Hi Everyone:

I thought this silly article was actually worth discussing. Since we're concious of copyrights, I'm only going to put a link to the article.

https://dandbpoker.com/magazine/how-to-master-poker

The following is from pages 169-171 of our book Poker and More which I wrote with David Sklansky. Even though it was written well before the above article, I think it serves as a good response to it:

Idea No. 3: The components of a game. While this idea is addressed in some detail in Real Poker Psychology I don’t put it in these terms, and by doing so I think it’s a little easier to understand. Basically, you can divide almost any game into two components, the knowledge component and the execution component. And the following is from the “It’s Not What You Eat” chapter starting on page 142:

To understand this better, let’s take another look at tennis. Suppose you’re a good tennis player, are on the court, and your opponent hits the ball over the net and now it’s your turn to hit it back. What do you do?

I believe that two things happen. First, you instantly know what you want to do. That is, you’ll decide what spot on the court you want to hit the ball to, how hard you’ll want to hit it, how much and what kind of spin you’ll want to put on it, and so on.

Notice that so far we’re talking about the knowledge component. Continuing with the excerpt:

Next you’ll have to do this, and that requires timing, speed, and coordination.

And now we’re talking about the execution component. Continuing with the excerpt:

Now let’s look at poker. It’s your turn to act and you have a decision to make. Suppose your opponent has bet and you have to decide whether to fold, call, or raise, and if the game is no-limit how much to raise. Of course, a good player will know what to do in almost all situations quite quickly, and the remaining spots will take a little more time

Clearly, this is the knowledge component of poker. Continuing with the excerpt:

but will he need timing, speed, and coordination to get it done? That answer is no.

And again this is the execution component of poker.

However, notice something interesting, the execution component in poker doesn’t exist, or if it does exist, it must play a minor role compared to the knowledge component, while in an athletic sport like tennis, the execution component is quite important, and in my opinion in many athletic sports it’s probably more important than the knowledge component.

So why is this important? Well, the answer is that when I read the poker psychology books, and I also assume this is true of the coaching/counseling that many of these people sell, there’s a ton of stuff that clearly comes from the execution component of the sports world and is essentially worthless in poker. So we hear about unconscious competence, how it takes 10,000 hours of study and play to be an elite player, taking deep breaths (which I assume makes you more relaxed), and of course being thankful for the hot shower that you took in the morning which has something to do with gratitude which I assume is supposed to reduce stress. But I also don’t see how any of this helps to improve your knowledge of the game which is what you use to make your playing decisions.

I understand the point you're making Mason. Of course, there's no real physical execution component in poker to master.

However, there is an execution component to poker because for one simple reason: it is observable.

A lot of mistakes players make are down to a lack of concentration or being in an emotional state.

This is something that:

1. I've observed with myself;
2. I've observed with all of my friends and other players;
3. Other incredibly self-aware players have observed with themselves.

People 'switch off' when for example:

- When playing Zoom and auto-piloting decisions;
- When playing multiple tournaments on a Sunday for hours;
- They've folded for an hour in live poker.

The best way to think about this would be to consider a heads up game between a human player and a bot. Suppose both fully know the GTO strategy and correct exploitative adjustments to make for the game their playing i.e. they are perfectly at the same strategy skill level.

Who would you back to win?

I know who I would.

When you play poker as a human being there are more elements at play than just knowing the strategy. I'd argue the key elements to execution are:

- Familiarity with the environment (the players, the stakes, the site software etc.);
- Concentration;
- Emotional Self-Awareness.

In particular, concentration and emotional self-awareness are highly undervalued skills. The best way I know to develop them is through mindfulness meditation.

With all this being said this is not meant to take anything away from poker strategy. If you take poker seriously then clearly having a robust and well-defined strategy for every situation you encounter is the most important thing. And is where most of your effort should go.

Hi Mason,

I agree that the execution component would play a minor role next to the knowledge component of poker. I do think there is an execution component especially in regard to live play. I could know all the correct decisions, but through my physical behavior, give tells to the other players that allow them to outplay me.

For blackjack, you can learn all the correct decisions in a short amount of time. For chess, there are too many possibilities to learn all the correct decisions, but a computer can easily beat human players. Poker is too big for even the computers to solve yet. I think this knowledge gap is what leads players to seek out other means to improve their games. I think the emotional element of playing a game that involves bluffing and wagering also leads players to think they just aren't executing well enough.

Hi Chiggs:

Let's assume for sake of argument, that everything you state above is absolutely true, and I'm sure that at the very least, most of it is true. This still leaves the question, how many hours, assuming you go about it correctly, will it take for you to become a top-notch poker player. Of course, this can vary some depending on the game you play, but my estimate would be no more than 500 hours which is only 5 percent of 10,000.

