For not much money those of you who have read the other books and wonder what Mason is talking about you can read his and see what you think.

HB, I like you better when you speak your mind and not being a mouthpiece. Mason doesn't need an advocate. He is fine the way he is.

It's nothing against him. I just wanted to give my input regarding what gm posted.

I haven't read MM's book. I don't intend to at the present time. My expertise comes from my training.

I have read some other books which Mason wrote or coauthors, though.

All of them are excellent.

P.S. Just in case if I was included in what you have in your mind your when you wrote your unusual post.

tirtep:

I didn't suggest Mason's book in response to you, I did it bec of the back and forth itt. If ppl are willing to spend money on books, nm on how much coaches must cost, they might consider spending some money on his book and see if it helps.

I've had Tendler's book on my shelf for some time and put it aside, not even half-read, bec I thought it not of much worth at least poker-wise. I realize that's not entirely fair so when Mason's book came up in Books and Publications I decided to give it another go while I waited for Mason's book to arrive and I couldn't get past page 75. I skimmed the rest and while it has good general advice I didn't think it special in any way regarding poker. Early on Tendler brings up the 'Adult Learning Model' whose goal is to reach 'Unconscious Competence' and I didn't think that achievable when it comes to poker psychology and therefor a dead-end.

And I'm certainly not Mason's mouthpiece, of all things, as if he needs one. It happens that I think Mason's book at least worth a read whose basic premise is sound although I would've added some things or phrased others differently. And, fwiw, there are a couple, few gems that only a life long player would've thought to include and they are worth the price all by themselves.

So that's the way I look at it: If someone's willing to spend some money bec they need help in this area they might consider reading Mason's book and I do that bec I think it likely to be helpful.

Everything is fine, HB. Keep up the good work.

Cheers!

Hi tirtep:

Howard's not a mouthpiece for me. Sometimes he agrees, and sometimes he doesn't, and that's the way it should be.

If ganstaman disagrees with what I'm saying, that's also fine. As we have stated for many years on these forums, one of its purposes is "vigorous debate," and that's what's happening here.

Well, since this is a subject that interests you, perhaps giving my book a read will be worthwhile (to you). As for your expertise, I don't know what it's in and perhaps you might tell us, but I do believe that this is one of the problems with what's out there in the poker psychology literature.

For example, Tendler states that he's a sports psychology coach and that it's time for sports psychology to come into poker. Where I think he goes wrong is that he doesn't understand that the components which make up your expectation in an athletic sport are not weighted the same as the components that make up a game like poker which lacks physical execution and is mainly a knowledge game.

I worked for years as a professional statistician and this is precisely the type of stuff that I do understand. Thus it's easy for me to see how misguided much of their advice is, and this includes Cardner, how inaccurate it is, and how little value it has. Of course, all this is my opinion. But I have yet to see any arguments as to why what I say is not accurate and why it won't be of much benefit to someone who's struggling in the area of poker psychology. But it's also true that much of the advice which I'm giving is not what many players want to hear.

Thanks. Much work goes into all the books that 2+2 publishes and we're proud of the track record of our products.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Howard:

Consistent with my previous post, this is an example of how Tendler doesn't understand that what works for an athletic sport doesn't work for poker, and in this specific case has nothing to do with poker. On the other hand, if you only had a second or two to make all poker decisions, then "unconcious competence" would start to make sense.

As far as I can tell, the average price these poker mental coaches charge comes in at a little less than $300 an hour. And if you go for a few hours, that's the equivalent to a lot of books.

Best wishes,
Mason

Agree. A classic example of unconscious competence is driving. We can all probably relate to that moment when you're driving along lost in your thoughts and suddenly you arrive at your destination or you just lose 10 minutes. Once you have been driving a number of years, it becomes such an automatic process we can do it without thinking. I have also had this experience multi-tabling online poker.

The key question here is: Just because I can do it automatically, without any conscious effort, does that mean I'm doing it optimally?

I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Poker is all about critical thinking and not being predictable, therefore undertaking a training programme where unconscious competence is the overarching goal could be detrimental to both learning and performance.

But I think Tendler is proposing unconscious competence for the exclusive purpose of recognizing situations you have experienced before and using that to make the appropriate play. That's not to say to go on autopilot and become predictable. I think he's saying to develop it as a means of developing a "sixth sense" of knowing if an opponent is bluffing or weak and using that unconscious competence to then guide your play.

