, again, is knowing what you do when under stress while playing. Pay attention to
your own reactions when next at the table. Next week, we will cover more of the most
common physical tells that are triggered by stress, anxiety and fear.
The Poker Shrink: Volume 6 - Controlling Your
Fear at the Poker Table
Let's finish our focus on fear and anxiety at the

poker table by remembering that most of the physical and psychological changes associated
with fear are involuntary. You don't consciously increase your heart rate; you don't cause your
face to flush when you hit the perfect card on the river. However, most involuntary reactions
we have are to a great extent controllable with practice and experience. Physical changes
happen including flexing of muscles, chest expansion due to increased breathing which in turn
is due to palpitating heart rate, eyes dilate and eyelids narrow. In poker, when someone has a
big hand they are typically ready for confrontation and can exhibit some of these
characteristics; this is the "fight" response. During a bluff, you might expect a player to be
anxious, but if they intend to fold if re-raised they may look quite calm, this is the "flight"
response.
Here are the keys to look for in opponents and the responses to learn to control in your
own game.
1. Face and Eyes:
Eyes may be the window to the soul but sunglasses conceal most ocular reactions. So instead,
look at your opponent's entire face. The much talked about "poker face" is not only difficult to
learn to execute; it often vanishes even in the best of players during moments of high stress.
Talking to an opponent will often shatter their calm facial expression; if it was that fragile,
what does that tell you about their hand?
Facial recognition software breaks down the common human facial expressions into
manageable and readable components. You know what sadness looks like and you know what
nervousness looks like. If you're not sure, google facial expressions and get yourself some
basic knowledge. Also even the sunglass protected eyes cannot cover the turning of the head
to look away from the flop or the looking down at the stack or hole cards. Stress, anxiety and
fear can make a player look away from the big flop and down to their chips before they have
consciously decided to bet. The signs are very subtle both in other players and in you.
2. The Hands:
On the other hand (sorry) most players who have nearly perfected the poker face have no
control over their hands. Not only do they shake or nervously scratch, often players will move
their hands in completely different ways with a hand as opposed to when they are drawing of
bluffing. Be careful, however, of hands shaking; as with most physical manifestations of stress
and fear only 'most' people tremble when afraid but a large subset trembles with anticipation
of the big hand. You need to pick up the reaction and then have validation of its meaning.
Most importantly don't assume because your hands shake when you are afraid that this is true
for everyone. Oh and one more thing, one of the most difficult false tells to give out is
trembling hands, it is very hard to tremble on command. Go ahead try it.
3. Complete Body Posture.
Your eyes are a component of your face. Your hands are a part of your arm. Your eyes, hands,
face and everything else a player can see about you at the table are parts of your body. If you
want to take control of your fear as it gives off tells to others players, take control of your
body. There are two ways to do this. First, you have to be aware of what you are doing at the
table, which means you need a buddy or two to sweat you. You can't 'read' yourself. Once they
give you some tips on your potential tells, I suggest a holistic approach. Deal with the
psychological reactions to fear and stress by recognizing them and deal with the physical
manifestations by relaxing your entire body. It is much easier to relax yourself than to attempt
to only lower your heart rate or to slow your nervous eyes.
Some obvious changes in posture based on their cards are shoulders slumping or the opposite
sitting up straighter. Then there is the lean forward, which usually means bluff and the easy
lean back, which indicates strength. But these are common body reactions to fear and elation,
lots of players know this, so they are common false tells.
The best way to overcome reactions to fear at the table is really quite simple. Play more. The
more often you encounter big hands, the more often you run risky bluffs, the more routine
they become for you, the less stressful they are to you and the less your mind and body react
to the anxiety. Experience, in this case, truly is the best teacher.
The Poker Shrink, Volume Seven What is
Poker Psychology, Part One
This begins a series of articles on Psychology and

Poker. In this first article we explore two basic questions: What is Psychology? & What is Poker
Psychology? Future articles will ask and answer the opposite question: What is not Poker
Psychology and then we will take a few weeks to consider reverse psychology and its use at
the poker table.
So we begin with a simple question: What is Psychology? Too often words and their meaning
get generalized in everyday usage. Xerox is the example will always use as the example, not
every machine is a Xerox but we all say: "Xerox that report" instead of "copy those papers".
Psychology is one of those terms. Let's be very specific about what psychology is and is not.
For a good definition of just about anything I always turn to the second best thing about the
internet: Wikipedia.
"Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of the human mind, brain,
and behavior."
The key word here is behavior. In psychology and in particular poker psychology we are
attempting to mask, hide or give misinformation about our own behavior; while, at the same
time, precisely interpreting the behavior of our opponents. Also whenever you see the words
"mind" or "brain" used in a psychological context remember the "body" is included in these
general terms. Psychological reactions are those of the mind, brain, body and, if you will, heart
and soul. The complete complex of human personality is the field of psychology and is the set
of factors we are attempting to "read" when we employ poker psychology.
More from Wikipedia:
"Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human
activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness."
Here is where poker psychology hits the wall of our pathologized modern culture. If you think
you have a gambling problem, there is an 800 number on the wall of every casino and at the
bottom of every internet gambling site. We are not talking about mental illness or any other
similar problems here, unless it is the problem of how to get that calling station in seat four to
fold to your opening raise with pocket Jacks. We are going to talk about "problems of daily
lives" only insofar as those problems have to do with the psychology of playing winning poker.
Poker is not an illness, despite what some politicians in congress would have you believe and
adults have every right to play poker or bet on a horseshoe match if that is what they wish to
do.
Finally, Wikipedia finishes up with this:
"Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking
to explain the mental processes and behavior of individuals."
If we could only see into our individual opponents mind and heart we would know how they
intend to behave on each hand. Since we can't quite do that, how do we do the next best
thing and approximate their behavior to predict it and to recognize it when it happens? The
answer lies not in knowing each individual opponent but rather in recognizing that there is a
finite set of emotions, thoughts, feelings and reactions available to each of us in any situation.
When we think about poker the actions really are limited to fold, bet, raise, check. The intent
of poker psychology is to gain information about your opponent mental process when they
take one of these very simple actions. The other side of the chip is to limit the information you
give out when you bet, check or raise and even to distort that information to your advantage.
Here is this week's assignment. The 2006 WSOP is running right now nearly 24/7 on ESPN.
When you watch try to get a read on the players in any hand not base on what Lon or Norman
are saying but on how the player is acting and what they are saying. Sure it's more difficult
since you can see the hole cards (do you have the Final Table on tivo?) but give it a try. My
first observation: Notice how many players, after much thought, make the bad call on the
river.
Next week, more on this topic including what it is not Poker Psychology.
The Poker Shrink, Volume Eight What is
Poker Psychology, Part Two
In Part One of this series on Psychology and Poker,

I talked about the basics of what psychology is. In this article I want to come at this from a
different angle by talking about what is not poker psychology. I said last week that poker
psychology is mostly about behavior - both yours and your opponents. Using poker psychology
to better your game is about noticing the behavior of your opponents and using that
information to make more profitable decisions. Poker psychology is also about using
information to manipulate your opponents into changing their behavior to your advantage.
Finally, psychology also helps you to recognize and disguise your own behavior at the poker
table.
The most common aspect of poker that is often referred to when talking about poker
psychology is reading opponents, however, reading a player at the table is not poker
psychology. Let me explain.
Imagine you have just arrived at a neighborhood party. Just before arriving at the same party
one couple had a fight, the wife in another couple got news that her father had been taken ill
and she would be flying out in the morning to be with her dad. The husband in another pair
just finished a year long project the day before and his small company won their biggest
contract ever. And one lady had some of the best sex of her life last night, she is accompanied
at the party by her husband, whom she was not with last night.
Now are you the type of person who might pick up on any of this from just talking with these
people? Do you have a natural ability to sense emotions or mental state in others behavior,
speech or body language? If so, then you have a natural ability to read people and you have a
great advantage in learning to read poker players. Or are you the guy who doesn't know his
wife or girlfriend is upset until the cup hits the wall beside your head. Well, fortunately this
ability to read someone is a skill that can be learned whether you have the natural head start
or not. But this skill in reading players is not psychology; it is just a skill. Reading players is a
necessary poker ability in the same category as knowing pot odds and calculating your outs on
the river.
So what's the big deal with whether or not reading players is psychology or not? Well the issue
is that many players think they are reading opponents when they are only reading patterns of
play.
Seat two likes to trap and traps with his big hands but not his monster hands; he pushes hard
with his monsters. Good read. Seat seven tosses his chips in the pot on a bluff and places
them in with a made hand. Another good read but still not psychology. These reads will make
you and save you money. Using the reads to alter the game will make you a winner.
Psychology inspects the behavior of different players and using psychology allows you to
interpret and even change their behavior to your advantage. Let's look at an example with
seat two.
Our read is that seat two traps with big hands but not monsters. Traps are cheap to call down,
seat two is trying to get you to bet for him. So with your read you now psychologically
manipulate. You check along on several of his traps and when he springs it you fold and
comment: "You got that flush, huh?" or "Hit it on the river, did ya?" Small investments in small
bets and comments that appear to suggest you are unaware of the traps. Later, when you
have the nuts and seat two traps you can come over the top for all of those small bets plus the
big bet he made and often, because his "move" worked in the past, he will call you down or
push all-in with second best.
Poker Psychology is an add-on to your basic poker skill set. You first observe the behavior;
then you connect the behavior to a playing pattern and finally you use that knowledge to
manipulate the game to your advantage. Next week, more on poker psychology.
The Poker Shrink, Volume Nine What is
Poker Psychology, Part Three
October 06, 2006, Dr. Tim Lavalli
In two previous articles, I have talked about the

use of psychology in poker. We all know that deception is a big part of playing the game.
Anyone above the amateur/fish skill level also knows that giving off false information to your
opponents is also an aspect of the game. But we also know that the knowledge of false tells is
not exactly a secret. Here we enter the realm of what is often called reverse psychology.
Reverse psychology is the term that describes the outcome where advocacy of one course of
action persuades someone to do the opposite. (Wikipedia.com)
This is precisely what we are doing when we give off false tells. We anticipate that players at
the table, who are able enough to watch for tells, will see our false signals and make incorrect
interpretations of our hand. Or we actually make certainly plays during inexpensive hands to
lead players to believe we play a certain way with the hopes of using the 'planted' false
information later to win a big hand.
Both of these aspects of a solid poker repertoire fall into the category of reverse
psychology. Let's look at an example of each; first false play to plant an image of your play
that you will reverse later.
Last night I was playing a $4/$8 game at the Gold Strike in Tunica when a player I knew sat
down on my right. I knew him because I had seen him win a "bracelet" and go deep in several
other major events. So, yes I was a big surprised he was taking a seat in a $4/$8 game but he
mentioned right away that he was just killing time waiting for a NL seat to open up.
He played the first six hands dealt to him, lost five, won one on a huge suckout and showed
his cards on all six occasions. Then he pulled back a bit and in just a few hands went on a
huge rush to the tune of about $350. Everyone at the table (except me, I saw him win the
bracelet remember) but everyone else at the table was after his chips. When it was all over
and I got nine folds to my 3X raise UTG with KK; he leaned over and said:
"You know if you waste thirty or forty bucks when you first sit down, these boys will call your
pocket Kings."
A perfect and simple example of reverse psychology. Show a style of play that is not your style
and show it when everyone is looking at the new guy at the table. These early reads tend to
endure long after you have changed up your game.
The other use of reverse psychology is a bit more complicated if not more subtle. In this
example you actually give off a tell that most players at the table will recognize but you give it
in the opposite situation from what is expected. Easy example: most of us know that when a
player looks at the flop and then immediately looks away, the flop has hit him. Players
instinctively look away because they sense that staring at a flop means you like it. So if you
quickly look away from flop, some players will interpret this to mean you have hit it big.
Now here is the big problem with reverse psychology. If the other players know about false
tells they may read you as using reverse psychology; so they may read you as strong when
you falsely signal weak because they think you are a good enough players to give a false tell.
So they think that you think that they think you would think that if only they thought that
But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man
who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put
the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for
what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can
clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
No one said this was easy. Next week, some final words on psychology, reverse psychology
and poker.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 10 - Overreaction &
Under Reaction to the Internet Gaming Bill
How many times have you seen someone yelling at

their husband or girlfriend or kids and thought: "He's nuts." or "That woman is crazy." We all
tend to identify and label behavior that is "too" loud or "too" bizarre or "too" anything. You see
we all have a fairly uniform definition of what is normal and therefore what is abnormal. The
overwhelming number of people are normal and not mentally deranged but we all sometimes
act outside the norm.
"It was a crazy day."
"I just go nuts when I hear talk like that."
Now we don't actually meant that we, ourselves, are clinically mentally disturbed, well we
don't mean that most of the time. But sometimes there are those events where a whole lot of
us or a whole subset of us just get a bit crazy at the same time and often for the same reason.
The Internet Gaming Bill passed by the U.S. Congress was one of those times for poker
players. There were two extreme reactions to the passage of the bill and both exhibit
behaviors that at least some of us, might want to reconsider.
The first reaction should be familiar to anyone reading this article, the world wide web went
nuts! Forums, blogs, websites just freaked out over the both the passage of the bill and the
late night political maneuvering that brought it to a vote. During that first weekend I spent
several hours each night lurking in various online card rooms reading table chat on the
Gaming Bill and invariably the reaction was vociferous, unanimous and in most cases had little
or nothing to do with what the legislation was actually about. Once again "we" were using the
faceless internet to go collectively "nuts" with very little information and even less reasoned,
measured consideration of the actual facts.
I happened to be in Tunica, Mississippi when the Internet Gaming legislation passed; so I also
got to listen to a fair amount of table talk in live games and tournaments. An informal survey
of all sources had the "misinformation factor" on the legislation at well over 90%. However, to
be fair there were some well reasoned analysis and commentary out there also.
The psychological question is: why do we react like this? The answer quite simply is that
human beings are not fond of change and, in particular, not fond of change that reduces our
options or current patterns of behavior. The scientific word for "everything just fine" is
homeostasis. In psychological terms homeostasis means a state of psychological equilibrium
obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated. You want to play poker
online; you play poker online. You want to play poker online; you can't play! Homeostasis
disrupted and the subject reacts. But in this case the situation was: You want to play poker
online; Congress passes a law that might prevent that and you ("we") go nuts!
This is an inappropriate emotional reaction to an event that may or may not have future
consequences and yet the reaction is immediate, emotional and driven by misinformation. I
would suggest that such a response is not only inappropriate but is not the cool, calm,
measured response one would wish to cultivate in order to play top notch poker. The old poker
axiom to remember here is: "Leave your emotions at the door."
However, overreaction to change is not the only psychological syndrome in play around the
Internet Gaming Law. Just as strange and equally questionable is an under reaction to change,
threat or trauma. Some of the online poker sites went just a bit crazy, in fact, as you know
several had closed the accounts of U.S. players even before the legislation passed. On the
other side of the aisle, several sites made strong statements about remaining open to U.S.
players. However, as a group the online poker sites have done nearly nothing to lobby
Congress on behalf of their business model. One has to wonder with the political realities of
21st century American politics why the online sites took such a passive approach to this threat
to their companies and their futures. Overreaction in this case caused some sleepless nights
for many players and those associated with the many small businesses that are part of the
online poker phenomenon. Under reaction could cost a select group of site owners tens of
millions of dollars in future financial gain.
I have to wonder if a more proactive response might not have been a wiser and sounder
business and psychological decision for those intimately involved in the business of internet
poker. For further counseling on the disadvantages of under reactive behavior, those online
owners might wish to address an email to: pokershrink@hotmail.com
The Poker Shrink, Vol 11 - Continued
Reaction to the Online Gambling Bill
Last week's article was about the reactions to the

Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. Since then I have heard from several readers and
poker buddies about another 'psychological' reaction to the possible pending shutdown of
access to online poker for U.S. players. The question is: what are U.S. players doing with the
money they already have sitting in their online accounts.
In light of the new legislation and its pending implementation, a reasonable prudent person
might tell you that they have withdrawn the monies they have online. I, being a reasonable
prudent person, will tell you that is exactly what I did with the money I had in my account at
Party Poker. However, Party had already blocked U.S. players from playing cash games and
tournaments when I cashed out, so my withdrawal was merely bookkeeping. Other players at
Party had gone on a gambling spree before the cutoff date last Friday, rather than withdraw
their funds. Low-limit cash games became classic 'no fold'em, hold'em' tables. Tournament
numbers swelled with players 'going for it' with their remaining bankroll rather then make a
withdrawal. Immediately after the Party Poker deadline (the actual signing of the bill on
10/13) the action at Party dried up to the point that they even cancelled the number one
weekly event of the online poker calendar: the Sunday Million.
So what exactly was this behavior by players at Party and elsewhere to the new legislation
all about? Well, actually it was neither an uncommon reaction nor unhealthy. Think of the
reasoning behind having a wake instead of a funeral; or a bachelor (bachelorette) party the
night before the wedding; or any event just before the end of an era (New Year's Eve, end of
the school year, the moving sale.). We as humans tend to celebrate even at the brink of a
disaster or at the end of an era. It is, in fact, a very normal reaction to change.
However, in this case, not everyone was celebrating or at least not everyone was celebrating
the same way. I spoke to one professional player who told me he had spent "every waking
hour" on [an online poker site] playing only the tables where players were "using up their
bankrolls." How did he know? Well apparently the players were talking about what they were
doing in table chat.
"It would be unfair to fish to call these guys fish. They were literally giving their money away.
Instead of getting rivered or sucked out on, say one time in ten, which might be normal odds;
at these tables it was almost as if they were playing their draws with the cards exposed. I
never had a losing session and had several where I just had to cash out and take a new seat
because my stack was just too intimidating to the newer players. It was like they were
abandoning the sinking ship but leaving their valuables behind. I was just surprised there were
so few sharks in the water with me."
In business this is called the "Titanic Syndrome" and it has two applications in the current
post-internet gaming law era. First, the player's reaction is one we all should avoid as poker
players. There is never a reason to stay at the table and toss those last few chips in before
you go home. There is never a good reason not to walk away from a losing session before you
go broke. There is certainly no reason to loosen up your game to suicidal limits simply because
you are too lazy to cash out and move your bankroll to a new site. Lots of online poker sites
are not closing but I have also witnessed looser play on those sites despite their assurances
they are not shutting off U.S. players. Yes, it is human nature to react but it is poor poker play
to bring outside pressures or news to your game and become a blind guppy after years of
playing your "A" game. If you are guilty of this behavior, it's time to take a look at the level of
professionalism you are bringing to the tables.
A second application of the "Titanic Syndrome" has to do with how the online sites have
reacted to the new legislation or rather how they reacted before it was passed. I have said this
before and dozens of writers have written similar words over the last six months. The new
laws were not an iceberg that crept up on the online poker industry. None of this should have
been a surprise to any enterprise that was engaged in sound business planning. The players
may be engaging some weakness in their game when they go hyper-donkey with their
remaining bankroll; the online sites have a lot more at stake and should not have been singing
'Nearer my God to Thee' when President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gaming
Enforcement Act. There are psychological aspects to playing poker and to running a poker
business; once again someone needs some business/poker therapy.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 12 - Underlying
Depression
There is a lot of depression in the poker world

these days. Even more then usual. I would like to suggest today that everyone in the poker
community pay attention to themselves and to their poker cohorts, buddies and pals.
Depression can not only affect your game; it can affect your life and yes, it can take a life.
Clinical depression is a state of intense sadness, melancholia or despair that has advanced to
the point of being disruptive to an individual's social functioning and/or activities of daily
living. Although a low mood or state of dejection that does not affect functioning is often
referred to as depression, clinical depression is a psychological diagnosis and is different from
the everyday meaning of "being depressed". [Wikipedia]
If you or someone you know is or may be clinically depressed, the most important action
you can take is to get help or get them help.
On the other hand, what we all normally call "being depressed", while not as serious is still a
very uncomfortable way to live your life. Furthermore, common depression can lead to clinical
depression if not dealt with. Depression of either type is not something you can just "snap out
of." It's caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals, along with other physical and mental
factors.
Poker is a game of highs and lows, wins and losses. Top tournament players experience a
"failure rate" well in excess of 90%. Every player on the planet has had a run of bad cards.
Losses are part of the game. Depression is not.
Losing more money than you can afford; losing to successive runner, runner bad beats;
bubbling in yet another tournamentnone of these are going to make you feel good about the
state of your poker game. Being sad is a reasonable response to these events, being unhappy,
angry, frustrated.all acceptable human reactions. However, a continued state of depression is
not only unhealthy and inappropriate; it can also be a warning sign of deeper trouble ahead.
Right now many sections of the poker community are a bit depressed by the effects of the
Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. Players are losing access to a fun hobby or even a
lucrative job. Poker media are losing jobs; online investors are losing portfolio value. Yes it is
depressing; these are not good times for poker. But what to do?
First, talk to someone. The worse effect of depression is isolation. You are not alone and you
simply must reach out to those you trust, those you love and those in the same boat you are
in. If you know of someone you even think might be depressed, reach out to them now and
reach out again tomorrow. Some of the saddest words you will ever hear are:
"I only wish I had known."
Next, you (or they) need to get away from poker. Get out and take a walk. Take a vacation; go
to a movie (not Rounders). There is more to life than poker. Take time away even to the extent
of taking a set amount of time, measured in days or better weeks, completely away from
poker. Get some perspective on Life.
Exercise. We all know that sitting at a table or in front of a computer screen for endless hours
is draining; the position (particularly in front of a screen) can also be addictive and addiction
leads directly to depression. Finish this article and go take a walk, right now. When you come
back, call someone or better yet, go and see them.
Medication: Even mild, non-clinical depression often responds to short-term anti-depressant

medication. There are literally dozens of options you can discuss with your physician. Don't be
afraid to ask for a "short-course" prescription (one or two weeks) and if the medication does
not work within that time, go back and get a different prescription. We are not all
physiologically the same and some meds work for some and not for others. There is no shame
in taking a pill for a short-term remedy.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 14 - The Psychology of
a Poker Tournament
November 10, 2006, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Every poker tournament is different. The

structures are different, the players are different and certainly the cards are different.
Recognizing how a tournament is different can increase your chances of making the money.
Your pre-game ought to include at least an awareness of the internal psychology of a poker
tournament.
To find the psychology of a tournament, ask questions like: Why are players here? Why are
they playing this event? How can I use this knowledge to gain an advantage?
Let me illustrate what I mean by the "psychology of a tournament" by using a current NLHE
event I have been playing the last several weekends. The tournament is Ultimate Poker
Challenge being played each weekend at Binions in downtown Las Vegas. This is a year-long
set of tournaments, so if you are going to be in Las Vegas in the coming year you might want
to consider my analysis if you intend to sit down at one of these tables.
So what is the internal psychology of this event? Well it is the combination of the Binions
celebrity name and the television coverage that gives these events their unique psychology.
First, this is Binions, the original home of the World Series of Poker. Poker tourists often make
the trek to downtown Las Vegas to play at Binions; they hold four small buy-in NLHE
tournaments everyday. But the poker tourists are also there when the $340 Ultimate Poker
Challenge events go off on the weekends, they see the permanent television final table set-up,
they see the previous days event being taped, they see the scattering of professional players
in the UPC events and they often plunk down their cash for a seat in the bigger buy-in UPC
event. For that reason the Ultimate Poker Challenge events have a very fishy flavor,
particularly in the early rounds.
Quite frankly, I have never seen so many first-timers playing in this size buy-in event before.
Identifying the dead money is easy because they tell you "This is my first event" or they ask
about the blinds every time they come around. Now the psychological aspects of such a mix of
players require a savvy player to make many subtle adjustments. For example, after a table
change, I found myself next to a lady who asked about the button and blinds every round. She
simply could not "get it" how the button moved, and therefore how the blinds moved. Two
seats past her was professional Kenna James and next to him was the super-aggressive
tournament chip leader. Each hand had a very different make-up of players with varied
psychological reasons for their play. The psychology of the event changed as the day wore on,
players were eliminated and the TV final table loomed ever closer.
These can be very tough tables to play, trying to isolate that fish and avoid the sharks.
However, there were still players in the event who had not considered the motivations of the
other players. They had not considered the psychological aspects of the play and therefore
they could not manipulate the others players with their bets and raises. There is more to the
psychology of a table or an event than how a bet or raise will produce the desired effect in a
particular hand. The key is how your move will affect the particular players in the hand with
you. Reading a player needs to be done repeatedly during a tournament, reading a table is
more complicated still but reading the tournament is easy and you can do it before the cards
are in the air.
To determine the psychology of any given tournament, just ask yourself: Why are players here
today? Why are they playing this event? How can I use this knowledge to gain an advantage?
The Poker Shrink, Volume 15 - Optimism at
the Poker Table
Some years ago I participated in a study on

