If you’ve ever argued about anything on the Internet, you’ve probably encountered pretty much every kind of flawed logic and fallacy imaginable. You’re probably deeply versed in cognitive dissonance even if you’re not the type to post online about politics or your favourite movies, since most of us are victims of this thought pattern at one point or another in our lives, and it’s very common to encounter this phenomenon in everyday life, even if we’re not able to specifically put a name to it when it occurs. Let’s examine what it is, and the role it plays in poker.

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Very simply, cognitive dissonance is a state of holding two conflicting beliefs or opinions at the same time. It usually occurs because we have arrived at each belief independently as a result of completely separate desires or tendencies, and failed to realise that two of our ‘end point’ beliefs conflict with one another because they have different origins. In most cases, the situation will usually be resolved either by changing one of the beliefs to fit the other, resolving the root causes of one or both beliefs so that they no longer exist anymore, or developing an entirely new, third belief that reconciles the two.

A great example of this on an everyday, personal level might be someone who is stuck in a behaviour pattern that they consciously know to be harmful to them in some way – let’s say they’re overweight and have an unhealthy diet, and they’re unhappy about it – but when challenged, they’re able to come up with multiple reasons why their behaviour is entirely justified and right for them, because admitting to bad habits in front of other people is too painful.

This also occurs on a level more relevant to society as a whole – take politics, for example. It’s not uncommon for Republicans in the United States to espouse the belief that government shouldn’t interfere with the lives of individuals while simultaneously promising to restrict the marriage rights of LGBT couples, or for Democratic politicians to campaign for economic equality while accepting massive campaign donations from wealthy individuals or corporations.

How are these broad-spectrum beliefs eventually reconciled? In most cases, by invoking religion and/or nationalism, two domains of thought with a higher tolerance for cognitive dissonance than most, or by simply refusing to acknowledge anyone who calls them out on it. The overweight person, on the other hand, might blame their genetics or other external factors, and thus refuse to acknowledge any connection at all between their habits and their health.

When two things can’t be true at the same time in poker

Of course, unlike these examples, most of the time in poker our cognitive dissonance is reasonably unlikely to be called out or even noticed by someone else. It usually manifests itself in insidious ways, creeping into our performances and attitudes without our being able to identify it. As a coach, I can honestly say I’ve seen evidence of cognitive dissonance in 95-100% of my students – it’s the reason why a lot of poker mistakes happen.

It’s very easy to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time as a poker player – probably the most obvious is when players say, “I hate variance”, despite the fact that they’re voluntarily choosing to play a variance-based gambling game for fun.

If these people truly hated variance, they’d play chess in their spare time. What they really mean is “I hate when variance costs me money”, because of course, they love it when variance means they win.

Another common trend is when tournament players make tight laydowns out of uncertainty, and then proclaim with absolute confidence that they can afford to fold away a potentially profitable spot because their edge is so big they’ll gain it back later by staying in the tournament.

Who are these players who became so good at tournaments by voluntarily giving up profitable situations? The only way to even have an edge in a tournament is by identifying and taking profitable spots, especially at short stacks.

Either a play is profitable and we should be happy to make it because it increases our edge in the tournament, or it’s unprofitable and our future edge doesn’t matter. There are exceptions to this rule where the spot truly is close to breakeven, but nowhere near as many as most players seem to think, and if you’re good enough to make decisions based on how big your future edge is, you better be good enough to know a truly marginal decision when you see one.

Finally, on this front, we have the instances where fear takes over – the times where someone chooses not to make a bet because they’re afraid of getting raised, without realising that if your opponent is so overwhelmingly likely to raise you, you don’t have to fold when they do!

It’s very difficult for an opponent to simultaneously be very likely to raise a bet, but also be doing it with a range of hands so strong that folding becomes compulsory. Your opponent can’t simultaneously be raising your bet extremely frequently, but never with a weak hand. If you think they are, the bet was probably bad in the first place!

In this case, fear of making a tough decision is usually what takes over. Fear of unknown consequences, or fear of negative results leading to shaken confidence, fear of losing, fear of variance…there are all kinds of fear that can cause cognitive dissonance in poker.

In my experience, when a player holds two conflicting beliefs about the game or about a situation at the same time, there’s usually some truth in there somewhere, but the rest is mostly fiction based on fear.

Moving towards the fear and eliminating it

The only real way out of cognitive dissonance is to directly confront the fear that’s driving it in the first place – either the fear of admitting you were wrong about one of your two conflicting beliefs, or the fear of some future consequence which is driving one of those beliefs to exist in the first place.

In most cases, the route to escaping from these fears is a paradoxical one – we have to seek out and attack their root causes and move closer towards the fears themselves. If, as a poker player, we’re prone to cognitive dissonance about our opponents’ play or our own (for example, believing simultaneously that our opponents are too good and we lack the skills to win, while also blaming variance for our losses), then we must force ourselves to challenge one or both of the beliefs involved.

In specific instances where we might hold conflicting beliefs about a certain hand or be torn between two options, we must resolve the fear of difficult decisions that is often the root cause of this feeling of ‘being pulled in two directions’. If there is no hypothetical impossible future decision or situation to worry about, the current decision becomes a lot easier.

Cognitive dissonance is a tricky and nebulous thing to get to grips with. You won’t always be able to notice when you’re guilty of it. But now that you’ve read this article, you’ll certainly start to notice when other people are guilty of it, and that’s a good first step.

The next step? Contribute to poker discussions on forums, talk to friends, talk to your coach – see if you can catch yourself out. If you do, don’t beat yourself up – you just took a positive step forward.