Category Archives: cognitive biases
23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker
Like other complex activities, poker is easier to learn when you build skills in the right order. So I’ve compiled the top 23 cognitive mistakes that make people play bad poker. I’ve listed these roughly in order of priority. In other words, if … Continue reading
“This is what 5% feels like.”
Today I’m going to give you an explicit technique to improve your rationality. But first, a short digression: Have you ever seen poker players on TV talk to themselves? It’s an interesting phenomenon and there’s a few different motivations behind it. … Continue reading
Tilt as Moral Outrage and Limbic Override
This blog is about the intersection between poker, rationality, and life. Poker is hard far out of proportion to the strategic complexity of the game, because it is so good at invoking our irrationalities and biases. This makes it an … Continue reading
Posted in cognitive biases, rationality
Tagged evolutionary morality, evolutionary psychology, mike caro, tilt
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Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias is our tendency to overestimate the obviousness of events… once they’ve already occurred. “I knew it!” is a common utterance at the poker table. I hear it all the time. Often it will be right after someone calls a … Continue reading
Train to be rational?
Rationality is the process of coming to correct beliefs. Correct beliefs turn out to be really important. Being correct about how the world works gives you a huge advantage in achieving your goals. No matter what you want to do … Continue reading
Posted in cognitive biases, rationality, training
Tagged bias, overconfidence, rationality
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Correcting Self-Serving Bias
Follow-up to: Self-serving bias in Poker We’ve noted before how self-serving bias can eat you alive in poker. Now we’re going to discuss how to correct for it. Yes, there’s actually a solution. It was developed by an online poker … Continue reading
Outcome bias and results based poker
I am a bad poker player and an aspiring rationalist. I’m very good for a bad poker player though, and I have quite high aspirations as a rationalist. My game of choice is micro to mid limit large multi-table turbos … Continue reading
Self-Serving Bias in Poker
Self-serving bias – the tendency to attribute success to internal or personal factors but attribute failure to situational factors beyond our control. You ever notice how people who are late never say ,”Sorry I’m late. I’m lazy and irresponsible.” No. … Continue reading
Knowledge of biases isn’t enough
Learning about biases is a great first step to becoming more rational, but ultimately, it’s not enough. Why? Because facts don’t change minds. To a first approximation, we actually never change our minds. So how do you expect to change the … Continue reading
Poker as Rationality Training
Looking for the best known form of rationality training? How about a fun, addictive game you can play from anywhere that rewards you with more money as you become more rational? Welcome to online poker! Poker can be the key to conquering … Continue reading
Rational Poker 