optimism; specifically how did an optimistic attitude affect the results of various tests and
games. Lately, I have wondered how these results might apply themselves to poker. Let's look
at just one of the results of that study and then apply it to the poker table.
College students were asked: "Are you likely to score in the top half of your class on this test?"
Then the students who had said they were going to score in the top half were told the test had
been written to be very difficult and they were asked again if they would score in the top half.
A full 75% of the students now said they would be unlikely to make the top half. Even though
the test was going to be more difficult for everyone, the students felt they would do worse.
Change the question around and tell the students who felt they would not score in the top half
that the test had been made very easy and sure enough, nearly 75% of those students felt
they would now score in the top half.
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In the face of a shared adversity (harder test) or a shared benefit (easier test) the students
rated their chances without considering that everyone was taking the same test. Their own
chances should not have changed at all but their perception was that the shared benefit or
adversity was affecting only them and not the entire group. Let's take that reasoning to the
poker table.
You have been playing in a tournament for several hours at the same table. The players at
your end of the table have been there the whole time with you and there has been a fair
amount of conversation. The knockouts all came from the other end of the table and so there
was a big turnover down there. A very large stack gets moved into one of those seats. This
new player (X) is aggressive and talkative (loud) and a bit drunk. He immediately begins
running over the table and while he is distracted with the cocktail waitress or one of his
buddies at another table, the quiet conversation at "your end" of the table is about him. "A
good place to double through" and "gotta be lucky to play that hammered"; you know the
conversation and you know the situation.
The new player represents either a shared adversity for the table or a shared benefit. But
poker is not a team game. Yet time and time again, we see players underestimating their
chances of winning against "X" when in a hand alone against him and overestimating their
odds when up against "X" and one of their long term table mates. Somehow an individual
game becomes a team game, almost always with unintended and bad results for any player
who loses sight of their individual goals. Inadvertent soft play can occur against the "friendly"
players and over or under aggressive play against player "X".
Why?
The simply answer is human nature. The more complete answer is that poker is not life.
Despite all the poker metaphors ("they should have folded that offer", "that relationship was
never going to be the nuts"), despite the language of poker being used in everyday situations
poker is a game of individual play. Cooperation is almost never a solid poker strategy.
Letting shared benefits or even civility at the table change how you play is nearly always a
losing strategy.
Studies have shown time and time again that the average optimism of a set of competitors
increases in the face of a shared benefit and decreases in the face of a shared adversity. But
poker does not have a "set of competitors"; everyone at the table is an individual. To the
extent that any "community" feelings at the poker table change your play in the slightest, you
have a leak in your game. Optimism at the poker table should be part of your game and
making the other players pessimistic about their game should be too.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 16 - Food, Psychology
and Poker
What better time than the day after Gobbler

Gluttony to talk about food, psychology and poker. If you don't already know how eating (or
not eating) affects your game, then I have to ask: what were you thinking? Or better still what
were you eating?
Poker tournaments can often involve eight or more hours with only short breaks and limited
selections for nourishment. So an obvious question for any poker player would be: How does
hunger affect my game? On the flip side would be the question how does food and in
particular, a big meal, effect my decision making process at the table?
First, a question or two? Do you have any consistent preparations you do before a long
tournament? Do you consider how much rest you get the night before? Or how much exercise
you get? If not, then don't worry about how much or how little you eat, no big deal. If,
however, you are serious about playing your best possible game during a long tournament
then you must plan for rest, sleep, food and drink. You should know how your mental acuity is
sharpened or dulled by food and by which foods. Not everyone is the same but it is an
absolute guarantee that what you put in your mouth will have an effect on what goes on in
your brain and it can take less than 15 minutes for food or drink to cause a significant
alteration in brain function.
You simply have to pay attention to how you feel before you eat and in the several hours
after you take in nourishment. Blood sugar levels are the first bio-marker to show the effects
of food but your entire physical self will react to food. The learning curve is simple; if you
make any notes at all on your play simply add food as another category to be observed. What
did you eat, when did you eat it and how was your concentration, focus and decision-making
helped or hindered after the food, simple notes is all you need.
Now that takes care of you and food during a game, how about your opponents? Well in
tournaments there is often a dinner break and play is significantly affected by the player's
reaction to the long food break.
First, as the tournament approaches the dinner break, many of the short stacks will become
looser and more aggressive. Now, you already know that short stacks get aggressive with
lesser and lesser holdings as their stacks dwindle and the blinds increase. A pending long
dinner break makes many of the short stacks even more willing to push their stacks with
inferior holdings. Why? It's the pure psychology of having to kill an hour or more knowing you
have a short stack sitting on the table and maybe only one more chance to make your move.
Short stacks don't want to "hang around" for an hour or longer dinner break and then come
back to even higher blinds and bust out in five minutes. It's the food equivalent of "Dead Man
Walking." Better to "push or go home" before the long break rather than after. Many a
tournament winner has picked up chips preying on the starving minnows just before dinner.
Sure, even the short stacks pick up big hands sometimes, but it's the odds and trends that
over the long term make for consistent winners. So remember, short stacks get even looser as
a long dinner break comes up on the tournament clock. Just in case, the short stacks at your
table are unaware of the tournament structure, it never hurts to point out: "Thirty minutes
until dinner!"
On the other side of the dinner break, you will find a table of well fed and often drowsy or
distracted players. Be careful more careful here, not everyone just ate a full turkey dinner with
all the holiday fixings. Some players take a walk or even catch a quick shower during the
break. Know thyself and thy stomach but watch out for the player who knowest themselves
too.
Now is there any pumpkin pie left?

The Poker Shrink, Vol 17 'Original Position'
December 01, 2006, 0
Suppose you had the power to set up all the rules

of society. You get to be the creator of the laws and social conventions for how everyone will
act and interact in every aspect of life. You get to create the "social contract" for the world.
Sound good? OK, there is one small item I forgot to mention: You don't get to know your role
in this world until after you make the rules. You could be a rich retiree; you could be a single
mom with two jobs, a migrant farm worker or a recent MBA graduate with a six figure salary
and a gorgeous girl/boyfriend.
You might want to ponder this idea for a moment; it is called the theory of "Original Position".
Try googling Original Position, I recommend the Wikipedia explanation.
So how does this theory apply to poker and psychology? Well you sit down at a tournament
table and you know none of the other players. This is the 'original position' but just as you
would know that some rules of conduct would be necessary in creating a society; you also
know something about tournament poker. You are not making up the rules of poker but you
should be constructing, in your head, the structure of this table. You start making reads even
before the cards are in the air. I am suggesting that your original position could be defective
and hindering your ability to win the tournament.
So you bring to the table some basic "knowns" about poker players in general: weak, tight,
fish, pro etc. Your job is to win the tournament and to do that you need to read these
unknown players by building on your basic knowledge of poker players and the information
you collect during the play is used to modify your original position. Here comes the problem:
How to separate general knowledge of the game from specific information on individual
opponents at the table. For example: the lady in seat eight.
You perhaps begin with the position that female poker players tend to be weak-tight and easy
to push off a pot by coming over the top. This is, after all, a $200 buy-in, that ain't Annie Duke
down there in seat eight. On the other hand, are you able to change that read as play
progresses or is your original position hardened into some sort of poker truth that you can't
modify based on the play at the table? Holding to a generality on individual players is a
mistake made by lazy players who do not focus on making reads based on the table action.
Now all of this seems fairly straightforward, at least I hope it does, you read the table you
build up player profiles based on what actually happens during the tournament. But now let's
turn to the very essence of the psychological component of Original Position theory. You do not
know who you are or what your status is before you enter the arena. In other words you might
not want to assume you are the best player at the table; just as you also may not want to
assume you are dead money. Your developing analysis on this little single table society should
include a read on yourself and your position in the table's food chain. Assuming anything
about your skills or abilities in the mix of these other combatants before the cards are dealt
will inevitably prevent you from forming a correct view of the entire playing field. You are one
of ten or nine or eight members of this little world and correctly placing yourself in the order of
things will allow you to see yourself as other see you and that may be the best position for any
poker player.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 18 The Anatomy of
Tilt
December 08, 2006, Dr. Tim Lavalli
It doesn't matter if it's the final table of the Main

Event of World Series of Poker or a $2/$4 game at your local casino; players go on tilt. We
have all seen Mike Matusow lose it at the table and we have seen the drunk, internet wiz go
ballistic when the clueless player in seat two sucks out on a runner, runner. The question is
why? Why do we all, at one time or another, lose our cool at the poker table? Why do some
players tilt less and others go off at the slightest downturn? Why?
I got to thinking about this the other night when I played a tournament at the Venetian. On
the first hand, before everyone was even seated, I had pocket Queens in the small blind and
the button was dealt pocket Jacks. He managed to blow off two-thirds of his stack by
overplaying the Jacks and went on uber-tilt. He threw his cards at the dealer for five straight
hands until she called him on it and then he argued with her. He basically brooded and bitched
for the better part of an hour and nearly got tossed by the floor for overall bad behavior.
Fortunately, he eventually took a walk and then got a miracle river card to stay in the
tournament, calm down and eventually talk with me at during the second break. This was a
fairly good poker player with no control of his emotions.
So I got to wondering, is it just the cards or is there something else going on when players
tilt? This begs the more simplistic question: Why do players get angry? And even more simply:
Why does anyone get angry?
Anger is an appropriate psychological reaction to perceived danger. As we became more
civilized the danger changed from simply physical danger to the more subtle perceived danger
of language. We get angry when we are insulted or we feel slighted or ridiculed. Or we feel
anger when our religion or race or job or thoughts are challenged or belittled.
Often angry comes as a result of misperception or misinterpretation of someone's words or

actions. At other times we get angry simply when things don't go our way. This would seem to
be the case at the poker table when bad cards or "bad play" puts a player on tilt. However,
psychological studies have shown for years that anger (and in this case tilt) only occur when
there are certain factors already in place within a person before the actual trigger incident
occurs.
We all know "angry" people. There are among us those persons whose initial response to the
world is anger. These are usually males and if you were lucky they were somebody else's dad.
But these extreme examples of an angry person give us the clues to why anyone, of any
temperament, goes on tilt. The basic question you have to ask yourself about tilt is: Why did I
get angry?
Here are the most common precursors to tilt at the poker table:
1) You are playing with money you cannot afford to lose. This was the case with our tiltboy at
the Venetian, he had to go borrow the rebuy $50 from a friend at another table. He clearly
should not have been in the tournament with his last $125 and he donked off most of his chips
on the first hand. Good situation for getting angry but not when you know, as we all do, that
you cannot play your "A" game on tilt.
2) You were already angry before you got to the table. The nasty behavior has more to do with
your girlfriend not wanting you to play or your boss being a jerk yesterday than anything that
happens at the poker table. Remember the old adage: Leave your emotions at the door.
3) You misunderstand the game and think your own "skill" should make up for the variation in
the cards. This is commonly known as the Phil Hellmuth factor: "If it weren't luck, I would win
every tournament." No one and I mean no one wins every hand or every race. Two outers
happen. A good solid poker player understands that the underdog wins sometimes or the odds
would be 100 to 0 and no one would ever gamble.
4) You are an angry person by nature and tilt is just a way to act out your decidedly miserable
view on life. Get some help. Life is too short to spend it mean and angry. In the alternative--
stay away from my table. My rate is $200 an hour, $400 if you are an angry client. Until next
week: Tilt Less, Win More, and Enjoy It A Lot More.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 19 - Bad Behavior
'The price one pays for pursuing any profession or

calling is an
intimate knowledge of its ugly side.'
--James Baldwin
I was reading an article recently in which Linda Johnson comments about bad behavior at the
poker table. She's against it, and in fact so am I. But what (if anything) do players do about
it? And should they? Quite frankly, if you believe that the behavior of others players at the
table does not affect your play then I will suggest that you are playing the wrong game. Some
of the worst behavior I have ever seen at a poker table was done to tilt the other players.
Distinguishing between bad behavior as psychological gamesmanship and just ignorant
player/dealer abuse is a skill worth incorporating into your game and probably a skill you
already have but may not be using to the benefit of your game.
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As far as gamesmanship goes we could cite Men 'The Master' Nguyen or the ever popular
king of bad behavior Phil Hellmuth, along with hundreds of internet wannabes. Now whether
the powers in poker want to regulate this type of behavior is really a question for each tour,
each casino and each player to have an opinion on, write a rule to enforce or just talk
endlessly about while the dealer shuffles up for the next hand. I personally find such behavior
to be transparent and I either ignore it or even better use it on the player in a sort of reverse
psychology. Let me give you an example.
There is a particular semi-pro player who stares at other players with a look that could scare a
four year old. He also seems to make some poker players uneasy with his dark scowl. This
past year in Tunica he tried the "face" on me and I launched into the following speech: "Does
that have any effect at all on anyone but your dog? You actually think you are going to get a
read on me because you look at me with that Phyllis Diller face? You can look all you want this
hand is mine and you need to fold that raggedy top pair." I saw him try the "face" on another
player who immediately broke out into a rendition of "You got the cutest little baby face." In
both cases the Scowler called and in both cases he lost the hand. Gamesmanship is part of the
game; whether you use it or it is used on you depends on how you prepare for it before you
get to the tables.
Outright bad behavior also happens at the poker tables and you should also be prepared for it;
again to the benefit of your game. If rudeness or dealer abuse changes your game in anyway
then you need to step up to the situation. If you can let it go and allow the floor to handle the
situation then do that; but we all know that floor staff are not always quick or decisive in
dealing with players who are out of line. So what do you do when a player disrupts your table
and your game? First, it is important to remember that the abusive player is affecting your
game and your enjoyment. The key reason players are jerks or blowhards at the table is to get
others to not take them on in hands. Sure they may be drunk or may have taken a bad beat
or two but it's a card game not surgery, the shuttle launch or even a putt to win The Masters.
My first suggestion is to have the dealer call the floor. Notice I did not say you should call the
floor; you want the dealer to do it. You accomplish several things with this procedure. First,
the dealer is empowered to report the abuse, which they should. Second, the abusive player
and everyone else at the table will know you not only handle yourself well at the table but you
also will not take any angle shooting moves from anyone. You control the table by calling out
the abusive player within the rules and establish yourself as a player not to be taken lightly.
The abusive player has actually given you an opportunity to gain an edge simply by doing
something everyone else wishes they had the courage to do.
Poker is a subtle psychological game, every edge you can take helps.
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 20 - Leave Your
Emotions at the Dooror Not!
You've heard it said at the table dozens of times;

whenever a player goes on tilt you think it - every poker book mentions it: "Leave your
emotions at the door of the poker room." Great advice but completely impossible. You might
as well ask a player to leave their brain at the door. We are by nature emotion laden creatures.
You can't leave your emotions at the door. Like most folksy bits of advice there is truth to be
found in the general idea but let's take a look at how your emotions can work for you as well
as against you at the poker table.
A player goes on tilt; they just "go off" after a bad beat or a monster suck out. What comes
next? They donk off the rest of their chips; they verbally act out at the dealer or another
players; they take a walk and shake it off. There are lots of ways to react to tilt but the
question remains: Why tilt in the first place? The answer to that question usually can be found
in the answer to this question: 'What was already going on with that player before they sat
down at the poker table?'
The majority of table tilts happen before the player ever gets to the table. Hence, the
advice: "Leave your emotions at the door." Since we realistically cannot ever do that
completely; let's try some better or at least different advice.
1) The next time you tilt; do a post-game analysis of the tilt just like you do the post-game on
your play. Sure, you rethink the over-the-top move with the AQs but you don't consider the
loss of focus when you lose to the AJo caller? Your reaction, your tilt, is just as much a part of
your game as playing suited connectors under the gun. If you look at your negative responses
to a bad beat, you will invariably see that it costs you chips and costs you money.
2) Notice how other players react to a bad beat. How does that guy stand up and say: "Nice
hand, Sir" after someone hits a runner-runner on him? His reaction is emotional, just as much
as slamming the table or throwing the cards but who do you think has a better chance of
playing the next hand under control?
3) Really, truly understand that someone hitting a three-outer on the river against you will
happen about 7% of the time. A 93% chance to win still means you lose sometimes.
4) Preparation for the bad beats is substantially more critical to your overall success at poker
than is how you riffle your chips at the table. Which of these two have you spend more time
on?
This is not rocket science but it is human science. The key to human science is observation.
Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists all rely on observing human beings in their natural
state. If you are having problems with tilt or with your emotions at the table then observe
players who do not have that problem. What are they doing? What are they not doing? How
are they acting and reacting before the bad beat? The key to using your emotions to your
benefit is preparation and once you have your emotional state at a perfect pitch for your poker
game then you will be able to move to the more advanced lessons: Using others less than
optimal emotional states to put them on tilt and increase your winning percentage.
Bad beats happen but the resulting tsunami should sweep away your opponents chips - not
yours.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 21 -- Problem Poker:
Part I
For the next several weeks I am going to take up

the issue of 'Problem Poker.' We will cover what heath care professionals say about problem
gambling in general and we will take a look at some examples of 'problems' among both
recreational and professional poker players. Most importantly, I will attempt to translate the
generalized issues of problem gambling into language and examples that illustrate the
differences that 'Problem Poker' presents; problems that are unique to the way poker is played
and abused by poker players. Psychological and behavioral issues around poker are not
synonymous with those issues addressed by the literature on gambling in general. "Problem
Poker" is a unique set of personal and social behaviors; recognizing them will be beneficial to
your enjoyment of the game and the health and well-being of yourself and your poker playing
friends and family.
Before you stop reading this article because "you don't have a problem with poker" I would
like you to consider this. Your goal at the poker table is to win money. One way we all know to
win more money is to have a read on another player. If there are players with Problem Poker
issues at your table, then reading them and knowing how they will play because they have a
problem means you can outplay them. I know it sounds mercenary to use someone's problem
to take their chips but you will exploit every other tell or weakness to gain an advantage, why
not this one? And if you don't someone else at the table will. So you probably don't have a
Poker Problem, which means this series of articles can only make you money. No, no don't
thank me.
In all of my previous writing on poker, I have avoided any mention of problem gambling and
Problem Poker. It has been my opinion, up until now, that there was plenty of literature,
enough books, websites and 800 numbers to cover the issues faced by those players who
"have a problem." Recently, however, I have changed my mind as more and more people have
asked me questions about this dark side of poker. These questions have come from my friends
and colleagues both poker players and non players. Very recently the questions have begun to
come from the players themselves. I supposed when you put yourself out there as "The Poker
Shrink" these questions are inevitable but when a professional poker player whose name is
recognizable to the entire poker world asked me some very pointed questions a few weeks
back, I decided it was time to address the issue of Problem Poker.
If you do a web search on "gambling" you are going to get a lot of hits for "problem
gambling," not so for a search on "poker." We don't hear a lot about Problem Poker. I thought
I would start by taking some time to address the unique issues that haunt the dark side of
poker today. This will take a couple of weeks to fully explore but I would suggest that if you
read these next few articles with an open mind you will recognize a friend or poker buddy in
these descriptions. You may even see a bit of yourself in these examples. Poker is a great
game, it's social and entertaining. Poker presents a profound set of challenges to a wide range
of analytic and social skills. Poker is indeed a game that takes a moment to learn and a
lifetime to master. Poker is also gambling and all of the holier-than-thou criticism we all hear
from family and self-righteous friends and busy-body do-gooders has some basis in fact. The
fact is that human nature leads some people to have addictions of all kinds and poker can be
one of those addictions. It would serve us well to not hide from this fact of our nature.
So let's start with addiction.
Addiction is a mental or physical disorder precipitated by a combination of genetic,

biological/pharmacological and social factors. Addiction is characterized by the repeated use of
substances or behaviors despite clear evidence of negative consequences arising from the
behavior.
Notice the terms "pharmacological" and "substances", addiction is too often thought to be only
those behaviors associated with drugs, alcohol or other ingestibles, like tobacco. Often other
"addictions" are referred to by the less severe term: "dependencies". Many people, both
psychology professionals and laypersons, now feel that we should be speaking of psychological
addiction in such areas as gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, work, exercise and
even shopping.
If the first step in a "cure" is admitting there is a problem; then the first step in addressing
Problem Poker is identifying the behavior. Whether we call it an addiction, a compulsion or a
dependency; it is the negative consequences that clearly defines the behavior. You don't have
an issue with Problem Poker if you don't have any negative consequences from playing poker.
But we all know there are players with big Poker Problems.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 22 - Problem Poker:
Part II: What is It Exactly?
January 05, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
{Ed Note: To read the introduction of this series,

check out Problem Poker: Part I: An Introduction}
So the question arises: Are Problem Poker and problem gambling not the same issue? Even
more specifically, don't most gamblers have multiple problems? Aren't they betting on sports
and playing craps or blackjack and playing poker?
In many cases the answer is, of course, yes. However, would you say that someone who has
an alcohol problem has the same addiction as someone who compulsively overeats?
Or even more pointed, is the abuse of alcohol the same if its "only on the weekends" by
someone with a job and a family versus someone who is an "on the street" wino?
The subtleties that surround any addiction are worth noticing when treatment and care or
cures are the goals. So let's take a detailed look at some of the basic information on problem
gambling and see how Problem Poker is the same and how it is different.
The key component that distinguishes poker from other forms of gambling is simply that when
you play poker you are not playing against the house. Poker may not legally be a game of skill
but does not have an inherent "edge" to the house. In casino, cardroom or online poker the
"house" collects a fee for running the game but the competition is among the players seated at
the table. It is this key factor in poker that makes the issues of Problem Poker different from
other forms of gambling.
Problem gambling is gambling behavior which causes disruptions in any major area of life:
psychological, physical, social or vocational. The term "problem gambling" includes, but is not
limited to, the condition known as "pathological", or "compulsive" gambling, a progressive
addiction characterized by increasing preoccupation with gambling, a need to bet more money
more frequently, restlessness or irritability when attempting to stop, "chasing" losses, and loss
of control manifested by continuation of the gambling behavior in spite of mounting, serious,
negative consequences. [derived from the American Psychological Association definition]
Live poker is different. Other players (other people) must witness your losses; there is more
than a mere betting slip to toss away. To lose consistently and heavily at a poker table
requires making bad decisions in public over and over again and going into our wallet over and
over again. There is a very public face to playing poker, which is why many Problem Poker
players encounter their biggest losses online.
The internet has brought problem gambling into our homes and offices and has made it
faceless. Pushing a button is much easier and addictively anonymous. For the action junkie,
even being a maniac in a poker room means only 30 hands an hour. On the internet players
can enter 10 or 20 games simultaneously. The adrenaline high of multiple tables is a
fascinating and frightening addiction to behold. Problem Poker is almost never seen as an
isolated live action phenomenon; there are either other gambling aspects, such as sports
betting and other table games or there is an online component.
Many experts think that pathologic gambling is an addiction because of the "rush" you feel
when you win and lose money. In tournament poker even the best players in the world lose
more than 95% of the time. In hand for hand live action games, you can play every hand but
it's a guaranteed losing proposition and still may never be enough action. But beyond the
"rush" of winning and beyond the cash of winning, poker now offers another addictive prize.
With the advent of television, poker now offers celebrity. Other than Jimmy the Greek, name a
famous gambler? OK, now name fifteen famous poker players. If you have come to
PokerNews.com and you have read this far -- name ten more famous poker players. No
problem, right! Fame, celebrity as well as fortune are now there for anyone to have, simply by
playing poker and even if you don't actually win the World Series, you can play at the table
with Johnny Chan or Chris Moneymaker or Greg Raymer.
Its fame, its fortune, its drug, sex, rock-n-roll, its poker! Addiction behavior needs a goal and
a focus. The "rush" is clearly one type of drug, so is fortune, and so too is fame.
Next week, more on the unique characteristics of Problem Poker.
Part IV: Diagnosis
Today we have two different sets of questions used

