Where did my voice go?

Here's a secret that I've previously only shared with a couple of close friends: When I first started playing poker, and some situation came up that just plain smelled wrong, I would frequently hear a voice inside my head saying, "Get out, get out, get out!" Exactly those words, exactly three times. It was loud and emphatic, like the impossible-to-ignore irritation of a smoke detector sounding.

When I heeded that warning, I was always right, at least as far as I could tell (i.e., I was never shown a bluff, though of course it's possible that the alarm was actually a false one, and I never knew it). Essentially 100% of the time that I ignored it and plowed ahead with the hand, I regretted it.

This was a pretty strange thing to have to deal with, because it always felt as if the voice were coming from somebody else. The reason it felt that way is because it was outside of my usual thought processes, coming unbidden. I like all sorts of puzzles. I approach them as logically and systematically as I can, and nearly always I would be able to explain to an onlooker what I'm doing and thinking. (Not that anybody actually would be interested; it's just a hypothetical observation.)

I have no reason to think the "Get out" voice phenomenon was anything supernatural. Rather, it was just that some part of my brain was integrating disparate bits of information and coming to a conclusion in a way that somehow bypassed my usual verbal, linear, logical, deductive process. Because I could neither articulate nor reproduce the factors that were leading to the warning, it felt as if it were coming from somebody else or someplace else. I still have no idea why the warning took the specific form that it always did, but I accept that the brain does many mysterious things--mine perhaps more than most!

I haven't heard that "Get out, get out, get out!" voice in a long time, and today I started wondering why. Where did it go?

I think the only reasonable conclusion is that I don't need it anymore.

Today I am far more analytical about the game. I'm much better able to explain, both to myself and to others, why I did a particular thing in a particular situation, why I came to a given conclusion about what another player was holding or thinking, etc. Bet sizes, betting patterns, facial expressions, ways of handling chips, table talk, are all things from which I have learned to derive specific inferences. I can integrate those clues and deductions with much greater facility than I could a few years ago, verbalize to myself everything about the process, and do it in the short time available for making a decision.

Consider, for example, the hands I dissected in nauseating detail here and here. I couldn't perform that kind of analysis and synthesis at all--let alone in a few seconds--when I started playing. All I had going as a means of self-protection was some crude pattern-recognition capacity that would notice that something undefinable was out of line with the way successful hands had played out in the past, and somehow that recognition would sound my internal alarm. Looking back over the two hands I posted about, I think that in earlier days the "Get out!" warning would have gone on, and I would have folded. Now, instead, I can often assess the various clues, weigh their significance, and reach a more accurate and more useful conclusion about what's going on. A binary "Go" versus "Get out" decision has been gradually replaced by a more sophisticated mechanism, which gives me a broader range of options. In fact, in that second story I even mentioned that I was having an internal debate, torn between the gestalt, nonspecific fear that my opponent must have a better hand, and the analytic part of my brain dictating a call. The latter proved to be the correct approach.

In late 2006, Byron Jacobs wrote this interesting column for Card Player magazine. In it he describes having had a very clear impression that his online opponent was bluffing, but he couldn't articulate what it was that had allowed him to reach that conclusion. It was only in retrospect that he found the clue. Some deep part of his brain had correctly interpreted the clue, but it took some work for him to recreate the process in a manner that he could articulate. Moving to that higher level, though, makes it much easier for him now to recognize and interpret that clue when he sees it again, and avoid giving it out himself (except for when he wants to deliberately use it as a false clue to confuse opponents).

A very bright guy I used to correspond with once wrote something in a letter that I've never forgotten, because it was so profound: "Clear thinking begins when we make explicit the assumptions we were not aware we were making." Of course, to learn that point, I had to endure him then proceeding to pick apart the arguments I had written, showing me the assumptions that were unconsciously embedded in what I had written, and how they were questionable. It was a pain worth enduring, though, as his aphorism comes back to me often when I'm facing a conundrum that doesn't readily yield to my first analysis.

Poker players often describe making a decision based on what their "gut" is telling them to do. It's crudely stated, but I think what they mean is essentially the same general phenomenon that resulted in my "Get out!" warning: Some clue or combination of clues is leading to a decision about an action, although the player would not be able to explain what he is perceiving or exactly why it should lead to a particular course of action. Useful as such a mechanism is, I'm convinced that learning to tease out the clues, explicitly decipher what they mean, and articulate why they point to a specific best decision is a far, far more flexible and valuable skill. (Note that I'm not claiming to be an expert at it--just a lot better than I used to be.)

Overall, I have no doubt that how I approach poker situations now is many-fold better than it was a few years ago. Still, sometimes I miss having that voice to do the work for me. Hearing such a warning is a lot easier than reasoning out exactly what's going on. Furthermore, heeding it is both easier and more emotionally comforting than is relying on the end product of a process of clue analysis and deductive reasoning.

I wouldn't trade back what I have for what I've lost. But I do wish that somehow that voice hadn't been so thoroughly driven out of my psyche by what replaced it.