On the other hand, if you were trying to become a top notch tennis player, be prepared to hit a lot of tennis balls when you're young and 10,000 hours seems reasonable to me. The same is true to become a top-notch musician, a top-notch mathematician, and there are some games, perhaps chess would be a good example (but I don't play chess so don't really know) where thousands of hours of play and study is reasonable.

But what about tic-tact-toe? I think that 10 minutes, as opposed to 10,000 hours is a better estimate.

And this brings us to another question, why is this claim even being made? Here, I can only speculate, but some of these mental coaches get up to $400 an hour for their services, and if it was understood that getting good at poker didn't require the amount of work that these people claim, then I doubt that these mental coaches would get many clients.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi paulhamr:

I think this is a very good post. Obviously, while the execution component of poker is not zero, it's still small compared to the knowledge component. If it was larger than it is, more hours would be required to become an expert.

If you follow the link that I gave in the first post, you'll discover that Cardner's new book is written with Gareth James. Now I don't know who Mr. James is (perhaps I should) but I followed the link to his short D&B Poker bio and the last sentence is this:

Prior to becoming a a poker professional, Gareth was a fully qualified music teacher.

Now I would agree that to become a top-notch musician 10,000 hours is probably a reasonable estimate, and perhaps that's why James is willing to put his name on the idea of 10,000 hours is also required for poker. But I think that music, which has a large execution component, is much different from poker which is mainly a knowledge game with at most a small execution component. Also, I wonder if Mr. James, to reach a professional level at poker, had 10,000 hours of play and study under his belt.

Best wishes,
Mason

I’m glad you posted this and that I have the opportunity to respond because I’ve followed your dispute with the mental coaches for some time and, with respect, I think you and Sklansky are completely wrong on the matter.

Your criticism of their work as presented in this thread can be separated into two different points (although they are surely intertwined): (i) your disagreement with their claim that it takes a lot of work to become an elite poker player; and (ii) your disagreement with their claim that there is a significant mental (i.e. psychological and emotional) component to becoming an elite poker player. Both seem to stem from your argument that there is no (or at least very little) execution involved in poker – if knows what the right play is, one will make the right play.

You are of course correct that poker is different from athletics because so much of athletic performance depends on physical prowess and body mechanics. That is in fact why subsequent studies have identified athletics as one major exception to the 10,000 hours theory. At 5 foot 8 and 140 pounds, I could practice for 50,000 hours and yet I will never become an elite American football player. No amount of practice will make me fast enough or strong enough. However, just because poker isn’t physical doesn’t mean there isn’t an execution component.

For one thing, there is a hell of a lot to learn in order to obtain poker knowledge. Because every hand we play is unique and we rarely encounter the exact same spot repeatedly, one cannot learn poker by rote. There isn’t one single answer for how to play 77 from UTG+2 in a poker game. The only way to develop the ability to recall and apply the knowledge one needs for the range of situations one will encounter is through playing experience – and lots of it. The practice of Medicine is a good analogy here. Physicians spend several years in medical school accumulating the core knowledge they need to practice, but they don’t come out of medical school as expert physicians. It takes years of practice for them to develop the clinical judgment that makes them expert physicians. Likewise, it can take a lot of time and practice to develop the judgment required to apply one’s poker knowledge across the wide range of poker situations one will encounter. And even then there are other factors that can prevent one from applying the knowledge correctly, which brings me to the mental aspect.

Your skepticism regarding the mental aspect of poker is based on a blatantly incorrect assumption that humans are perfectly rational computing machines. There is voluminous literature from the fields of psychology and behavioral economics showing that humans are far from perfectly rational – we are actually deeply flawed decision makers that often fall prey to the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, heuristics, and so on. And all of these factors can rear their ugly heads at the poker table. The sunk-costs fallacy is a common one that many poker players are familiar with. Fear is another big one, and here I can speak from personal experience. The single biggest factor that has impeded my performance as a recreational poker player is that I used to feel scared and intimidated when I played, which often prevented me from making the best plays under the circumstances. I had the knowledge but failed on the execution. This is the kind of stuff that many of the mental game coaches focus on.

Which brings me to my final point and that is I think you and Sklansky are both guilty of a pretty brutal straw man argument, often (as you do in this thread) diminishing the work of mental game coaches to nothing more than doling out tips like get a good sleep, take deep breaths, and think positive. It’s a lot more in depth than that.

Hi Darth:

Thanks for posting this and I'm sure you spent a lot of time and effort on it. Unfortunately, you have very little knowledge or understanding of exactly what I have stated when it comes to the psychology of poker. You'll be able to see this from my embedded comments below.

