99.99% of people lay they eyes on you 2 seconds and make a judgment about you that is 99.99% of the time not in relationship to the truth. Life is not true very few people care what truth is, just look at the system we live in, who cares what the truth is, very very few. People make wrong generalizations ALL THE TIME!

How totally true. When the sun-worn, dreadlocks wearing, glassy-eyed couple wandered into the restaurant I was eating lunch at today and then moments later walked out empty-handed, I shouldn't have made any judgement about them.


Their appearance and behavior meant nothing, and should be disregarded.

1. I make no assumptions about players I sit down with. I tend to watch them play a couple of orbits and start making judgments based on what I see.

2. I think a large enough sample size is one that gives you results that statisticians would consider to be statistically significant. It is unlikely that you would obtain such a sample size over one session.

3. I remember the players I regularly play with.

At any rate, if I could say one thing about this thread, it's that we human beings have huge leaks when it comes to things like tribalism, preconceived notions, and wanting to gamble.

Using a stereotype as an excuse to make aggressive, spewy plays is therefore subject to huge confirmation biases. It takes real guts, on the other hand, to admit, even to yourself, that you really don't know as much as you would like to think and that you don't have enough information to justify a gamble.

The personality type that wins at live poker, consistently, over the course of time is the personality that is patient, unflappable, careful, cautious, and can resist generalizations and impulsive behavior. One reason there are so many losers at every live poker venue is that very few people possess this set of personality characteristics.

You're pushing a loaded shopping cart towards the checkout lines, and it's super-crowded. As you approach, you watch the cashiers and judge their competence. You scan the lines, looking at the people, their cart sizes, and their awareness. You filter everything through your judgement, your experience, your knowledge, and you weigh the pros and cons. You place your bet. You take note of the positions that you could have selected. You continue to watch, and perhaps you even switch lines.

Do you generally come out ahead? Is it worth your while to do this?

If not, well, maybe it's all useless, a matter of simple personal bias, and you should just give up. You're a loser, and in fact, nobody can really be a winner, because we're all people, and there's no significant differences among any of us, and nobody's proven otherwise.

On the other hand, if you're overwhelmingly successful, is it really just a matter of luck? Maybe so, but would you turn off your brain when you approach a poker table? Not likely.

Who is paying whom here? The folks who deny that differences exist, or the folks who recognize the differences, and draw the correct conclusions?

When I look for a poker table, I look for folks who don't appear to be likely to know what they're doing at a poker table. Yeah, it's a judgment call, but that's what it's all about.

Could it really be that some people actually have better judgement than others? If so, wouldn't that be an edge?

Seriously, Coffee and lawdude?

Poker is a game of subtlety and nuance, played by people with Aspergers.

hey I'm trying to save some time and didnt really read this thread - was hoping to take a shortcut can someone post cliffs please

That's actually quite easy.

If there exists an optimal play, then there exists non-optimal play. On the assumption that nobody knows the actual distribution of players, there is overwhelming likelihood that your first attempt at optimal play will not succeed and you will use an iterative process. As a result, the question is not whether stereotypes generate optimal play, but whether they provide a better starting point than guessing outright.

You're absolutely right that people who don't adjust based on data and just follow stereotypes are terrible. But what makes you think that, if they didn't start with a stereotype, they'd be any more observant? That is, do you really believe there is someone who will blindly follow a stereotype and totally shut out any observation, but, if his stereotypes or prejudices were magically removed, would suddenly transform into an observant, thinking player?

I argue no. Starting with a stereotype and adjusting > starting blank and adjusting >> starting with a stereotype and not adjusting ~ starting blank and not adjusting.

Also, I contest your claim that you don't sit down with any preconceptions about your opponents at all. For one thing, you already know something about your opponents - they have all chosen to play a particular stake. If you sit down at a 2/4 LHE table and do NOT assume all your opponents are loose-passive, you're losing money while you confirm what any good player should easily stereotype.

I believe a good poker player should absolutely stereotype. And if stereotyping by race, age, and sex are somehow offensive or taboo, then I suggest the following stereotypes:

- People who buy in for small amounts are passive.
- People who use a large bill to buy in for an amount smaller than the full value of the bill are losers.
- People who seat change are aggressive.
- People whose chip stacks are greater than 20 are winners.
- People who are dressed well bluff too much.
- People who smell will not care about math.
- People who have a chip protector that is not a chip from the casino are neither big winners nor big losers.

Sit down and start with stereo/categories, then adjust reads and player profiles from there.

Until everyone good starts adjusting to your stereotype so they can get paid off. Everyone good stack in 20 only and play out of a rack. People that dress nice play super tight. People who seat change are usually nits at most tight aggressive tho.. just trying to find a juicy table. Everyone can adjust to stereotypes. But, most people do not and don't really care. They just are who they are and don't change.

So I agree better to start off with some kind of first impression and then adjust your perception of that opponent as you go. You just have to know what info is good, and what is not. This doesn't mean you have to even utilize your stereotype while playing against them until you feel more comfortable with it actually being correct.

This is not getting enough love.

...I resemble that remark... lol

Y'all know about how Bayesian inference works, right? Stereotyping is like the a priori probability distribution one starts out with before letting the measured data change how you think about the real distribution.

(Of course, some people ITT could well be Frequentists, in which case the Bayesians will round them up and send them to re-education camps soon enough.)