The evolution of the "Sentient Player"

Following on from the last themes, let's consider how the myth of the emotion-driven player can arise at all. How can someone who does not analyse his hand at all become a good player? It is not that rare.

First of all, let's remember that poker is a probabilistic game - that is, uncertain. In part, it gives you random feedback on your play. For example: you make a good checkraise, your feedback may still be negative (the checkraise failed and you lost the pot) 40% times. There are also second level stochastics (probability theory and statistics) - your checkraise may be good against 80% players who have the same reads as your opponent and bad against 20%, so even if you made a bad checkraise against this player, there is still a one in 20% that, on average, it will be good. Add to that the coolers and bad beats and you can see how unreliable and chaotic the feedback is.

But the idea we are exploring now is that the sentient player responds specifically to the feedback that comes in. He does not use theory to accelerate his learning process. He simply listens to what the poker is telling him, a little yes, a little no, the player is simply conditioned by the feedback of a winning or losing hand. Such a player is like a person learning to balance on one leg, gradually becoming more proficient, his body constantly pushing him in the right direction. It probably sounds unrealistic, but isn't poker too chaotic for such a player to get good at it?

Let's consider a hypothetical simulation (known as a Monte Carlo simulation). Imagine one group of players who play based on theory and another group of players who play based on feelings. Both groups have 1 000 000 participants. Of course, many of the theoretical players will get discouraged because maybe they are not clever enough, maybe they draw too fast, or maybe they just don't get lucky, but let's say that only 30% players will be successful poker players. So we have 3 00 000 theoretical survivors. On the other hand, a lot of sentient players will also get lucky - poker is quite random the game, and the learning of such players is completely non-goal-oriented, so they will drop like flies. As for the numbers and the fact that poker will allow some players to develop good skills, let's say that 0.5% of them succeed. There will be a total of 5 000 successful sentient players.

We have 1 sentient player to 60 theoretical players. The ratio fluctuates significantly in one direction. But it's enough, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few sentient players accidentally end up in the top 300 in the world. Such a player still seems like a big phenomenon, even though there are more than 1 in 60 of them.

In reality, players with feelings are usually very rare, especially at high limits, and we just tend to notice them more. This is a cognitive shift in accessibility, the mind tends to exaggerate it.

Meanwhile, theoretical players are all around us. They are boring and mechanical. And the feeling player is sensual, rare and fascinating, which is why we pay so much attention to him. Every word is dedicated to them, we watch them play and take an interest in them. Why? Perhaps because they are like us. Feeling players make risky decisions, they bridge. They do things that nobody would normally do. Even the very idea of becoming a sentient player, instead of the tedious and meticulous hammering out of theory, seems exciting. The feeling player appears to show us that anyone can win at poker. You don't have to be a genius, spend thousands of hours studying the game or have excellent combinatorial skills.

Haseeb Qureshi

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