That's fine, and this is the type of discussion that these forums are for.

Except that I agree it takes a fair amount of work to become a top poker player. My disagreement is in the amount of hours that they claim. I say 500, and perhaps would accept 1,000, they say 10,000. Furthermore, if 10,000 was accurate, I doubt if there would be many poker players.

This sounds a little like what David Tuchman said when my book first came out. Sanitizing his remarks, he claimed that I said psychology was not important in poker, but I had just written (and published) Real Poker Psychology which is a 250 page book on the subject, and since then have added another 20 pages in our more recent book Poker and More (written with David Sklansky). So, I don't disagree with the general claim that there is a significant mental component to poker. But I do disagree with most everything they state as to what that component actually is.

This is certainly a lot of it. Let me be specific. In Real Poker Psychology I describe four different mental states that poker players can go into where their games can deteriorate. The so called poker mental coaches had no idea about three of these, and get the fourth one wrong.

Just because you put in a lot of hours at poker doesn't mean you'll become a good player. You still need to go about it the right way, and I address this in Real Poker Psychology. But if you go about it the right way, the 10,000 hour claim is just silly.

I never said there wasn't an execution component to poker. I did say that compared to the knowledge component it's small, and compared to athletic sport, or what is required to play a musical instrument, it's small.

This very topic is addressed in Real Poker Psychology. The mental coaches, and a bunch of other coaches who also charge high fees, claim, as you just did, that you need to study lots and lots of hand histories, and I claim in my book that this should drive you crazy. The right way to learn poker is to learn a finite but manageable number of concepts that you then apply to your poker decisions, sometimes balancing concepts against each other. Looking at some hand histories certainly is good, but it's not anything like you state above.

This is flat out wrong. The amount of knowledge you need to be a physician is far greater than what you need in poker. The same is true for many other fields. For instance, to be a Ph.D. in math and to be able to work in advanced mathematics, 10,000 hours seems reasonable to me. But you don't need anywhere as much knowledge in poker to become a top player as you would to become a competent physician or mathematician. Anyone who claims the other doesn't know what they're talking about.

I agree that you don't learn how to play poker overnight. I think that 500 hours, or perhaps as much as 1,000 hours, provided you go about it right, is what you need. That's a whole lot less than 10,000 hours.

I've never said anything like this.

In my book Real Poker Psychology, and I have more discussion of some of this in our more recent book, which I wrote with David Sklansky, Poker and More, I describe four different states that poker players can enter into where their games can deteriorate. This would not happen to people who are perfectly rational. By the way, the poker mental caches never even heard of three of these states until my book came out, and the fourth one they don't get right.

I agree that new players probably won't have any problem in betting the nuts (in situations where it's correct to bet them) but will often have problems with bluffing, especially for a lot of money, in situations where it's correct to bluff. If you were familiar with my work over the years, you would know that in many places I have stated that experience is important. But again, the 10,000 hour claim is silly.

But that's exactly what they do in the stuff I'm familiar with. Most of them seem to come from the sports world where things exactly as you mention above are emphasized. For example, do you need a warm-up to play poker well. I strongly doubt it.

To save going around the same points, the present thread will I'm sure cover some of the issues raised in this one.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...aches-1678554/

Hi Elrazor:

Yes, that was a very good thread, and I think that those who are not familiar with it should read through it, especially if they're thinking of spending a lot of money with one of these poker mental coaches.

Best wishes,
Mason

It's going to take me some time to digest all of this and craft an appropriate response, but my initial reaction is that there is some serious fallacious reasoning going on here.

1) You're nit-picking about the 10,000 hour rule, which is so insignificant to the broader issue that it is almost irrelevant. It's become a pop culture reference and even Gladwell himself has since clarified that it wasn't meant to be interpreted literally (https://www.businessinsider.com/malc...-rule-2014-6). Do you honestly believe the mainstream mental coaches think it literally takes 10,000 hours to become a poker expert? Of course not. The point is simply that it in addition to natural talent it takes a lot of work (and thus time) to get good at anything.

2) I highly doubt I will read through all 197 pages of that other thread referenced above but from a quick glance it strikes me as a terrible case of cherry-picking. You used one silly example to discredit the entire category of mental coaching. There are charlatans in all fields and mental coaching is no different. Just because there are some people out there calling themselves mental coaches who are teaching players to visualize cards does not mean there aren't other mental coaches doing good quality, evidence-based work. Tricia Cardner herself has been highly dismissive of that kind of visualization technique.


Anyway, I will follow up with a more detailed and substantive response.