I'm not saying I agree with him or not but I think he was specifically speaking to just recognizing situations you have experienced in the past.

Tendler never discusses UC in this way. It is things that shuttle from Conscious Competence to UC. Eg I do not think much about what I am doing when I drive but I can explain all of it to my son when teaching him to drive. You are conflating two different things because they both contain the word 'unconscious'.

No, I'm not. I'm saying what I think Tendler meant and I might be mistaken but I do believe he mentions the seemingly "sixth sense" people develop. Sounds like you think he is a proponent of robotic play which I highly doubt he is advocating.

What's the name of the institution?

That's a pretty solid response, thank you.
Sadly Murray got beaten in the end. He seems to do a lot of shouting at his coaching box when things turn against him, bit weird. Important point you make about relative skill. These guys are really close, oscillating for Tennis Number 1. Small edges can make all the difference. The question I guess would be: to what extent does mindset/attitude influence performance.

The Tilt: Fight/Flight thing is pretty interesting. Really, you should see some fights. It's not like fighting is a logical choice after extreme emotion/the fight:flight mechanism kicks in. Rather the consequence of the extreme emotion is because logical choice mechanisms themselves have been submerged (so the theory goes). Normally the husband would never punch his wife. But he just *loses it*. And it's commonly that brain circuitry that's invoked. Ganstaman makes a couple of interesting points. But he should grant you that there would still be a fair number of fights. When SAM (Sympathetic Adrenal Medulla) goes off at full whack, that system really was there for Fight or Flight. We have inhibitory and control processes that modulate them (as tirtep alludes). What is commonly invoked then is in the extreme fight or flight situation where we have Amygdala Hijack and it sends a big '**** you' to the neocortex (thinking brain) before the latter is even aware of what is going on.
This is important because it is really what is being invoked in the mental game literature for an explanation of tilt. It works like this, supposedly. You need to think to play poker properly. When you tilt (extreme emotion) you play badly. This is evidence that you cannot think (you know what to do but just cannot think). If you cannot think and you have extreme emotion then this points to a Fight or Flight process having been invoked. This applies to all emotions, it is reported in the Mental Game stuff. So an example would be: you are multitabling big tournies online. You win a massive score in one game. You are excessively happy (or, you could be too focused, or confident). This excessive emotion (happiness) activates Fight or Flight and it shuts down the neocortex. You literally cannot think. You know from memory that 23o is bad but you call all-ins with it early in the tournament because you cannot think. If you ordered a pizza earlier you cannot now pay for it because that requires neo-cortical activity which you do not have.
This applies equally to 'underemotion': tired or bored. Your frontal brain activity has decreased in the same way. You are bored therefore you cannot think and that is why you make poker mistakes. You KNOW what to do but you cannot think.
If anyone disputes any of this you are disputing the cutting-edge of Poker Mental Game teaching so bring it on
The Zone: this is where your emotions are 'Goldilocks', neither too high or too low. This is the peak of poker functioning, where you play your best. You are not too tired or bored, but not too happy or excited either. Just make sure you are none of these and you will play the best you can. Poker will feel easy. You instinctively know when to bluff.
Positivity: This is a rather nebulous concept but basically what they are saying is that it having importance is a myth because you cannot control the cards in poker so there is no point in hoping for this so you should just concentrate on skill. Actually, thinking negatively can be better for some poker players (this is exapted from a set of experiments on dart players but the mechanism is disputed.

I'm really just outlining what is being sold. I disagree with almost all of it and would welcome those selling it to tell me why they think it's right.

I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. 'Unconscious Competence' was thrown about as part of a 4-part learning model that had nothing do do with 'sixth sense' or 'gut'. It even pre-existed the Mental Game of Poker. That then having largely been set in place, when they were looking for an explanation for 'the gut etc' to counter poker players who were talking about 'soul reading', they ascribed it to 'Unconscious Competence' pretty much because
1) That already had 'Unconscious' in the title
2) They had some kind of gross misunderstanding about how learning poker concepts and playing poker hands interact. Quote from Tendler: 'you may have some parts of your game that are unaffected no matter how high your emotions are (paraphrasing). Say, for example, your pre-flop decisions are really well known and tilt does not affect them.'
You can quite clearly see that with that kind of view of poker, the 'gut as you tapping into Unconscious Competence' fits rather well. It's just the premise that is wrong.

