Last time, we discussed the four levels of mastery. Knowing them gives you a better understanding of how the learning process works.
First of all, it should be understood that poker does not progress evenly through these four stages. It would be clearer to say that individual skills progress through them. For example, your perflop 3-bet game may have reached the fourth stage, while your flopbet float game may be at the third stage of conscious competence. Every poker player has a unique set of skills, spread across the different stages of mastery. To truly understand the difference between conscious and unconscious competence, we need to understand the difference between conscious and unconscious thinking.
Let's start with the obvious - when you think consciously, you are aware of all the data you are processing at the time, and you experience it all. When you think unconsciously, you only experience a fraction of the data being processed. For example, you may only have vague knowledge that you are playing poker. When you play unconsciously, you don't have to actively think about the size of each bet, each card on the board, etc. The information that comes into your head is very compressed, like taking the shortest route to the shop and not having to think about how to move your feet or avoid an obstacle.
The conscious type of thinking tends to veer off course.It is a process-oriented type that often changes through language. If a player is consciously thinking about how to play a hand, there is a good chance that he is thinking it through step by step: "OK, he raised, so that means he can only have X,Y,Z hands, but on the turn he bet that much, so he can't have Z, and if he did have Y, then he would have probably made a 3-bet," etc.
Unconscious thinking is distinguished by being fast. It is precise and intuitive, and usually not dependent on a step-by-step process. If you see A22 on the flop, your unconscious mind immediately decides what to do, it has only one answer for this situation and it does not require any reflection.
So the conclusion is that conscious thinking is slow and unconscious thinking is fast because of the step-by-step process. This is important. The unconscious mind controls motor skills, internal organs etc. Therefore, it has to be fast and know exactly what to do at any given moment. And the conscious mind takes its time, focusing on the process itself.
To determine whether the conscious or the subconscious is exploring a situation, you need to pay attention to a few signs: if you are experiencing every element of the process, if the situation is changing through language (which can only happen in your head), if it is being considered step by step, and if it is happening slowly, then it is likely that the conscious is "engaged". But if it is very vague, you automatically know the answer and it happens quickly, then it is happening in the subconscious.
Talking to yourself is one way to find out which aspects of your thinking are in your conscious and which are in your unconscious. If you try to track your thoughts and say everything you think out loud
(preferably to someone who is also experienced in poker), you would find that most of what you would say relates to deliberate spots. It is very likely that you would simply miss the unconscious parts of your thinking, such as betting patterns or board interpretation, clear play.
Consciousness, because of its tendency to be language-based and the possibility of going off course, always tends to run aground more quickly, because it is connected to the verbal centres, and the last sentences will always be about what you are doing at the time.
This phenomenon can be seen in poker videos. Often, when the best players talk about poker strategy, their talk ends with the process in which their conscious mind is involved. It is easy to guess that most top-level players have moved a large part of their game to the unconscious level of competence. This is because they have played for countless hours and have developed very effective habits as a result. And for this reason, when they talk about poker consciously, they usually say only what the interlocutor wants to hear.
It's very easy to just say what's on the tip of your tongue, but to become a real teacher, videomaker or poker coach, you need a broader set of skills - you need to be able to explore your own subconscious processes, to visualise how a situation would be conveyed through the eyes of your student. You need to be able to see the situation as a person who has just started playing sees it. This is why the best poker players are usually not the best teachers.
Conscious and unconscious processes are also closely linked to the timing of the decision. What does a player do if he needs time to make a decision? He tries to analyse the hands again, so he reboots his conscious mind once more to try to find a clear solution. This means either that his subconscious doesn't know what to do or that he doesn't trust it (perhaps because the pot is big or the hand is strange).
Why do players make decisions quickly in some situations and more slowly in others? Because the conscious mind works more slowly than the subconscious mind, so the spots where they are forced to think longer are the spots where the players are "employing" their conscious mind.
This theory is again linked to the idea of centrality - the closer the situation is to the centre, the easier it is for the quick and confident unconscious to cope. The further the situation is from the centre, the more the conscious mind is needed. As soon as you leave the centre, you will immediately notice a clear difference in the opponent's game and time requirements.
What about when the conscious and the unconscious have different solutions for the same situation? Remember that for all intents and purposes there are two distinct systems that are structurally separate. Imagine them as two separate neural networks in your brain, distant from each other. Although there is interaction between them, they are architecturally separate anyway. More figuratively, there are two poker players inside you - the conscious and the subconscious - and each is dedicated to your game. They are like Plato's horses, like mind and emotion, one pulling one way and the other the other. Your task, as the referee between these two elements, is to exploit their strengths and mask their weaknesses in each game.
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