Continuing this series of articles on cognitive biases in poker, I’d like to start—as is my custom—by explaining why it’s important to understand cognitive biases. After the first few parts, I hope you’ve come to realize that:
- it’s impossible to turn off the inner monkey—the intuitive channel;
- in certain situations, we really, really need the monkey.
System 1—or the intuitive decision-making system—is something we really, really need, and it’s precisely what distinguishes a professional from an amateur.
Imagine a professional boxer in the ring who, when his opponent’s gloved fist is flying toward him at tremendous speed, starts thinking: “I’ll dodge to the right now, then to the left, then I’ll duck, then maybe a double jab…”—and so on. If he thinks about that, he’ll be knocked out immediately—any athlete who’s ever boxed will tell you that. During training, reflexes are developed so that during a fight, the boxer thinks only strategically and positionally. At the moment of a punch or an attack, as a rule, he isn’t thinking about where to dodge, where to tilt his head, at what angle, how low to crouch, or where to extend his elbow… All of this happens automatically. And that’s exactly what our “inner monkey” does. It works quickly, without thinking—exactly what’s needed during a fight.
That much is more or less clear, but the question arises: do we need System 1 in other areas unrelated to motor coordination? Maybe we should turn it off in all other cases? Well, no!
Take a look, for example, at a game between top-level chess players. What distinguishes a grandmaster from a master, a master from a club player, and a club player from a beginner? You probably know that in chess there’s a clock with a flag. If the flag falls, time is up—which means you’ve lost. A certain amount of time is allotted for each game. The entire game depends on the speed with which the player finds strong moves. Does that mean they think better (faster) than an ordinary person—someone who isn’t a chess player? No.
Strange as it may seem, for a grandmaster, a titled master, or any trained chess player, all these moves come almost automatically; only afterward, with the help of System 2—our rational mind—does the player reject some, accept others, and decide which move to make. But there are a huge number of different moves that can be made on the board. How do you choose the optimal one from this multitude? The fact is that a chess player begins by considering the most important moves, and that is precisely what saves them time. That’s what the monkey does. And this happens not only in chess. As you might have guessed, it happens in poker, too.
System 1 (the inner monkey) is capable of making the right decisions only when a person has a certain amount of experience. And the more experience a person has, the more the energy-intensive and time-consuming System 2 delegates tasks to System 1. So I’ll repeat what I’ve said in previous articles. If you think you’ll find a “magic pill” in this text that will suddenly let you beat a poker bot—or, for that matter, defeat anyone at the poker table—you’re mistaken. My main point is this: to win, you need to make fewer mistakes, and to make fewer mistakes, we’re studying the key cognitive biases that apply to poker. In fact, I’m slightly shortening your path toward reducing systematic thinking errors when playing poker.