As far as the PLO goes, it is less exact than NLH and took me like 2k hours to learn, play and pass the micros with good feel. Because of PLO and NLH GTO, it took me like 500 hours to achieve the same in NLH cash and tourneys and it is far easier to continue as so further with NLH because it is way more exact (the GTO). The PLO needs more experience and more technical knowledge than is in the books, taking a couple of thousands of hours more (that knowledge doesn't come easy nor free at the table nor outside it).

In chess, a verified case became a master in 3k hours and another one didn't in 25k hours, so the 10k number is considered a myth (a pretty new Chessbase.com article). I see the talent factor here and an arbitrary point of being a master. So, go figure.

The execution element is more or less the part of the brain that integrates the information from observations and knowledge. There is also a similar part, the temporal-parietal junction, that is used only vs. humans, not vs. bots. https://www.news.com.au/world/breaki...c5a26abae32130

The advanced players use more the memory component than the less experienced players who use more the analytical. Similar to younger and older people. The advanced chess players use more both sides of the brain. The masters recognize the patters better and use it to make better decisions. The German scientists have made many studies.

At high-level poker online, they can training-learn the patterns much in detail even in PLO, but most players are more difficult.

The talent needs for poker are considered (because of the competition or not) lower than in chess etc., but one needs to play vs. good players also and there is the rake to beat (every 100 hands the house takes around 10% of your 100 bb stack) but mastering the patterns takes its time.

There's also some serious misrepresenting of what I have stated concerning this stuff.

Come-on. Cardner and her o co-writer are the ones who wrote the article, not me, and why does D&B Publishing put this stuff out? But I do agree with you that's in one of the numerous silly things that these people advocate.

Someone should tell this to Patricia Cardner. Perhaps this is something that you can do.

But Cardner claims to be a poker mental coach and she says that this is accurate.

I claim that it should take about 500 hours to get very good at poker, and this assumes you go about it in the right way. That's a lot different from 10,000 hours.

No. And again you're misstating the facts. I use many examples.

Okay, but I don't know of any other poker mental coaches doing good quality work. If one exists please tell me.

I read her first book, and I am highly dismissive of most everything she says in this book.

In your response, please make sure you explain why you attributed a whole bunch of things to me which I've never said.

Mason

Hi pucmo:

I agree that different poker games should take different lengths of time to master. I'm not much into PLO so I'll take your word for it that it's more substantial than NLH. Years ago, I use to play ace-to-five draw poker in the public cardrooms of California. My guess on mastering that game would be about 20 (twenty) hours. It's much simpler than NLH or PLO.

I don't know much about chess, but it's clear to me that it's much more complex than poker. So I would expect it to take much more time to master than virtually any form of poker.

Okay. But it's still a whole lot less than an athletic sport where speed timing and coordination is involved.

Again, you're getting into stuff that I know very little about, so I'll take your word for it.

I think I understand what you're saying here and I'm sure it's correct. But I also think you may be missing the point. These poker mental coaches charge a lot of money for their services. For instance, Jared Tendler charges $5,000 for a twenty hour package:

http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/shop/

and I believe that their services are at best, worth very little.

Best wishes,
Mason

Okay for clarification. The 10k hours is not a myth. The original Eriksen studies related 10k hours to becoming an expert musician and similar skills, but clearly some skills are easier to master than others.

In addition some people are going to have a genetic and environmental advantage. If you have a musical ear and your parents are musicians, then you're probably going to do it in less than 10k hours. If you're tone deaf and from a low-income family where your parents have no interest in either you or music, it will probably take longer. However, 10k hours is a decent guide for that type of discipline.

In the UK, Helen Glover went from never having sat in a boat, to Olympic champion in 4 years. That's because she was identified as having the ideal physique and then fast-tracked through a talent programme where she could do it full time from the get go. This case study does not make the 10k hours rule bunk - rowing is a lot easier to master than the violin.

That said, poker does not take 10k hours to master, and the rule has very little application in poker. I would guess people extolling this are doing so for reasons such as they know it's easy for students to understand and will probably help sell books. But yeah, if you're a struggling poker player, and need to pay someone to tell you to practice, then you're probably not cut out for poker.

A free Tendler blog: https://www.888poker.com/magazine/poker-mental-strategy They don't come any time soon on the list of things to master but I have read some stuff like that also, as psychology things seem to have their place in poker also. I can't jump years ahead to comment, other than it looks mostly so secondary at this point and sort of lame.

The execution part can be viewed also as a knowledge part, e.g. Phil Gordon uses lists that point the things one should be thinking about before making a poker decision. I believe into stuff like that as the main part, as not knowing some factors and not thinking some factors, result in errors and weaker play. After that, or at any time, it might be worth to do some coffee house psychology reading, in case one is missing something.

