Last week we elaborated on the different ways to proof that poker is rather a game of skill than chance. This weeks assignment takes the argument away from the search of a proof that stands in court and politics, to a wider range of personal qualitites and skills gained by the individual who follows along a poker career path. These are discussed by David Sklansky and Alan N. Schoonmaker in their paper “Poker Is Good For You“.
Sklansky and Schoonmaker have created a long list of points which they relate to (US American) everyday life scenarios to show how these learned qualities and skills may help an individual to make a better living in economic, social and personal situations.
For today’s essay we want to take their findings and relate them to six aspects (parts) of poker to elaborate how they foster a certain learning experience.
While reading the paper and relating each argument to one of the six parts of poker (position, aggression, chips, multi-level-thinking, tells and reads, bankroll management) we already saw that a certain argument fits into more than one aspect of poker. We will therefore structure the document using the six identified parts and elaborate for each of them about the relation to one or more of the 24 characteristics and skills. The related skills for “chips” are also included in “bankroll management” and so the author decided to elaborate on these below a unique aspect.
We want to mention that the author is only familiar with the game Texas Hold’em and therefore his examples will relate to this type of game. If the same is true to other types of poker is seen as possible. As the author also has no experience in real money games, later assumptions on this area are derived from reading other people´s suggestions and tips.
Position
The player’s position at the poker table may seem unimportant to the unfamiliar spectator or player in the beginning, but will show its importance sooner or later in the game. In a bigger round of 6 and more players one can easily group them into the three positions they find themselves in: early position, middle position, late position. Starting with the player left from the dealer or “button” starts the early position with “small” and “big blind”. Left from the big blind starts the middle position and after it the last position ending with the dealer. With whom the middle position starts and ends depends on the size of the table actually, but at a table with nine players we can separate them into groups of three easily.
The first round before the flop (“pre-flop”) then starts with the player after the big blind as all players have to “buy-in” themselves before they are allowed to play the actual hand. When all players have called, checked or folded (possible betting before might have occurred) the flop is shown and the new round starts with the small blind, the player on the left hand of the dealer.
Visualizing this scenario it becomes quite clear how the names for the positions are derived. The dealer and the player(s) on the right hand to him are the latest who are called to action. In the pre-flop and after flop they can observe their opponents and gather information from their actions before they have to act. Especially after the flop it is important to observe the opponents and their reaction to the flop. Information is key in poker and as we cannot watch into the cards of our opponents (we suppose), we take advantage of our position to “read” our opponents.
Entering decision making in our lives we easily see the relationship. We have to make decisions in conferences, negotiations, our work, personal life and the relationship with others. Information is key, as we want to have enough of it to make a sound and positive (profitable) decision. Before entering or acting in a market a company might find itself in the position to take advantage of its competitor’s early start and possible failures and to learn from it, making its product more robust, competitive in price/quality or interesting to the consumer.
Being in a annually performance review meeting where a possible raise is on the table, an employee might try to get as much information from his supervisor before entering or answering the question about what he imagined for himself to be able to argument it thoroughly.
In an auction it might be easier to evaluate the situation and how to enter the betting when some opponents have already shown what they are ready to spend for an certain object.
In court or in dispute resolution it might be a good tactic to let the opponent start with their presentation of the case, to gather information from their argument, the errors in their reasoning and personal weaknesses they reveal.
But poker should be considered unfair in the aspect of position if not the “button” changes its owner on every hand. So the player who was the “small blind” before is the dealer now, as every position moves from right to left. Therefore every player come into the advantage of being in the position to play his hand regarding the information he can gather from the previous actions of his opponents. As the foremost dealer moves from an early position to a middle position and finally to an early position before being the dealer again, he has to adapt his play each time he retrieves less information from previous actions and may give more information to the players after him.
Being in an early position might have other advantages. With a strong hand it is possible to display strength by raising pre-flop and therefore provoke some folds from other strong hands in the middle positions for example. But the lack of information is clear, as the player in the early position cannot evaluate the other player’s hands.
