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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Dec 01, 2007

Selective Perception and Other Silly Things

Pick a year, any year, as long as you hit the tables (online or in a brick-and mortar) a goodly amount of hours during that time. Then, answer these questions.

How many times have you held the best hand all the way to the river and had someone suck out on you? How many times did your aces get cracked? How many times did you fold the best hand to let two other suckers go up against each other only to find out you would have wiped them out had you stayed?

To answer these questions -- and they are serious ones -- you would have to access your records. You are keeping records, aren't you? (Even those among us who don't like that tedious task do it.)

The questions seem silly at first because they sound like just a few more bad beat stories. But, if you read any of the forums, newsgroups, or chats, you'll know that the number one complaint about this game of poker (after comments about the lack of etiquette among younger players, the unhappiness with Harrah's handling of the World Series of Poker, slow-play in tournaments, possible -- and probable -- cheating online, the U.S. government meddling in private preferences, rigged games, well, you get the point.) focuses on these negative questions.

Let's side step a bit and look at the game of blackjack. The basic strategy, the very best move to make (without knowing how to count cards) in blackjack is, for example, to stand if you hold a five against a dealer's 13. Often, beginning blackjack players will make that move a hundred times at the onset of their gambling career and they will then begin to question the validity of the strategy. They wonder how come the dealer always wins with that 13 against his five because it does seem to be that way.

Three factors operate here. First, standing on that five doesn't guarantee a win. It just decreases the number of times you lose. Second, the dealer doesn't always beat the five. It just appears that way. And third, without counting cards the player has no clue whether the deck is rich or poor with cards to help or hurt him.

Back to poker we can see a parallel. First, knowing the best strategy for any two cards doesn't guarantee a win. It does, however, help scale down the number of times another player will win with a better hand. Second, no single player always beats your best two cards. You aren't playing against a robot (at least we hope you aren't) and you aren't playing against he same individual every time you have an outstanding starting hand. And third, unless you have x-ray eyes or you are an employee of the online poker room and you can see everybody's down cards, you never know what is going to happen until the very (sometimes bitter) end.

Probably the biggest factor involved in this whole debate over consistent and never-ending bad beats is the number of hands you get to play online. Because the games move so much faster online than in a land-based room, you get involved in many more hands than you would if you were sitting at a table at, say one of the Station casinos in Las Vegas.

More hands translate into more opportunity to lose.

What's really happening is a phenomenon called selective perception, the filtering out of pertinent information to make a situation fit what we believe.

We tend to remember the sting of the paddle, the negative event because it hurts and so when it happens again, it seems to multiply in occurrences.

You don't lose with every great starting hand. (If you do, well, then you shouldn't be playing poker.) But you do remember the negative sting of losing a big pot with a great hand, especially if the person who beat you drew to an inside straight and caught the case card on the river.

This selective perception stuff is really annoying because it builds up and sticks its ugly face up side your other negative surroundings. Your bankroll has taken a hit recently and then you get this bad beat and suddenly you have two big bad ogres stinking up your life. Maybe you had a fight with your significant other, went online to play a tournament, and got knocked out after just three hands. Can you blame that on suck outs? Yeah, you can, but that wasn't the reason you lost.

If you keep records meticulously, you'll see that there's no pattern to your losses and that there aren't a bunch of idiots calling your bets and raises every time.

Once you come to terms with the fact that you won't win every time out and that you could, if you stop being negative, win enough on your good outings to more than make up for those losing sessions, you are on your way to beating the best.

It's not that simple, but it's that simple.

Selective perception -- it's not a good thing.