I rate technical knowledge and experience higher than psychology. There are also practical tips like bankroll, what to play, where to play and then some psychology that improves performance would probably be worth something.

Hi pucmo:

I went to the Tendler Blog through the link you provided and this is what the first sentence says (and I didn't read anything else):

Poker is not a physical game. Even if you’re a player who eats well and works out, the reasons you do are less about poker’s physical demands and more about the mental ones

What I find interesting about this is that, going from memory, I don't remember anything like this in his first book (which is the only Tendler book I read). But then my criticism started and part of my criticism stressed that these poker mental coaches, including Tendler, didn't make any distinction between knowledge and execution, and in fact didn't have any understanding that much of what they were recommending, if it worked, was targeted towards execution and that poker is mainly a knowledge game.

As an example of my criticism, this is from my revised review of Tendler's first book:

There’s also a much more general problem with this book and with much of the current poker psychology literature. It’s the fact that many of the ideas presented come from the world of sports psychology. But how related is poker to an athletic sport? In my opinion, it’s not close, and that’s because things like speed, timing, and coordination are not part of the game. And that’s because poker is mainly a game of knowledge, and those psychological ideas that may help an athlete perform better should, in my opinion, have little impact on a poker player.

As a result, we now see sentences, like the one from the Tendler blog above, where they're acknowledging that there is some sort of difference and that poker is not a physical game, but they actually had it right all along. It's hard to make this stuff up.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason,

I took the time to read through the 197 posts from that previous thread, along with some of the other embedded links, and it has given me a much clearer sense of your position on the mental aspect of poker. I haven’t had the opportunity to read your books on the topic, but I think I’ve gleaned the important concepts from the numerous quotes you have provided. Before I address the bigger picture, however, I would like to clarify a couple of important facts.

First, you have repeatedly criticized the mental coaches for trying to apply concepts from the sports world to poker but not all the mental coaches come from the sports world. Tricia Cardner, for example, has a PhD in psychology, is a former professor of psychology, is a licensed psychotherapist, and has been a semi-professional poker player for many years. To my knowledge she has no connection to sports whatsoever.

Second, you seem concerned that people who pay mental coaches might focus on their mental development at the expense of learning strategy, but none of the mainstream mental coaches advocate this. In fact I have heard Tendler, Cardner, and Elliot Roe all say that mental coaching cannot replace strategic development, and that learning good strategy is absolutely essential. But since some players have difficulty implementing good strategy (which we will get to below), mental coaching might be helpful for some of those players.

Finally, you’ve made comments that imply that you believe you understand mental states related to poker better than the mental coaches do. While you can certainly claim to have a better understanding of poker than they do, as far as I’m aware you have no qualifications in psychology or any field related to “mental states.” Two of the mental coaches have degrees in such fields, and one of them is a PhD in psychology who was a former psychology professor. To believe that you have a better understanding of mental states related to anything than they do exhibits a level of hubris I find astounding. I can only imagine what your response would be if one of them had claimed that they have a better understanding of the mathematics of variance than you do.

Now for the substantive issues. Here is my understanding of your position, and please correct me if I have misunderstood it.

1) Poker is almost entirely a knowledge-based activity with a very small execution component.
2) Players can fail in their execution for four main reasons, which you call the four mental states:
a. Tilt: when a player loses the ability to think rationally
b. Pseudo-tilt: when a player decides something else is more important
than maximizing expectation
c. Searching: when a marginal player tries to find superior strategies
because he’s losing (I don’t really understand why this amounts to an
execution failure but I suppose you mean that the player tries different
strategies without taking the time to learn the strategy that actually
maximizes expectation)
d. Apathy: you describe this as a form of searching and I can’t find a
definition for it, but I will assume you are referring to a lack of
motivation

3) Any of the above failures in execution can be fixed through the accumulation of poker knowledge, specifically what you call knowledge of “all things poker.”
4) Therefore, there is no need for psychologists or mental game coaches in the world of poker and people shouldn’t be paying them hundreds of dollars per hour for advice. They could fix their execution problems by reading your books (among others) and perhaps by having a brief educational session with you.

I agree with two things. First, I am in total agreement that the execution component of poker is much smaller than the knowledge component compared to other activities like athletics. Second, I am in total agreement that increasing one’s knowledge of “all things poker” can help address certain execution failures. I think a perfect example of this is how a better understanding of the mathematics of variance can help prevent the tilt associated with bad beats.

Where I disagree is that I think your account of the mental states that inhibit execution is insufficient. Let me describe a couple of examples to illustrate.