to diagnose a 'gambling problem.' I have tweaked the questions to apply to poker and have
followed each set of questions with some comments of my own.
Test #1: Twenty Questions (Count the "yes" answers)
1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to poker?
2. Has playing poker ever made your home life unhappy?
3. Does poker playing affect your reputation?
4. Have you ever felt remorse after playing?
5. Do you ever play poker to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial
difficulties?
6. Does poker ever cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?
7. After losing did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?
8. After a win did you have a strong urge to return and win more?
9. Do you often play poker until your last dollar was gone?
10. Do you ever borrow to finance your bankroll?
11. Have you ever sold anything to finance your poker playing?
12. Are you reluctant to use your "poker bankroll" for normal expenditures?
13. Does poker ever make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?
14. Do you ever stay at the table longer than you had planned?
15. Have you ever played poker to escape worry or trouble?
16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance your
bankroll?
17. Does poker playing or thinking about poker cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
18. Do arguments, disappointments or frustrations create within you an urge to play?
19. Do you ever have an urge to celebrate any non-poker good fortune by playing a few hours
of poker?
20. Have you ever considered self destruction or suicide as a result of your poker playing?
Seven "yes" answers is considered a problem, quite frankly one "yes" to #20 is enough. On
the other hand, some of these fairly standard questions are double-edged swords. Take #12,
for example: if you keep your poker bankroll separate from your living expenses then keeping
them separate, except in a family emergency, actually makes good financial sense. Number
#14: Yes sometimes you do stay at a lucrative table longer than you had planned, as long as
you are not missing your kid's birthday party (or birth). Well you get the picture; if you said
"No" to all of these then you probably don't actually play poker. But if you or someone you
know does hit the seven or eight "yes" answer threshold; it may be time to reconsider the
game.
Here is another list that is a bit more reflective. The questions are not so easily answered "yes
or no" but consider the "squirm factor" as you read the questions. The more uncomfortable
you feel with each question, the more time you should take to answer honestly and
thoroughly.
Test #2: "Problem" behavior as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. Preoccupation with poker (e.g., preoccupied with reliving past poker experiences, planning
the next game, or thinking of ways to get money for your bankroll exclusively);
2. Need to play poker with increasing limits, buy-ins or stakes to increase the excitement;
3. Having made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back or stop playing;
4. Being restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop playing;
5. Playing poker to escape from problems or of relieving a "down" mood (e.g., feelings of
helplessness, guilt, anxiety or depression);
6. After losing money at the table, returning to get even (chasing one's losses);
7. Lies to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with poker
(whether winning or losing);
8. Has committed illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, theft, or embezzlement to finance
bankroll;
9. Has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity
because of poker ("they just don't understand");
10. Relies on others to provide money to relieve a desperate financial situation caused by
losses;
This second list is a bit tougher to wiggle away from. The essential factor to any diagnosis
comes down to the basics: Is poker (a game) interfering with your life (not a game).
Next week, after the diagnosis of Problem Poker, there is treatment.

Part V: Treatment Options
You have heard it said a thousand times: If you

can't spot the fish at your table in the first ten minutes, then the fish is probably you. Let's
look at that another way: If you can't spot the Problem Poker player at your table in the first
round of blinds, then it's probably you with the problem.
You know in every medical school class there is one doctor-in-training who hears each new set
of disease symptoms and immediately believes they have that illness. For others they couldn't
diagnose their own illness if their life depended on it. So how many of you have read the first
four parts of this series and have diagnosed all of your buddies as having a "Poker Problem"?
As I said at the beginning, we are all human, we all have addictive tendencies. But recognizing
our own follies, foibles and faults is often extremely difficult. My addictions are chocolate and
poker playing redheads from Texas but it took years of therapy and buying stock in Hershey's
to recognize those addictions in myself. I am powerless over cocoa beans and gumdrops.
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Just as there are many addictions, so too are there many levels of Poker Problems and as
many treatments and cures as there are individuals who play. On the "easy fix" end of the
scale is someone who has read these articles, recognized their problem and has just closed all
of their online accounts and gone back to coaching soccer. Nice hand, Sir! For others the cure
is not so easy.
Let's look at the mindset, or in some cases 'mind games' that are the central element of many
Problem Poker issues. If you can overcome these unfortunately widespread beliefs, you are
halfway home to resolving your problem. Poker players often believe their playing abilities to
be superior to other players despite consistent evidence (losses) to the contrary. Poker gives
evidence session by session that you are wrong in your beliefs, you lose and lose again. Yet
the compulsion is fueled by a non-evidentiary belief that we are better. "It's just a run of bad
cards." Or "It's just one bad beat after another."
Central to the problem and treatment of pathologic gambling is helping the patient overcome
irrational thoughts. Pathologic gamblers believe they have the ability to control random or
chance events by relying on superstitious behavior or methods. Even when, as in poker, these
superstitions are that two-outer suck-outs will happen for you, but never against you.
Treatment goals for patients who are pathologic gamblers or patients who are being treated
for problems like alcoholism tend to be similar in that they focus on restoring a normal way of
thinking and living to patients. A variety of approaches are used in the treatment of the
pathologic gambler.
Modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous is the primary self-help group and
uses a 12-step, abstinence-based treatment program. The efficacy of Gamblers Anonymous
has not been demonstrated in controlled studies and, unlike alcoholism, some researchers
have discovered that complete abstinence from gambling may not be necessary for successful
treatment. Now several readers have commented that giving someone information like this
(you really don't have to quit!) is counter-productive to helping those with Problem Poker
issues. However, I must point out that while Gambler's Anonymous does help some problem
gamblers, the program does not have the success that Alcoholics Anonymous does and the
two problems are not correlated with any proved scientific studies on treatment. Drinking to
excess and gambling to excess do not have the same root causes and therefore may not be
treatable by the same methods for all patients.
A current and widely disseminated theory is that people engage in gambling because it has the
capacity to create excitement. We are back again to the idea of the "rush" many players feel
at the tables. In our increasingly controlled buttoned-down society we often seek behaviors
and distractions that involve risk-taking. Risk-taking is reinforced by the emotional experiences
that follow, such as relief from boredom, feelings of accomplishment, and the "rush"
associated with seeking excitement. For many individuals the mere acknowledgment that they
are seeking relief from the ordinary is sufficient for them to recognize their risk-taking
behavior and re-channel that behavior away from a problem area. We don't all need years of
therapy or group sessions; often we simply need to stop, look and observe our actions to see
the error of our ways.
Being "addicted" to $2/$4 limit hold'em is probably not a Poker Problem for most of us. It is
simply a social issue or just outright boredom. Playing the $400/$800 with the minimum buy-
in which represents your entire bankroll is an entirely different issue and a horse of a different
color. Playing the $40 tournament during your weekend in Las Vegas while tipping the waitress
$5 for your seventh Jack&Coke is recreational poker; doing that during the $50,000 HORSE
event at the World Series is either completely compulsive Problem Poker or the way to get
publicity for your soon to be published book.
We are all individuals and judging ourselves or someone else against what is "normal" is
always problematic but the first step in intervention or treatment always remains the same:
Do you have a problem? Can you see it is a problem? Do you want to do something about it?
Next week, we look at the Professional side of Problem Poker.

The Poker Shrink, Vol 27 - Problem Poker: VII:
Some Final Thoughts
February 09, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Over the past six articles I have attempted to

outline some of the issues, facts and treatment alternatives for those poker players who are
dealing with the spectrum of consequences of Problem Poker. There are a few final comments
and observations I want to add to wrap up this series.
When I started this series I pointed out that Problem Poker is a term we do not hear a lot
about but when we do it tends to be attributed to many more players than it actually effects.
Poker is a very interesting game and is played and not abused by the overwhelming majority
of participants. Demonizing or pathologizing poker playing is simply an overreaction. I also
have said that humans are by nature potential addicts, this is true of all of us at all times.
However, most of us control our addictive and compulsive behavior and should not, in a free
society, be subjected to restrictions on our behavior because some minority of players might
have a problem dealing with self-restraint, responsibility and indeed freedom itself.
According to the American Psychiatric Association: "Gambling is neither a financially nor a

psychologically risk-free experience. In addition to the possibility that gamblers will lose their
money, they also risk experiencing a variety of adverse biological, psychological, and social
consequences from gambling."
I am not going to disagree with this statement but I would like you to consider this:
"Life is neither a financially nor a psychologically risk-free experience. In addition to the

possibility that a person will lose their money, freedom, health or even their life; they also risk
experiencing a variety of adverse biological, psychological, and social consequences from
living."
I hope I have made my point.
Poker is an enjoyable recreational activity participated in without harm my millions of

individuals worldwide. The cost of playing poker should be kept in perspective as would the
expense of any other recreation or hobby. Gambling is not more or less inherently addictive
than sex, work, exercise, eating or playing the stock market. There are certain things in life
that are more addictive than others. Heroin is addictive for many people, so is tobacco and
many other substances. Behaviors, on the other hand, are far less addictive than drugs and
behavioral addictions are a matter of choice for the overwhelming majority of humans. Playing
poker and having issues with Problem Poker are for 99.9% of us, a choice we make.
There is a difference between Pathological Gambling or Compulsive Gambling and Problem

Gambling. There is a difference between compulsively playing poker and having a problem
with poker. Does the difference matter? Absolutely, yes! We all have problems at one time or
another; part of living is dealing with problems that arise.
Awareness is the key to recognizing a problem before it becomes a compulsion or an

addiction. Calls to problem gambling toll free numbers jump dramatically when the ads on
ESPN run during the WSOP broadcasts; not surprisingly that is what advertising is supposed to
do. Internet gambling now accounts for 8% of those calls. But here are some statistics that
often go under-reported.
Less than 1% of problem gambling issues that rise to the level of professional care involve
playing poker. As high as 15% of calls to gambling hotlines are made by family and friends
who are concerned about the morality of someone's gambling and not necessarily about an
actual gambling problem.
I bring up these numbers and these thoughts in my final article on Problem Poker only to
reemphasize that the high risk involved in playing poker is almost completely attributable to
individuals already at risk for compulsive gambling behavior. The risks of Problem Poker are
not inherent in the game but in the psychological make-up of some individuals who play it.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 28 - The Fundamental
Attribution Error
When any researcher studies human beings, they

are attempting to discover "why" something happens (or perhaps "why" something doesn't
happen). Therefore, it is important to discover the source of the behavior, the reason or
reasons that something occurs. Of course, what we are trying to do is get it right; to actually
discover why a person acts the way they do but often times the researcher gets it wrong. The
number one reason a researcher gets something "wrong" is that even as a trained observer we
attribute the outcome to some action or thought or feeling that is, in fact, not the cause of the
result. In psychological research this is often a mistake made because we think we have
observed the cause of some event that was either internal to our subject ("in their head or
heart or soul") or perhaps we observe the person reacting to somethng external to them out
there in the big wide world. Basically, we get the wrong 'cause' linked up with the right 'effect'.
Here is a poker example:
A player under the gun limps with pocket Kings. The flop comes 872 rainbow, our 'cowboy
limper' bets out and gets two callers. The turn is another 8 and our limper goes for the
takedown and gets reraised all-in by the guy with the 87o boat. The KK player laments his
"bad luck". He attributes his loss to an external factorluck and perhaps to the donkey play of
the 87o player. But we all know what the real cause is, right? We know the "luck" involved can
be directly attributed to limping with pocket Kings. If you make the appropriate raise then the
87o folds and "luck" never comes into play. The player in this example has made what we call:
The Fundamental Attribution Error. He has tied the outsome of the hand to an external factor
(luck) rather then an internal factor (decision to limp with Kings).
The Fundamental Attribution Error is a pretty straightforward concept, which has been
supported in countless studies across all types of behaviors. Essentially, what it means is that
individuals have a tendency to attribute other people's behaviors to internal rather than
external causes. Conversely, especially when dealing with choices or behaviors that have a
negative outcome, people have a tendency to attribute their own behaviors to external rather
than internal causes. [Wikipedia]
More simply put, we think the bad stuff that happens to us is not our fault and we tend to
think the exactly the opposite when someone else does the same thing. So our 'cowboy
limper' above would observe that anyone else limping with a big pair is making a bad play and
is therefore a bad player but when the player himself does it, the result is attributable to bad
luck.
In poker, this can translate to players assuming that an opponent is a weak or poor player
when he or she makes some decisions that turns out unfavorably, which means that a really
good move by another player, which should put you on notice that they play well; does, in
fact, make you think they play poorly when the play doesn't work. If it's a good move, it's a
good move; regardless of the outcome.
The Fundamental Attribution Error is an error in thinking. We are seeking information at all
times at the poker table but when we find it, then we need to correctly place it in the context
of the game. The bad results come when we become less objective both in evaluating our own
play and in estimating the strengths of our opponents. And like so many aspects of poker, this
one can be used against you by a truly gifted player. Let me give you an example:
One busy night in the GoldStrike poker room in Tunica, I was playing a $5/$10 game waiting
for a tournament to start. A player I recognized took the seat on my left. Now, I knew this
player and I knew he was slumming at these limits. He regularly played much higher limits but
he too was waiting for the tournament and this was just an "open seat" to kill some time. He
played five of the first six hands dealt to him, lost them all and showed marginal or drawing
hands that should have been folded. Within the next two rounds, he took down several pots of
over $200 each. As he raked in the last pot, he turned to me and said: "You show these boys a
few bad hands when you first sit down and they will pay you off the rest of the night."
He might not have been able to name the Fundamental Attribution Error but he sure knew how
it worked. He gave the table every reason to label him a weak player and they all applied the
label; then he switched up his game and they did not change their assessment of him.
At the table always seek information about your opponents but always be flexible enough to
change it as new information is acquired. At the table and away from the table, always assess
and reassess your own play and we willing to admit when it really is you and not the cards or
your opponents making the weak plays.
The upside of understanding the Fundamental Attribution Error is that when you become clear
about when it is your play and when it is your opponent's play because you have a lot more
information about them. Now just be sure that there isn't some sly devil at your table who has
also read this article. You know that he knows that you know he knows too.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 29 - Psychological
Aspects of Table Talk: Part One
There are literally a dozen potential articles on the

psychology of table talk. Today I want to deal with table talk and floor calls. Remember that a
good poker player will be paying attention to everything that is said at the table. Everything
includes interactions with the dealers and floor staff.
Let's take a look at an example that happened just last evening. I was playing in a low buy-in
tournament when the following incident occurred. A first time player was in the BB, it was the
third round of blinds and he had only large chips in his stack, so he put out a 500 to cover the
100 big blind. While the action was still at the far end of the table, he asked the dealer for his
change for the blind. She replied: "I'll get that when the action comes to you." A mid-position
player raises to 500 and when the action gets to the BB, the dealer says: "OK, there we go,
would you like to call?"
The BB player says: "Yes" but then reaches for chips to raise and says: "I want to raise."
The dealer gets a stricken look and properly calls for the floor and retells the story but relates
it this manner: "The player said: "I call.'" The floor rules the action stands at a call.
Now this little story would be over had not another player at the table spoken up: "Excuse me,
while I agree with your ruling," he said to the floor "that is not how the action took place." As
he told the correct chain of events and the dealer got that same stricken look again; the floor
listened, pondered and then properly apoligized for the dealer's verbal direction to the player
but again ruled that the call stood as the blig blind's action.
Interesting floor situation but it's the table talk that we want to address. Anyone who did not
already know that the player in the BB was a first time amateur now knew it for sure. More
importantly, everyone also knew that the player who spoke up was:
a) A knowledgeable player;
b) A fair player;
c) A player who knows the rules
d) A player who follows the action closely
We can and should assume that this player has now raised his table image but, of course, the
question is was that something he wanted to do? Remember every action at the table is being
observed, judged and used by other players in assessing your play. Was this small floor call a
significant enough event for this player to give away all of this information about himself? Now
certainly the player may have wished to establish his image, in which case, mission
accomplished. All too often, however, players give away unnecessary information about
themselves when the rule should be: 'The less they know the better.'
Think about this the next time a floor call is made at your table, if you don't need to be
involved perhaps you shouldn't. Do pay attention to who speaks and what they say and in
particular to who makes the floor call. Generally, it is the dealer who calls the floor but did the
dealer catch the precipitating incident or did another player? How did the players react to the
floor call and the floor decision? Did someone go on tilt when the call went against them? Did
someone get angry and demand the floor in the first place? and it they did, were they really
angry or was this some kind of act to establish a 'Don't mess with me' table image.
Everything that happens at the table is worth taking in and adding to your analysis of your
opponents. Don't take a break when the floor is called; not when free information is about to
be given.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 30 - There is
Psychology and then there is Psychology
March 02, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Sometimes its better to make your point very

quietly and other times you will be a lot more successful making a whole lot of noise. Last
weekend I got a very interesting lesson in psychology at the poker table and unlike so many of
the lessons we get at the tables, this one didn't cost me anything, in fact, I made four hundred
dollars just for being quiet.
I was playing a $2/$4 no limit hold'em ring game at one of the poker rooms on the Las Vegas
strip. The room I was playing in spreads $2/$4 no limit and $1/$2 no limit games. I have
found that the $2/$4 game is much more profitable, simply because it has less bankroll swings
for my style of play. Obviously other styles of play do not perform as well in this game or I
would not be making a steady profit at there. On this night it was clear fairly early that the
other player at the table was seated down on the far end in seat seven. He acknowledged my
first big hand with a wry smile and he noticed that I got out of the way of a smooth stop-n-go
move that made him a sizeable profit. He talked amiably with his end of the table and I was
my normally quiet self at my end. He knew what I was doing, I knew his plan and we were
both content to not trespass on each other's pots. Let's call him Arthur.
Soon, however, a nearby $1/$2 game began to heat up. If they didn't have their own
cocktail waitress, they should have. Several of the players knew each other and clearly the
$200 maximum buy-in was not an issue for many of the players. The game was loud and
getting louder; the pots were big and getting bigger. Soon, Arthur was walking over to watch
them gamble when he was out of the hand at our table. Clearly, he was hatching a plan. After
one monstrous and loudly contested hand, I waved the brush over and quietly requested a
table change to that table. About fifteen minutes later two of the more reluctant players at the
"big table" were busted on a runner-runner suckout and the floor came by and told both
Arthur and myself that your seats were available. Arthur gave me a surprised look; he had not
seen me request the table change.
While making the table switch, Arthur said: "I notice you tend to be very quiet at the table."
And I replied: "Yes and that will continue."
As we hit the table Arthur was calling for the cocktail waitress and ordering a "Double Jack and
Coke." I quietly slipped into my seat down at the other end. I am sure I was the only one who
noticed that he placed his order with the same waitress he had had a conversation with a few
minutes earlier back at our old table; the same waitress he had tipped very generously. When
she arrived with his drink and he immediately ordered another: "Keep them coming, darlin'." I
was also the only one who would have given odds that there was a lot of Coke and no Jack in
those drinks.
Arthur had his psychological plan to implement and I had mine. Mine worked even better with
Arthur joining in the fun and playing lots of pots. But when he raised to $40 and got three
callers before I made it $200 all-in, he was the only one who folded his cards to my pocket
aces. And when he had rebought once and made a flat $80 call of a $20 open and $40 raise, I
tossed my pocket pair into the muck because I knew Arthur had found his hand. After he took
down an $800+ pot, he took a stroll and when he came back my seat was empty. I watched
from outside the poker room as he played another round, folded every hand and then made a
falsely drunken exit with a $600 profit for an hour's work.
Arthur had his psychological read on what it would take to make that one big hand and he was
willing to gamble $200 to find it. I had my read on the table and under the disguise of Arthur's
act, I only had to invest $50 to collect my $400 profit. His read was great; mine was good but
given a big assist by the loud pseudo-drunk at the far end of the table. Watch carefully the
next time you see one of those shark shows on the Travel Channel; watch for the barrcuda
picking up the big leftover chunks of fish.
There are all kinds of psychology to be employed at the tables; this was a tale of just two of
them.
The Poker Shrink - Vol 31 - Absolute
Threshold and Signal Detection Theory
Absolute threshold is a very specific psychological

and sensory term. Absolute threshold refers to the smallest intensity of a stimulus that has to
be present for the stimulus to be detected. The most common example of this involves
sensitivity to heat. Think of an electric burner on a stove. You place your hand on the burner
and then turn it on low. At first you won't feel anything because it is takes time for the coils to
heat up. Eventually it will get warm enough for you to detect heat; there is some temperature
that is just hot enough for you to notice it. In this case your absolute threshold is the point at
which it is just hot enough for you to detect the presence of the heat. Now for someone else
the absolute threshold could be higher or lower; sooner or later. In psychology such a variation
in perception or feeling is referred to as a threshold.
A threshold simply implies that there are different levels of response or perception to
certain stimuli, which varies among people. We all have different levels of response to heat,
light, sound, color and dozens of other sensory inputs. Your particular response or perception
of a stimulus is your threshold. It is possible to measure when you become aware of
something and often your awareness precedes your conscious recognition of the stimulus. You
know when someone says: "The noise from those fluorescent lights is driving me crazy." You
hadn't even noticed the annoying buzz but now that someone has mentioned it, you can't stop
hearing it. Did you actually not hear the noise before? Or was your absolute threshold for the
noise reset?
OK, what's the application of absolute threshold to poker? Very simple. Your skills of
observation at the table not only can be improved but can actually be reset. This means that
you can detect and utilize more vital information from your opponents by resetting your
threshold of awareness.
There is another interesting concept in psychology called signal detection theory which says
that our ability to observe is not an absolute quantity but rather depends on situational and
motivational factors. Simple example, you learn more about your poker table opponents when
you are paying attention and are not tired, distracted or drunk. Seems obvious but wait there
is something much more subtle and valuable to your game and your bankroll going on here.
Let's say that you are looking at the player in seat two when he tables his AKo to pick up a
pot, which is to say you are watching the action instead of the cocktail waitress as she walks
away from the table. Because you are watching the table, you also hear the player in seat
seven say: "Played big slick a bit faster that time." And the seat two player responds: "Well I
was in early position this time." Now you have three pieces of information instead of one and
you have also reset your threshold to a higher level to receive more information. How?
Here is the point. Absolute threshold can be reset to receive more information ("to feel the
heat sooner") simply by paying attention. Signal detection is enhanced by paying attention to
more information and the ability to remember the information and access it later in the game
is also increased by both paying attention and having more information available. Notice that
nowhere have we mentioned remembering the information or storing the memory. In fact,
studies have shown that with absolutely no attempt to increase memory or use any memory
tricks whatsoever, an individual will recall more information simply by paying closer attention
to events as they unfold. The additional information actually makes you more sensitive to
more subtle clues you would have missed previously.
By resetting your thresholds higher, you remember more of what you see and hear even with
no conscious effort on your part to save those memories. It is a proven function of threshold
behavior that as you make more refined observations, you simply retain more information.
The simply truth at the poker table is: 'Paying Attention Pays'.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 32 - Luck or Variance?
Magic or Math?
Just how much luck is there is poker? I have stood

