Strategy: Information Overload III - Going With Your Gut

In Super System by Doyal Brunson he talks at length about gut feelings and instincts. It turns out that he may really be well tuned into a now proven form of instinctual thinking that is studied extensively in Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

Early in the book Gladwell describes an Iowa study run with a simple gambling game. The participant picks cards from one of 4 decks. Two decks are red and two blue. The red decks are a minefield of steep penalties and large rewards. Overall the red decks are a loosing proposition. The blue decks on the other hand have more modest payouts and overall allow the player to win in the long run.

Typically within about 50 cards most participants had a hunch about what was going on and by about 80 hands had figured out the game so that they were able to explain what was happening.

However the Iowa scientists also did something interesting. They hooked each participant up to a machine that measured stress by checking the perspiration rate in the participants hands. These sweat glands are acutely tuned to our stress response. Clammy hands when under pressure is a real phenomenon.

The amazing result is that by the 10th card typically the participants began to have a stress response to turning over red cards. Unconsciously, the participants bodies realized a full 40 hands before their conscious mind that the red cards were a bad idea. More importantly after the 10th card their behavior began to change as well and they began to favor the blue cards although they were not yet aware of the trend.

It has now been determined that as a species we have a second more primal decision making process working in our brains and that by learning to listen to this process we may be able to make much faster accurate decisions.

I don't know how many times I have been sitting at the poker table and "had a feeling" but ignored it to my detriment. Usually, I can justify ignoring the feeling based on a plethora of information that I can gather from the situation. However, invariably, it is that nagging feeling when the cards are turned up that turns out to be correct. Typically its all that extra information that is really getting in the way of making the right decision. I guess that learning how to harness this primal split second decision process is difficult, but that the first step is to recognize that it exists and to start to be aware of what it is saying. Maybe someday like Doyal, I will be able to make huge laydowns and bluffs based on my gut.

Good Luck at the Tables,
Greg