Hi Everyone:

On Patricia Cardner's Website she has written the following:

To see the complete article, you can go here:

http://www.drtriciacardner.com/will-...mason-malmuth/

In my book Real Poker Psychology the following appears on page 1 (as part of the "Introduction").

So where does this come from? And the answer is the hot shower stuff comes from this video:

http://floattheturn.com/playvideo.php?vid=1172

At 4:58 of the video it switches to a new topic and the first thing we see is a whiteboard with the heading "Nervous, Stressed, or on Tilt?" And the first words we hear are:

And to complete this post at the end of the first section of Real Poker Psychology the following short chapter appears.

Best wishes,
Mason

Is this your way of saying you have not made several references to her advising taking a hot shower as a means of tilt repair?

Networth:

No I am saying that she says to think about the hot shower that you took in the morning "as a means of tilt repair." If this is not clear to you, I suggest you read her statement again:

MM

I understand what she is saying. And I understand what she is saying about what you are saying she is saying, which is not what she is saying. So I'm just asking if you ever said what she said you said, that she said to take a shower as a means of tilt repair.

As for whether her methods help some people play better than yes. Just remove tilt and pseudotilt from the wording and you may not disagree as much.

If someone plays looser than they know is ideal after losing a big pot, you say don't do that. She says here's ways to help you not do that.

You can listen to the interviews and hear exactly what I said.

In the conclusion of Real Poker Psychology I do state that this mental stuff can be of small benefit providing it doesn't cause you to stop working on your game.

This is not correct and you'll need to read the book to see why this sentence makes no sense.

I don't say this at all. Again you'll need to read the book.

What she advocates has very little value at best and much of it, in my opinion, is just plain silly. Again, you'll need to read Real Poker Psychology to get a better understanding of what is really important and what is not.

Mason

Cliffs: Buy my book!

The idea that one subjective experience can impact another subjective experience is utter nonsense. Debating the matter is completely futile, and does nothing but demonstrate how little those who would engage in such a debate know about the science of behavior.

If an experience is objective, then it may be harder to alter but still every day psychology. Taking some larger and positive view can sure alter the experience as a whole, and looksmore like the reality compared to the bad beat alone, where one will tilt but other factors can overpower it.

I know exactly what i am thinking when i get stressed or bad beated. I think about my positive edge because of my strategy, and about the long run, and maybe take a note that can produce me additional good in the future.

That though doesnt include plo at this time as i tilt there the most but that is my limitation and having some larger and more positive and tougher views would sure help me to improve there also. The other forms i play, about all of them, are more systematic and smaller and it might be that playing plo helps me to stay further cooler in other forms also.

Hi 646...:

Thanks for your clear and insightful post. But the question I have for you is do you take a hot shower in the morning?

Best wishes,
Mason

Not sure if the bolded is a typo but the post above yours was challenging the practice of modifying a subjective experience with another subjective experience.

In terms of poker, assessing behavior is quite simple. Bet, call, check, fold, raise. All of which can be directly observed. The question is then what are the conditions in the environment that elicit any of these behaviors. And those environmental conditions themselves should be objective as well. The actions of the other players, the time of day, the time you've been sitting in the session, the last time you've eaten something, the win-loss up to that point etc.

Defining "tilt" in terms of these objective behaviors and environmental conditions is what's required to effect any real understanding of the phenomenon.

I am surprised Patricia Cardner is not chiming in on this thread

Open letter from Dr. Cardner from her blog.


--klez

smart woman. although not just for the obvious

So what is the purpose of your post? Notice in my OP this exact same link appears. I suggest you carefully read what I wrote in that post to get a better understanding of what this thread is about.

MM

Really? Let me address the Cardner statement that you quote in your post this way. I think it's very fair to say that I and 2+2 have done more by far than any other group to revolutionize our current understanding of poker, and this process is still ongoing. In addition, there is nothing we haven't published that I haven't spent much time working on. So in my opinion, only an incompetent fool would make the kind of statement that you quote in your post.

MM

It is a response to the person I quoted, who expressed surprise that Cardner hadn't responded itt.

I did not go to the links you posted, just read the excerpts you posted.
Clearly the person whom I quoted hadn't yet, either.


--klez

Let me preface this by saying that I am very grateful for what Mason Malmuth has given to the poker community: which is simply the 2+2 forums. A lot of poker players owe their gratitude for learning poker thru these forums. I’ve found the forums, for the most part, to be very fair and well run.

As it pertains to Patricia Cardner, to be quite blunt, she comes across as someone to stay far away from as it pertains to improving ones poker game. Unfortunately she has neglected to even open the debate on why Mason may be wrong and has resorted to letting things get personal . Had someone questioned my methodologies, on that which I base my business on, I assure you, I would have responded in much more depth and specificity to why they were wrong. This leads one to ask the question: Did she really ever have anything important to say in the first place?