with some of the biggest names in poker and heard them toss out numbers like 50% or 10%.
More complicated answers often sound like "90% short term but only 5% long term" or "a lot
more today with all the donkeys in the game". But not once have I heard any of the great
players, or average players or even a single Friday night fish give the only, the one and only
correct answer to this question. So what is this ultimate answer?
There is no such thing as luck in poker!
There is variability and variance but you know and I mean you know that over time it all evens
out; you know you want the donkey calls all day, every day; even though a four-outer on the
river will sometimes knock you out of a tournament. From a psychological perspective I want
to argue that any belief in luck is detrimental to your bankroll and to your ability to play your
"A" game.
Before I make my argument, let's take an example of what some call luck or bad luck and
what should be correctly identified as variance. You know what variance is right?
I quote Mike Caro: "A measure of the spread of a statistical distribution about its mean or
center. With respect to poker, the distribution of your results over a set of hands or sessions,
or the swings in a positive or negative direction of cash flow. The greater the variance, the
wilder the swings; the lower the variance, the more likely a given session results will be close
to one's average result."
Now if you play perfect statistical poker then your variance will be based on the times that the
"odds" or the "distribution of results" go against you. Or what some would call "bad luck" for
you and "good luck" for your opponent.
Now to our example: You and one opponent are all-in on the turn, the cards are turned over,
you are ahead and your opponent has four outs. What does this mean statistically?
Well in a 52 card deck you can see 8 cards (4 on the board and 2 each in 2 hands), so there
are 44 unseen cards and 4 of them win for your opponent and lose for you. Statistically you
will win 40 times out of 44 or 10 out of 11 times.
So no reasonable person should disagree that on average 1 time in 11 they will lose in this
situation. Ask any good poker player if they are willing to risk their tournament on a 10 to 1
draw and they will say: "Yes!" Every single time. The question is simple, do you say yes to this
propostion every single time? If you do then you understand variance and you reject the fuzzy
logic of luck. Furthermore, you understand that sitting down at a poker table engages you in a
game that is, in fact, gambling and you are doing this voluntarily.
Now the question arises: Why does a belief in luck have a negative effect on my game? The
leak in your game occurs not when you are unlucky (when the statistical variance goes against
you) but when you are lucky (when you are the donkey needing the 4 outer or the runner,
runner diamonds). You hit your miracle card and you think: "I got so lucky!" Wrong! You got
your chips in with the worst of it, you risked your tournament on a 1 in 10 play but because
you think "lucky" you do not do the analysis of "Why did I do that?" You don't learn from your
mistakes, instead to write off your tournament survival to "Luck."
Tell the truth, do you analyize only the hand you bust out on or do you look carefully as the
hands where you got "lucky"? If we truly learn from our mistakes then improving our game
must include admitting our mistakes and taking a look at them. Don't blame your losses on
luck, it was variance. Don't credit your suckouts to luck but rather take a good, long hard look
at how you tempted variance and learn not to do that. Get it in 10 to 1 not the other way
around.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 33 - Accommodation
and Assimilation
I want to be very precise today with the

psychological concepts of accommodation and assimilation. These are similar terms that refer
to learning and adjustment. These are very similar concepts, but not the same concept, and to
apply them at the poker table you need to understand the subtle difference. First let's take a
look at a tournament situation that we all have faced.
You sit down to your table in a deep stack tournament and you know absolutely no one at your
table. Before the first card is dealt you are listening to the players talk, you have picked up
that seat three is a first time tournament player and that the dealer knows seat five by name
and he plays this same tournament every month and usually satellites in. You hear that the
event is bigger than usual today because a bowling tournament is in town this weekend and
many of the additional poker players are in that group. Seat one is a bowler and says that
about thirty of the bowlers are playing and some of them "got their first hold'em lesson this
morning from the floor staff." Once the cards are in the air, you begin to add information about
all the players at your table, just like any other tournament, correct?
Near the end of the second level there is a monster pot, the bowler in seat one takes down
the huge pot and busts a player with a move that seems a lot more sophisticated than you had
given seat one credit for. Were you wrong about his skill level? Or did he not even know how
good the play was that he just made? You certainly want to watch him more closely to try and
figure out if this is an opponent you need to be wary of or just a lucky fish. Then in just a few
hands, the floor fills the vacant seat at your table with a monster stack. No one should have
that many chips this early in the tournament but there they are, three full racks being put
down in seat seven on your immediate right. Well this is going to change everything.
You have two new pieces of information to take in account in your reads of your table but
these are very different levels of information that require a slightly different kind of response
on your part. The bowler in seat one has presented you with some information that does not
quite fit with your picture of him based on his prior play. This is new information you need to
"assimilate." The psychological term 'Assimilation' refers to a process of fitting new information
into an already existing framework. You might say you want to add information to the
database on that player but the new information is contradictory or at least adds a new
dimension to seat one's play. You make sense of this new information by referring to already
collective information and then make either temporary or permanent adjustments to your read
on that player. Seems simple enough.
Now we turn to the monster stack who has just been moved to the table, you have no
information on him except, unless he is on one heck of a run of cards, the guy probably can
play some poker. On his first hand he comes out raising and takes down the pot and then re-
raises an early minimum bet on hand number two. Looks like he knows what to do with a big
stack. He is definitely going to affect your game; he is seated on your immediate right, acting
before you on almost every hand. But wait! You are not the only player about to be affected by
this big stack, the whole table is about to adjust. This means that all of the information and
reads you have on the table are about to change because everyone (well at least the good
players) are going to adjust to the monster stack. Information you pick up now is going to be
different because the table circumstances are different. This is the process of accommodation.
'Accommodation' is process of revising existing perceptions, and understanding so that new

information can be incorporated. In order to make sense of some new information, you actual
adjust information you already have to make room for this new information. Now, you are not
just adding a new byte of information like you did when the seat one player made a move,
now all information goes into the new data file labeled: "with a monster stack at the table."
Good players are going to make adjustments to the big stack; they are going to play
differently. Bad players are going to do something too; they are going to turn into rocks
whenever the big stack plays a hand. Good, attentive players looking to collect more and
better reads are going to accommodate the new structure of the table and adjust their reads
to take into account the new sheriff in town. Accommodate the new set of circumstances and
adjust your reads to pre-monster and post-monster stack categories. Probably when he is not
in a hand the "pre" file data will be more beneficial to you and when he is in a hand refer to
the "post" file data to adjust your play. Similar but not the same information, just as the
processes of 'assimilation' and 'accommodation' are similar but not the same.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 34 - The Yerkes-Dodson
Law of Arousal
Arousal. See, now I have your attention. The

Yerkes-Dodson psychological theorem states that an organism's performance can be improved
if that organism is aroused in some manner. Yes, this concept was first explained during
experiments with lab rats where food pellets were paired with sex or perhaps reruns of the
Mickey Mouse Club, I forget the details. This is why the law uses the term 'organism' and not
human. However, we are definitely organisms and we do response as stated in the Yerkes-
Dodson Law of Arousal. The simple idea is that the performance we wish to enhance, let's say
something small and manageable like, oh I don't know, winning the Main Event of the World
Series of Poker; that performance can be enhanced by increasing our level of arousal.
The Y-D Law holds that we may improve our performance by being aroused from our
average or normal state. So first we need to have a baseline state, which as far as poker goes
would be, how are you normally when you sit at the poker table? Seriously - think about that
for a moment; what is your normal state of mind when you play poker? Are you relaxed?
Anxious? Intimidated? Hyper-Alert? Whatever your normal condition is at the table, the Y-D
Law states that if you can be aroused in some manner over and above that normal state, you
will perform better.
Of course, there are many ways to be aroused (let's not go there!), but there is a downside. If
the level of arousal increases too much, performance decreases. Of course, this level is
different in everyone and so are the ways to achieve a level of effectively heightened arousal.
A good example of this is an athlete who performs better in the 'real game' than he/she does
during practice. There is more appropriate arousal (stress, excitement, even the crowd noise)
during the real games which increases their performance positively. But, if the pressure
becomes too much, their performance can decrease (they choke!). Some players do better
with more pressure; you want the ball in their hands when the game is on the line. But
Yerkes-Dodson says that everyone's (poker) playing would be better if we increased our
arousal in some way.
So how? The easiest way to achieve increased arousal in a very mental game like poker is to
go with the mental. I once played with a player who always knew what the 'average stack' was
in the tournament. If he was below average, he was constantly planning to take a pot that
would get him back to average. Once at average, he set a new goal of average plus 25% and
so on. He was always actively plotting and planning to achieve this next chip stack goal. He
kept mentally active; he was achieving a heightened level of mental arousal via the average
stack computation.
Another common way to stay involved and engaged is to put the others players on a hand
each and every deal. You may not always get to see their hole cards and you may not always
be right but the engagement with the game while you are not in a hand keeps you sharp and
aroused. Arousal in this sense can be interpreted as "a little edgy," a little more of some X
factor than you usually are.
There is no reverse Yerkes-Dodson Law of Arousal but I am going to invent one right here on
the spot. Let us call it the Buckner-Norwood Online Law, which states that many good live
poker players are unable to successfully compete in online play because they are not
sufficiently engaged, interested or aroused by clicking a mouse to play against faceless
opponents named 'All-in Al' or 'RaiseMeNow.' These players like to face an opponent and see
the tournament field narrow rather than just see the numbers on the screen decrease. For
them the online environment provides too little arousal, if you are such a player, I have only
two possible solutions: either play more than one table to ramp up the excitement, or stick
with live play where the opponents are flesh and blood.
However, you deal with this issue, remember: a little arousal is your friend.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 35 - Selective Attention
April 06, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Selective attention is purposely focusing your

conscious awareness onto a specific stimulus. Now that sounds an awful lot like just plain old
paying attention. But take this test with me. Keep looking at the words on your computer
screen; do not look away from the screen. Now in your peripheral vision there are some
objects-what are they? Pictures on the wall? A sofa? The cat? Whatever they are just note
them without looking away from these words. Now how about sounds? Traffic noises?
Someone talking in the next room? Television or radio? Note these too. How do you feel?
Tired? Hard chair? Sitting with your legs crossed too long? All of these sensations, you were
not paying attention to when you began taking my little test. But you are now. Why? Because
you were selectively paying attention to the content of this article. Thanks I appreciate your
attention.
So now you are seated at a poker table in a big tournament room. The card room
management makes some effort to minimize distractions; hopefully you are not near a bank of
"Wheel of Fortune!" slot machines. The PA system is used only as needed. So outside
distractions are kept to a minimum, except for the plasma screens with the NCAA tournament,
the very attractive player in seat four (select the gender of your choice), and the hunger
pangs in your stomach and -- where is that cocktail waitress??
You get the picture right? You are never without sensory input from potentially hundreds of
sources. So you must pay selective attention just to walk to your table, nevermind play your
"A" game.
Fine, fine! You say. Pay attention, don't get distracted. So what?
Well selective attention is more than just paying attention, it is a conscious action on your part
to focus your attention on a certain aspect of the game and to exclude everything else but
what involves the game. You focus on the tournament and in addition you selectively pay
attention to a particular aspect of the game. Here is the best example I have ever
experienced.
Some years ago I was doing tournament reporting and was working the entire schedule of a
WSOP circuit event, I was reporting on 18 final tables in 18 days. I was fortunate to be
working along side one of the best tournament directors in the business, Johnny Grooms. Each
day Johnny and I would stand side-by-side while the final table played out, I would report on
my laptop and Johnny ran the table and by the way also ran his floor staff for the other events
and satellites. So neither of us was focused on the table at every moment.
We decided on day 15 to try a little selective attention experiment. We were going to watch
the final table players for betting tells with their chips and hands. The idea was that we each
would focus on the how the players put their chips into the pot as they bet, we would try to
pick up any tells. The plan was not to compare notes until the second break, at two hours into
the final table. What we were doing was paying selective attention to one particular aspect of
the game.
At the second break there were six players remaining and we agreed on five of our reads.
Seat one: Always placed strong bets in the pot and always tossed bluffs. This is the most
common chip tell.
Seat two: This was the only professional at the table and we both agreed he put his chips in
the pot exactly the same way, every single time he bet.
Seat three: This player would always place his chips in the pot but if he was bluffing or on a
draw, he would count them out into piles of five. When he had a made hand he just put in a
stack.
Seat four: Another player who places chips with the nuts and tosses them with the bluff. A
very easy read because he also talked when he was bluffing and was quiet when he had a
made hand.
Seat five: Our only disagreement. I thought this guy was just too erratic to be read for
anything. Johnny felt he tossed his chips and made his bet more quickly when he had a hand.
Johnny was right; once I had his read the player did indeed act fast and toss chips with good
hands.
Seat six: This guy fumbled, dropped, miscounted and generally acted like he had never played
a tournament before in his life. We found out later, when he busted in 3rd place, that he had
never played a tournament before in his life.
No one at the table had made these reads or seats one and four would have busted out
several times. But wouldn't you have liked being at this table with these reads. They call it
selective attention; try it next time you are at a table.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 36 - Regression Toward
the Mean
Regression toward the mean is the tendency for

any series mathematical events to average out. This simply means that events like extreme
tests scores or terrible river suckouts or 'holes-in-one' tend to happen rarely and when seen as
a mathematical average this makes logical sense. This average is what we call the statistical
mean score. Golf is a good example; if I have a ten handicap then I will average shooting
about an 82. I should never shoot a 62 and if I don't drink or play Augusta National, I
hopefully will never shoot a 102. But 90's happen, a lot, and once in a great while so do
medium/low 70's.
In an article several weeks ago I said "There is no such thing as luck in poker." My argument
was, and still is, that lucky is simply a lazy way to describe the laws of math as applied to
poker or any other game that can involve chance. Several readers and some of my poker
buddies pointed out that this "that only works if you play poker everyday and live to be 743
years old!" Long bad runs can seem like some mythical creature we want to call "bad luck" or
a rigged random number generator if you play online. My argument remains the same, it is all
mathematical and it will all regress towards the mean if given enough hands and enough time.
But I know you "luck" fans want some proof, so I decided to try a short-term semi-scientific
demonstration for you.
Here is the set-up for my test. A group of my poker buddies were in town for a long
weekend of, what else, poker! After an initial briefing, I bought the drinks, I gave them 3X5
cards and asked them to keep them out on the table and mark in the left column every time a
2 or 3 or 4 outer hit post-flop. The experiment was "only" post-flop and only for 2, 3 and 4
outers. I ask them to note every time it happened at their table when it hit! and when it didn't
hit. Now any poker player knows that in reality these low percentage suckouts mostly don't
happen but the potential for them occurs often. So we did have the problem of staying focused
to catch all the times the "luck factor" did not weigh in and snap the best hand off. We also
had several math problems, like sometimes the 4 outer only comes into play after the turn or
a 3 outer becomes an 11 outer when the turn makes a flush draw. I did mention that this was
semi-scientific right?
Now this was a long weekend, the 7 players in the experiment played 71 tournaments over 5
days; four of the players were very diligent with their notes, most of the time; two were good
but may have missed several times when the 'outer' did not hit but nearly everyone got it
when the card hit (the collective "OH!" at the table helps a lot with remembering to write down
the suckouts). It's a lot harder to remember to mark down when the 77 loses, like it should, to
the AA.
Since you get to see the flop and at least two player's hands for a total of seven cards, usually
a 2 outer has a 2 in 45 chance of hitting; a 3 outer, 3 in 45; and the 4 outer 4 in 45. Plus you
get a chance on the turn and another on the river to a true post-flop "outer". Plus, we know
we missed some of the instances when the miracles cards did not come and the best hand
post-flop simply took down the pot. So we had another meeting, post tournament #71, in
order to pick a reasonable "magic number" for the correct frequency of suck-outs (FSO). After
some fairly reasonable discussion of probabilities fueled by rum; coupled with a fair
assessment of the accuracy of the numbers on our 3X5 cards. Just how many times did we
miss the 4 outer not hitting on the river? We added two tadpole tails, several eyes of newt,
more of the aforementioned rum; shook not stirred the mixture and came up with our FSO
number of 9% plus or minus .5%.
Our FSO number of 9% states that a true Regression to the Suck Out Mean would have the
total number of 2, 3 and 4 outers that hit on the turn or river in our semi-scientific
experiments being 9% or roughly 1 in 11. A potential 2 or 3 or 4 outer should come from
behind to win the hand one in every eleven times.
The results of our Regression to the Mean experiment. In 2,844 recorded instances of 2, 3 and
4 outers; 275 hit or a 9.7% frequency, which proves beyond a reasonable scientific certainty
that: "There is no luck in poker." Discuss.
Next week: Humpty Dumpty could be put back together again

The Poker Shrink, Vol 37 - The Strategy of
Tension
We often read crossover articles between poker

and business, poker and stock trading, poker and other sports, even poker and relationships.
You know the titles I mean: 'Keeping a poker face when your wife asks: 'Does this dress make
me look fat?'' Or 'Bluffing the Boss: Asking for that Big Raise.' Poker terminology is
everywhere. Most of the time, the similarity between poker and something else has a lot to do
with human nature. Being who we are, we humans tend to use whatever works in one part of
our life as a strategy in other areas. It is quite simple, if the hammer works on the nail, it
probably will work on the frozen latch, the stuck flywheel and the block of ice cubes.
For the next couple of articles, I am going to look at some concepts that originate far, far
away from casinos, cardrooms and poker games. Let's start with terrorism.
The strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a way to control and manipulate
public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents
provocateurs, false flag terrorism actions and even terroristic actions. [Wikipedia] In the words
of historian Daniele Ganser, "It is a tactic which consists in committing bombings and
attributing them to others." It is the intentional creation of tension in order to influence others
to accept your idea or your solution to relieve that tension or to avoid further tension and
discomfort.
The key here, for poker at least, is that there is a natural tendency for us to avoid tension and
discomfort. Therefore, if someone could create tension at the poker table and also offer a
means by which a player could avoid more tension, then they might be able to manipulate
other players via the Strategy of Tension. Let me give you an example.
Several years ago I was covering a tournament when I saw a very highly regarded
professional player use the Strategy of Tension. I did not completely understand the entire
process at the time but since I have seen him do this several times since, I am now convinced
it is a conscious tactic on his part. I am not going to name this player, you will see why later -
let's just call him Len.
Len was at a fairly tough final table, about two hours into play with six players still remaining.
Len begins to ask the floor a couple of questions. Nothing too pushy but he is clearly
complaining about very minor points. Then I notice he begins to watch the dealer's very
closely, looking for the smallest mistake. Finally, when a dealer neglects to move the button
before the deal begins, Len snaps: "Where is the button?"
The floor steps in and makes sure the mistake is corrected but Len does not let up. He
continues to loudly complain that: "We are playing for a lot of money here." He picks at every
point: blinds being posted, bets being pulled into the pot; he is relentless and alternates
between loudly and longly complaining for all to hear and a deep, brooding, ready to explode
silence. Len had established a very tense situation at the final table.
Why?
How likely are you to reraise an angry player? An angry, professional player you have seen on
television? An angry, professional player, the floor staff have been calling by name and
listening to and trying to calm?
Notice Len did not attack another player he focused on floor staff and dealers. Yet he created a
very tense situation and then exploited it to his advantage. I have in the past three years seen
Len do this several more times; each time with amateur players at the table who might
actually be intimidated by this behavior.
At one such event where there had actually been a physical confrontation between Len and
another player, I was standing next to the table counting chips while the tournament was on a
break. Len looked at me and snarled: "You don't need to count my chips." I leaned down and
replied: "Len, there aren't any other players around; you can cut the angry man act with me."
He looked up at me, smiled and with a twinkle in his eye said: "Don't tell them my tricks."
The Poker Shrink, Vol 38 - Reading a Player
with Clusters
Everyone wants to be able to read an opponent at

the table but what does it mean when he riffles his chips? Why did she smile when she made
that bet on the turn? Is that nervous twitch really a tell and if it is does it mean he has a good
hand or he is running a bluff?
Perhaps there is just too much information rather than not enough. Every player tries to give
off minimal readable tells but many players, particularly the talkative ones, actually give you
more information than you can process. Rather than try to throw out the useless information
looking for the useful, perhaps you might try looking for a group of signs that all point in the
same direction.
This process of finding similar things that tend to have the same meaning is called clustering.
What if rather than trying to figure out if that nervous twitch means a monster hand, what if
you could look for half a dozen tells that all pointed to that same conclusion.
Clustering, often called data clustering, is the classification of objects into different groups,
or more precisely, the partitioning of a data set into subsets (clusters), so that the data in
each subset share some common trait. [Wikipedia]
Any body language signs, speech patterns, twitch, or tell need to be evaluated as a cluster and
not as random, unrelated events. One tell alone might just be a personal nervous habit, so we
look for more elements of identifiable clusters.
Let's start with the player with a strong hand; we obviously want to look for signs of
confidence or strength. This is called a Positive Evaluation Cluster and may consist of any or all
of the following data signs:
- Leaning forward (the most common tell of a monster hand);

- Head slightly tilted (our necks tend to get rigid and straight when we lie or are afraid);
- Free hand resting on table (but this must be a change to normal behavior);
- Legs uncrossed (again only if new behavior);
- Dilated pupils (it's why people wear sunglasses at the table).
The next cluster goes with the Positive Evaluation Cluster but note the differences, this one is
called the Confidence Cluster. Remember a confident player might be wrong, they might be a
bad player but confidence should tell you a lot about how they will play there hand. Signs of
the confident player:
- Leaning back with hands behind their head (this is the easiest tell in poker to read);
- Hands pressed together to form a triangle (you have seen this a thousand times in movies);
- Hands on hips or surprisingly hands in pockets even while seated.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the Negative Evaluation Cluster, this player does not
feel good about their hand and will show these signs:
- Leaning back from the table;

- Legs crossed (again only as a changed behavior);
- Head bowed (the easiest tell to fake);
- Body turned/pointing away from table (not including talking to the cocktail waitress);
- Constricted pupils (makes you want to buy sunglasses, doesn't it);
- Free arm placed across chest as a barrier, or both arms folded across chest (the first tell I
had to learn to break);
- Free hand resting on chin, supporting their head- often with a finger across the mouth
(another tell that players will fake);
- Slow eye rubbing (any movement to the eyes is a sign of weakness).
If a player is unsure of their play then the opposite of the Confidence Cluster is the Hesitant
Cluster, consisting of:
- Closing hands or even tightly clenching fists;

