Biases cause your judgment to be clouded. When you watch a movie and after it ends, you say, “I knew that would happen!” even if you really haven't guessed it before. Such cognitive biases are highly prevalent in poker.
Some of these biases can cost you big time. Poker demands rational and logical thinking. However, your brain might not always function as you want it to. Your brain’s gotta mind of its own!
You can experience multiple biases in one game and that's perfectly normal. It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or a skilled player; these biases are always working behind the scenes. You can control them once you recognize what type of bias you experience the most.
Relax! We are not planning to bore you to death…We are eliminating all the guesswork here. Let’s take a deep dive into the article to find out what cognitive biases exist in your head and how to overcome them.
Cognitive biases are like your brain’s shortcuts for making decisions quicker. They stem from the brain's need to simplify complex information. Some are tied to memory issues, while others relate to what grabs your attention.
You can see these biases prevailing not just in poker but in every field you can think of. They affect your decision-making process leading sometimes to unwanted results.
The gambler’s fallacy is one of the most common biases encountered by gamblers. Simply put, it occurs when a person believes that repeated outcomes in a game will lead to a different outcome next time. In short, if an event happens more frequently than usual, there’s a mistaken belief that it’s less likely to happen again.
Let’s imagine you’re playing a game of poker and you keep getting good cards like aces and kings. After a while, you develop the perception that you’ll get a bad one in the next round, while in reality, it’s always a 50/50 possibility that you’ll get a good or a bad hand, regardless of the past outcomes.
This leads to poor decision-making. Instead of considering the actual odds of the game, players go after chasing their losses in hopes of getting lucky with their next move.
You can see the outcome bias in every sport worldwide. Imagine a football match where the coach decides to put on a different play as the game approaches towards the critical end. If his tactic works and the team wins, the coach is praised for his strategies based on the outcome.
During a poker game, you can bluff all you want about your hand. This may scare the opponent and cause him to fold, making you the ultimate winner. Conversely, if your acting doesn’t work out, especially when you are playing against pro players, you might end up losing the pot.
If the tactic works, the player becomes overconfident when they win and may repeat the strategy based on the outcome. However, the probability of winning differs with each game.
Confirmation bias is when you notice or believe things that match what you already think. It’s like sticking to your own perception rather than looking at the bigger picture.
For instance, you love a singer and enjoy all his songs, even the boring ones, and desperately wait for his next album. You develop an opinion in your head that he is a great singer, while others might critique him for his voice and other traits. You pretty much don’t care what the reality is and make decisions based on your perception.
In poker, if your opponent starts with aggressive moves, you might expect them to continue playing boldly. You might not even notice if they switch to defensive play because you’ve already labeled them as aggressive in your mind. You tend to focus only on information that confirms your existing opinion.
Seasoned poker players are pretty darn smart. Thinking that they would act the same way in each game…well, it’s a foolish mistake you don’t wanna make.
It occurs when you change your moves based on past events. In poker, selective perception can affect how players remember and understand the game.
If a player has been winning with a specific pair of cards, he may use the same in hopes of winning big again. But it doesn’t work that way. Every event demands a different skill set and strategy and ends in a different way. What may have worked in the past may not work in future games.
Selective perception clouds your judgment, and you make decisions on what you believe is right rather than focusing on the player's move, odds of the game, and important information that may hurt their chances of winning.
As humans, your brains are naturally inclined towards taking shortcuts. You like things that are easy to understand and recall. The availability heuristic relies on how easily you can remember examples of something happening.
Let’s say you are a team leader. You have to give a task to one of the two employees, Max and Alex. Both have a good track record of completing the work on time. However, Max, in his first year of employment, accidentally deleted some important project files when his system was having some issues. Keeping this scenario in mind, you decide to hand over the project to Alex, even though both candidates were equally competent.
As a poker player, it’s easy to be overtaken by this cognitive bias. Like when someone might think a hand is more likely to happen just because they remember it happening before. For instance, if they recently lost to a flush, they might get jumpy thinking every opponent has one, even when it’s not that likely. This over-reliance on recent, vivid memories can lead to poor decision-making.