Hi klez:

Thanks for your reply and correction. I thought your other post was directed at me and thus my reply. My apologies for my error.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi redfin:

Thanks for your post. I also want to point out that our publishing company has also made many contributions to poker, and we do our best on these forums to be an honest broker where all points of view can be heard.

I think this is 100 percent correct. When someone's only response is stuff that would come under the insult umbrella, it's probably safe to say she's not capable of defending her material in any legitimate way against the many flaws in it that I have pointed out.

This would make you a worthy adversary and the ensuing debate might lead to better information for all. And to answer your question, based on the Positive Poker book (written with Jonathan Little) and the other stuff of her's that I have become familiar with, there is, in my opinion, virtually nothing of value.

Best wishes,
Mason

Is the assertion in this thread that Dr. Cardner advises taking a hot shower as a means of tilt control, based on the quotes given? If so, the assertion is wrong. It's such a simple logic/math problem that I feel silly having to explain. Being grateful (for something, such as having hot water for my morning shower) as a means of tilt control does not imply that the "something" is the means of tilt control. Gratitide is the act, the shower is an indirect side effect, and it could be any one of a number of things. You could just as easily be grateful for your toothpaste and the water to brush your teeth with, and neither the tooth brushing nor the drinking of the water would be the tilt reduction techniques.

networth appears to understand this, as I would assume the other thread readers do as well.

This is similar to some basic Buddhist beliefs, which seems to work for over 500 million people. You could say the Buddha was the ultimate tilt reducer.

This is so obvious that I feel silly stating it, so I will assume that is not the assertion in this thread. But that does leave me wondering what the assertion of this thread is. Maybe I'll feel silly when someone explains something really simple that I missed.

My 2 cents is this Mason . . .

You took a throw away example included in her actual suggestion and turned it into the focal point. You have taken it out of context and gave it new meaning. I consider it a dishonest representation of what she said.

I know you to be an intelligent man, it wasn't done by accident. So, you don't think much of Dr. Cardner, you make it apparent. A lot of what amount to petty jabs, just from the excerpts you've posted.

I admit I haven't read the book, but I have been amused by the Twitter war. So, is the book about poker psychology or is it an expose of someone you believe to be a fraud in her field?

For the record, I don't know her any better than I know you, so I can't say if she is a fraud or not. But I do wonder why you felt the need to take pot shots at her in your book

Hi curtinsea:

I think you should read Real Poker Psychology. The vast majority of it is not about Cardner and includes a good number of topics/ideas which I don't believe have ever been published before.

Best wishes,
Mason

From the limited amount that I know: much of her stuff was done based around a PhD involving psychology and poker players. If you are granted a PhD it means you had to do the research, reason it out to conclusions, in a way that advances science, and then you generally have to formally defend this in front of a bunch of well-educated peers so that it stands up to scrutiny. Often the Government has stumped up the cash for you to do a lot of it, and that cash isn't appropriated willy-nilly.
Hardly sounds like a very good launch-pad for a fraud to me.
I've heard a fair bit of her stuff, and to be honest I quite liked it. For one thing, she doesn't talk a lot of s***, dressed up as 'science', which I've heard plenty of from some of her peers, who seem to pass with nothing like this level of scrutiny.
Think this whole thing will progress more smoothly when we've all had a chance to read Mason's book, and regroup. I've read his other stuff and was very impressed by it.

Hi chrisshiherlis:

I have a suggestion. Why don't you post some idea or concept, preferably from Cardner's Positive Poker book, which you feel is really good and we can discuss it right here. And if you post something from her book, please be sure to give the exact location where it appears in her book.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think Cardner's argument goes something like this.

Gratitude is something that can reduce stress and this is good for your poker game.

Now I agree that in the world of sports, and in my book Real Poker Psychology I frequently use tennis since I've been playing tennis from a young age, I do agree that stress reduction and being relaxed on the tennis court can be helpful for fluid movement which results in proper execution of ground strokes, volleys, serve, and so on. But what does it do for you in poker?

As I show in my book, games can be broken into two components which I'll call here their knowledge component and their execution component. It's my opinion that poker has a large knowledge component, certainly much larger than the knowledge component for tennis. But its execution component is quite small when compared to virtually any athletic sport. That is you don't need speed, timing, and coordination to throw your chips into the pot. And the execution component is where things like speed, timing, and coordination come in, and that's where something like gratitude (which is suppose to reduce stress) is helpful.

So here is an example of an idea which probably comes from the sports world that has at best little value in poker. And one other thing, your toothpaste won't help you with your poker game either.

Mason