Incentives to support decision-making (Part III)

There are also certain motivations for wanting to quit what you started. There is one experiment with New York taxi drivers that clearly illustrates this. The drivers were asked questions such as "How long do you work in peak hours?" and "How long do you work when you are not working?". Of course, a taxi driver's salary will be substantially higher on peak days, so it would make sense that they should work more on peak days and rest when there is little work. But the opposite is true. Almost all drivers worked shorter hours on busy days and longer hours on days when work was scarce. Why?

There are certain incentives. For taxi drivers, their internal view was the average amount of money they make in a day. In other words, they unconsciously set themselves the goal of getting the same amount of money every day. On busy days, they would earn quickly and rest for the rest of the day; on days when work was scarce, they would work long hours to try to secure a regular wage.

Poker players often do the same. People like to quit when they reach a certain threshold that looks like a "good win", and people don't like to quit when they're doing badly or when they're having a tough session - they usually play until they can't until they're forced to stop. And the reason is the same everywhere. Players unconsciously set themselves the goal of winning the same amount of money every day and playing for a similar amount of time, although this is not necessarily optimal.

The optimal strategy is to play as long as you can on the days you win, and to finish quickly when you lose. On successful days, you will play an A-level game, feel extremely confident, and have more opportunities to play against weaker, tiltier players. The EV of a bad session pales in comparison to the EV of a good one, so it is not worth continuing.

So, rethink your habits of mind. What are your "quit playing" patterns? What number of wins makes you feel that enough is enough, that you feel comfortable quitting early? What loss is so small that you don't even feel it is a loss? Can you finish the game "sitting on zero"?

We all have many inner motivations. And ideally, we want to get rid of all of them so that poker decisions are completely objective. If we play during the upswing and quit early when things go badly, we are maximising our winnings.

The solution is again the same - to accept that "everything is one long session". And it doesn't matter if you lose or win, because it's just a section of the timetable of your entire career. If you can look at it that way and choose when you play and when you don't play based on the quality of your game, your life as a poker player will be much easier.

If you really apply this perspective, there will be no point in playing marathon sessions and sitting on zero. What is meant by "sitting on zero"? If you're down 10 buyins one night, what's so special about trying to go down another 10 buyins tonight? Why not try to get them back up tomorrow? Or the day after tomorrow? The next 10,000 hands will appear on the chart anyway, no matter when you decide to collect them, so what makes tonight special? Unless, of course, you play worse tonight, in which case the only logical choice would be to go to bed, and then play the next day, and then Next.

Another, effective, mental belief is about wins per hour. Let's say you know that your average winrate is 100$/hour, and let's say that tonight you dropped 1500$. So, if you want to level out based on this idea, you should say to yourself: "Well, if I want to make up the difference, I'll have to play 15 hours. If I play for 3 hours, I'll only make, on average, 300$ (and also, I'm tilt-less and very tired, so is it really worth it to play now?) The answer is probably: no.

So there are many strategies to reshape our periods and the incentives in our minds. But inevitably, one of the difficulties in changing your attitudes is that it is impossible to get a clear picture of how you are doing in that particular session. Even if you have decided to discard all the incentives of the daily sessions, even if you have switched off your tracker and don't look at your bankroll, if you are minimally observant, you will eventually have an idea of how much you have gone up or down anyway. And how can you resist the urge to continue a session whether you are up or down?

Well, it's a real challenge. There are no magic tricks anymore, you just have to force yourself to see your reality differently. It takes time and effort, but once you realise the strength and power of your beliefs, you face the inevitable responsibility of mastering your mind and using it strategically to raise your perception.

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