People tend to remember experiences based on the most exciting part, ‘THE PEAK’, and how they felt at the end, rather than considering the whole experience.
Imagine throwing a party at your house. The ‘peak’ of the party is when everyone is dancing and having a BLAST, and the end is when your guests start leaving. Even if there were some quiet moments in between when people were just chatting and waiting for snacks, they’d remember the party based on how much fun they had dancing and saying goodbye in the end.
In a poker game, if a player manages to win a big hand near the end of the game and finishes the game feeling satisfied, they might count the whole experience as a success story. The positive or negative points in the events are recorded in memory, which highly influences your future gameplay.
There’s a famous myth about ostriches that bury their heads in the ground when they see a danger approaching. Human psychology also works in the same pattern. Instead of facing the issue head-on, they try to take a different route. But, avoiding the problems only makes them worse.
Suppose you’re playing a poker game. The ostrich effect would be playing aggressively even if you have a weak hand, thinking that a fairy godmother would wield her wand and turn the table in your favor. Instead of folding early in the game, you continue to chase your losses.
This emotional decision-making will only result in incurring heavy losses. It’s best to realize the reality early on so you can change your strategies as the game progresses.
With each game, the player has the opportunity to learn new things and adopt competitive strategies. Poker is a game of mind. Old-school play won’t help you win big forever. So, even when there’s a good reason to change, you stick stubbornly to your own opinions.
Let’s imagine, a player is dealt with a so-so hand but decides it’s better than it really is. As the game progresses it becomes evident he has a weak hand but ignores the danger signs and keeps betting. Instead of changing his gameplay, he sticks to his own initial belief. These costly mistakes can seriously damage the entire game.
It is a cognitive bias that exists in almost everyone. You keep pushing because you know you have invested a lot of time and effort to reach that point. Even though your efforts might end up all in vain, you still continue to invest more and more.
In poker, the sunk cost fallacy occurs when players continue betting in a hand despite unfavorable odds just because they have already invested a lot of chips. They let their past investments affect their decisions rather than focusing on the current scenario and winning probabilities.
It is a cognitive bias where a person believes that all his success is due to his skills and expertise whereas blames his failures on luck. In short, he takes credit for all the wins and blames his losses on circumstances. It’s all about protecting one’s self-esteem at any cost.
If a poker player loses a game, they are likely to blame it all on poor card distribution, opponents' unexpected moves and of course fate. That way their confidence level is maintained but their tendency to learn from mistakes lessens.
Optimism Bias lets you see only the positive side of things. A player experiencing optimism bias may overestimate their chances of winning a hand while brushing off the risks involved. Their TOO much positivity and overconfidence often lead them to making costly mistakes..
The Dunning-Kruger effect shows how some folks with lower abilities tend to think they’re better than they actually are because they don’t realize their shortcomings. It’s like when someone’s not great at something but still believes that they are pro.
The Halo Effect is when you think someone is awesome overall, so you automatically assume they’re great in every way. It's a bias where your general impression of a person affects how you see their specific qualities.
If a player has a good reputation at the table, the opponent might assume they are highly skilled, regardless of their actual abilities at the table. As a result, players start to make faulty perceptions instead of seeing things objectively.
Don’t let these biases take control of your poker game. Check out some of the incredible ways you can ditch these biases.
Even though you should make smart choices, your brains don’t always do that, and you end up making similar mistakes over and over again. Quick decisions might come in handy when in a hurry but often leads to the wrong route..
To wrap it up, making right decisions in poker requires overcoming these biases mentioned above. They can easily cloud your judgment and lead to costly mistakes. Whether it is a gambler's fallacy, outcome bias, or confirmation bias, each one can influence decisions and outcomes.
But there are ways to outsmart them. Remember, even the best players make blunders sometimes, but it’s how you bounce back that counts. So, stay focused, keep learning and enjoy the game!
