Quote:
Originally Posted by Aces123123
It is also posssible that winning or losing change their game in completley different ways. Losing rocks might get more aggressive and winners might become scared money or overly aggressive. Or call to often.
It is probably best to think how winning or losing affects you own game first. And then observe how other players react to losing or winning.
I agree that what may be true in general may not be true for a specific opponent, and the more you accurately know about each opponent the better you should be able to do. But what is clear is that many of the marginal players you'll play against don't play as well when losing as they do when winning, while the experts don't have this problem.
In my psychology book I have much discussion of this and talk about three specific categories (or states) where poor play occurs. They are:
1. Tilt
2. Pseudo Tilt which can also be called expectation bias where a player decides that something else, usually the desire to get even for a session, is more important than playing well.
3. Searching where a marginal player who is doing poorly in a game begins to search for those strategies which will allow him to win as much as the best players but are not well thought out and thus his expectation is usually decreased.
But notice that none of this happens to a particular opponent who is doing well in a game.
Best wishes,
Mason