Poker Org

I’m always grateful to win against tough competition, and needless to say this was no exception. Playing the studio end boss, the Big Fox himself, HU for the title is anything but a walk in the park. I wanted to share a fun anecdote from this recent @PokerGOTour series and an idea I’ve been playing around with that actually came up at the last Khemset Immersion Event, which also relates to some of the ideas in the book I recently wrote – and that is that beliefs act as algorithms. The anecdote is as follows: @Nolez7 gets moved to my table last week and is seated on my direct right. We have played a lot of blind v blind over the years and often joke about it. He says I’ve gotten the better of him and, while that may be true, and I did win this hand, there’s something that he does better than me – better than everyone else, imo. In our first encounter on this occasion, it folds to him, he limps and I x Q♠️4♦️. We’re about 40bb effective. Flop Q♣️J♦️6♦️ we both x. Turn 8♠️ and we both x again. River 9❤️, and when he x, I bet 2 bb, to which he immediately exclaims, “Milkman!…What happened, you got scared with Q4?” and folds. Obviously a very impressive read, and while Sean doesn’t always get it right, he gets it right a lot more often than most. I tried to play my hand in a way he might not expect and needless to say it didn’t work at all! 😂 This is where I think the idea of beliefs having algorithmic properties for the human experience becomes so interesting, though. A lot of people seemingly don’t think (believe) they can have this type of non-local (or precognitive) insight, and so they don’t. Sean, on the other hand, probably has a laundry list of these insights that grows longer every time he sits down to play poker. I would imagine this goes beyond belief for him, where he simply knows this to be a normal part of his lived experience at this point. It’s largely (only?) those who believe they can who do, because the belief, in my opinion and experience, precedes the ability. I think this is because beliefs filter what types of information we process, what possibilities we are willing to engage with, and perhaps even what possibilities become available for us to consider in the first place. It reads a bit like a catch-22 or paradox, akin to that of the chicken and the egg, but so often it seems paradox lies at the heart of truth. What do you think about this? Can you relate to it? Ultimately, I think this is a natural human ability that we all possess in greater or lesser amounts – perhaps, entirely depending on our beliefs.