Entering early in a new market has its advantages and the benefits might be big. But the possibility of failure is high and therefore a company is well-advised to start the challenge with thorough preparation and the right people at the steering wheel.
As other companies might wait to see how well or bad the competitor does in the new market, itself might try to gather information early and quickly be launching product tests, prototypes, market surveys, etc.
The same can work for the player in the early position, having a strong hand, he might test his opponent´s with a raise.
Changing positions from comfortable to ugly exposed is valuable learning for how to deal and behave in these situations.
Aggression
Changing situations not only occur due to the rotation of the dealer button, but also with every person at the table and his own character. Especially in Sit-and-Go Tournaments one is confronted with new players and characters on a regular basis and has to adapt his strategy regarding their type of play. Playing against a player who is more aggressive, out for a gamble or a bluff affords another strategy as playing against a tight and conservative one.
We regard patience as helpful in a situation like this. Taking the time to observe your opponents and to learn their type of game is important to make the right decisions when the right hand is available. How to play it then to get the maximum out of it depends well on the knowledge about your opponents and how to animate them to increase the pot size.
Patience will help additionally to await the rise and fall, the enter and leave of an aggressive player when it just does not match the own personality and strategy. One should not be seduced to call unreasonable raises and underestimating his opponents because of their loose play.
In “reality” one might be confronted with an aggressive opponent, spending his resources on an objective of similar interest or showing off his strength. In this situation it might be clever to retreat and stay back at first, to await if the opponent can only last the first meters and enter again when he fails and profit from it.
In a military strategy we see that one party waits until the other party shoots one´s wad by an aggressive tactic and overcomes the enemy with its saved resources and gathered intelligence.
But against an technological superior enemy it might be better to retreat completely and to give up one´s position. At poker this might just mean to switch for another table.
Multi-Level-Thinking
Gathering data at the poker table affords patience to accumulate enough, but concentration is necessary to do this effectively. Staying focused on the game and its opponents will help to restore past experiences and learning, to combine them with the actual situation at the table to conclude faster and better. The thinking must stay undisturbed and that is why we see many poker player´s stay quite and concentrated through out the game and again others trying to deflect the players around them with questions, jokes and direct provocation. To stay calm and focused requires some discipline.
In situations of conflict in our daily lives we see people being loud, rude or especially aggressive. But this is often just to hide their insecurity and lack of understanding due to lack of thought and analysis of the situation. People who stay calm and patient, who analyze the situation they find themselves in and, in a next step, analyze the situation of their opponents, may come to a solution for both sides which is not a waste of resources, lives or money. They do not overreact nor act thoughtless.
As the level of experience and skill of a poker player increases and the level of his opponents on the table also, he may find himself thinking more and more in different levels. Away from his own hand he starts to think about the hand of his opponent and how the opponent might see his own hand. And when taken a step further, the player starts to think what his opponent might think he thinks about the opponents hand. Here comes into play the image one has at the table. Or what the opponent thinks about what I think what his image is.
We just can imagine the situation between the politicians and diplomats in the era of the cold war and especially the Cuba crisis, when no direct communication with the other side was possible and only the actions and the reactions visible, how the strategists might have evaluated their options and next steps. What was the perceived strength of oneself in the other´s mind? How could the own action have a positive gain on the personal strategic position by provoking a reaction on the other side. How would my opponent react when I do this in reaction to his last action?
Patient observation, information collection, focused thinking and careful evaluation lead to thorough reasoning and good decision making. We might say that because of the execution of these qualities on both sides in the Cuba crisis has anticipated a full-scale war and has influenced future decision-making in situations of conflict in the Cold War.
Tells and Reads
We elaborated already on information gathering and the conclusions a player might draw from them without actually talking about from where he might take the information. Beside the image with whom a player tries to deceive his opponents, poker tells are source of information about other players. A wide range of poker tells is known and documented, which makes it difficult to conclude from when seen in an experienced opponent who just might use them to pretend a weakness where actually is strength.
Reading a person by its tells is widely know in our lives. In legal cases a lie detector is used to analyze whether a witness or a convict is telling the truth by recording his pulse and body temperature during an interrogation.