- Stroking the chin (this one is the least reliable, as some folks do this whenever they think);
- Scratching ears or neck below or behind the ear (no really!);
- Scratching top or back of head (but not the nose or forehead).
The key to using clustering is that you can gain knowledge and verify it by finding several
clustered mannerisms in a single player during a single hand. One tell alone is risky, two is
better, three could lead to confirmation.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 39 - Is There
Psychology in the Poker Chip Trick?
May 04, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Why do players do chip tricks? The easy answer, of

course, is that they are bored and they have chips available. Being creatures with opposable
thumbs we tend to twirl pencils, click pens and basically do anything with our hands and
available objects to kill time. But there are other aspects to chip tricks or chip flourishes as
they are called and those are intimidation and image.
One of the first signs that you have been spending a long time on the felt is the way you "cut"
your chips when you make a bet. You don't count out a pile of five chips, you snap cut the
stacks and maybe give a single stack the one finger spill. A clear indication to the other
players at the table that you are not a poker rookie.
This is precisely the aspect of chip flourishes that lends itself to a psychological
interpretation. What are the reasons, other than boredom, to show chip tricks at the table and
are there any reasons not to do them?
1. Intimidation: Quite simply if you have been around poker long enough to be able to riffle a
stack of twenty chips, then you probably have enough experience for any player who can be
intimidated to actually be intimidated. Ask any pro why they first learned a chip flourish and
they will admit it was for table cred.
2. Table Image: Like it or not, you have a table image and other players react to that image
and consciously or unconsciously adjust their play towards you to that image. Just think of
your own reaction to someone who fumbles their chips across the betting line and the
seasoned player who snap cuts their soldiers into the pot.
3. Stress Relief: Studies have shown many times those repetitive movements done without
conscious thought are distractions from stress. It's why we drum our fingers or twirl hair or
even chew gum.
4. Covering Tells: Sure riffling you chips can relieve a bit of stress but by doing just one
repetitive move a player can also suppress any unconscious physical tells. It's like focusing
your mind on one thought to the exclusion of all other thoughts. In this case you focus your
nervous energy on one task: a chip flourish and therefore you are much less likely to give off
other physical tells to your opponents. Just be careful not to use a particularly chip move when
you are bluffing and another when you hold the nuts.
5. Respect and Notice from Dealers and Floor Staff: Some of the best chip tricksters started
their careers as dealers, where chip handling is a sign of strong table control. Dealers often
unconsciously treat other dealers and ex-dealers with more respect. This might even give you
an edge with the dealer and the floor in close table decisions.
6. Maintaining Focus: This one you will need to try for yourself. Some players find a good long
three minute chip riffle will help their concentrate when making a big call or fold at a crucial
point in a tournament. Others will notice that the chip handling is distracting to their
concentration; you decide which group you fall into. Again, be careful, don't riffle on the bluff
raises and stop riffling with the monster hand.
7. It looks cool! Yes, it does and the pros do it but again think about this for a moment-Is
looking like a professional what you want? Sometimes a fumbling amateur gets attacked a lot
more than the smooth calling pro. There are times when being mistaken for a rookie at the
table is the best image to have. How you handle or mishandle your chips is a great way to
distract your opponents from your actual skill level.
Poker is a game of psychology; your chips and how you handle them are part of that
psychological game.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 40 - The Titanic
Syndrome
I guess this article should be called "Teddy and the

Titanic Syndrome" but let's not get ahead of the story. Teddy is a poker playing buddy of mine.
Last week he asked me if I had heard of the Titanic Syndrome. I had, it goes something like
this: Businesses, particularly start-up entrepreneurial ones, tend to incorporate current widely
accepted business management strategies at some point in their development. One of the big
current rage management techniques is called "change management." By which it is meant
that what keeps a good business afloat is staying current and changing with the times or
"managing change." Seems simple enough and when correctly applied works quite well.
However, new very successful businesses often think they are invulnerable. So at times their
"change management" is really misapplied to a more serious problemthey have hit an
iceberg and the business is going under. Here comes the Titanic Syndrome: the inability to
recognize icebergs on the horizon and then to under-manage when you actually hit the big ice
cube. Teddy felt his game had gone cold but another player had told him he was dead wrong
and he was in the middle of a Titanic Syndrome breakdown (meltdown?). Teddy didn't get it,
so we sat down to analyze his game.
Teddy pulled out his bankroll notebook and showed me his results pages for the last three
months. Sure enough about five weeks before the numbers had switched from 80% winners to
90% losers. I drew a line where the big switch occurred and then another line where Teddy
had changed games from $5/$10 Limit Hold'em to $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em. Those two lines
were less than a week apart, so I had to ask Teddy why he had switched games. I got a blah-
blah-blah answer that finished with: "But even when I switched back to the limit game I got
crushed." True enough, Teddy was losing at both games now.
I know how Teddy plays, at least I know how he plays limit; he always plays at one of the big
"locals" rooms off the strip. He plays during the day and therefore is playing a lot of
recreational rocks. Teddy changes up his game, sees a fair number of flops and always makes
the value bet. But the No Limit game is not populated by the same rocks as the limit game
and I noticed Teddy's sessions were now more in evening and even late at night; different
game and different pool of players.
Here is where the shuffling of the decks chairs on the sinking ship began for Teddy. He realized
he was not playing optimal strategy for the No-Limit game, so he started to try some other
moves. Since, he was in a losing streak, the new moves were usually only incorporated for a
single session or less and then he was on to something else. Have you ever stood on the first
tee after reading an article in a golf magazine and tried to keep you head down, your elbow in,
roll your wrist, flatten the club face, rotate your hips, follow-thru and then realize you forgot to
tee up the ball?
Teddy was involved in massive change management without having identified the problem and
worse yet he had taken his broken game back to the limit game, where he had been winning
and was now losing there too! There were now two floundering Titanic Teddy poker ships both
taking on water and leaking chips like crazy.
So what did I tell Teddy?
"Teddy, my boy, have you consider taking up Crazy Pineapple?" A joke, just a joke.
"Teddy, my boy, go back to the limit game but only after you remember your winning strategy
and can stick with it religiously. Once you begin to win again, then you may consider playing
some no limit, but I suggest you do that online at low stakes until you figure out that game.
My best advice is that if you can't keep the two game strategies separate that you stick with
limit only. It's bad enough to have one ship sinking but you keep this up and you could lose
the whole Teddy Fleet."
Last I saw Teddy, he was sitting at the $5/$10 limit table with a big stack and a big smile but I
detected a longing for the deck chairs over on the no limit table.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 41 - Cognitive
Dissonance: Learning from the Bad Beat
Can you really learn from a bad beat? I mean, can

you learn something other than the guy in the three seat is a donkey and the poker gods hate
you?
First, let's be clear. A bad beat happens only when you get your money in with the best hand
and the other player draws out on you with less than a 50% draw. In fact, some would go
further and say a true bad beat has to be something with longer odds than a three-outer. But
we all agree that a bad beat must be statistically a 'come from behind' event. The longer the
odds of the second hand making the beat, the worse the beat feels.
Poker wisdom might say that you must forget the bad beat and just walk away. Next hand,
next tournament, next session. There might just be something to learn, though, in taking the
beat, but you need to be able to clearly analyze all of the elements that went into the painful
experience. This is where cognitive dissonance comes into the picture.
Cognitive dissonance, as commonly understood, is the perception of incompatibility

between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, including
attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.
When you take the bad beat you certainly have reactions that can include attitude (you get
angry), emotion (you stalk away from the table talking to yourself), belief (that guy is a
donkey!), and behavior (take it well or take it badly, it's still behavior).
Now, here comes the tricky part. The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting
cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or
beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict)
between cognitions. In non-scientific terms, conflict makes us uncomfortable, so we attempt
to relieve that discomfort by coming up with new beliefs or behaviors to in some way reconcile
this conflict.
This tension that we want to relieve will drive us to find new ways to do whatever it was we
just did that caused the tension. But! In poker it is possible to relieve the discomfort and not
learn anything at all. If you walk away from a bad beat and your entire thought process is
'That guy was an idiot' or 'I am just unlucky', then you have lost a valuable opportunity to
improve your game.
Work with the tension. Work with the discomfort of the bad beat and ask yourself, "What really
happened?" Just how good were your odds? Did you have another play that risked less of your
stack? Was that player likely to make such a call based on his previous play? And if he was,
did you have the best odds to make the call or that big re-raise?
You see, the discomfort we naturally feel when we take a big hit at the table presents an
opportunity for analysis and improvement -- but only if we put the right elements into the
conflict. Only if our cognitive dissonance comes from an honest, factual assessment of the
hand in question can we improve. Sure, maybe the guy did make a terrible call, but perhaps
you also had been stealing like a bandit, and your all-in move looked like a semi-bluff to him.
Maybe if you had checked and let him bet out, then come back over the top, he would have
laid it down and there never would have been those runner-runner clubs.
Cognitive dissonance suggests that a bit of discomfort can be a good learning tool -- in fact, a
great learning tool -- if we choose you use it.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 42 -- The Pareto
Principle and the Ninety-Ninety Rule
There is a somewhat humorous but all too true

rule in business often called the 'Ninety-Ninety Rule.' There are literally hundreds of variations
of the Ninety-Ninety Rule in business and other creative endeavors. In computer
programming, for example, its version of the Ninety-Ninety Rule goes something like this:
"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining
10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."
That the total development time sums to 180% is a humorous observation of the tendency of
engineering, budget planning, product development, construction projects or nearly any
human endeavor to overrun its original schedule. We all know this and yet we all make
schedules. Of course, there must be another rule somewhere that says: "If you don't make a
schedule to eventually be overrun, then the project will take even longer."
The Ninety-Ninety Rule is a variation of the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle (also
known as the 80/20 rule) states that, for many phenomena, 80% of the consequences stem
from 20% of the causes. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto originally observed that 80% of
income in Italy went to 20% of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g.,
"80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients." (Wikipedia definition)
So let's apply the Pareto Principle to poker. Depending upon the limits you play the numbers
might be 80/20 or even 90/10, as the Ninety-Ninety Rule might indicate. My observation is
that the lower the limits, the higher the ratio; the Ninety-Ninety Rule might be more
appropriate at $4/$8 but the Pareto Principle (80/20) would be more applicable at $20/$40
and above. Here are the two variations I have come up with for poker.
Pareto Poker Principle #1: 80% of your wins comes from 20% of your opponents.
Pareto Poker Principle #2: 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your plays.
Principle #1 is perhaps the easier of the two. Most good poker players know that other good
poker players will not enter a big pot without some kind of a hand; they will not chase a pot
for all their chips and they can make the big lay-down. On the other hand, the weakest players
at the table will do exactly the opposite of this, whether they are chasers or over-aggressive
maniacs. Targeting those players and opening up your game when they are in the pot with you
is a profit-making strategy, just as playing more conservatively against the other good players
is a good loss-reduction move.
Over time, the majority of your profits will come from your opponent's mistakes. Therefore, it
makes profitable sense to play more hands against the poor poker players than against the
better ones. You will find over time that the majority of your profits come from that small
percentage of truly poor poker players.
Principle #2 is a bit trickier because it has two parts. First, you will be making plays at the
table: check-raising; stop-'n'-gos; semi-bluffs; all the tricks in your bag. To make these plays
profitable, you need to be able to recognize when they have gone wrong and to let them go
before the big bets hit on the turn and river. All this is the first part.
The second part, which is perhaps a more advanced play, is that many really good moves at
the poker table need a set-up. You need to make the first bet and fold to the reraise a few
times to set the player up for the big kill. Or you need to not defend your blinds, in order to
pounce when the blind stealer gets too greedy. So, you are using moves and plays that you
know will lose you small amounts of chips, in order to set up the big score.
It's an interesting rule of thumb that you might expect only 1 in 5 moves to be profitable
(80/20 principle again) but it surely is more profitable then the player who plays every move
to the bitter and costly end.
Consider your own game. Do you have an 80/20 rule in place? Are you ready for 90/10?
Notice that the higher the ratio, the more disciplined you need to be. If you're making 90% of
your profit from 10% of your moves and only 10% of the other players, then you are playing
twice as tight as the 80/20 player.
What is your Pareto Poker Principle number?

The Poker Shrink, Vol 43 -- Anecdotal
Evidence
June 01, 2007, Dr. Tim Lavalli
Anecdotal evidence is information you obtain from

a subjective report, an observation, or some kind of example that may or may not be reliable.
In addition, anecdotal evidence is not scientifically valid or representative of testable facts.
Let's take a look at a real-world (non-poker) example to illustrate anecdotal evidence. A lady
claims her arthritis pain went away completely because she wore copper bracelets on her
ankles and wrists. A medical doctor and research scientist will tell you that there is absolutely
no scientific studies that show copper bracelets, copper pennies or copperheads relieve
arthritic symptoms. The lady could be in remission, or she may have changed her diet, or this
might just be a placebo effect. The 'evidence' that the copper bracelet helped her medical
problem is anecdotal, without basis in scientific fact, meaning evidence obtained under rigid
and specific test conditions. However, the lady no longer is in pain.
Now some poker reports relying on anecdotal evidence:
"I busted out of the tournament with pocket Jacks, I always lose with Jacks."
"The continuation bet is the most over-used move in poker."
"I can never get my Aces to stand up when it really counts."
Notice that these statements tend to contain words like: 'always,' 'most' and 'never.' We all
know that players making such statements are simply launching into a bad beat story. We
know the odds; we know that AK is a very good starting hand but. We know, we know, we
know. However, we also tend to rely on anecdotal evidence when it comes to our game, our
bad beats and the suckouts that take us out of the tournament.
These statements also tend to contain words such as 'our' or 'us.' You see, humans (that
would be 'us') tend to be more objective when things happen to others and more subjective
when they happen to us. Makes sense; we are the 'subject' of the event when it happens to us
and we tend to not be objective towards bad stuff happening to us. By the way, this works the
opposite way, too. If you win with QTo several times in a tournament, you will be more likely
to play QTo later in that same event (remember Robert Varkonyi in 2002).
So what's the problem? We all know that no one really loses all the time with pocket Jacks and
we know that AQo is not a worse hand than 72o, because we know that people muck the 72o
and play the AQ, which is why you lose more with AQ than 72. Here is what is wrong with
relying in any way on anecdotal evidence. The game of poker has certain objective elements
52 cards, number of outs to the flush, odds on the double gut-buster draw and it has
certain subjective elements reads on other players, aggressive or loose opponents, table
image. If you allow subjective assessments to creep into the objective portions of the game,
you simply make your decisions less reliable and therefore less profitable.
There are already lots of subjective judgments for you to make in a hand of poker. Why
convert other portions of the game, where you have good, reliable, objective information, to
the less solid subjective realm? Anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Should you rely on it?
Sure, when it's reads or tells or the 'dumb luck factor' of the donkey in seat four. But when
you have good solid facts to back up your play they should be tempered by the subjective
information not transformed into some poker mythology.
Great poker players use all of their skills to make the big decisions but they seldom rely on a
hunch or a rabbit's foot. It may look that way on television, but day after day at the tables,
good solid factual evidence wins the cash time after time after time.
Except when I get Jack-Dewey suited that's my lucky hand.

The Poker Shrink, Vol 44 -- Gall's Law
"A complex system that works is invariably found

to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch
never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working
simple system."
This has become known as Gall's Law and can be found in the book Systemantics: How
Systems Really Work and How They Fail. It would seem rather intuitive that any complex
system would have begun as a simple system; however, that is what we often call evolutionary
thinking, which means we assume things evolve naturally. We know, of course, that many
things do not evolve, but rather are created by humans and often created to the specifications
of other humans... or worse yet a committee!
In business projects, particularly software projects, Gall's Law is an argument in favor of

underspecification. When making a design specification, for example, keep it simple. Design
something simple, and if and when it works, you can add more bells and whistles. In fact, if
you design to a baseline concept, you will often find that systems, product lines, etc. will grow
on their own. They do indeed evolve!
If, however, you construct a very complex system, then you are likely find that not only does it
not do what it was meant to do, but you also cannot fix it. Take your poker game.
Is there a lot of fancy play in your game? Is it working? If not, let me ask this: Did you ever
have a basic poker game that worked? Or perhaps did you read a lot of books, watch a lot of
television poker and lose a lot of money?
Poker games are built, not bought or learned or created in seven days. If you are not winning
at poker (be honest with yourself) than ask the very simple question: "When was I last a
winning player? Was there a basic game that was uniquely my own and was a winning game?"
Examples of complex losing games are the previously mentioned 'Fancy-Play Syndrome,' the
'Always Slow Play' and the 'Constant Trapper,' not to mention the 'Maniac' and the 'Loose-
Aggressive Forever' strategies. Gall's Law suggests that 'fixing' these games may not be the
way to go, and in fact, it may be impossible. You have two choices for rebuilding your game.
#1: If you had a winning game at one time, then you need to literally go back to that game.
Identify and strip away all the add-ons that have crippled your game and begin again. This
process is difficult because it requires you to actually remember what worked and then to
locate all of the potentially winning strategies that you have added that instead created a
complex and losing system.
There are practically no poker players who can do this alone, even with great session notes.
You need a coach or a poker buddy to do the analysis with you. Then you have to play some
poker without resorting to all of those losing tricks you have 'learned'. Remember that in and
of themselves these are not losing strategies; it is only the complex game system that you
have constructed around them that has become severely broken. Often the task is too difficult
to consider, or as Gall suggests: "A complex system designed from scratch never works and
cannot be patched up to make it work."
#2: In this case, your best course of action is to start over. 'Back to the basics' is a well-
known phrase because it so often is the correct course of action. As Gall reminds us: "You
have to start over with a working simple system."
To make this less of a painful task, answer this question honestly: Did you ever have a simple,
working, functioning, winning poker game? If you did, then at what level and with what
bankroll? Sure, it's hard to start over with the basics, but if you have never actually had the
basics in your game then it's not really starting over, is it? And is playing a basic poker game
really harder to do than sitting at the higher-limit tables and losing session after session after
session?
Your call, but Gall says: "Keep it simple, stupid." Oh, wait, that might have been Zippy.
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 45: The Premack
Principle
While observing children in the '60s, David

Premack noticed that some parents used one behavior to reinforce another. For example, your
son likes to play video games but does not like to clean his room. You, the parent, want the
room cleaned and you also want your son to spend less time playing video games. One
behavior (playing the video game) happens often and reliably; the other (cleaning the room)
happens less and completely unreliably. So the wise (or manipulative) parent offers more
video game time when the son's room is clean. One behavior acts as a reward for the other.
Yes, of course, there is some debate about reward-based behavior, but most parents will take
the clean room in exchange for the game playing.
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I was reminded of the Premack Principle last summer during a World Series of Poker NLHE
preliminary event. Five professional players were seated nearly back-to-back at four tables;
among the pros were Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Layne Flack and Huck Seed. The fifth
player will remain anonymous because he was the one using a form of the Premack Principle,
and although I am giving away the strategy, I am not going to identify him by name. Let's call
him... Bill.
Here's how the play went. It was the first round of blinds, which means in the deep-stack
WSOP structure, there are very few chips in play relative to chip stacks. The five pros were
talking back and forth, making last-longer bets and discussing other prop bets they had heard
of in the '08 Series. They were paying a lot more attention to the conversation than to the
early hands of the tournament.
Bill the Pro was the farthest away from the center of the conversation, so he continually
leaned back in his chair to talk to the other players. In fact, he was often up out of his chair
talking to the other pros. When seated, Bill played quite a few hands and folded on the flop or
turn to continuation bets. It appeared he was seeing a lot of hands but was not going to get
involved in any big pots. Easy read. And he appeared to be more interested in chatting with
the other pros then playing his cards.
At one point, maybe 30 hands into the tournament, Bill looked at his cards and came in for a
raise, his first raise. He paid attention to the hand and called a bet on the flop of K-8-6. When
a deuce hit the river and the other player bet the pot, Bill tanked for a minute, then showed
his pocket queens and mucked. The other player showed his A-K and the game moved on. Bill
went right back to his distracted chatting and folding a lot of hands post-flop.
When the players returned from the break after round one, Bill remained standing. He looked
at his cards and folded them for a couple of deals while in a conversation with Mike Matusow
about the EPT blind structure versus the WSOP structures. When he finally took his seat, he
continued to appear more interested in conversation away from the table. Then came this
hand.
An early-position player opened for a raise; this player had taken several pots from our pro
with post-flop bets. Bill called pre-flop while talking to Phil Hellmuth about an upcoming
charity tournament. On the flop of A-K-8, the early-position raiser bet one-third of the pot and
Bill casually called, still talking to Phil. The turn was a six and the EP player bet half the pot;
Bill had to ask what the bet was because he was not paying attention, and he apologized and
called. The river brought another king and after a pot-sized bet from the early player, Bill
raised, the EP snapped out his all-in bet and Bill insta-called. The dealer shouted, "All in and a
call!" for the ESPN cameras that had been hovering near this group of tables, and Huck Seed
and Layne Flack stood up to see the hand. When everyone was ready, the EP showed A-K for
kings full and our disinterested professional showed pocket aces, for aces full, the win and the
double-up.
As he walked away from the table, Huck said: "Did they really think Bill wasn't paying
attention?"
Did Bill set that up? Well, yes he did. I know because I asked him on the next break. He didn't
call it the Premack Principle but I will. Let your opponents do something they reliably like to do
-- take your chips by betting you off a pot -- and thereby make it easier for them to do
something they don't reliably do, like play a big pot out of position when you don't fold.
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 46: Attribution Theory
Attribution theory describes the way in which

people explain both their own behavior and that of others. According to this theory, people
tend to see either internal or external causes as the determining factor in most behavior. If
you see a child crying in a store, you might think "That kid is a brat" (internal), or you might
think "I wonder if he is hurt or ill" (external). You are attributing the child's crying to either an
internal or an external cause. In poker, if a player plays a hand particularly badly you might
attribute it internally, as in "That guy is a bad poker player," or externally, like "That guy is on
tilt or drunk or distracted." The distinction can be important to your game.
If you are at the table with a truly bad player then you can take advantage of that fact over
and over; but if a player is on tilt and he takes a break, he may well come back no longer on
tilt and ready to play a much stronger game. If you mistakenly attributed their bad play to the
internal fact that this guy is just a bad player, you could lose a lot of chips when he comes
back with his "A" game.
So, let's ask the important question: When you lose a close hand to another player, what is
your first thought? "He is a donkey." "He outplayed m." "He got lucky." The correct answer is,
you shouldn't have the same first thought every time you lose a hand. You should review the
hand in order to correctly attribute the loss to skill or luck. But even more importantly, you
should make an internal/external decision about both the other player's actions and your own.
Far too often we dismiss our own mistakes by putting the donkey label on our opponent. Sure
he may have played the hand badly, but how about you?
For each hand where you pick up a read, you want to attribute the other player's play to them
correctly. If they really are a rock or a maniac (internal) than so be it, as you then have a
good, solid, long-standing read. However, if they were making a move with one hand to show
they can be aggressive, then perhaps they were just sending a signal to the table (external)
and they will now go back to playing tight.
Applying attribution theory to other players is the easy part. Just don't put a big label on a
player (rock, maniac, bluffer) until you are sure. Better to go with several external reads ("He
plays A-K fast") and work up to the big label. In most small buy-in tournaments you never
really have enough information on a player to make a big internal read. If you jump to such a
conclusion it could cost you when the player comes out with a contradictory play. It's not that
they are changing up their game; it's that you attributed a style to them based on too little
information.
The second application of attribution theory in poker is much more difficult. You have to
attribute motivation and actions to your own play. We'd all like to think we lose those big
hands to a luckbox or a huge suckout, but we really know this is not true. Sometimes we
make a bad read or a bad play; we make a mistake and we should attribute that loss to either
an internal or an external factor of our own games. If it's external: we were tired, we missed
the read, we got distracted. etc. Note the mistake and move on. If it's internal, then there's
some work to do. If you are pushing with top pair/top kicker and getting snapped off time
after time, you have a leak in your game. You are clearly misplaying TPTK and it's an internal
issue.
Attributing your mistakes correctly and taking action to plug the leaks is fundamental to
improving your game. Remember accurately attributing your own behavior is more difficult
than attributing the other player's actions and correcting internal behavior is more difficult
than fixing external mistakes.
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 47:
Convergent/Divergent Thinking
Who doesn't marvel as Daniel Negreanu makes

