Brags. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.

The human mind is wrought with cognitive biases, which prevent people from acting completely rationally and objectively. Unfortunately, poker is about all about making rational and objective decisions in order to make money, which explains why the average person is so terrible at it even after they learn some basic strategy.

I took the list of cognitive biases page from Wikipedia and decided to highlight a few which quite commonly crop up in poker.

- Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

This is probably the Daddy of all cognitive biases when it comes to poker. It is more commonly referred to as ROT (results-oriented thinking) where people will correlate how much they won or lost in the pot to how well they played it. This is much more profound in beginners, who would beat themselves up for going all-in with AA and losing.

- Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.

This relates pretty closely to the previous one. I’ve commonly seen people, after losing a pot, try to think of an alternative decision they could have made (“Maybe I should have just called pre, I could have got away from it after that flop” or "If I bet the flop he would have folded and he wouldn’t have sucked out on the river) that would have won them the pot. Poker players need to realise that some situations are just of their hands and by playing correctly, some of the time they will end up losing the maximum due to the randomness of the game.

- Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.

This appears a lot when people are not willing to let go of the money they already put in the pot early on, despite new information suggesting they should fold. I’ve seen people often playing AK pre-flop, miss, and play it to the end no matter what, whether it be crazy spewy bluffs or just hero calls. This is the classic sunk-cost fallacy appearing, where people put more value in money they have already spent and try too hard to reclaim it.

- Hindsight bias — sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the inclination to see past events as being predictable.

This is quite close to outcome bias, but slightly different and I’m definitely guilty of this one sometimes. People often ponder a call on the river and then after doing so, being shown a better hand, exclaim “I knew it!”. Honestly, you didn’t know it, you just think you did after you see it.

- Availability heuristic — estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.

The mind is not good at processing large amounts of information or experience at once. Usually, it can only focus on a few individual pieces of information from the past in a short period of time, and these tend to be the most memorable ones. Unfortunately, people also only vividly remember things that are unusual and tend to filter out all the things they deem ordinary, so this means people will be using the least common instances to base their decisions on, rather than the big picture. So if one guy’s been playing solid for four hours, but showed one crazy bluff, people will still think he’s a maniac.

- Primacy effect — the tendency to weigh initial events more than subsequent events.

First impressions definitely last, in life and in poker. When someone first sits at a table, our opinion of them usually forms based on the first hands they show down. These tend to stick and are sometimes unshakeable even after new information appears that should change our opinion.

- Projection bias — the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.

I’m definitely guilty of this sometimes, by trying to read opponents actions by what I would do in certain situations. Unfortunately, people are very different to each other, with different experiences and thought patterns. You should not assume people are like you, ever, especially when playing with utter fish.

There are definitely a lot more that can relate to poker and I only picked a handful of ones. An important step to getting good at poker (and life) is to be able to make the right decision and to shed yourself of all cognitive biases that can hamper you. Look through the list and just mentally tick off how many you possess and then attempt to overcome them, and you’ll become a much smarter person in all spheres.