Hi Elrazor:

The bolding is mine and this is an interesting point. I have stated many times that unconscious competence would only apply to poker is you had to make all your decisions in a second or two. Well, suppose you're multi-tabling, playing 500+ hands an hour, are using simple algorithmic strategies, and playing as close to GTO as possible.

Are you even playing poker anymore? and now, given that you've become essentially an automatic player, does a mental game even matter since you just make the decisions that your (semi-)memorized strategy tells you to?

Early on in these discussions )in a thread in our Books and Publications Forum, I asked Cardner if you needed to be mentally tough or well rested if you're playing video poker with a memorized strategy. Isn't this something similar?

Assuming that what I just stated is correct, is Tendler actually making an argument that his services have little value?

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Dr. Meh:

This leads us to the almost infinite number of hand histories that you need to study. That way you'll have experience in any situation that comes up and you'll know what the right decision is. In Real Poker Psychology, I explain why this is a terrible way to attempt to learn poker and why learning the the appropriate concepts, of which there is a reasonable finite number, is far superior.

Best wishes.
Mason

I talk about this, using tennis as an example, in my book. Because tennis has a small short term luck factor, the slightly better player will almost always win. But in the case of Murray and Djokovic, their skill levels might be so close that the mental game may be the big decider.

Again, there are no virtually no fights and you don't see people running out of the poker room. So this is an indication that flight or fight has nothing to do with tilt. But what else do the poker mental coaches know? and they need to point at lots of emotion to make their arguments and counseling worthwhile.

In my book, I use a mathematical approach to explain tilt. It's based on the idea of discontinuous functions modeling bits of information that come our way which at first don't make any sense. One of the interesting things about this approach is that when your brain can process the information, we get humor. When we can't process the information, tilt can set in and we lose the ability to think rationally.

I agree that this is what their argument is but they have no understanding of tilt or how it works. For instance, in your example above, is the player really on tilt or has he deiced in a rational but incorrect manner that something else is now more important than maximizing his expectation. In addition, there's also a good chance he's being tricked by the large short term luck factor present in poker. Specifically, it's well known that expert players can profitably play a few more hands than typical players, and now because of his recent win our hero thinks that he's an expert and can now play lots of additional hands. Again, stuff like this is not understood by these poker mental coaches.

This can be caused by a number of things. One of them is being mentally tired as opposed to physically tired, and is the reason we all need a vacation from our job every so often. Another possibility is that the stakes you're playing at are not meaningful to you and thus your attention to the game is not there.

Well, I brought it on with a whole book.

I think this is one of the major errors the poker mental coaches make. I agree that when an athlete is in the zone, he certainly will play better. But his knowledge of the game is not changed. In poker, which is mainly a knowledge game, it means that some of the hands which you play you'll now play differently, and this new way of playing will be superior than before. But notice that this happens mainly by improving your knowledge and understanding of all things poker and not by improving timing, speed, and coordination.

My experience is that they can't defend their arguments well and have no defense against what I'm saying except insults such as I'm autistic and out of date since I'm strictly a limit player who has no understanding of the real game of no-limit poker. (Neither one of these are true.)

Best wishes,
Mason

I'm not even reading the rest of these posts, but this idea you have said at least 3 times now is just patently false. I don't know how you can claim to have any sort of authority on speaking to psychological issues if you think that the fight or flight response actually leads humans today to fighting or fleeing and not other reactions. I get that you know a lot about statistics and poker but this is just ridiculous.

Hi ganstaman:

I've been playing poker in public cardrooms since the early 1980s and have never seen a fight that I can contribute to flight or fight. I have seen drunks, who usually were not playing, get into fights, but even this is rare. I also have never seen anyone grab their chips and run out of the poker room.

Now you may be correct in that most fight or flight situations do not lead to fights or someone running out of the poker room, but I would think it shoud happen on occasion, and I should have seen this. In addition, there is a chapter in my book that addresses this subject and it also states this. So I'm on the record much more than three times.

Also, if you were to read my book, you would see a chapter called "A Mathematical Model of “Tilt” — Cause and Cure." This chapter was also given as a paper at the 15th Annual Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, jointly sponsored by the University Nevada Reno and the University Nevada Las Vegas, that was held at Caesars Palace Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in 2013. And the approach used to describe tilt, how tilt works, and how to solve tilt problems has nothing to do with "fight or flight."

The only reason I even discuss fight or flight is that the poker mental coaches which I'm familiar with go on and on about it. But in reality, it's not part of my thinking and plays no role in my view of poker psychology.

