The cognitive bias of loss aversion suggests that people are inherently irrational when taking risks. They overvalue avoiding losses and undervalue potential gains. For example: if you are in a 300bb pot and have 200bb with which you will make a bluff shove on the river, and you think your opponent will fold 50% of the time, will you shove or fold? Even with these assumptions, most people check back the river because their mind inherently pushes them to keep the money they already have. Those 200bb you already have seem more valuable than the 300bb in the middle of the table. Losing the 200bb you already have feels worse than winning the 300bb in the middle.
Of course, in reality, every dollar should be valuable. A dollar earned should be just as valuable as a dollar lost.
This bias is one of the hardest to overcome because it is based on emotions, and emotions play a significant role in making internal decisions in poker. The impact is not only on strategic terms but also affects how we play, when we play, and what we play. A tool that can help overcome this bias and become more process-oriented is self-talk.
Self-talk is the process of talking to yourself while performing certain actions. It is a universally useful trait used for evaluating, reminding yourself, criticizing yourself, and interacting with the world. There are three main types of self-talk: positive, negative, and instructional. Positive self-talk is encouraging and reinforcing yourself, e.g., “I got this!” or “I'm so cool!”. Negative self-talk is criticizing yourself, e.g., “I'm such an idiot” or “How could I make that call?”. Instructional self-talk is guiding yourself to perform an action, e.g., “call on this turn, then shove on any river” or “don't tilt, be patient and wait for him to 3-bet you again”.
It won't surprise anyone to say that positive self-talk is much more beneficial than negative self-talk. But studies have shown that instructional self-talk is even more effective than positive self-talk. However, this is up to you. I'm not trying to say that positive self-talk doesn't serve any important function—it does, and we'll discuss that soon—but instructional self-talk is the best remedy for the cognitive bias of loss aversion.
By using instructional self-talk, we can help our rational mind deal with our subconscious cognitive biases. “Okay, it's fine, I lost two buy-ins because I had a good shot at three buy-ins, and that bluff had very positive EV.” Just by telling yourself this enough times, you will learn to accept it as a satisfactory justification.
Constantly challenging your natural fear of loss with self-talk can neutralize your mind's impulse to constantly suppress actions that could lead to loss. In situations where you haven't yet suppressed your fear of loss, you need to constantly engage in self-talk. Every time you make a good bluff or call where you fail, you need to mentally tell yourself that you did everything right and try your hardest to accept it. By constantly repeating this, you will eventually overcome this bias. In fact, you can apply this method to other cognitive biases, such as the first impression bias (when you hold on to your first impression for too long). Essentially, self-talk is an invaluable tool for poker players, a skill that must be continuously developed to truly master the game.
As you may have noticed, our brains often interpret different feedback differently, giving certain events more importance than others. I call this imbalance. Due to this imbalance, our brains attribute more noise to it, not counting the distortions already inherent in poker.
Let's examine negative events. A negative event is when you decide not to do something you previously planned. Negative events happen all the time, although we rarely think about them. You chose not to make a 4-bet or decided to check-raise before the flop. The problem with negative events in poker is that we rarely let them affect us.
For example, you are in a big pot, barreled two streets, and now you are deciding whether to bluff on the river. If you barrel the river and your opponent folds, you win the pot, feel very good, and give yourself a lot of positive reinforcement. If you bluff the river and your opponent calls your bluff, you lose and give yourself a lot of negativity. But what happens if, after some consideration, you don't bluff the river, lose, and he shows the nuts? How will you feel then? You might feel some relief, but most likely, you will feel neutral and even a bit annoyed that he had the nuts and won the pot.
This is where the feedback imbalance lies. When you make the correct decision to barrel and your opponent folds, you get a lot of physiological approval that you played correctly. But when you make the correct decision to check and your opponent wins with the nuts, you get very little approval that you played correctly. It doesn't feel like a win, even though strategically it is.
Haseeb Qureshi
