My latest poker strategy article, Stop Telling Stories, is now appearing in Two Plus Two Magazine. It’s about the natural but dangerous temptation to create a narrative (and assign blame/take credit in the process) out of all of the randomness that’s inherent in poker:
“Ancient civilizations invented demons, gods, and myths to explain the random forces of nature, such as weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes, which loomed so large in their lives. Often, the heroes of these stories were mortals, like Odysseus or Beowulf, who triumphed over supernatural forces to become masters of their own destiny.
Like our ancestors, we poker players are at the mercy of a powerful force whose machinations seem indifferent and sometimes even cruel: variance. It is both the beauty and the curse of this game that luck has the final say. No matter how well we play, there is no guarantee that we will win a given pot or even a given session. Is it any surprise that we joke about “the poker gods” or make of ourselves a “Hero” when sharing a hand on the Two Plus Two forums?”
I actually wrote this before I started reading Thinking Fast and Slow, though that book offers plenty of support for the idea that our brains are hard-wired to find causal explanations for random, unconnected events. It’s an excellent book in a lot of ways, with plenty of applicability both to poker and to plenty of other aspects of your life. After all, shouldn’t we all have a better understanding of how our brains work?
Im getting this book. I read a sample and is very interesting explaining the traps in thinking and solving situational contradictions.
I want to also note that I have trouble navigating your new site. Every time I scroll down I get half a page because the black part of your header seems to drop down. It makes hard reading . I also miss the old colors.