A recent article in the New York Times caught my eye. It discusses a paper in cognitive psychology titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments."
According to the paper, there are two types of people in the world:
those who have enough experience to know they're making a mistake, and
those who don't have that much experience yet. In this world-view, the
amateur player makes a mistake but also fails to realize that it was a
mistake.
This connection has been made before in other competitive games. Stefan Fatsis, in a book about professional Scrabble players, compares amateur players to professional players: "In a way, the living-room player is lucky . . . He has no idea how
miserably he fails with almost every turn, how many possible words or
optimal plays slip by unnoticed. The idea of Scrabble greatness
doesn't exist for him."
This is a great reason why it's important not to tap the glass in poker. An amateur player may not yet know enough to realize that he needs to learn more. As soon as he realizes how little he knows, you have started him on the path to being a professional. It would be interesting to look back and find out how many of today's professionals were motivated to learn the game by a guy needling them in chat.
The average poker player does not realize what clues he is missing in a hand. He may make a decision based on some bits of information, but not others. A professional knows what clues to look for and how he should play because of them. That's why "How could you call there? I was clearly representing a set." is already going too far. Now that the fish has started thinking about what you "are representing," he's on his way to second- and third-level thinking.
The "unskilled and unaware of it" situation is also one of the primary reasons why hiring a coach will do more for your game than anything else. Your coaches should have coaches of their own. A good coach will teach you to recognize and avoid the mistakes that you are currently unaware of.
Chance July 24, 2010 9:25 AM
Poker throws another wrinkle into the Dunning-Kruger Effect mentioned by the New York Times article rarely seen in most other facets of life; namely, that a poor player's incompetence, and his ignorance of that incompetence, is occasionally directly rewarded. Success in straight calling a draw to the river, and hitting it, usually represents a death knell for the novice player. The reckless behavior, rewarded and encouraged, continues until the odds catch up the player, to the benefit of the seasoned veterans who know how to take advantage of amateurish ways of thinking (or not thinking). In the long term, novice players' progress can be debilitated by a misguided interpretation of pure luck as skill. The game, for them, is reduced to a slot machine; rare payouts that come frequently enough to keep them coming back for more action, while masking how much they are actually losing in the long run.