This time we will discuss a poker psychology article written from an unexpected perspective. The authors of the article aim to find out how information integration differs between profitable and unprofitable players. In poker, this ability is extremely important because, as the authors note, one needs to balance exploiting the opponent's tendencies while hiding one's own. Theoretically, one could play completely randomly and be unpredictable, but then any profitability would be sacrificed. How do the best players balance exploiting the opponent's mistakes and their own unpredictability?
To understand how this aspect of poker is analyzed in the article, two concepts used by the authors need to be introduced:
- Private information – simply put, this is information that the opponent cannot know (for example, the hand you have, thoughts about future actions, determining the opponent's range, and so on).
- Public information – what is visible to all players (for example, flop/turn/river cards, the total pot, bets, and so on).
As in many other articles, the authors used the Observe function and collected information about played hands at Heads Up tables. This time, both high and low buy-in games were observed (the exact stakes are not detailed). A total of 1.7 million hands were collected, along with an additional database of 9.2 million hands from 6-max and full ring games.
An aspect quite obvious to a poker player was observed in Heads Up play – card distribution does not determine the profit earned over a significant number of hands. The variation in card dealing, when playing enough tournaments, can even out fairly quickly, leaving practically only the skill factor.
The authors of the article note that good and bad players differ significantly in only one aspect – information integration or synergy. Simply put, this means that regular players use all the provided information much more effectively and can integrate it into a whole better than newcomers.
The table shows the differences in information processing. Significant differences exist only in the second and fourth parts of the table. The second part shows that unprofitable players are much more reactive (i.e., their strategy is much more based on what is happening on the table rather than theory or an abstract understanding of the game).
The most interesting part is the fourth part of the table. We see a quite noticeable difference between unprofitable and profitable players' ability to integrate all the provided information. In theory, this means that new players find it much harder to understand game states (hitting the range on flop/turn/river, equity changes as cards fall, and so on). This knowledge and understanding can be used in practice. Poor players will find it harder to understand complex situations, such as playing in ISONAI or 3BNAI pots, they will be easier to convince with bluffs, and often their play in such pots will be close to ABC poker. Regular players should pay attention to this – if we find ourselves in a situation where both flat and 3BNAI (or both check and ISONAI) are profitable, for psychological reasons, it will often be more profitable to choose a more aggressive play against weaker players.