those unbelievable reads on television? I mean, who doesn't want to say, "I am folding my
quads to your royal flush," and be right? But be careful, trying to be as good and as
entertaining as professional poker players can have its pitfalls. Trying to be too good of a
reader can hurt you at the poker tables.
In psychology, when someone is trying to find that one perfect, exact answer; we say they are
engaged in convergent thinking. This is process in which a person attempts to find the one,
true and single correct answer to a question, a question such as: "What is the speed of a
comet?" But convergent thinking may not be the best course of action, if your question is,
"What is my opponent holding?"
We were all taught when we first learn to "read" other players that we should try to put our
opponent on a range of hands. This is called divergent thinking, which is simply the thought
process where you attempt to find many possible responses to a single question. Divergent
thinking is very useful at the beginning of a research project, when one tries to figure out
what possible answers must be tested. But more importantly for our poker application,
divergent thinking allows us to consider that there really is more than one answer to the
question. "What does he have in his hand?"
Players open with a range of hands and if you narrow that range too quickly, you can easily be
tricked by a weak holding developing into a winner. If you put a player on A-K pre-flop and the
flop comes J-4-2, you might bet hard with any pair. But if you had put the player on A-K, A-Q,
A-J or any middle pair, then you have some cause to be cautious.
The second part of this divergent/convergent process is not to get too confident. I know a very
successful NLHE cash player who always sits down with the maximum buy-in and tries to lose
his first two or three hands. Really. He plays loose and shows his hands a couple of times in
the first round after he sits down. He also orders a drink and loudly tells the cocktail waitress
that he expects to see a lot of her, he then tips her big for everyone to see. He is trying to get
other players at the table to make a convergent read that he is loose, aggressive and quite
frankly stupid. He also is loud, overbearing and has too much money, which he does not value
at the poker table.
The divergent thinking process in response to his "coming to the table" actions is either that,
"Yes, he is an idiot and a cash machine," or that, "No, he is setting you up and will lose sixty
bucks early to win your stack later." Guess what? It works.
Okay, so you are going to leave your options open and engage in divergent thinking. You are
in a showdown situation and you are reviewing the betting: "Did you actually call my opening
raise with a three in your hand? I can beat your two pair, but trip threes is a winner." As you
reconstruct how the hand was played, in order to decide if you are going to make the big call
on the river; you have a distinct advantage in recreating the hand if you engaged in divergent
thinking. If A-3 suited was a possibility for this player pre-flop, then it does have to be
considered on the river. But if you have been reading this player all night and he never played
a small ace to an opening raise, then your divergent thinking should have already ruled out A-
3 and you can confidently make the call.
Divergent thinking works both ways. You not only leave yourself open to possibilities, you also
can close off some of those haunting draws when you have divergently put your opponent on
hands for several hours. Knowing what he doesn't have is sometimes just as important as
what he does.
The Poker Shrink, Vol 48: Blocking
Sometimes it surprises me just how often our

basic instincts overrule our really big brain. Early experiments showed that behavioral
scientists could condition rats and pigeons to recreate certain behaviors on cue. You know the
old: hear a bell and get fed, or peck a black dot and get a treat. Those are called conditioned
responses. The lab animal learns that a certain stimulus leads to a regular response. The light
means food, the whistle means a hungry cat. Something like that.
Further research discovered that once an animal was conditioned to one stimulus they would
not learn another one. So if you "taught" the rat that pushing the red lever meant a food pellet
would appear but the black lever produced nothing, the rats would push the red one but not
the black one. If you then added a yellow lever, the rat treated yellow like black or no food.
Why? Well the subject rodent had already associated red with food and they just didn't have
the mentally capacity to broaden their actions to consider that yellow might also mean food.
Red was food and that was that. Effectively, the first-learned conditioned response blocks out
any later conditioning even if the later association is just as strong as or stronger than the
first. A strong conditioned response relationship strongly blocks any further associations to the
original stimulus. But we humans are a lot smarter than that, right? Well let's see.
At the 2007 World Series of Poker, I had dinner with two professional poker players, who
had been playing at the same table for the first six hours of that day's tournament. During
dinner they were talking about several hands that had been played at their table when Pro A
said: "And I can't believe the guy in seat four hasn't busted out, he plays so badly."
To which Pro B replied: "Yeah and he has that monster tell."

Pro A: "You saw that, too? I mean does no one else at the table get it?'
Pro B: "I know neither of us has been able to get him heads up all day and the other players
don't seem to have a clue."
Pro A: "And he plays so many hands, he is bound to give us those chips before the day is
over."
So, of course, I had to ask about the tell and after being sworn to secrecy, Pro A said: "Every
time he has a strong hand, he makes his bet and then leaves his hand out on the table in a
fist. He never does that if he is bluffing or on a draw, only when he is strong."
Pro B: "What? He has a strong tell too?!"
Pro A: "That's not the tell you had?"
Pro B: "No, I have a weak tell on him. When he is weak, he plays with his chips after he
makes his bet. With a strong hand or a strong draw he never touches his chips after a bet."
So the guy in seat four had two different tells and each pro had picked up one of them. It
turns out that during the very first round of play, when blinds were low; Pro A had lost a pot to
seat four when the player gave off his strong tell and Pro A picked up on it. Also in the early
rounds Pro B had taken a pot from the player in seat four when he gave the weak tell and Pro
B picked up on that one.
So each pro had a confirmed tell and apparently were blocked from picking up the player's
other tells. Where is it written that a player will only have one tell? The answer is nowhere.
Clearly if you are weak enough to have a tell, you could have more than one. But the ability to
pick up on a second or third tell is blocked by our little reptilian brain. Except that now you
know about blocking and can focus your attention to search for those other tells. Just be sure
to remember: Red means food!
The Poker Shrink, Vol 48: Blocking
Sometimes it surprises me just how often our

basic instincts overrule our really big brain. Early experiments showed that behavioral
scientists could condition rats and pigeons to recreate certain behaviors on cue. You know the
old: hear a bell and get fed, or peck a black dot and get a treat. Those are called conditioned
responses. The lab animal learns that a certain stimulus leads to a regular response. The light
means food, the whistle means a hungry cat. Something like that.
Further research discovered that once an animal was conditioned to one stimulus they would
not learn another one. So if you "taught" the rat that pushing the red lever meant a food pellet
would appear but the black lever produced nothing, the rats would push the red one but not
the black one. If you then added a yellow lever, the rat treated yellow like black or no food.
Why? Well the subject rodent had already associated red with food and they just didn't have
the mentally capacity to broaden their actions to consider that yellow might also mean food.
Red was food and that was that. Effectively, the first-learned conditioned response blocks out
any later conditioning even if the later association is just as strong as or stronger than the
first. A strong conditioned response relationship strongly blocks any further associations to the
original stimulus. But we humans are a lot smarter than that, right? Well let's see.
At the 2007 World Series of Poker, I had dinner with two professional poker players, who
had been playing at the same table for the first six hours of that day's tournament. During
dinner they were talking about several hands that had been played at their table when Pro A
said: "And I can't believe the guy in seat four hasn't busted out, he plays so badly."
To which Pro B replied: "Yeah and he has that monster tell."
Pro A: "You saw that, too? I mean does no one else at the table get it?'
Pro B: "I know neither of us has been able to get him heads up all day and the other players
don't seem to have a clue."
Pro A: "And he plays so many hands, he is bound to give us those chips before the day is
over."
So, of course, I had to ask about the tell and after being sworn to secrecy, Pro A said: "Every
time he has a strong hand, he makes his bet and then leaves his hand out on the table in a
fist. He never does that if he is bluffing or on a draw, only when he is strong."
Pro B: "What? He has a strong tell too?!"
Pro A: "That's not the tell you had?"
Pro B: "No, I have a weak tell on him. When he is weak, he plays with his chips after he
makes his bet. With a strong hand or a strong draw he never touches his chips after a bet."
So the guy in seat four had two different tells and each pro had picked up one of them. It
turns out that during the very first round of play, when blinds were low; Pro A had lost a pot to
seat four when the player gave off his strong tell and Pro A picked up on it. Also in the early
rounds Pro B had taken a pot from the player in seat four when he gave the weak tell and Pro
B picked up on that one.
So each pro had a confirmed tell and apparently were blocked from picking up the player's
other tells. Where is it written that a player will only have one tell? The answer is nowhere.
Clearly if you are weak enough to have a tell, you could have more than one. But the ability to
pick up on a second or third tell is blocked by our little reptilian brain. Except that now you
know about blocking and can focus your attention to search for those other tells. Just be sure
to remember: Red means food!
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 49: Transference
One of the most common and most important

aspects of psychological therapy is the concept of transference. In very basic language, there
are times in our various relationships when we "transfer" our own needs, desires, and fears
onto someone else. In therapy, the most common occurrence is when a patient either likes or
dislikes their therapist. If someone reminds you of a loving parent or a nasty boss, you might
also assume they have other qualities of that person; you transfer the feelings about one
person to another. The key to any form of transference is that it is nearly always unconscious.
As we all know, unconscious assumptions or actions at the poker table can cost us money, so
transference during a game is something to be avoided.
You have to be careful, though. Transference and getting reads are not the same but they
closely resemble one another. You hear a guy talking a bit of trash in a hand and when it plays
out you find he was bluffing. Now that is a read you want to keep in mind, as he may be
talking to cover up a bluff. However, his trash talking also reminds you of John that jerk that
plays at lot at your local card room. John is a pain in the butt and no fun to play with but he
does give away a lot of chips when he drinks, and this guy is drinking, too.
That second observation is transference; it is an emotional reaction. You have no factual basis
that this current player will give away his chips like John does. You just don't like to play
against John because he is, in your estimation, a jerk. Yes, this guy may be just as big of a
jerk, but that does not mean he will play poker like John does. You have the first sign of an
actual tell with his trash-talking on the bluff hand, but the rest of your information is about
John, rather than this player; whatever you do, don't transfer one player's game onto another.
Transference need not be negative; in fact, in therapy the most common sign of transference
is when a patient actually begins to like the therapist. Patients can even fall in love with their
therapists. This is understandable, as when you tell your deepest secrets to someone and they
listen and do not judge you, they then seek to support your feelings and help you make sense
of them within the context of your life situation. It is only natural that on an unconscious level,
patients often transfer very strong positive feelings onto someone they see in an office once
each week. It's understandable, but is based on a clinical, not a social, relationship. Basing
attraction on the artificial construction of the weekly client-therapist interaction is
transference. The same can be said about the social contact at a poker table.
Someone talks with you about the stock market or your kids or basketball. You develop a kind
of relaxed friendship and then you are in a big pot against them. If the "good" feelings you
have towards this person changes how you play your hand, you are the victim of transference.
Perhaps they were even having the conversation with you to gain that edge.
Now, I am certainly not suggesting that you not be friendly and conversational at the poker
table. However, you definitely should not allow friendly banter and camaraderie to alter your
game. The situation at a poker table is just as artificial as the therapy session, and remember
that the key aspect to transference is that it is nearly always unconscious. If you are not
aware you are missing that river bet to the friendly old guy in seat five or that you never
check-raise the attractive young lady in seat two, then perhaps you need to take a long, hard
look at how your unconscious is affecting your win rate. At the poker table your goal should be
to transfer chips to your stack and that is the only transference there should be.
The Poker Shrink, Vol. 50: Rehearsal
Rehearsal is exactly what you think it is: practicing

something, often repeatedly, before you need to perform the act. We most often think of
actors rehearsing scenes or lines of dialog and this is a perfect example of why rehearsing can
benefit your poker game. Actors want to be completely familiar with their lines and with their
movements before that have to perform a scene. The reason is that they want to be able to
act in perhaps a variety of ways without having to focus on what words they have to say or
what actions they must perform as their character. Acting is not about the words; it is about
how an actor delivers in thought, word and deed.
Now think about that, as it applies to poker. You not only don't want to give away any clues
about your hand or your thoughts at a poker table, you also sometimes want to give false tells
instead. So there are several aspects to rehearsing that apply to poker. First and foremost,
you don't want to choke when you should be making the big bet or even the big laydown. For
example:
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A player pushes all in and if you make the call, you are all in for your tournament life. Your
read tells you that you have a 65% chance of being ahead and the huge pot demands that you
make the call but. it is for all your chips and this is a big tournament and you will still have
a just-below-average stack if you fold. What if your read is wrong? You lack the confidence;
you are questioning yourself at the table.
At this point I would ask: "Have you ever had to make this decision before?" Ever been in this
situation in a $5 tournament online or a low-limit cash game? If not, why not? Rehearsing for
a big poker decision requires that you play enough at very comfortable limits that you have
experienced this kind of situation before. It's not enough to have read about it in a book and
definitely not enough to simply know the pot odds. You need to have been here before and
made the move.
Just for a minute, recall several of the biggest hands you have ever played; it doesn't matter if
you won or lost the hand. You remember them, don't you? I will venture that you don't
remember the next time a similar situation came up in a later tournament because you
already had that move in your arsenal. You had rehearsed it in a real-time tournament
situation and you made the move; probably, you have made it several times since. Rehearsing
does a couple of things for your game.
First, rehearsing gives you the confidence to make the right move. That confidence means you
are also not going to be giving off any physical tells, like shaking hands or fumbling chips. This
rehearsed steadiness means you also are ready to give false tells and dupe your opponents.
Rehearsal also means that you will be able to maintain your steady action even in the pressure
hands. If you always take 30 seconds to check, raise, bet or fold; then even at this pressure
point of the tournament, you will take 30 seconds because you have rehearsed under
pressure.
The obvious question is: Can a decision in a $5 sit-'n'-go really be the same as one in a World
Series of Poker tournament? The answer is yes! But you have to rehearse as if that $5 table
meant something. You have to bring your "A" game and you must make the decision based on
the same poker skill and knowledge that you would bring to a WSOP final table. If it's "just a
five-buck satellite" then you are not optimally rehearsing. And without that focus and
commitment, the rehearsal will not give you the confidence or physical control to make the
same move in the big event.
Now get out there and do it and do it again.

The Poker Shrink, Vol. 51: Implosion
Last week I wrote about rehearsal and suggested

that rehearsing particularly difficult decisions at the table would make those decisions easier,
with less chance of a player giving off any physical tells. I heard from one of my old
psychology professors, who suggested I cover "the other side" of this phenomenon. He
referred me to a therapeutic technique known as implosion.
Implosion is a process in which clients imagine and relive certain aversive scenes or anxiety-
producing situations. The therapy consists of having many different exposures to the same
negative stimulus but in a safe or less-anxious environment. The theory behind implosion is
that the negative stimulus will eventually lose its ability to make the client anxious.
This is similar to what I suggested in the rehearsal article, when we simply play a lot of
low-limit online hands to produce many examples of situations that produce our anxiety. We
all know it can be hard to push all in with top-pair/top-kicker, but less so for a dollar than for a
thousand. But there is another way to use implosion theory to desensitize yourself to difficult
poker decisions. You don't have to "imagine" the anxiety producing situation; you can actually
reproduce them.
Let us suppose that your problem is firing the third bullet on the river after you have made the
post-flop continuation bet and fired out another bet on the turn. Implosion theory would
suggest that you need to do this enough times that facing such a situation will produce zero
anxiety. This reminded me of a learning technique I was shown over a decade ago, and it was
about poker.
My first poker teacher was a tight low-limit cash-game player, who grew up with stud and
draw games. He later taught himself texas hold'em
at some of the earliest online poker sites. I am not sure we could even call those early games
"sites," because they were 100% text-based, but I digress. John, my teacher, was having a lot
of problems with firing that third bullet and he explained that he had a similar problem
learning to fearlessly make the continuation bet when the flop missed him (the first bullet).
Once he had that mastered, he had to overcome the fear of throwing away chips by making
another bet on the turn with no hand (the second bullet) and eventually he had to face the
anxiety of the third bullet on the river, when he had made absolutely no hand and all the cards
were out. Here was John's solution and a perfect example of implosion desensitization.
John was playing low-limit stakes online poker and he would commit to firing all three bullets
every single time the situation arose. Never mind any reads he had on the other players or on
a particular hand. He was going to make all three bets every chance he got until he was so
desensitized that he would not show any anxiety or concern or any physical tells as he made
those bets.
Yes, his win rate suffered, but as he said, "I was paying for my lessons," and he was playing
very low stakes. By constantly committing to the three bets, John no longer hand to make
those three decisions; the bets were coming out every single time. It didn't take long for his
concerns about the three-bullet move to completely disappear; then it was just a matter of
moving up in limits and taking his new fearless play to the live games.
Whether you want to see this kind of practice as rehearsing or implosion is not as important as
whether you can commit to following through until you have truly gotten past the anxiety.
Poker is about leaving your emotions at the door and playing your "A" game without fear. It
takes practice to leave the emotions behind, because none of us can -- or should -- completely
control our emotions.
Unless we are seated at the green felt.

The Poker Shrink, Vol. 52: The Butterfly
Effect
Psychology is, at least in part, about teaching us

how to effectively cope when life deals us setbacks. There are many ways to deal with life's
little problems. One particularly effective way is perspective. Putting your problem in the
proper place in your overall life. Here is one way to gain such perspective.
The butterfly effect serves as a metaphor for life in a chaotic, uncontrollable, unpredictable
world. Specifically, it suggests that small events can have very large effects. The commonly
used example is of a butterfly flapping its tiny wings over Japan and setting off a wind current
that eventually causes a hurricane in America a week later.
The point?
Tiny changes in one place can have huge ramifications later on in another. Here is a
concrete poker example. Its late in Day One of a major tournament, you are ready to come
over the top of an opening bet with your J-J but the big stack steps in first and moves all in.
You toss your jacks in the muck and curse your luck when the big stack shows 9-9 and takes
out the other guy with A-K. That was your pot and then you hear that the big stack got that
way earlier in the day when he was dealt pocket aces three times and ran down pocket queens
or kings to build his stack. He is just lucky but now you have to deal with him sitting on your
right reraising pot after pot in front of you.
Its not how he is playing that bugs you, it's the easy way he got his big stack with all those
aces. The aces were the butterflies; the hurricane is now sitting at your table. Relax. You know
all those short stacks you took out to get your chips? Well, they are the result of the same
butterfly effect.
Here is my time-tested bad beat recovery tool, using the random, chaotic language of the
butterfly effect. I call it the "688/687" truism. You have just won a 688-player poker
tournament, you are getting your picture taken and your first-place prize counted out in
Bellagio chips. No need for any psychological support here congratulations. Now turn the
wheel slightly, you are passing the final table and see them giving the prize money to another
player, you busted out of that tournament ten hours ago. But you see that tournament only
had 687 runners and just one less player meant the difference in winning or losing for every
single one of the 687 or 688 players.
The final entrant in any tournament changes the entire event. Cards are dealt differently at his
first table with an extra player. Tables breakdown just a bit faster with more players. Players
are distributed to the empty seats around the room in a different order. That donkey doesn't
give you his chips in the "687" tournament because he is seated at a different table. In the
"688" event, you got those chips and they got you past that one bad beat and allowed you to
play on and eventually win.
No, I am not saying that it's all random or that luck wins out over skill at the poker table. But I
am definitely saying that there are hands being played at other tables that will eventually have
a major effect on how you play your cards later in the tournament.
You know we always laugh at the absolute donkey who makes it to the final table as the chip
leader, but we forget all the other really bad players who gave us their chips so that we could
be at the final table to beat that donkey.
The point?
There are random events that happen away from your table that you cannot control. They
actually have as much to do with who wins and who loses as your own play poker. So when
you do get hit with the bad beat, the cold deck or the cooler, the best thing you can do for
your sanity is to walk away from the table with two thoughts in your head:
First: "Seven-deuce off-suit beats pockets aces 12% of the time."
Second: "There are a lot of butterflies in Japan."

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The Poker Shrink, Vol. 53: The Just-World
Phenomenon
The just-world phenomenon is the psychological

tendency for people to believe that the world is just or fair and that people therefore get what
they deserve. We all hold this belief to some extent, so when something good happens to you,
you might conclude that the world is just because you are a good person. In the same way,
when you see something not so good happen to someone else, you may conclude that they
did something to bring on their trouble. Otherwise, it would not have occurred, since the world
is a just place.
For many years in professional poker, Phil Hellmuth was a prime advocate of the just-world
phenomenon; Phil felt and he told you that he deserved to win the hand or the tournament
because in a just and fair world the best player should win. Mike Matusow was the poster child
for the other side of this story. Mike would tell you how bad he ran and how he never won a
coin flip because it was not a just or fair world.
Mike has changed his attitude and now operates on a more positive expectation view of
life. Phil, well, Phil is always going to be Phil. The question is: Where do you fall on the fair-
world spectrum?
Is poker a fair game? Is the poker table a good or a bad example of the just-world
phenomenon? Should you even consider fairness when playing poker?
First of all, poker may be an absolutely perfect model for a fair-world view of life. We all know
the best starting hand in hold'em is pocket aces. We also know the worst starting hand is
deuce-seven off-suit. We know that, right? Then we also should know that in a heads-up hand
between the worst and the best starting hands, with all of the chips in pre-flop, the pocket
aces will win approximately 88% of the time. In a just-world scenario, the big hand wins, but
in the real world, not a different evil, bizzaro version of reality but in the same just-world/real
world, the seven-deuce off-suit wins the hand 12% of the time.
You know that right? So when you win 88% of the time and lose 12% of the time, how is it
that you are so upset 12% of the time and not equally and oppositely happy the other 88% of
the time?
Fair is fair. You are not a good person for winning when you get your cards in right; nor, are
you an evil, worthless lout when your big hands lose to merciless suckouts. The problem arises
when our game suffers when the fair-world model evens out and we do take some bad beats.
If all of life were as easy as the percentages and poker odds that arise from a 52-card deck,
then we would all be cruising along in a just world. But the world is not quite so easy to
predict as a poker game. Which begs the question, if poker does indeed come down to math
and predictability, then why do players get so upset, and why do they tilt after a bad-
percentage river card?
The answer is simple. We do think the world is just, we do know that things even out over
time. We do know we are actually winning 88% of the time. But we tend, because we are
human, to focus on one hand or one tournament or one cash game session, and that is not a
"world" view. The percentages that affect the big world take place over time, a time a lot
longer than one hand of poker.
So for your own sanity, for your own mental health and for your blood pressure, remember: It
actually is a just world, at least at the poker table, which does not mean that two pairs,
deuces and sevens, will not beat your pocket aces sometimes.
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Poker Shrink Vol. 54: Successive
Approximations
I was playing poker the other evening and after

losing yet another hand, the young player next to me mumbled: "Man, I just can't put that old
guy onto a hand."
I was a bit surprised because the gentlemen he was referring to had played and shown down a
lot of hands in the last couple of hours and I had what I was sure was a really good read on
him.
"What did you put him on that hand?" I asked.
The distraught poker player said: "Ace-king or ace-queen."
Not a bad read, except that the gentleman had bet just like he had a middle pair and then
showed pocket nines. A short time later, as the player folded again, he said quietly to me:
"There's another A-K read gone wrong." Strange, I thought the older gentleman was once
again betting like he had a medium-size pair and sure enough, he was playing pocket sevens.
I wondered why my young tablemate had not adjusted his read to at least include the
possibility of a medium pocket pair, considering the previous hand we had discussed. They
broke our table for the evening tournament a short time later and I had a chance to talk with
the young player about his reads. What I realized from his description was that he was not
making good reads, but what he was doing instead was remembering the bad reads and not
adjusting his read on the older players. Then I remembered I had heard this several times
before from poker players learning to make reads.
The process of getting a read on another player is completely about knowing what he has and
basing your play on that foreknowledge. Reading is not about being as good as Daniel
Negreanu or being able to call out someone's hole cards. What this player was doing was
feeding his ego, or in this case destroying it, but he was not reading to gain information and
win more chips.
He missed a step, which in psychology we call "successive approximation" and apparently he is

