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"I interfere whenever and wherever I please."
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, via Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes would likely have made an excellent poker player. Winning poker involves
breaking codes,
misdirection,
manipulation and the fundamental
ability to discover the truth when others attempt to hide it from you.
Sometimes seeing the truth is not hard. For example, an opponent's bluff might be painfully obvious. But other times, the systematic
elimination of the known can lead to the discovery of the unknown.
"The true is discovered by eliminating the untrue... When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth."
Windows - Mac
Poker has some moments of certainty, like when you have the best possible hand, but for the most part we need to wade through a sea of
unknowns as we make decisions. This aspect of the game becomes more important the higher the level of your opponents. Mediocre and
worse players have little imagination and play by rote. Top players like to do things that don't just confuse other players, but that
the other players don't give serious consideration to. When dealing with top players, the improbable tends to morph into the probable.
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
theories to suit facts."
 While crime detection
likes facts, sometimes known facts don't exist. All that exists is data. This is where the greatest similarity to poker occurs. When
playing poker we have reams and piles and truckloads of data, but often there isn't a fact to be found (beyond the exact value of our
own hand). A mistake every player makes (time and again for many players) is to twist the data they have to "prove" a theory
that they started with before any data existed.
The most common example of this is many losing players believe they are great players, and no amount of data will dissuade them from
that belief... at least as long as one tiny bit of data supports the theory. I've seen some tournament players who got assaulted by
the deck one day which allowed them to win a major event end up convinced that they are in fact top players. Somehow getting pocket
aces ten times in an hour, and winning with all of them, becomes an "I'm a great player" data point that offsets years of
data from dreadfully unsuccessful play.
But the world of online poker is where this twisting becomes most comically bizarre. Some of the weakest poker players around assert
that all online games are rigged, primarily because they lose. One online forum poster asserted that "there is clearly a growing amount of
circumstantial evidence that online poker is rigged beyond recognition."
But when confronted about "evidence", there turns out to be exactly none, zero. Several years of arm-waving message board posts like
this have to date yielded zero circumstantial evidence, even as minimal as 1000 consecutive hand histories that show anything questionable.
The complainers never post 1000 hand histories of their own because all that would very likely be shown would be some pitiful poker.
"Where there is no imagination, there is no horror."
Great poker players are not devoid of fear, because great poker players are not
idiots. Great players know when to
exercise caution. Great players aren't afraid of danger, they even solicit dangerous situations because they know how to handle
themselves in such situations, but when they do this they are aware of the
risks.
"It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you."
Great players are not reckless. They don't see themselves as bulletproof. The danger level of situations is simply one more piece of
data to insert into your playing equation. Many novices see top players make bold moves on
television, and don't understand that the bold move is not reckless,
but rather made by a player who fully understands the risk.
"I am glad of all details, whether they seem to you to be relevant or not."
And of course this is an item that will forever separate the great from the mediocre, or worse. The Dr. Watson's of the world might
not find much value in details, but the devil is in the details. Tiny details can unlock the mysteries of life and of a poker game,
even if they often don't. I'm glad to have every detail an opponent gives me, and I am constantly on the hunt for details that I can
use this second or this century.
"What one man can invent, another can discover."
And the game is afoot. Your opponents are constantly inventing. Our mission is to unravel the contrivances of their inventions to find the truth.
See also Reading Opponents,
Poker Empathy
and YA Tittle and Losing Poker
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