By
grapsfan |
Published
Nov 02 2007, 02:29 AM
The “Best Poker Book Ever!” isn’t about poker. I don’t think the word “poker” is used once.
The book is called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by the noted columnist for “New Yorker” magazine, Malcolm Gladwell. He presents his topic with a simple case study of a museum that spent millions on a statue. The statue was preserved better than any in its style ever discovered before. Scientific analysis showed the marble to be from the same timeframe and locale of other statues of its kind. The museum was provided documentation tracing the statue’s history and past 100 years of ownership. After the purchase was completed, the museum showed off its prize to several noted art historians, who all had the same immediate reaction: “It’s a fake.” The reasons were, for each person, inexpressible. They didn’t know why they knew…they just knew. They were right, and the Getty museum now lists its remarkable kouros as a “probable fake.”
As “Blink” progresses, the focus is on the science of time-slicing, the innate ability of almost every person to take small chunks of information out of the flood presented to us in every minute of every day, and derive special meaning from the info. Without time-slicing (and Gladwell provides examples of studies done on brain-injured subjects who cannot), most of our ability to process non-verbal communication and context is lost. People who can control and master how they time-slice are better coaches, teachers, psychologists, salesmen. All walks of life are covered, each with its own case study and suggestions as to how their skills can become our own.
Gladwell also dedicates a significant portion of the book to reflection on what happens when our time-slicing instincts are wrong. The underlying prejudices of our subconscious can cause our first reactions to have disastrous consequences. Everyone should investigate various forms of the Implicit Association Test, especially the Race IAT, to see how revealing and dramatic a difference there is between how we believe we react to certain stimulus, and how we actually do.
How does this all apply to poker? I’m tempted to not say, so as not to color what you might gain from reading the book yourself. But I want to encourage everyone to read the book, I’ll give two examples where I think I’ve improved my poker game.
1) I’ve learned to get a better feel for what my first read, my gut instinct, means at the table. Many of us talk ourselves out of an initial read…a bet comes our way and we immediately make a reaction to it. “He’s weak; I can steal this pot.” “Why so much? He can’t have anything.” “Value bet: he wants a call; I should fold.” After the immediate reaction, we normally take our time to reconsider the situation, often talking ourselves into changing our decision one way or the other.
In poker, this is best known as “the crying call,” but it can be just as costly the other way, folding the best hand when it should have been fairly obvious something didn’t make sense. When Daniel Negreanu is really locked in, his ability to time-slice, and distill the right decision out of mountains of information and disinformation, is stunning. When he’s off, he can end up down $750k in two days of High Stakes Poker, Season 2.
Through some of the techniques in “Blink,” I believe I make better decisions on later streets than I used to.
2) I’ve found an answer to a question I’ve often asked: why are so many good poker players tall? Only a small percentage of men are over 6’1”, and yet, a statistically large percentage of the top professional players are that size, and in some cases, much taller (Hellmuth, Seed, Brunson, Cloutier, Lindgren, Gordon, Ivey, Lederer, etc.) in a game where size should make absolutely no difference. Why? “Blink” defines a behavior called “The Warren Harding Principle”.
An entrepreneur and political strategist in turn-of-the-1900s Ohio had a chance meeting with a tall, strikingly handsome and poised man named Warren G. Harding, who was running for the state senate. Sitting next to Harding at a shoeshine stand, the strategist’s first impression was “doesn’t this man just LOOK like a President!?” And so he became Harding’s right-hand man for the next 25 years, from Ohio Senate to U.S. Senate to, indeed, President of the United States.
It didn’t matter that what rumbled out of Harding’s tremendously rich baritone voice was usually confused or mostly meaningless clichés. It didn’t matter that Harding was probably of below-average intelligence, and performed very poorly in every office he held. The strategist’s first impression remained unaltered by reality, and he guided Harding to the highest office in the U.S., where he was one of the three or four worst Presidents in history. The truth is that tall people make an impression of skill and power, and good poker players use it to their advantage.
Everyone says “poker is a game of people,” and yet, we as players rarely do anything to understand people. We spend countless hours reading strategy, trying new techniques at the table, and divining the probabilities of the game. “Blink” is a crash course designed to bring our people skills up to our card skills…even if the author himself doesn’t know it.
If you regularly buy books, “Blink” should be the next one. If you don’t, “Blink” should be the first.