not alone in this oversight. Using successive approximation we gradually can refine our
actions, decisions, or options to a more precise point. If we reward or praise a child for
attempting to read, he will try again. We then praise him for reading a word, then a phrase, a
sentence, and a paragraph. We are successively rewarding behaviors that are steps in the
process of reading. As we support each newer achievement, we approach the goal we are
after.
So, you make the A-K read on a player because he limped under the gun and then bet out on
the disconnected flop. When he shows down 8-8, you simply adjust your read. Next time he
limps under the gun, you put him on a medium pair; then when he shows the A-K, you can
adjust again. He plays A-K and medium pairs the same way when he is under the gun. You
don't care if your reads are brilliant, you shouldn't care how many times you have to adjust
your read. The idea is to get it right.
By using successive approximation, you allow yourself the latitude to make a bigger range of
reads and you, over time, narrow in on a player's tendencies without discarding your original
reads. It only makes sense to put a player on A-K early; it is a very common hand to play. But
when you are wrong about that read, it's not a failure; it is simply a mis-approximation of how
this player plays poker. All you are really after is a solid correct read. You can effectively
narrow in on a truly great read with a series of successive approximations.
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Poker Shrink Vol. 55: Interference
Interference has to do with recalling previously

known information. There are events that can and do interfere with our ability to have an
accurate recall. In poker, this is often a problem when we try to remember how a particular
opponent has played previous hands.
There are two types of interference. Proactive interference is when we have trouble learning to
remember something new because of some previously held memory. One of the more obvious
examples of proactive interference is learning to drive an automobile on the other side of the
road. If you have ever tried this, you know that while it might be possible to quickly learn to
stay on the opposite side of a busy road, it is quite another feat of navigation to make a turn
across an urban intersection and get yourself in the correct lane on the other end of the turn.
The other type of interference is retroactive interference, which is just the opposite. With
retroactive interference, some new information is presented that makes it difficult to recall
some older memory. A good poker play example is when a player you had a tight,
conservative read on suddenly comes out firing a couple of hands in a row and takes down a
pot or two with weak starting hands.
Is that player changing up his play? Or was your read just wrong? Both are good questions to
ask, but what you want to avoid is interference. Because if you let new behavior wipe out your
older memory of how this player acted, you are losing what could be valuable information to
retroactive interference. The last hand is not more valuable than the hand played an hour ago.
If your recall is correct, then don't let it go just because the player has made a contradictory
move.
What is most interesting about interference for poker players is that all of us have a tendency
to allow interference of one kind over the other. Most players are more likely to have old
information dominate any new play from another player. We tend to get locked into a read we
have and will almost always ignore new contradictory play. We really don't like to alter our
reads. Basically, we all have a tendency to be proactive interference victims; we just don't like
to change our minds. But clearly an old read is no more valuable than a new one, so be
flexible.
Now if you happen to be a retroactive interference player, I have some bad news. It is often
very difficult to break a retroactive memory pattern. Remember, with retroactive memory we
tend to remember the new play and forget the old one. If that is how your brain normally
recalls, you are going to have to work on this problem to overcome retroactive interference.
We all know we should change up our play and not fall into patterns. What if you discover that
every player at your table is a 100 percent retroactive interference memory person? All you
would have to do is never repeat yourself. If you play a big hand aggressively they will all
remember that, so the next big hand you slow-play and they'll be remembering the aggressive
play. You just switch up each hand and no one ever gets a read on you.
The reality is that there is no perfect pattern to varying your poker play but there is one really
good tip when you do change it up make sure they see it! Show those bluffs. Make a show of
that river check-raise. If you are trying to keep the other players off your game, take
advantage of their ingrained need for interference and get that new information out there. It
doesn't matter if it interferes with their old reads or their new reads, just as long as you keep
them guessing.
On the other hand, figure out whether you are susceptible to proactive or retroactive
interference, and be aware of your own tendency to give more or less credit to new or old
information. A read is a read is a read, no matter how new or old it may be.
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The Poker Shrink, Vol. 56: The Just-noticeable
Difference
There is a concept in psychology called the Difference Threshold, which is commonly referred
to as the just-noticeable difference. Technically, psychologists define these as a change in
any form of stimulation that a person will notice at least fifty percent of the time. For example,
you are asked to hold a cup that has water in it. You close your eyes and as more water is
added (without any sound), you say when you notice an increase in weight. Obviously, the
weight of a single drop of water will not be noticed, but filling the cup half full will at some
point trigger the difference threshold.
The just-noticeable difference can be used to measure the increase in any stimulus: light,
sound, weight, heat, cold and even poker tells.
It might be obvious that if someone is giving off a subtle tell -- perhaps a nervous twitch --
that the bigger or more frequent the tell, the more likely it is to be read by an opponent. On
the other hand, the more attentive you are to subtle clues and tells the more likely you are to
pick them up, while the other players at the table might miss them. These are good examples
of the just-noticeable difference.
Here is an example I was shown by a professional poker player. He told me to watch a certain
player at his table. Whenever that player made a big bet, he would sit back in his chair. The
further back he sat the more confident he was in his hand. If he sat fully forward leaning
towards the table, he was bluffing. Mid-way meant he was on a draw with some outs. All the
way back in his chair and he held a monster. It had taken the pro a couple of hours to get this
information and correctly assign the right read. He was operating by observing a just-
noticeable difference in the players posture.
Later, another player showed me a difference aspect of this idea. He told me that when he was
last to act in a hand on the river, he always took advantage of the situation to send a message
to the other players at the table. First, he made his decision on the hand in play. Once he
knew what his play would be, he took advantage of being last to act (being on stage he
called it). He would send a message to everyone at the table. For instance, he was going to
fold what he was sure was a second-best hand. But before he folded he talked about the hand
in such a way that he appeared to be struggling with the decision to fold. In this way he was
trying to discourage players from bluffing him, by making it appear that he was having a hard
time laying down a hand.
Here is what he told me: You almost never are putting on the act for the player who is in the
hand with you, they are already paying attention. You are talking or acting to get the other
players to pay attention and pick up the read you are trying to give. You gotta talk just enough
to get them interested but not too much that they pick up on the fact that you are delivering a
message.
In other words, you are trying to get the players to just notice your poker play -- just
enough to get the message but not enough to notice that the message comes gift-wrapped
with a bow and is probably ticking like a well-planted time bomb. The just-noticeable
difference works many ways, but the more subtle the just noticeable is, the more youll
benefit from the information given or received.
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The Poker Shrink Vol. 57: Adaptation
Things change at a poker table. Players get tired. They get short-stacked or big-stacked.
Blinds go up, antes kick in. Players bust out and are replaced by new players. The money
bubble approaches; someone goes on tilt. The one constant at any poker table is that things
change.
Things change in life. To be successful, we also must change. We have to keep up with trends
in the market, with the growing capacities of our kids. We have to keep up with technology,
economics, politics, and the latest music, food, movies, and reality shows.
Adaptation refers to an individuals ability to adjust to changes and new experiences.

Adaptation relates to a persons ability to accept new information, to integrate that information
and then alter his behavior accordingly. A high degree of adaptability is a positive trait in
rapidly-changing environments such as poker games.
Not everyone is highly adaptable, in life or in poker, but adaptability is something you can
learn or relearn. The first simple step is to remember that what you know about other players
is subject to change, because they are adapting too.
Several years ago I was playing in a big buy-in event in Tunica, Mississippi. Just after the
dinner break, I was moved to a table with two professional players. One of these players you
would all know and the other was a very successful local pro. Clearly these two were both
better poker players than I was, and my game plan was to avoid them. The big pro was
opening a lot of pots for three times the big blind plus antes, and limping into pots with more
than two limpers in front of him. Because he was so regular in his betting amounts, I couldnt
pick up anything from his bets.
Though it was clear that allowing him to limp from late position was a bad idea, the table was
letting him get away with it and then he would take over the hand post-flop. The only thing I
did notice was that he was avoiding the other professional at the table, just as I was doing. No
need to mess with the good player when the rest of the table is giving you easy chips.
Then the second pro also limped into a hand and played back post-flop, and he got pro
number one to lay it down. I saw this adaptation and the very next time the same scenario
played out, I limped into the hand with nothing and reraised pro number one off the pot post-
flop. I had adapted albeit with the assist of the demonstration from pro number two but I
had adapted.
Then we lost a player and a new player was brought to our table. On the very next hand, pro
number one broke his pattern and opened the pot for only twice the big blind. I was
dumbfounded; I had my read, it had been good for hours, so what was this? I was going to
need to adapt to something brand new. How do you adapt to new information? Fortunately,
this hand didn't reach a showdown, but the question still remained.
Thankfully, the new addition to the table turned to pro number one and said: Well I see you
are up to your old tricks.
To which the pro replied: Dont be giving free information to the fish.
Aha! This new move was targeted at the new player. He clearly had an old tricks read on the
pro, and the pro was attempting to reinforce that read with what the new player thought was
his normal style. So I was going to need to adapt to the new move by pro number one and to
the style he was adapting to the new player. I wondered what pro number two would do based
on this new player at the table. How many more adaptations were taking place?
Did I mention that poker can be a difficult game? Did I mention that things are always
changing? How good are you at adapting to the changing game of poker?
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Poker Shrink Vol. 58: Foot-in-the-Door
Phenomenon
The foot-in-the-door phenomenon comes from the foot-in-the-door technique, which vaguely
alludes to a salesman who literally puts his foot in the door so you cant slam it in his face. The
idea is that if you will at least listen, then maybe you will buy. Or to put it in psychological
terms: if you want someone to do something big, first try to get him to do something small.
The phenomenon is the tendency for people to agree to a large request after they have agreed
to a much smaller one.
So if you want your buddy to help you move to a new home, you might first try asking him if
he will help you move your sofa. Once he agrees to the sofa, you can try the living room
furniture, and before you know it hell be loading those boxes you havent unpacked since the
last time you moved.
Now there is also a reverse process here, where what you really want is just the smaller
item but to get it you first request a much larger one. "Say Bob, can you spare the weekend to
help me move my six-bedroom house full of sofa beds and steamer trunks? No? Well then
could you help me move just this table?"
That is called the door-in-the-face technique. Meaning, you expect to get the door slammed in
your face by making the big request, but usually you can get the smaller one because well,
because you guilted him into it.
Now you ask, as you often do: "What has this got to do with poker?"
Congratulations, you made the final table! Ten players are moving to the final table, taking
their chips out of the racks and ordering new drinks. They are also checking the payouts on
the screen and it says nine players are being paid and most of the money goes to first and
second place. If you are one of the medium stacks, this is the perfect time for you to make a
suggestion: Hey, how about we give tenth place a save? Give him back his money. Usually,
players will agree to this and just as usually the money comes out of the first-place prize. So
you give nothing away and you are identified as the guy who is willing to make a deal.
Later, the table is down to six or seven players and you are still a medium stack, maybe you
have even slipped a bit, but you were the guy who made the generous offer to give tenth
place some money. Now, when you start talking about a deal, people will listen to you. You got
them to agree to a little deal, now you are going for a bigger one. Its the old foot-in-the-door
technique and the other players are psychologically more likely to accept the idea of a chop
from you, because of the first smaller deal you got them to accept.
Since we all know that split prize pools tend to give everyone cash that is more than third
place and less than second place, you are probably always going to come out better with a
deal than without. Unless you are fairly sure of a second-place finish with a shot at winning
the whole thing, you want the deal.
One caution about the door-in-the-face technique, where you make an outrageous deal offer
in hopes of getting one not as good but a lot fairer that seldom works in poker. Make a bad
offer and the other players will remember it. So, go with the foot-in-the-door, make a fair offer
and build up goodwill for the final deal. And if you suddenly hit a run of cards and take over
the chip lead, well, try the foot-in-the-mouth technique: Be quiet and win it all!
Poker Shrink Vol. 59: Extroversion
We have all heard of personality traits, which we usually think of in terms such as dominant or
shy, weak or bitter, happy or joyless. But personality trait theory is a bit more complex than
that, and not surprisingly there are some strong correlations between personality traits and
good poker playing. This brings us to what I like to call poker traits.
What makes a good well-rounded, even well-liked person is not necessarily what makes for a
good poker player. And like so many other aspects of our lives, some things we can change
and others we cant. Lets take a look at what psychology has developed over many years on
what is called trait theory, and lets see what that can tell us about benefiting from your good
poker traits and managing your bad ones.
The most commonly accepted personality trait has two sides: extroversion and
introversion. Very generally, we tend to be outgoing, expressive, and talkative or we are shy,
reserved, and quiet. As you probably know, the majority of people fall very close to the mid-
range on the introversion/extroversion scale. Sure, we may be more reserved in most
situations but a normal introverted person will have swings to the extroverted side in some
areas. While you may think that friend of yours who is never quiet and always on the go is the
perfect extrovert, he probably has moments of peace and quiet as well. Generally speaking,
people tend to be slightly one way or the other.
Now at the poker table, either trait can be good for your game or it can create problems. First
of all, a poker face is much easier for an introvert. Normally reserved and quiet, the introvert
has a much easier time not showing emotions at the table. The extrovert on the other hand is
prone to talking and being demonstrative and telltale leaks are much more likely to happen. If
youre an extrovert, you might talk louder or faster when you have a good hand. You might
develop a nervous edge to your voice when you are bluffing.
On the flip side, introverts do get excited and nothing excites them more than flopping that
monster hand after hours of monotonous fold, fold, fold. But hiding that excitement
underneath a calm, serene surface can be a lot more difficult for the introvert. He wants to
jump for joy but he must maintain that calm, placid face. Hard to do.
The extrovert on the other hand is already loud and talkative, but when he has to think long
and hard about a hand, everyone will notice the change. The key, of course, is mixing up your
play or in this case mixing up your table image. Or you can go the other way and just master
one of the two traits. Chris Ferguson is a good example of the perfect introvert at the table.
He takes the same amount of time with each action; he stays unemotional behind that hat and
those sunglasses. You never know what Chris is thinking.
Daniel Negreanu is an example of the near-perfect extrovert. He loves to talk. He talks when
he is in a hand, he talks when he is out of a hand, and he loves to talk in-between hands. He
talks about sports, Rocky movies, and sometimes he even talks about poker but he always
talks. Try, just try, to pick up a verbal tell on Daniel.
The key to this most common personality trait is to know thyself. Know what you naturally do
in a stressful situation and work either to control those reactions, or decide to go with them by
being all you can be, either as a poker extrovert or a poker introvert.
Poker Shrink Vol. 60: Neuroticism
The most studied personality trait in psychology is neuroticism. Put very simply, if an
individual scores very high on the neuroticism trait, he will tend to experience more negative
emotions and he will experience them more strongly. People who score low on this trait are
often referred to as emotionally stable; these individuals are less likely to react or overreact to
stress and they recover more quickly from emotional trauma.
Once again, the majority of individuals tend to cluster around the middle of a scale between
these two extremes. We know that we are likely to be more one way or another at times. Just
think of teenagers versus the rest of the world and you will see the effects of hormones on
neuroticism. But they do grow out of it.
Not surprisingly there are some people who are stable in most situations, but unstable in
others. War is an extreme example but any large stressor situation can and does trigger the
potential for a high neuroticism occurrence. Here is the obvious poker example.
Our player is having an average day in the early rounds of a poker tournament. Then he plays
back-to-back hands against players he has a great read on. In both cases, he gets the other
player all in and the opponent is drawing to two outs. On both hands the two-outers hit and
our player is crippled. This is a perfect storm of conditions to watch for elements of
neuroticism to arise. It is important to remember that we measure neuroticism on a sliding
scale. If the player is calm and plays on without comment or disturbance, then we can say
that he is low, perhaps very low, on the neuroticism scale.
On the other hand, we are all expecting this player to go on tilt. He certainly is justified in that
reaction, but we also know that intense negative reaction will probably cost him any chance of
getting back into contention in this tournament.
Certainly, everyone has his or her breaking point. Economic calamities, floods, accidents,
deaths in the family these can all cause major reactions in the high end of the neuroticism
scale. But does anyone actually think that anything that can happen at the poker table is in
the same category as these huge life events? On a normal calm day, of course not. But players
can and do get so focused on a poker game that their whole world narrows down to the green
felt.
This is all leading to the proven psychological fact: that we are able in some respects to
control our emotional investments in various situations. That control can mean less negative
reactions and less stress in life. And less tilt in poker.
For instance, we know that introverts have an easier time controlling their emotions in difficult
moments. Extroverts tend to feel the good and the bad very quickly and very strongly. So if
you tend to blow up when the cards dont run your way, one suggestion would be to slow
down, quiet down, and go internal to stop the bleeding.
Secondly, we know that as a general rule, the older people get the less likely that it becomes
they will be involved in sudden emotional upsets. This is not only a function of having seen
and experienced more as we age, but also we simply have gone through the ups and downs of
our early years and experience tells us that particularly the downs just arent worth it. We
tend to still feel the pain but we dont invest our entire being in it.
So, can high scale neuroticism be treated? Well, yes. A hundred years of psychology and
psychiatry are aimed directly at that goal. Can the problem of high negative emotional
reaction at the poker table be treated? Yes again.
Very simply: you observe your behavior. You notice (usually after the fact) that you reacted or
overreacted to a situation. You note that this reaction was a negative to your game. Finally,
you slowly modify your behavior to react less by calming yourself at the table. If you are
capable of seeing your behavior as negative the next day, then you are capable of changing
that behavior to lessen the negative emotional stress on yourself and on your game.
Poker Shrink Vol. 61: Conscientiousness
The personality trait that covers organization, discipline, deliberation, and carefulness is called
conscientiousness. Often the simple comparison is made between someone who keeps a neat,
well-ordered home and someone who is messy and scattered. There is nothing wrong with
that example, but conscientiousness is a trait that begs us to look at the extremes.
What do you see when you see a messy house with clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink?
If you think and see lazy, disorganized, or even less intelligent then you probably see a neat
home as signs of industriousness, organization, and intelligence.
OK, what about a house where all the furniture has plastic covers? The books on the shelf are
all in a perfect row (and probably color coordinated). The floors are washed, waxed, and
polished every day and the bed sheets are starched and pressed. A bit much for you? That is
the problem with extremes.
There is one more example to consider before we get to poker. How many of us know or
have heard about accountants who do amazing work with the books at work but never balance
their own checkbook at home? Consistency is not something we should assume when it comes
to conscientiousness. Often in fact very often people show widely different levels of these
traits between work and home. Or between work and hobby, or family and business. Balance
is very important when talking about conscientiousness.
Balance is equally important when talking about the various traits of conscientiousness and
poker.
We tend to think of self-discipline, thoroughness, and deliberation as positive qualities. Most of

the time they are, but nearly anything taken to the extreme becomes a potential liability. Lets
take the deliberate, math-based poker player. He knows the odds. He has taken the time to
meticulously learn all of the math and is able to calculate pot odds in an instant. But he has
gone too far and become a math perfectionist at the table. So a good poker player will know
that he is going to lay his hand down to an all-in bet, but if you give this player 2-to-1 odds he
will make the call every time. He cant help it; he is controlled by his math discipline. I had
this exact player in my home game for years. I always lost more pots to him than I won, but I
also always won more chips than I lost.
Lets look at an example of the other extreme of conscientiousness. A player who is less
motivated and less goal-oriented. He isnt lazy, just a bit too laid back. He misses reads; he is
having a good time at the table. But when the big hand comes up, he is lacking information he
could have collected and he has also given out information he should have kept to himself. An
easy read, who doesnt know where he is in the hand.
Now, as with all of these poker traits we have reviewed, most of us do not come in at the
extremes. We mostly are near the center of the scale and we have tried as we built our game
to accumulate more good traits and eliminate the bad ones. Let me suggest that knowing your
tendencies can be very important, particularly in long tournaments. Put simply, if you are
prone to being too tight, too meticulous, or too loose and too casual, that is where your game
will tend to creep when you are tired after playing long hours.
We are creatures of habit and although we are capable of modifying our behavior, we do carry
with us the tendencies that we were born with. So, that old caveat to know thyself will often
assist you in staying on course in the middle of the long poker road, instead of crashing and
burning off the steep cliffs at the edge.
Poker Shrink Vol. 62: Agreeableness
There is good advice and there is bad advice. There is warm and fuzzy advice: Be kind, be
happy. And there is hard practical advice: Everybody for himself! Sometimes our natural
tendencies can lead us away from our goals; sometimes you have to keep your eye on the
prize. And that can mean acting in ways that are counter to your usual way of being. The fact
is that in most social situations, we tend to act and speak in ways that go along with the way
things are. We tend to be agreeable.
Agreeableness is a personality trait that can be categorized as simply being pleasant and
accommodating in a social situation. It is the way most people act most of the time. As with
the other personality traits we have discussed, there are ranges of this type of behavior. Those
who are normally agreeable tend to be friendly, helpful, considerate, honest, decent, and
trustworthy.
Those who would score low on an agreeableness measure are not necessarily anti-social.
However they do tend to place personal self-interest ahead of social acceptance. They consider
themselves first and the group last.
Now I know what you are thinking. First, you thought that agreeable people were the nice
guys and represented the majority of all of us and the less agreeable were just the nasty,
mean, unhappy few. But when you saw that a low agreeableness measure meant you were
just self-interested; well then it got a bit more complicated. And that is exactly the fact of life
in most social interactions.
There are situations where we do have to think about ourselves. The measure of success is
often just how self-interested we are. The downside, of course, are those people so obsessed
with money, fame, possessions, and winning that the majority of us only want to see them on
the greed-based reality shows. The emotional division is obvious: who is your hero, Mother
Teresa or Donald Trump?
Again, lets not forget that agreeableness is measure on a sliding scale and we can and
perhaps should be able to modify our behavior based on circumstance. I mean, at some time if
a manager is not going to step up and manage then he may score high on the agreeableness
scale and he can take that high ranking right to the unemployment line. This is not an all-good
or all-bad measurement.
So, have you seen the correlation to poker? The basic fact of poker life is that you are trying to
take chips from other players. The down and dirty baseline of poker is that you win when they
lose. Everybody got that? Because, I know, you have played in those low-limit cash games
where that is not the case, people are checking it down and soft-playing other locals. Quite
frankly, I dont know what game that is, but it is not poker.
So the question for you is: Can you be friendly and considerate and generous and helpful,
loyal, courteous, kind, brave, clean, and reverent...and not lose your edge? Can you have the
killer instinct at the poker table and still be a fun player?
I would seriously suggest that you consider this as a question you might need to address in
your game. Let me give you two observations that I have noticed over the years. First, if you
are serious about your game, you have probably stopped playing in your friendly home
game. Now you may have a new home game with other serious players, but you cant keep
your edge if you play just for fun. Second, the best cash game players I know can be
personable at the table but it never affects their play and in fact, their agreeableness is
actually part of their game. You like them so you might not play as hard against them or and
this is the one I see more often you like them because they are so personable and you
overlook the killer instinct they openly display when in a hand.
Dont be the player who smiles as the other guy rakes in the pot. Be the raker and dont forget
to smile.
Poker Shrink Vol. 63: Confirmation Bias
Does this sound familiar? You have been working on your skills at reading players and you
have improved a lot. You are actually surprised how many reads you had been missing in the
past. You are pushing hard with winning hands, you are able to make chip-saving laydowns
and your win rate is up. At some point you move up to the next-highest limit game and your
reads begin to falter.
I have heard this story so many times that I have to believe there are many possible
explanations. We assume the competition is better, which means on average the players are
playing ever aspect of poker a bit better. Lets take a look at one possibility for your failing
reads that is a matter of not adjusting to the improved competition.
In psychology there is something called the confirmation bias. I am sure you have
witnessed this in business or social situations. Confirmation bias is exhibited when someone
has a position or an opinion which he believes in so strongly that he can only see evidence
that supports his position. He completely ignores any information that would contradict his
opinion. Such a bias can destroy laboratory research; you actually do not see what is right in
front of you. Confirmation bias closes our minds to new information and will work against us in
nearly any business, social, or personal situation.
Watch any of the political discussion shows on television and pick one where you dont know
the political leanings (left or right) of the commentators or guests. How long does it take you
to pick up on their position? Usually, the first sentence right? These political experts make
their livelihood by being walking, talking examples of the confirmation bias. There is no
reasonable other side. There is no argument that can sway them from their position. They
are completely closed-minded on the subject. They are absolutely sure of themselves and will
hear nothing of any other positions.
So, back to that higher-limit poker table. Why are your reads so off? Well, you have gotten
comfortable with those reads because they were working so well at the lower-limit tables. Now
that you have moved up to a better class of player, you need to open your reading skill set up
again and take into account the increased skill of your opponents. If not, then you are guilty of
the confirmation bias. You think if that read was right before, it has to be right now. The
continuation bet meant this and not that, why would it change now?
If you are able to readdress your reading ability with a new and open mind, you will find that
your reads are really not that far off. Players change some from level to level, but it is still
poker. What you need to do is tweak and adjust your previous position and you will find that
some reads still work and others just need one more level of complexity. Actually, I have been
told by many players that moving up in levels actually makes for easier reads, once you
realize that the higher you go the fewer maniacs you encounter. But you have to be open to
seeing that change and not locked in to your previous position.
The simple counter-agent to getting caught in the confirmation bias is just to remember that
change is part of the game of poker. First, you didnt read players at all. Then you learned to
read the rocks and calling stations. Eventually, you got a read on the better players. As you
move up in stakes, there are just more good players and you need to be open to more and
better reads.
Poker Shrink Vol. 64: Eustress
One of my favorite concepts in all of psychology is eustress. When we think of stress, we

