In a newly released TEDx talk, poker pro Maria Ho discusses how to create an optimal decision-making process. The California native gave the talk at UC San Diego, her alma mater.
Ho has $4.7 million poker tournament winnings, including a World Poker Tour DeepStacks title and $2.2 million in World Series of Poker winnings. She’s feared in both live and online poker. TEDx talks are a showcase for speakers presenting well-formed ideas in under 18 minutes.
Humans make about 35,000 decisions in a day, she noted, from the mundane to the complex. Working through options isn’t always easy and she offered key points on navigating through some of these more critical choices.
“We often don’t even realize it, but our brain is constantly in overdrive,” she said. “It’s never-ending, the decision fatigue is real. As one of the top poker players in the world, I often find myself in situations where the difference between making the right or wrong decision could cost me or earn me a million dollars. This is why one of the most important skills I’ve had to hone is the ability to think clearly under immense pressure with incomplete information in a game where time is not a luxury.”
Don’t Tank In Real-Life, Either
Ho outlined some of her thoughts on optimizing decision-making skills. That included the idea that taking more time doesn’t always help one make the best decision.
“In poker, we often refer to the saying, ‘think long, think wrong,’” she said. “That’s not to say that we don’t consider the multitude of variables and factors at play at any given point in the hand. It’s just that most often, the conclusion that we come to initially ends up being the correct play.”
Second-guessing can diminish the logic a player initially used to come to the right decision, according to Ho. Much of her talk included carrying over these types of skills to the real world.
Additionally, many decisions don’t come without the luxury of perfect conditions. Ho compared this concept to how players must act on their hands based on conjecture and conclusions drawn without knowing exactly what an opponent might be holding.
“There are always so many unknowns, so many variables we can’t predict, and aspects that can’t be viewed through an objective lens,” she said.
Embracing Risk
About a decade ago, poker broadcasts offered Ho analyst roles. The proposal would make her the first female strategy analyst on these productions. While initially hesitant, fear of the unknown wasn’t a good enough reason not to accept the role.
“The production company knew that I had no experience, yet they were willing to take a chance on me,” she said. “So in spite of my ‘what ifs,’ I said yes. Next time when you’re faced with a decision with this uncertainty, don’t be afraid to take that risk and trust that you can make a good scenario out of a bad situation.”
Along with these concepts, Ho also touched on two additional points: that sometimes even a good decision can produce a bad outcome; and how to recover from a bad decision. Watch the complete talk below.
This isn’t the only time that a poker player has taken the stage for a TED talk. Liv Boeree spoke about using probabilities to improve “everyday decision making” in 2018. Last year, James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, also wrote the script for a TED-Ed animation focusing on the history of poker.