Poker Isn’t a Binary Game, And Either/Or Thinking Can Sink You

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Years ago I read something from Mike Caro that I thought was really a brilliant insight into the poker mind. It’s called “either/or” thinking, and you can read about it in his words. (Skip to the section titled “Today’s word”.)

The basic idea is that people tend to think in either/or terms: Either this is true, or that’s true. We naturally divide things into two pieces and then try to decide which piece is better. Sometimes that thinking works great, but sometimes it is limiting. The world is complex, and often there are more than two relevant options, more than two possibilities. Either/or thinking can cause us to ignore something sitting right in front of us because it doesn’t fit neatly into one bucket or the other.

In the article I linked above, Caro describes one way you can use either/or thinking to your advantage. You can bet a marginal made hand and exclaim, “You’re not going to believe what I made!” By saying this, you encourage your opponent to think about only two options: You have a great hand or you’re bluffing, nothing in between. This allows you to bet moderate made hands for value more often, because by removing those hands from your opponent’s perception of your range, you increase the chances he’ll call you with a weaker hand.

It absolutely works. I’ve used this trick in one form or another numerous times while I play, and I believe fully that it’s easy to get many players to slip into either/or mode. You don’t even have to say anything to do it sometimes. You just have to “act” one way or the other: act like you’re bluffing or act like you have a monster, it doesn’t matter which. When they pick up your “tell,” your opponent will try to decode it. “Why is he acting? Does he have a monster, or is he bluffing?” No longer will they think about the in-between hands, and you might increase your chances of getting called by a bluff-catcher.

I think either/or thinking is a basic aspect of the human brain. We tend to think about many things in that binary way. I think a lot of wrong-thinking (both in poker and not) comes from that one tendency, and I’m going to write about it. So expect more posts about the either/or fallacy.

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