to show or not to show (iii)

It is worth noting these mind games are not zero-sum between you and your would-be assailant. In other words your consideration is not simply whether you anticipate extracting benefit over the obvious foe; but if you net gain through future trades with all parties as a consequence of this revelation. An obvious point maybe, but I’ve certainly observed my attention to be rarely distributed, as it often should be, evenly across all players; creating an agenda of any sort seldom helps the cause.

Generally cards are disclosed in a bid to distort perceptions, however, it’s not always about the explicit second-guessing of each other’s strategy: it can alter or reinforce an individual's perspective/behaviour, or, indeed, your own.

In a tough game you’re getting run over and start to feel what you apparently are, a soft touch; an opportunity to advertise an unlikely bluff arises. Often, successfully executing the move is sufficient to restore confidence and give you that much needed shot in the arm; it smacks of self-indulgence to reveal a position just to let-on you’re no patsy or to become so enabled to metaphorically let rip a Lleyton Hewitt ‘Come on!’. However, the resultant change of impression effected in others may well favourably reform how you feel and see yourself, and perhaps enable you to feed off this change of image and liberate your game. Alternatively, as discussed in part ii, an opportunity emerges to mislead your opponents, since they’d likely empathise with your seemingly frustrated exploits.

An opponent enduring little thought to anyone’s play save his own will still be susceptible to timely insights into your game. Despite the lack of mental jousting between you both (showing your hand of course may change this), making public certain holdings could reinforce your adversary's favourable, but wavering position, or alternatively chip away at a stance currently handicapping your progress. Say your opponent is fed-up, in the falconry sense[i], and recently lost only a few chips but material pride, validating his decision through the disclosure of a strong hand may restore him to a stable state; if, of course, that’s desirable – a loose canon could be the order of the day.

Returning to scenario 1 (in part ii), we might view divulging/leaking a hand in this instance to be a futile act, especially against aware opponents, as we’d readily expect them to dismiss such an obvious ploy. However, disregarding a hand can be as demanding to a poker player as it is for a jury to strike off significant but inadmissible evidence or testimony: decision-making is seldom so clean and controlled. Ignoring, let alone utilising, such information is rarely easy especially when our decision-making, as I’m sure mine often does (particularly on-line), on occasions circumvents higher brain functions and races through to the amygdala. Apparently, it is the amygdala responsible for momentarily spooking us when, say, a misplaced glove on the sofa is reckoned for an instant to be a large spider. Decision-making is quite instinctive and unsophisticated at this level since the narrow bandwidth of information flow to it compared to the neo-cortex, leads to fuzzy rough and ready best matches for our circumstance. It’s difficult to believe this decision-maker could be so discriminatory as to rule out what another decision-maker deemed to be disinformation.

Bearing witness to junk hands would, it appears, distort a level of perception over which we have little control and so affect our judgement. Even allowing for instinctive reactions to dissipate it’s tough to gauge a sense for the true likelihood of a thing when we are witnessing (visually) such a biased sample, and where different emotional costs are inevitably attached to contrasting choices and outcomes. In many respects not seeing any hands can extend to us a clearer picture of someone’s game than just a few.

Consider a strategy requiring you to reveal every bluffed hand in a specific situation, say it's one in ten. Now suppose, without this wilful insight, your adversary correctly estimates your chances of bluffing to be as it is, 10%: will his judgement be affected by our controlled release of information? Well, with his rational hat he would now determine we are bluffing at least, not exactly, 1 in 10; without a dispassionate mindset the picture is more confusing. The set of hands shown in this scenario are those volunteered - the bluffs - and those called down, a mixture of bluffs and made hands; therefore the mind experiences and inevitably stores a far higher proportion of bluffs than are actually executed. Additionally, bluffs hurt more, and are consequentially weighted heavily: increasing the distortion. If we never show a bluff, we never afford our foes an opportunity to overweight them; that said, there is trade-off, as we’ll see alluded to in the next paragraph.

One clear disadvantage of an all-showing hand strategy is tactical: rivals would infer much from these exploits, and quickly. In addition, though, that EV makeweight curiosity vanishes. Another not unrelated makeweight, certainty[ii], is also distilled out of the decision-making process: these two bad-call biases would cease to influence your opponent should such an open strategy be adopted. And that’s generally not good: after all, how often would you have passed were you sure to be informed of the bettor’s hole cards, post-hand?

We might be inclined to wonder if exposing a fractional number of hands mitigates these biases and so enhance our opponent’s play. We should also be interested to learn ways , or specifically express hands, which instill and exaggerate these tendencies in others. Inevitably, one suspects it depends on which hands are shown and how we adapt to these biases that determines the effect generated. Certainly if you display superior hands, and so make passing more comfortable, then the call-candidate will be less in need of satisfying these desires. However, regularly exposing him to bluffs could easily foster[iii] call-biases, as well as taxing another emotion, pride. Of course we'd loath escalating these biases (or indeed more aggressive actions) in players who are typically under-calling, since as a consequence we may encourage them, albeit for the wrong reasons, to do the right things.

Although it isn't explicitly evident that exposing a few well chosen hands will be beneficial, it certainly should be deemed false to assume showing some must negatively impact the bottom line since displaying many in all likelihood, would. It does, though, seem a reasonable proposition to expect a good exponent of the game to gain from, as many of the top professionals appear to, the release of selective information. I’m certainly no prolific hand shower; partly because it is somewhat discourteous, especially live, but often I simply don’t relish the distraction while multi-tabling and am far from convinced I’ll net gain. Trying to assimilate many variables is tough and often leads to poor judgement since we invariably overweight the importance of fresh factors. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting topic which merits greater discussion particularly, perhaps, because it doesn’t lend itself to the rigours of conventional analysis.

Next Article: 6th July

[i] “…one which has 'fed up' wants merely to sit still and digest its meal (ie it is totally unresponsive)”

[ii] certainty: the need for (whether you would’ve won or lost.)

[iii] by regularly showing bluffs (or any hands) you are it seems more likely to placate these needs; however, it could be contended the biases are generated, sustained and increased by showing bluffs in the first place.