Best wishes,
Mason

Though I think there is validity and efficacy to the idea of such coaching, my guess is it is like sports coaches: about one-in-a-hundred is worth it and able to play a big role in helping you change. Proceed with caution ... if you find someone for whom you have profound respect, an actual leader ... game on.

I think in order to answer the last question, you need to understand the context of the argument Tendler is making, and i'm not familiar enough with his work to do that.

I think unconscious competence can work on many levels. A novice player might pick 77 up UTG and have to consciously think about how to proceed. For an experienced player, this is a trivial decision.

However, the same experienced player might pick up 77 OTB facing a raise and 2 callers. This clearly requires conscious thought. What position was the raiser? what kind of player is he? how about the callers? what about the blinds? what's my image? Only by answering these types of questions will they be able to figure out the optimal play.

Playing poker optimally, in my opinion, always requires access to critical thought. When I used to (8 table) PLO 6-max, I played around 25% of my hands, and played them pretty aggressively. I knew what my range was for each position on the table, so much of my pre-flop decision making was somewhat unconscious. However, as soon as I decided to play a hand, it became a critical thought process. The number of tables I played was a direct function of how capable I was of thinking critically across several hands at once. If I tried to play 10 tables, I would exceed these resources and the quality of my decision making would plummet.

If ALL of my decision making was unconscious, then theoretically I could have played significantly more tables than I was able to play. Clearly, this is not possible or all pros would play 30, 40, 50+ tables.

I think to summarise, I think any game or activity that requires critical thought cannot be undertaken with unconscious consciousness to perform at a high level. Sure, there are some players who can play 30 tables and grind a living on rakeback, but that doesn't make them a good player. And if you're shelling out for coaching I assume your goal is to learn to be a better player, rather than learning how to make money.

I'll answer for Tendler since he won't.
'My work applies to the psychology within players. Not the Psychology between players, which you are referring to here. You should note also that you may tilt or be competent in one variant eg nlhe but then when you switch to say PLO 2-7 you need to start again.'

$200 please.

What do you mean by 'Fight or Flight response'?

I'm a little confused by the question. It's a well known term that even has its own wiki page. I'm not using it in any non-standard way. Do you think I mean something different?

I think you and Mason are both saying things that are right, just mainly coming at it from different angles.

You're right, it's pretty extensively studied, and expounded in the wiki. It is also quite varied in its expression once activated (in us and other animals), depending on the interpretation of the stimulus (threat), which is modulated by memories and appraisal at the time. You can find increased heartrate, accelerated breathing, hair-on-end, pupil dilation both in the cat that is fighting for its life and in the kitten that is play-fighting.
In humans, with the right kind of stimulus-to-memory match and appraisal then in extreme circumstances the response can be a severe attenuation in neo-cortical activity which can lead to mindless violence, etc.
The type of daily activation you speak of is really important for poker psychology, and people's health in general. The stress response, whether activated by anger at a nasty boss, or a late train, can kill you. As big a risk as smoking or obesity if it goes on long enough without you seeking to correct it. This type of response does not typically result in Fighting or Fleeing. But often the physiological changes designed to prepare you for Fighting or Fleeing do start to activate a bit.
In Psychology, as you know, Data is king, it's an empirical science. Thus, it seems that the mainstream poker-psychology literature has started with the bad play evidenced when people are tilting as a data starting point. You need to be able to think to think to play poker properly. When tilting (high emotion, evidenced in FoF), people play badly ('my mind froze up' 'the moment I called I knew I had made a mistake'). So it is said that they were not thinking. So this is ascribed to 'Mental Shut Down from Fight or Flight Response'. Literally, the Amygdala has just shut down all thinking.
Easy to see where Mason was coming from then when he countered this very broadly expounded view, when he said 'but then you'd see quite a few fights; you don't'.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/94...37/?highlight=

Quote from Tendler's article

The loss of higher brain functions like self control, rational thought, logic, perception of self and other, organization, planning, strategy, mental manipulation of information, and others are the hallmark characteristics of Tilt.

Mason: 'You'd expect to see a fair number of fights; you don't'. I can completely understand why he would say that. You have (sometimes) been tilted by another player. Targeting your blinds constantly, aggressive tricky play always against you, negative speech play, sucking out against you. You then have no self-control, no rational thought, no logic, no perception of self. And you're raging. But you never hit him. You just sit there and riffle your chips?