"How could I lose this one?" the deeply stuck tourist asked me as he flashed the 8
6 before flicking them into the muck. The pot was gigantic, fivehanded to the end with multiple bets on the flop and turn. The flop had come K-10-6 with two diamonds, giving the lamenting tourist a pair of sixes and an 8-high diamond draw. A pair and a flush draw can be a big hand, as it has more than a 50 percent chance of improving to two pair or better. However, the stuck tourist did not improve his holding. The turn card was a black 3 and the river was an offsuit 4, leaving him with only a pair of sixes.
But sometimes we perceive things to be better than they really are. A set of tens won the pot and another player showed the Q J, an open-end royal flush draw, to the table before folding. The fellow bemoaning his bad luck in losing the hand was drawing stone-cold dead to running sixes. I didn't bother clarifying that to him, and I didn't think he would want to listen if I did. But the hand was hardly the bad beat he perceived it to be.
Perception and reality, alas, do not always come together in the minds of poker players, or other people, for that matter.
It has always puzzled me how intelligent people with reasonable sense and knowledge have a massive hole in their brains when gambling. When it comes to perceiving reality in wagering situations, even when the revelation should be self-evident, they just don't get it. I have heard sports bettors with enough intelligence to obtain advanced degrees tell me that a certain sports bet is a 100 percent lock to win, and genuinely believe it. How could they think such a thing? Can they not perceive that another outcome is plausible? The tendency of man's ego to overestimate his capabilities is what makes poker (and gaming for the casinos) such a lucrative venture.
Bowlers, pool players, and golfers soon realize they are outclassed when they lose every game. However, the power of denial deep within the human mind, and the fact that there is a luck element in the game, allows poker players to lose continuously over time and still feel superior in ability to their opponents. They explain away and justify their losses, and view their few moments of winning and glory as evidence of their superior poker prowess. Such players are unable to perceive the big picture, and are of the mistaken belief that over time the cards will even out and their losses will be justifiably returned to them. I've seen many highly successful (in other endeavors) and intelligent players destroy their financial lives over the course of many years of play and never question their false belief in themselves.
Other players seem to believe their "hunches." They believe they can determine the outcome of a gaming event or predict a random distribution occurrence due to some sort of psychic power. They believe their mental prowess is so strong that they can somehow control the statistical probabilities of the cards that are to come. I've heard players tell me after (and before) making a lucky draw that they knew it was coming. I think it is a stress reaction in their minds, a way of justifying a call because subliminally they did not want to experience the emotional frustration of folding a hand that would have won. They play their "hunches" again and again until they go broke. The few times that playing their hunches does work, as it occasionally will statistically, reinforces their belief in their ability and they somehow discount all the other times it fails.
Other players tell me they can predict patterns of winning or losing streaks in advance. They believe that past occurrences of statistical fluctuations in relation to events is a prophecy for future events. This flies in the face of all the laws of probability, and has no foundation in reality. Yet, I have seen this belief become a losing self-fulfilling prophecy. Players who believe they are due for a losing streak expect to lose, and therefore play in a manner to protect against losing, which very rarely is a winning strategy in poker, so they lose. Unfortunately for the streak theorists, this belief in "streaks" doesn't necessarily translate to a winning self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many poker players have superstitions that dictate their play in some way or other: lucky seats, facing certain directions, lucky charms to cover their cards, and so on. They know in their heart of hearts that following these superstitions will help them win. Players believe in their superstitions in spite of the fact that they never seem to work.
Something within the human mind seems to make it want to believe whatever it wants to believe. I think this trait exists in all of us, but to varying degrees. Those who lean toward a total fantasy world have little hope of becoming successful players. The lack of perceived reality in these people's minds destines them to make massive errors in judgment in both life and poker.
Denial being what it is, we all believe we correctly perceive things, regardless of the reality. It is important to have the capability to distinguish between what is really going on and what is compulsive or impulsive emotional input from your brain. Being perceptive, rational, unemotional, and brutally realistic is the mental state you need to maintain when playing poker.
The tourist with the 8 6 suffered from a perception disability, which flew in the face of hard probabilistic reality. He would never be able to adjust his game or grow from learning from his errors and experiences, because he would never be aware of the changes he needed to make. He was going to see the world his way, no matter what. Don't make these errors of perception yourself. Get and stay real! If you are not making your decisions based on truth and fact – a painful dose of reality is eventually bound to be coming your way.
Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for more than 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas – please see his ad below. If you would like to ask Roy poker-related questions, you may do so online at www.UnitedPokerForum.com.