1) The first example is a story I’ve heard told by one of the mental coaches, about a client who was a live cash holdem player. Let’s call him Bob. Bob realized that he was having a lot of difficulty handling it when someone 3-bet him, and it was costing him a lot of money. Instead of responding to each 3-bet with the play that would maximize his expectation under the circumstances, he would end up in a raising war and would try to blow his opponent off the pot every time. Over the course of the sessions the mental coach helped Bob realize that he was reacting to the 3-bets on an emotional level, and he traced it back to being bullied as a child. When he got 3-bet at the poker table it made him feel like he was being bullied all over again, so now that he was an adult he could “fight back” with more aggression. He didn’t want to back down to the bully by folding or taking a passive line. His work with the mental coach then focused on learning to separate what was happening at the poker table from what happened in his childhood, so that he didn’t interpret being 3-bet as being bullied.

2) Jim is a recreational player who plays micro stakes online and live local tourneys. Jim noticed that he seemed to struggle in live tourneys in a way that he didn’t online – specifically, he was much more comfortable opening up his game online. He was more aggressive, took more chances, and made bigger calls when he played online. When he played live, however, he tended to play a very weak-tight game. He very rarely 3-bet preflop, never attempted a check-raise or multi-street bluff, and when faced with big calls for his tournament life he too often opted for chip preservation and backed down to pressure. He always assumed it was because the stakes were higher live and he was less comfortable risking the money, but over time he eventually realized it was something else. Although Jim never got bullied like Bob did, he has always struggled with low confidence and self-esteem, and when he sat down at a live table with players who were more confident and aggressive than him, he would feel intimidated. So his lack of confidence generally bled over into his live poker game, resulting in a fear of taking risks and taking aggressive lines, and he was easily pushed off pots. It took Jim many years to come to this realization and work with a mental coach might have helped him realize it much more quickly.

Now I know exactly how you would respond. You would say that both cases could be understood as examples of either tilt (because they have lost the ability to think rationally in the sense of making the correct play) or pseudo-tilt (because they have both decided something else is more important than maximizing expectation). In either case expanding their knowledge of all things poker will cure their problem.

Unfortunately this doesn’t work. Bob was not making a decision that fighting back against his bullies was more important than maximizing expectation; his anger (and perhaps other emotions associated with being bullied) caused him to react with plays that didn’t maximize his expectation. And the same is true of Jim – he knew on an intellectual level that he should 3-bet, or fire a second barrel on a bluff, or make a big river call. But he couldn’t pull the trigger because he was scared. These are emotional reactions, not rational decisions, so they can’t be considered examples of pseudo-tilt.

Could they be considered cases of tilt? Sure, based on the way you’ve defined it. But your solution doesn’t work for their type of tilt. Knowledge of all things poker would help cure tilt associated with bad beats because that is a reaction that results in part from taking a perspective based on a small sample size, and learning about the mathematics of variance can change that perspective. But Bob’s and Jim’s emotional reactions to their situations are not based on any lack of poker knowledge, especially not mathematical knowledge. There is nothing you could teach Bob about the mathematics of poker that would help him not feel bullied when someone 3-bets him. Likewise, Jim can learn about all things poker and still feel intimidated and scared at the table.

I think the problem with your account is that it ignores the role of the emotional part of the brain in our behavior. When Bob gets 3-bet he gets angry and tries to fight back but not because he has made a decision that something was more important than maximizing expectation. Rather, the process is much quicker and more biological. His brain perceives the 3-bet as a threat, his amygdala fires in response to that threat, and he reacts with fight over flight. All of this happens before he can rationally assess the situation. In fact, it isn’t even that the emotional reaction happens more quickly, it happens in place of the rational assessment. That’s the beautiful evolutionary design of the human brain – the amygdala actually overpowers our rationality so that we react to threats without thinking about them (this is why we say and do things we later regret when very angry, for example). When our ancestors emerged from their cave and came face to face with a saber toothed tiger, taking the time to analyze the situation rationally would have resulted in a quick death. Thankfully the amygdala took over, forcing our ancestor to either grab his spear or run for his life. Getting 3-bet is Bob’s saber toothed tiger. Jim’s situation is similar but he has the opposite response: any time a situation arises that triggers his fear, he reacts with flight rather than fight. But the important point is that this process is not amenable to education because it isn’t governed by the rational part of the brain; it is instantaneous and emotional, and the only way to “cure” it is to address the emotions associated with it. And for that people are much better off paying a mental coach than reading books by a mathematician.

Cardner says she has a Ph.D. from Argosy University. Here's some stuff you can read about Argosy University:

https://www.complaintsboard.com/comp...y-c239740.html

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ersity.415625/

http://www.onlinedegreereviews.org/c...rsity-reviews/

Here's a couple of quotes from her first book:

Think about the challenge that an Olympic athlete might make. They have an ultimate goal, like winning an Olympic medal,...

