Q&A #88: Blame Others, Blame Yourself, Or Blame It On The Rain?

awesome question to begin with.
great answer.
this will provide food for thought for quite some time. thanks!

>If you gotta blame it on something, blame it on the rain.

Well I think studies have shown that people tend to be more depressed when it rains, and if you’re depressed then you don’t play as well right? So yeah, blame the rain…

I also was a tournament chess player for a number of years. I observed that some people played a lot, but their play never improved. They had reached a plateau and couldn’t move beyond it.

What they had in common is that they played for fun but never really spent any time analyzing their own games.

Playing is necessary, but alone it’s not enough. You need to analyze your play and look for the mistakes you made. Not to beat yourself up with “blame”; I agree that’s not the point and is probably counter productive. You just need to acknowledge that a better move was available and you missed it. Next time a similar situtation comes up, you will be less likely to make that mistake.

But I do see your point about randomness in poker. Two people can play a pot, both can play “perfectly” (given the information that they have), but someone still loses because of the way the cards fall. That’s what makes poker so much fun.

Nice article. I have never blamed others for my outcomes at the table, but earlier on I used to beat myself up a bit, get mad at myself for making a mistake,etc.

VegasSocrates, I made myself look at things differently. Of course I still make many mistakes. But one thing I did is realize be careful on what you call a mistake. For example, I should have made a smaller value bet on the river? It’s good to analyze situations when they’re over, but don’t think of it as a mistake.
If they had a hand they wouldn’t have called any sized value bet with, then you really didn’t make a mistake. And what if they did call you, could you have made a bigger value bet? You can’t know these things for sure even after they’ve happened.

The better you get at reading hands, people, situations the better your approximations will be, but not even a pro can be sure exactly where the cutoff for the bet size was for a certain individual. They will come closer than us but that’s not because we made a mistake, it’s because they have more experience and are more skilled than us. And of course could be more talented to begin with.

So about the only thing that makes me stew ( even when I get mad at myself at the table i’m a sulker not a whiner) is because I didn’t trust my read or what I knew in my brain to be the right move, being too passive because of recent results, letting my attention wander and not playing the best I can, etc. And these are not so much mistakes as weaknesses that cause mistakes. I can and do work on them and I have improved and will continue to improve, but like Ed said in his well crafted analogies, give it time.

I accpet the fact that sometimes I’m not good enough to be sure if I just made a mistake or not. So I come home and read, post on NPA, and work on it. I catch guys when they are leaving for home and ask them what they had that hand when I layed down, etc.

You made a really good post VS, which prompted another nugget from Ed. Good work. And if you don’t want to take Ed’s advice and blame it on pretty, sweet rain, blame it on human nature, which usually isn’t as pretty and sweet.

[...] made the call with ATo. Ten on the flop, Ace on the turn and good game me. I’m not gonna blame Rocky for the call but it is getting old having him send me to the rail what seems like tourney [...]

Ed,

Wow.

This is a very good one here. I really enjoying reading your psychology articles. I may be a little bit biased as this is one of my main areas of focus at this moment, but I think you do a really good job of making your points clear and precise. This is a new personal favorite.

I hope to read more like these in the future.

Just wanted to say: This article is one of the best since I started to read poker blogs.

VS,

I think you already answered your question yourself with this:
>> “Here’s an activity that I do solely to get better at it.”

You do NOT play poker to blame yourself like your shrink appears to think:
>> “Her argument is that, in everyday life, people that tend to do that also tend to be people that help create problems like that in the first place. Rather than admitting that some of his problems are not up to him, people like this blame themselves for everything that happens to them and then cope with it in a kind of detached solace (i.e., not really addressing the issue). Since they find comfort in the solace, they tend to put themselves in situation where the appropriate response (to them) is more solace. She feels that anyone who is constantly putting the blame on themselves in life can’t fully function as a healthy person.”

Since “improvement” and NOT “blame” is your motivation I’d say you are fine!

Greyzy

Oops,
I wasn’t logged in, but it was me anyway, not Anonymous

Great question.
Great answer.
But negative points for the Milli Vanilli reference.

Great article.

Poker is funny this way that so many people think they should be experts just playing recreationally for few months. Research shows that it just takes a whole lot of time and disciplined training to become an expert.

The only real problem I see that it’s harder to find the way to do deliberate practice in poker. Just playing a lot doesn’t improve one’s game that much. What one should be looking for is ways to read hand distributions based on board textures and betting patterns. And the way to maximize your expectation against that distribution. There’s no simple way to directly practice this.

I’m not saying there necessarily should be, but, in this way, golf, say, is more straight-forward as it’s somewhat easier to visualize and understand what it means to become better, or, how the process of becoming better should go.

Oh and one more thing.

Not sure whether the phrase “fooled by randomness” was an intentional reference to the similarly named book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, but I think that’s a book that has a lot to offer to poker players. And to anyone else intellectually curious, for that matter.

VS and his psychologist friend miss the key question – Why do I play poker ?

Make money, kill time, prove i’m smarter than the donkeys, etc. etc. There are almost as many “right” or “wrong” reasons to play poker as there are poker players.

Suggestion for VS – use Stephen Covey’s ( a “life coach” / author ) concept of “Begin with the End in mind”. Write down the reasons you play poker and what you want to accomplish.

Suggestion – now that you have a goal (“End” ) use well known “SMART” technique : goals should be specific,measurable,attainable,realistic and time-oriented.

Suggestion : borrow a concept basic to MBAs – a good decision-making process usually will produce a good decision which in turn will usually produce a good result. A bad result is however not impossible, just less likely to occur. The converse is also very true; a good outcome is possible even if the decision process and the specific decision are flawed.

Periodically go back to the basic question – why do i play poker ?

Am i doing what needs to be done to satisfy my goals for poker ?

Maybe VS would enjoy trying to guess why Socrates didn’t become a sculptor like his father rather than determine “blame” when the river card is dealt ?

Wow, thanks for the responses everyone!

It occurred to me in reading everyone’s thoughts that part of the problem I was having was thinking of the word ‘mistake’ in the wrong way. I forgot that, in poker, people tend to use the word in the half-rarefied sense of ‘playing a different way would have made more money’.

I wonder if there’s a more value-neutral term I could use. Having a ‘mistake filled session’ isn’t nearly as hard to deal with psychologically as having a ‘negative-data-point filled session’. Though, that has the air of something that has been afflicted upon you. Sort of like getting an STD.

Suggestions:
‘I made several card errors in yesterday’s tournament’
‘If I’m ever going to win the Main Event, I’ve first got to work on my miscalculations of play.’
‘You’re making less oversights at the 6-max tables than you were three months ago!’

Allow for a learing curve too. I felt the 2nd or 3rd month I played I was worse than my 1st month, but I was trying more plays so naturally made more mistakes. I also overcompensated some. You know, calling too much, then folding too much, etc.

I worry more about my way of thinking now than anything else. Like getting sloppy about the mathematical interpatation of calling on the river or not, not making a bluff when the situation was right, etc.

It’s a work in progress and will reamin that way i’m sure. One of the things that makes it such a great game. Keep posting and good luck,,,I mean good thinking.