usually are considering something that is a negative for the human being. But in fact, stress is
a normal part of everyday life and comes in both good and bad forms. The bad type of stress
is distress. When we are in distress we potentially have a whole series of negative
consequences. Distress or too much stress, or even stress without relief over a long period of
time, can negatively affect every aspect of your life.
Distress can lead to numerous serious illnesses such as high blood pressure and a variety of
cardiac conditions. High amounts of stress will cause sleep problems, which lead to excess
tiredness and loss of focus. A reduced immune system can also result directly from high levels
of stress.
In the modern world when you go to see a medical professional, he could quite literally
print at the bottom of your intake chart: reduce stress! Diet, exercise, yoga there are dozens
of ways to address distress in ones life. But we are talking about poker, not life, and we are
talking about eustress, not distress.
Eustress is the good type of stress. Yes, read that slowly the good type of stress. We need
motivation to perform at our best. Eustress is clinically the optimal amount of stress that will
promote health, growth, and top-level performance.
Think about this for a moment. You are given a big assignment at work, one that is critical for
the company and probably very important in your getting that next promotion and raise. Now
what does it feel like when the assignment comes with the following instructions:
1) The deadline has been moved up, we need this completed by Tuesday!
2) This is critical to the next quarters budget, we need this in three weeks.
3) Get this to me when you can.
All of these are going to induce some level of stress; you just got a big assignment. But as far
as promoting a level of eustress you might draw on to be productive, I think you can see that
instruction #2 is optimal.
So you are about to begin a big poker tournament. How do you feel? Do you have butterflies
in your stomach? This is a four-day, big buy-in event. So which of these seems optimal for a
player to make a run at the championship?
A) My game has been way off; I need to focus on winning this one.
B) These things are never decided on Day One, I can always golf tomorrow.
C) I have been working on my game. I am ready to focus and play well.
Can you really win a four-day event on Day One? Is casual the way you want to approach your
poker game? Or is some nervousness appropriate and healthy?
Great actors will tell you that they are always nervous before they go on stage. No matter how
many times they have performed the same part, they always get keyed up. Stage fright is the
result of distress, but a truly great performance starts with eustress.
Be prepared to play. Challenge yourself to play your best game. Focus from the first hand and
stay alert to the challenge each and every hand. Someone is trying to take your chips every
time you enter a pot. If you are not prepared to battle for those chips, they are. Eustress is
good stress; it keeps us going and gives us an edge. You can learn to cultivate eustress by
mentally preparing before you sit down at the poker table.
One more little thing to know about eustress. When you are working or playing in a state of
good stress, it is less likely that something negative, such as a bad beat, will flip you into
distress. If you are neutral or on cruise control, distress is much easier to fall into. Eustress
acts as a preventative for tilt.
Poker Shrink Vol. 65: Habituation
Human beings get used to things. New sights and sounds eventually become familiar. Even
something that is initially very exciting can become routine. Habituation is this tendency we all
have towards a decreased response to certain stimuli. A lot of the changes we make in our
lives are to avoid habituation. We move furniture, change how we drive to work, read different
types of books all because we are tired of a certain pattern.
On the other hand, there are some things that never grow old. A 65 Mustang convertible can
forever fascinate some guys. Maybe music does it for you and maybe, just maybe, what turns
you on every single time is poker. Congratulations, that is one form of habituation you do not
have to overcome. But when it comes to our favorite game there are several aspects of
habituation to consider.
First and most obviously habituation can simply mean we are bored. If poker bores you,
then quite frankly you should quit playing. Why would you risk money doing something that is
not engaging you, when you know that inattention will make you a losing player? Go do
something else with your money and more importantly with your time.
If you are a playing poker for a living, then we have another name for habituation: the grind.
And you have a problem. Overcoming the mind-numbing effects of poker habituation is nearly
impossible. Sitting at the table hour after hour doing something you are completely bored by
is not only a horrible life, but your mindset cannot be such that you can play your A game.
There are certain tricks you can use, but the best advice for the professional is the same as it
is for the amateur. Get a life where you dont have to sit on your ass and be bored.
Habituation has a third bad component and that is falling into patterns. When you play on
remote control, you tend to make the same moves and the same bets in similar situations.
Now that is fine if your bets are the same no matter what is in your hand, but what happens
more often is that you begin to raise with good hands and limp with draws. Or, even worse,
you develop obvious tells because you just arent paying attention. Ask any good player who
gives off the easiest tells to read. He will usually tell you that it is first the amateur and then
the tired player. Habituation leads to tells, which in turn lead to losses.
Next, some good news. Habituation has some good applications for your game. There are
aspects of the game that should become second nature to you. For instance, you want to
always put your chips in the pot the same way. Chip tells are some of the easiest to read and
therefore the most looked for by your opponents. You actually can habituate yourself to move
your chips the same way every single time you bet. Sure you ought to check yourself every so
often, but habits are good when they are precisely the same at the table. A learned poker face
is an example of a solid, consistent habituation.
Doing something repeatedly and consistently by habit can also be a means of reminding
yourself of skills and practices you always want to have in your game. Here is one I was
taught by a professional I really respect. Every tournament round, when the clock starts to
wind down to the break, players start to get anxious to get on with the break. So did my
friend, but then he started this practice of going around the table player by player, reviewing
his reads on each one of them. Not only is this a good memory tool to reinforce your reads,
but this ritual that is now habituated keeps him focused on the hands for the last few rounds
of each session.
Habituation can help your game or it can hurt you. Your choice.
Poker Shrink Vol. 66: Illusory Correlation
A leads to B, and B leads to C, so A leads to C. We all have some sense of what is logical and
what is not. But not everyone is a logical person and we all have certain beliefs that others
would find illogical or strange, or even outright wacko.
But when you subtract religion and magic and mystical beliefs, most of us know what is
sensible and what is nonsense. For instance, pocket jacks never win. Well we all know that is
not true but we also know pocket jacks are susceptible to flops with an ace, king, or queen.
These are logical numbers and odds, which do not support the statement: Pocket jacks never
win.
No matter what the logic or math says there will always be people who believe certain non-
factual relationships exist in their isolated little worlds. Sometimes people just believe there
is some hidden relationship between one event and another. Even though we all know and we
can prove these relationships do not exist, they persist in the mind of the believer. This is
called an illusory correlation. People link together two events with no evidence but their own
belief.
Asian dealers always deal me bad cards.
Aces never hold up against a big stack.
Never play the last hand before a tournament break.
Luck wins out over skill every time.
You cant win money against a table full of bad players.
You can probably list another half a dozen similar unfactual, untrue, unthinkable and
downright silly notions that you have heard poker players mutter. So what, theyre idiots right?
Well yes, but are you sure you dont have similar illusory correlations affecting your game?
Are there poker rooms you do not play because they are bad luck for you? Im not talking
about rooms you dont like because of the staff or the lighting just rooms with bad mojo. You
really think you cant win in a room because the poker ghosts in that room dont like you?
Are there games you do not play or have not tried because you arent any good at them?
Careful with this one. There are some very subtle skill sets for some games that are not as
important in others and if you dont have that skill, well maybe you should avoid that game.
Deuce-to-seven, for instance, really is a position game. Pot-limit games put a big emphasis on
betting and bet-sizing. Now we can make an argument that you would improve your skills if
you tried those games, but we give you the I dont play that game well argument as long as
it doesnt have some weird because attached to it.
I dont play razz because I just dont get dealt bad hands.
I dont play lowball because I just cant draw to a low hand.
Finally, I want to talk about those lucky charms, lucky card covers, and magical pictures that
people bring to the table. Add to that players and fans who pray for their success. Whether
you consider this magical thinking, mystical intervention, or sorcery, I would like to point out
that you are invoking spirits, gods, demons and otherworldly powers to help you gamble!
Might it not be the case that in these belief systems there might be prohibitions against such
practices and might you not be invoking powers that will oppose your winning?
And might you not be basing your wins and losses on something as well-founded as: Step on
a crack, break your mothers back?
Illusory correlation replaces thoughtful action that I assume you have learned by playing solid
poker, working on your game, reading good poker books and practicing your poker craft. Why
would you want to set all that aside when you know that aces versus deuce-seven offsuit is
always an 88/12 proposition? Always. Even when your opponent is a voodoo priestess with a
shrunken head on her cards and bats flying around her head.
P.S. However, be very nice to her when your aces hold up, just in case.
Poker Shrink Vol. 67: The Hawthorne Effect
July 06, 2009, Dr. Tim Lavalli
The Hawthorne Effect describes an actual mistake discovered by some researchers. The
original study was attempting to discover the relationship between worker productivity and
working environment. The first variable introduced was lighting. The question was: would
better lighting mean higher worker output, and then would poorer levels of lighting reduce
worker output?
At first the data was all over the board, there was higher productivity with less light and then
more with more light and then even more with normal lighting. It began to seem like lighting
made no difference, yet the worker productivity was up and then down based on something
else, or was it nothing at all? This sort of information is not uncommon in research settings
because researchers have not controlled for all of the elements in the environment.
At some point one of the junior assistant researchers noticed that the productivity levels of
the workers went up when the researchers were observing them. It didnt matter what the
level of lighting was, it was the attention of the researcher even the mere presence of the
researcher that was affecting the productivity of the workers. Hence, we have the
Hawthorne Effect, which is defined as changes in behavior by test participants related to the
attention they are receiving from the researchers.
Clearly the Hawthorne Effect can screw up a lot of good research, so you have to control for it,
minimize it, and generally get the researcher out of the way. But the Hawthorne Effect also
demonstrates that we can affect how others react to situations by putting ourselves into their
environment and basically stealing the motivation. We can make ourselves the motivator or
the instrument of change.
I am reminded of the phrase: If you do nothing else with your life, you can at the very least
be a bad example. So for our poker example of the Hawthorne Effect, we turned to the
perennial bad boy of poker: Phil Hellmuth.
How many times have you seen this? Phil raises a pot and gets reraised. Doesnt matter if Phil
folds now or whether he folds after the flop when the other player bets out. He folds. But as
he folds, Phil will say something to the effect of: Just keep doing that, coming after me,
stealing my raises. Just keep doing that and I will trap you. I will get that big hand and your
will throw out another of your stealing raises and I will set the big trap and take all of your
chips. Just keep doing what you are doing.
What just happened here? Well, the correlation should have been: Phil will back down to a
reraise or Phil will fold to pressure. But the correlation has now become: you made a mistake
playing back at Phil, if you do it again, it will cost you all your chips. The presence of Phil (and
his mouth) has altered the facts as they actually played out. Phil lost that hand, the other
player did indeed get him to lay his hand down and that was that. But it wasnt.
An outside influence has entered the scene and changed the results. Phils antics are now
more important to the game than what actually happened in the hand. This actually is great
poker strategy on Phils part. He has benefited from a lost hand. He has changed the results of
the research in his favor. Maybe they should change the name from the Hawthorne Effect to
the Hellmuth Effect. The problem is, if you asked poker players to define the Hellmuth Effect,
you would get a hundred different answers and most of them wouldnt be printable here.
The Hawthorne Effect is a change in behavior based solely on the attention someone else
shows for the subject. You can change the perception of what really goes on in a poker game
by being involved in the game and making your presence more of an influence than the actual
play at the table.
Poker Shrink Vol. 68: Opponent Process
Theory
OK, this one can get a bit tricky but opponent process theory has some strong applications to
poker playing. The basic theory states that emotions are paired, something like a positive and
a negative. Fear and relief would be an obvious example.
The observation was made over thousands of examples showing that when one emotion is
experienced, the other is repressed. Makes senses you are not likely to be feeling relief from
fear while you are being chased by a hungry bear.
a) Emotions are paired as opposites.

b) When you feel one emotion the other is suppressed.
Now mind you, this works both ways. Once the danger is over and you are feeling relief, the
fear is then repressed. Discovered next was the real heart of the opponent process theory:
when the first emotion is very strong, the opposite emotion when experienced is very low.
Lets take bungee jumping. The first time you are scared to death but you finally jump and
afterward it is just OK. But your buddies who have been jumping a long time and were not as
afraid are feeling great relief and a post-jump high. The theory says that the more you get
used to the first paired emotion, the higher the experience of the second paired emotion.
This is why street drug use always leads to a disaster. You need more and more of the drug to
get the same high, but the opposite reactions (withdrawal etc.) get stronger. The more you are
habituated to a drug the stronger the opposite withdrawal reaction will be. As the upside
becomes familiar, the downside gets more and more intense.
Now on the positive side, the more you face up to your fears in anxiety-producing situations,
the more the positive effects of success and relief will rise. As you become less anxious to
speak in front of a group or confront a nasty boss, the stronger you will get because the
opposite feelings of confidence and self-assurance will become larger and stronger.
So, on to poker. You really have a problem firing three bullets on a bluff or semi-bluff. It may
not be the same fear as running from that angry bear, but it is fear. Fear of losing your money,
fear of busting out of the tournament. But you commit to getting the three-bullet bluff into
your game, so you just do it. Rather quickly you will discover two things happening. The rush
you get from your opponent folding on the river is really great and it gets stronger the more
often it happens. Secondly, when the move doesnt work the resulting letdown just isnt as big
a deal as you remember it the first time your bluff failed.
The key here is that you understand the good emotion the one you want to get at the end of
a winning hand. It will increase as your trepidation over making the move decreases. Lets
think about that for a minute.
I told you that research clearly shows a drug addict gets less of a good high as he gets
habituated to the drug, and more of the bad aftereffects and withdrawal symptoms. Now I
am telling you that by pushing through resistance you have at the table, by making stronger
moves, by taking risks and making advance plays, you will get a bigger rush, a bigger positive
emotional reward from a game you already like to play. You like to play poker, right? So you
will naturally enjoy it even more if you take more risks and learn to add a move that right now
is intimidating to you.
Risk/reward evaluation: Your game gets better, you feel better, and you win more chips. The
only downside is you have to keep finding more complex moves to add to your poker game so
that your game will keep getting better, you will keep feeling better, and you will win even
more chips. That would be win-win-win!
Poker Shrink Vol. 69: Recency and Primacy
Effects
Both the Recency Effect and the Primacy Effect have fairly simple explanations but some not-
so-simple applications. First as an explanation, think of being asked to remember a list of
items. You are more likely to remember the first items on the list then the middle items. This
is the Primacy Effect. However, as the list gets longer and you are more overwhelmed with
trying to hold them all in your memory, you may get confused and then only remember the
last item or items presented. This is the Recency Effect.
The Recency Effect has a broader application in that we are prone to base our actions on our
most recent observations the last thing we saw or heard. For instance, you see some fool
almost get hit by a bus because he didnt look both ways before stepping off the curb. I
guarantee at the next crosswalk you will look both ways.
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People who bet on sports are often victims of the Recency Effect. A team that has been
terrible all season suddenly has a great week and wins a game against a really good opponent.
The gambler sees this, particularly if he lost money on the game, and thinks: Well these guys
have discovered something, they looked good in that game so I should bet on them next
week. Of course, the terrible team then returns to their losing ways and the gambler is
confused. If this team was terrible for eight weeks, why would one good or lucky game change
his assessment? Why? The Recency Effect.
Switching over to poker. The guy in Seat 4 who you thought was a calling station just made a
great three-barrel bluff against the big stack and took down a huge pot. Seat 4 then enters
the very next pot for a big opening bet. What do you think? Be careful. If you have three or
four hours of reads that scream rock, why would one hand change your read? Again, its the
Recency Effect. You just saw the bluff and now you think this guy is a really good player
because of one hand? Sure, he might be changing up or he might have just woken up. Yes, it
is worth paying close attention to his play but one recent hand does not wipe out hours of
good reads.
The Recency Effect is fairly easy to overcome; we just learn that one hand is one hand, and
we factor each hand into our read of a player. If a recent hand has any additional information
we add that to the mix, and we might note that the recent play might signal a change but
one hand is one hand. Now the Primacy Effect is more difficult to overcome.
Once we lock in on a read of a player, we like to think that we have him figured out cold. There
are new players coming to the table and we need to concentrate on getting some early reads
on them. It is very common to want a previous, earlier read to stick. We have a tendency to
go with what we saw and read first, and to not want to change that read. Its human nature to
hold on to older beliefs; we call this the Primacy Effect.
Its true at the poker table or in any of our opinions, whether they be about a person or
politics, religion or art. We have an opinion and we tend not to change that opinion without a
motivating factor. In poker the strong motivating factor is that players do change up their play
and if you dont alter your reads on them, it will cost you chips.
You cant avoid the effects of Recency or Primacy. You can stay open to changing your reads
on a player based on solid new information but not just any single action that contradicts
what you already know.
Poker Shrink Vol. 70: Interaction Effect
All fold to the small blind, who completes. The big blind raises, the small blind folds. Then two
rounds later, same scenario, same result. Next round there is a limper, the small blind
completes, the big blind raises, and both opponents fold. This is easy for the big blind. Two
rounds later another limper, the small blind completes again, the big blinds raises again, and
the limper reraises. Oops!
That is an example of the interaction effect. Generally speaking, in scientific research we have
a dependent variable and an independent variable. The independent variable (iv) affects the
dependent variable (dv). So alcohol as the independent variable affects sleep, the dependent
variable. Alcohol can put you to sleep and we can demonstrate that with a study showing the
effect of the iv on the dv.
Now in most experimental testing we are looking to see if the independent variable will
have any effect on the dependent variable and we report what that effect is. So, does noise
(iv) affect sleep? We make noise and see if it wakes someone up or perhaps prevents him
from falling asleep. We give kids food with high sugar content (iv) and see if they behave (dv)
any differently.
But sometimes there is more than one independent variable. As in our first poker example.
The dependent variable was winning the hand. The independent variable was the other player
but when we introduced the limper, that meant we had two independent variables and we
needed both of them to fold to our big blinds raise. What is clear is that experiments get more
complicated whenever there is more than one independent variable.
You take a sleeping pill, you fall asleep. If you take sleeping pill with a glass of vodka, you fall
really deeply asleep. Two independent variables interact to cause a different reaction or a new
dependent variable.
Here the independent variables are doing something we did not anticipate; they might actually
be influencing each other. This potential is what we call the interaction effect. You raise, the
limper reraises, and the small blind makes it four bets. Things have changed. Those
independent variables are interacting and being very independent.
At the poker table, we are dealing with lots of independent variables and they change as they
interact. For instance, the rock opening a hand in late position is not the same as that rock
opening under the gun. Same player, different independent variable action. Add in another
player, and now they can interact with each other and you have to consider the interaction of
their positions, stack sizes, etc. And, of course, facing the player in Seat 3 and the player in
Seat 7 is not the same set of independent variables as facing players in Seats 3 and 5.
Now clearly we can take this to absurd limits. With a full table of players and a moving dealer
button and shifting stack sizes, very quickly the combination of independent variables makes
the interaction effect something that no one could keep track of. But at a more basic level, we
can learn from the interaction effect that some second and third independent variables are
worth paying attention to.
Certainly, when the third player enters the hand this changes the play drastically. Which is why
we often try to isolate against just one player we want to reduce the interaction effect
between those two players, between those two independent variables.
The key to using the interaction possibilities to your advantage, like any other edge you might
get at the poker table, is being aware of the possibilities. When both players check to you,
they put you in a position of power. Of course, now two players are also in position to check-
raise you, if you bet. The card on the turn now has to miss two other drawing hands not just
one. But when it does, you have two potential crying calls to increase your pot.
A famous scientist once said to his students: Remember the important part about
independent variables is that they are independent, we dont control them and therefore they
can change everything we think we know about the dependent variable. Or about the poker
game.

131 - Poker Shrink

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131 - Poker Shrink

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The Poker Shrink Volume 1 Too Much

The 2006 World Series of Poker is forty-seven days

I did a little psychological study at the just

"Do you use psychology in your game?"

"Specifically how did you use psychology in your WSOP win?"

It's Friday night, the pretzels are in the bowl, the

A friendly game of poker?

Unless you are a serious poker player.

These final words from a two time WSOP bracelet winner:

Pass the Pretzels. Deuces and One-Eyed Jacks are wild!

Last night I heard a yelp from the kitchen, I went

Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, whether it be a real risk or an

Feel that? Come on..Feel that?

I want to thank several readers who wrote me

Let's finish our focus on fear and anxiety at the

1. Face and Eyes:

3. Complete Body Posture.

This begins a series of articles on Psychology and

More from Wikipedia:

Finally, Wikipedia finishes up with this:

In Part One of this series on Psychology and Poker,

In two previous articles, I have talked about the

How many times have you seen someone yelling at

"It was a crazy day."

"I just go nuts when I hear talk like that."

Last week's article was about the reactions to the

There is a lot of depression in the poker world

"I only wish I had known."

Medication: Even mild, non-clinical depression often responds to short-term anti-depressant

Every poker tournament is different. The

Some years ago I participated in a study on

What better time than the day after Gobbler

Now is there any pumpkin pie left?

Suppose you had the power to set up all the rules

It doesn't matter if it's the final table of the Main

Often angry comes as a result of misperception or misinterpretation of someone's words or

'The price one pays for pursuing any profession or

You've heard it said at the table dozens of times;

For the next several weeks I am going to take up

So let's start with addiction.

Addiction is a mental or physical disorder precipitated by a combination of genetic,

{Ed Note: To read the introduction of this series,

Today we have two different sets of questions used

Test #1: Twenty Questions (Count the "yes" answers)

Next week, after the diagnosis of Problem Poker, there is treatment.

You have heard it said a thousand times: If you

Next week, we look at the Professional side of Problem Poker.

Over the past six articles I have attempted to

According to the American Psychiatric Association: "Gambling is neither a financially nor a

"Life is neither a financially nor a psychologically risk-free experience. In addition to the

I hope I have made my point.

Poker is an enjoyable recreational activity participated in without harm my millions of

There is a difference between Pathological Gambling or Compulsive Gambling and Problem

Awareness is the key to recognizing a problem before it becomes a compulsion or an

When any researcher studies human beings, they

There are literally a dozen potential articles on the

Sometimes its better to make your point very

And I replied: "Yes and that will continue."

Absolute threshold is a very specific psychological

Just how much luck is there is poker? I have stood

There is no such thing as luck in poker!

I want to be very precise today with the

'Accommodation' is process of revising existing perceptions, and understanding so that new