This will help you stay on track. Olympic athletes keep lists of goals that they look at several times per day. Sport psychologists typically have clients ...

Many elite musicians and athletes use this technique

This about the challenge that an athlete might face

Athletic coaches know this and the best ones have their athletes set a series of short-term goals ...

Athletes who exhibit a mix of the two types of motivation tend to show higher levels of persistence, ...


You're making a leap here. You're relating the coaching that these people give to "good mental coaching." If you were to read my book, you'll see that it's very different from what these people use to say. (Also, the reason I say "use to say" is that I haven't paid much attention to them the last couple of years.)

That's true. I talk about mental states that players can go into which none of these people were even aware of until I wrote my book which was published almost three years ago. So, I assume that they're now aware of some of this stuff.

You're correct, I have no qualifications in the field of psychology. In fact, early in the publishing process of Real Poker Psychology, I even stressed this fact. But I am qualified when it comes to mathematical modeling and statistical theory, and a good understanding of this can lead you to unexpected places. I can't help but think you state as a way to show others I don't know what I'm talking about. But here are the first three paragraphs of the "Introduction" from my book:

I’m a mathematician. The reason I can say this is that my degrees are in math. But I’m also a statistician, and the reason I can say this is that in graduate school my curriculum included a bunch of statistics courses. When I worked in the real world, first for the United States Census Bureau and then for the Northrop Corporation, my job was more of a statistician than mathematician even though “math” was always in my title. So why am I writing a book on poker psychology?

There are two reasons. First, my perspective is different. I don’t look at poker psychology as many psychologists would and believe that my understanding of what causes the issues that poker psychologists try to address is far better. And for those of you familiar with the poker psychology literature, video, seminars, etc., I think you’ll agree once you finish this book.

Second, even though there is certainly some good stuff out there, I can’t stand much of what I read and hear. Yes, perhaps this is my version of tilt and also my mathematical bias, but as you’ll see, my tilt problem is solved.


I don't consider any degree from Argosy University to be of much value, but perhaps I'm wrong and you'll come back with an explanation as to why I'm wrong. The second person, and I'm going from memory, has degrees in counseling psychology and comes straight out of the sports world. As for the third person, who does hypnosis, I think he stated that he once took a 150 hour course, and didn't he come out of the MMA fighting world? Please correct me if I have any of this wrong.

But the bottom line is that none of this matters. But what does matter is the advice they give which I mostly don't agree with.

This is easy to answer. In Read Real Poker Psychology and the psychology section in Poker and More you'll see that I talk about issues and mental states that these people never mention.

This is reasonably accurate. Also notice, that while the mental coaches certainly talked a lot about tilt, they never mentioned any of the other three states in any way. In addition, there's much more in my book than what you outline here, and much of what is in Real Poker Psychology is also never mentioned by any of these mental coaches. An example would be the idea that probability theory can be counter-intuitive to many people, and thus can mess with how they think about things and solve problems at the poker table.

I'm not seeking to give any lessons. However, when I first came out with this stuff I was accused of this by one of these mental coaches.

I think this is the first thing here that can be addressed with some seriousness. You keep saying stuff like "execution failures." I guess you can say that when someone losses the ability to think rationally, which is tilt, they are having an execution failure. But I don't view searching, pseudo tilt (which I generalized to "expectation bias" in Poker and More),and apathy would come under that heading.

I agree with this. Also, I think a better understanding of the mathematics of variance by the mental coaches you bring up was also needed at the time my book was written. Perhaps today they understand it better. Again, see my book for more discussion.

Whatever you say. So, as a young person, he was being bullied and this was effecting his poker. Sounds like this person should be seeing a qualified psychoanalyst and not someone who's a poker mental coach. You need to understand that I'm the first to state that there are some people out there who have serious mental issues and that my stuff is not targeted for them.

But let's assume that everything you just stated is fine. Now Bob gets three-bet. Does he know what the right strategy is and why? Does he understand the variance associated with the play? Can he process the information that is now being presented to him at the poker table? And so on. But he now knows that as a kid he didn't like being bullied and that somehow his raising wars are his attempt to punch back at those bullies (and I'm not trying to degrade this subject and am well aware it can be difficult for some people). I bet he'll still lose all his money (if he keeps playing) unless he learns how to play poker much better than his raising wars show that he is.

Okay. This one is a little more difficult to address because there are many possibilities. But we have a player who did okay in small online games/tournaments but poorly in live tournaments which were played for more money. Specifically, online they were able to make all sorts of nifty plays, and this would include playing lots of hands, but live they lost the ability to do this.