New detector technology at airports is tested which can analyze individuals in a cue by measuring their body temperature, heart beat, breath and body transpiration to conclude whether this person is nervous, has something to hide or bad intentions. They therefore might be selected for further investigation.
At the poker table we look at our opponents, especially the ones to the left and right of us to look out for one of these obvious tells like pulse, sweat and nervousness. Depending on what they read out of it, they adapt their strategy, decide whether to raise or fold.
But there are always two sides to it. One can never be 100% sure that what he reads is actually true or just what the opponent wants to tell about himself. We therefore carefully learn and fine tune our reading of people, avoid under-estimation and drawing false conclusions. Superficiality does not count. Every person has to be evaluated individually.
We often might jump to quick conclusions about new colleagues, new classmates or the new neighbour with his Italian sports car, just because of their appearance, talking and property. But as good poker players treat every newcomer at the table with respect and reservation one should take the same approach when meeting new people. A missed opportunity or a failure might have its cost in the future.
Chips and Bankroll Management
Leaving psychology we now have to think on some “hard” factors: chips and real money. To enter a poker game with real money one should already have the necessary bankroll to start with. To survive some bad hands and being sucked out by the blinds and the rake a player should enter with a bankroll that, depending on the game he wants to enter, be 300 to 500 times the big bets. For a 2$-4$ no limit game this would make a bankroll of minimum 1200$.
As we see some important issues about spending, long-term investment and risk-reward analysis come into play. When entering a poker game with real money we have to make the same considerations as when buying a new car for example. Without being rich, we cannot afford to buy a car with cash and in advance. We therefore make careful considerations and calculations for a financing. How high can we allow the rates per month to be? Would we spend less on other areas to save more money for the car? What happens when we have additional costs in other areas or we loose our job?
We would not buy a nice sports car without having the money to finance it and still make a decent living from our salary. So we should not enter a 10$-20$ game with a bankroll that will not let us survive for some time and cover some bad times. Focusing on the long term to play some good hands and get some real money for them we need to be able to stay in the game.
Every company who hires new personal has to make certain calculations and risk evaluation on the costs. Especially technology and research, companies might have to invest into a new employee for training, equipment and high wages in general. They therefore evaluate and calculate on their bankroll, make assumptions on how much they want to gain from that new employee in future earnings.
But as a company does not want to hire above their possibilities, they evenly do not want to hire below the necessary standard to keep up quality, quantity or image. The same counts for the poker player with a firm bankroll. With the experience from the smaller games he can start to play higher bets. Therefore the gains from winnings start to be higher and new strategies become reasonable. He might also think about a partly redemption to buy some necessary books or material to further improve his poker skill.
We imagine a freelance or small business which keeps parts of its earnings for higher education and necessary tools to improve its craft and services and therefore make higher earnings or be able to enter new markets in the future. Liquidity is important to survive economic downturns. Careful planning is necessary and risk-reward analysis is done to evaluate whether an investment is reasonable.
By comparing poker to all these “real life” situations one might ask the question why actually poker is so helpful in handling them. We found the following argument quite appealing:
In poker with every hand we are confronted with a new situation and again have to go through all the thinking before making a decision. Therefore the learning in poker is faster, as we repeat this circle every handful of minutes.
A real life situation might occur suddenly, for us reacting in some way and when its over, without really knowing what has happened and what to learn from it. We actually might be distracted by other situations in another context already.
In poker we stay in context and rapidly learn from the situations. Failures result in immediate punishment and because these situations and failures may occur in a short sequence, we have to learn and adapt fast.
When playing poker regularly someone can gain a lot of experience over the turn of a year for example. He will meet a lot of people with different characters, will go through hard times with bad hands, experience some bad beats and on the other hand some profitable hands. All the time he has to control his bankroll and his losses and focus on the long term to see how he is doing overall.
With the right perception of poker and its versatility and complexity we see it as a great learning experience for the thoughtful and open minded individual thinking in a long-term perspective.
To end with we want to confirm the beginning argument of Sklansky and Schoonmaker and conclude “poker is a great teacher”.
