The Biggest Bluff. How I learned to Pay Attention, Master myself and Win

 By Maria Konnikova

Konnikova, has a PHD in Psychology and has written a lot about decision making. She decides to see what it would take to become a world class poker player-- someone who has to control her emotions, and play the odds well. She enlists a coach (who is a world class player) and trains intensively for months. Within a year she became a poker world champion. 

"Less certainty. More inquiry." Is the mantra her coach uses with her. With probabilities you can never be certain. You can only ask are you being consistent within the odds? Are your opponents?

There are many layers of analysis to poker. The first is just knowing the probabilities and playing accordingly. This is called Game Theory Optimal or GTO. Next layer-- Learning if your opponents are playing GTO, are they gambling? are they working smartly within the GTO framework? For example, the person who is loosing the most at the table, may not be the weakest player. They may be having bad luck. The other way around, is someone winning because they are on a run of good luck, and not playing GTO. Over the long haul, GTO players will wine more than gambling players...

but... great players can predict what GTO players will play and use that to their advantage. 

Tells are way more complicated than TV would have you believe. Take hands that are easy to judge, v.s. hands that are hard to judge. You are going to take more time thinking through a hand that is hard to judge. This is a big tell that you have such a hand.