The following is from page 202 of Real Poker Psychology:

It’s my experience, based on observation, that these over-confident players can come crashing down when they finally do begin to run bad. Part of the reason for this is that by playing too many hands, they’ll also increase the short-term luck factor, and when you run bad with a large standard deviation, the results can be terrible. Now they’ll not only lose much of their confidence, but they’ll lose much of their bankroll as well.

Yes. The standard deviation can be cruel.

My answer to the first example is somewhat along these lines, but not the second one.

I don't agree with this at all. You're describing someone with a serious problem who perhaps shouldn't be playing poker.

No. He couldn't pull the trigger because his lost of confidence made him unsure as to what the correct play was. In addition, his understanding of how large the short-term luck factor can be in tournaments needed some improving.

You're the one saying they're examples of pseudo tilt / expectation bias, I'm not. In fact, they're not even close.

If there's one thing that I would like to see you get taught is not to assume I state things which I don't. You present things well, so someone reading this might just think that what you're stating about me is accurate. But it's not.

Okay. Let's assume you're right. Has Bob ever hit someone who three-bet him? Has he ever grabbed his chips and run out of the cardroom? And isn't this what the "fight or flight" response would have you do? Again, I think you're describing someone with a more serious problem, and I'm not the one to have an answer.

This is more of the same stuff and will not be addressed.

Okay, you can buy my book on Amazon for $19.44. Or instead, you can for five thousand dollars can get 20 hours of coaching from one of the mental coaches you mentioned.

MM

I think some people are mistaking Mason for saying that poker is easy if you have the right knowledge. It's not trivia. Poker isn't a quiz show that tests your knowledge of all things poker. It is incredibly complex. Each hand of poker you have ever played is unique in some way or another. The knowledge you can have is how to solve the problem presented by each unique hand. The knowledge isn't a cheat sheet that will tell you what to do. So, when you don't know how to solve the problem or you run into a particularly difficult problem, your emotions can convince you that you do know the answer. That idea relieves a lot of stress and you end up making an incorrect decision or a series of incorrect decisions. This doesn't mean the problem was with your emotions. The mental coaches could help with your emotions, but what good does it do, if you still don't know how to solve poker problems?

Hi Paul:

First, thanks for your post.

I think that much of the issue here is that these negative posters have little understanding of exactly what I have written relative to this subject. Instead they make certain assumptions which are inaccurate.

For instance, in Real Poker Psychology there is much discussion about how you should go about learning to play poker and why some of the techniques that these poker mental coaches are not right. If they had read that, they would see, as you point out, that I'm saying that poker does have its share of complexities. To be specific, I talk about balancing concepts that can come up in the play of a hand and that these concepts can often contradict each other.

Best wishes,
Mason

Is there a way to write a lengthy response without getting logged out and losing it? So frustrating...

Use a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect, then copy and paste.

By the way, if you continue to attribute things to me that I never said, perhaps I'll delete it.

Mason

A couple of comments. Firstly, this whole analysis just seems astrology-level bad. Most people experience bullying at some point in their lives, to varying degrees. You can pretty much attribute anything to this if you like – it’s a popular technique in pseudo-science, as the name suggests:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

Something else that troubles me is I have seen some poker mental coaches openly discuss specific clients, often using quotes from them to promote their business. This is unethical. Any mental health professional should adhere to the same levels of confidentiality that would exist between a physician and a patient.

As far as the wider debate goes, I think both sides have valid and interesting points. I would summarise:

Does psychology play a role in poker? Undoubtedly.

Does sport psychology play a role in poker? Arguable. I believe it is widely used as many sport psychology techniques are easy to understand, and their popularity in pop-psychology gives the therapist certain credibility. However, I personally think there are better ways to explain and treat psychology-related problems at the poker table.

First, it isn't an analysis it's a description of what the client learned about himself over the course of their discussions. So it isn't bad or good, it just is.

Second, the Barnum effect has nothing to do with this. The mental coach isn't a clairvoyant or some other quack who looked into his crystal ball and guessed the client had been abused. It's a kind of counseling in which clients can learn things about themselves that may be affecting their poker games.

Third, I would have to assume that the coaches have permission from the clients to use their de-identified stories in public settings. If so, there's nothing unethical about it.

Fine, but your original post suggested a cause/effect relationship, and no alternative explanations were presented.

Permission is irrelevant. What would you think about a physician asking a famous client they are treating for a testimonial they could put up in the reception or on their website?

From AASP's ethical code:

https://appliedsportpsych.org/about/ethics/ethics-code/