What's the explanation?

Take a look at the first few minutes of Monday's "Poker After Dark" here. At about the 2:25 mark, we start listening in on a conversation between Jean-Robert Bellande and Mike Matusow, talking about a previous hand. The details of the hand don't matter; just listen to Matusow explaining what he was thinking. It goes something like this:

Bellande: I would have snap-folded.

Matusow: I wouldn't have. I thought it was weak. Or strong. I wasn't sure.

I see. So you thought it was either weak or strong. Wow. I wish I had such masterful hand-reading skills.

Continuing our eavesdropping:

Bellande: What are you talking about?

Matusow: I thought at the river we were going to find out if it was weak or strong.

Bellande: It looked like he was begging for a raise. It was just like, mmm, just please, there it is. Raise me. Reraise me.

Matusow: Well, that's why I was shocked when he, I thought he was gonna bet big on the river. I thought it was like I've got three queens.

Bellande: 9800 into a 42,000 pot.

Matusow: That's why I was expecting a big bet out of Phil on the river.

I have posted before about an episode of "High Stakes Poker" in which Matusow's explanation of what he was thinking during a hand was utterly incoherent. This is another example. First he says that he interpreted Hellmuth's small bet as weak. Then he seems to be attacked by a fit of uncertainty and changes it to being either weak or strong. Then, when Bellande scoffs at the possibility that the bet represented weakness, Matusow is suddenly a convert, retrospectively confident that the bet represented strength, which, he asserts, is why he was expecting Phil to follow it up with a big bet.

I'm completely baffled by this. Remember, Matusow isn't explaining what he now thinks Hellmuth had, but is explaining what he was thinking as the hand played out. If he were just arguing with Bellande about what Hellmuth most likely held, then it's perfectly understandable that he might change his mind in the face of Bellande making an argument for a different idea. But what he was thinking at a particular moment in the past cannot change.

It's possible, as I assumed with the previous example, that Matusow's thoughts are so jumbled and incoherent that he honestly doesn't know what he was thinking even a few seconds ago, so an honest explanation of the state of his thoughts can shift fluidly.

But after watching this clip several times, noticing his facial expressions and body language, and listening to his tone of voice, I think there's a better explanation: He's lying.

His first sentence, "I thought it was weak," was the truth. But he quickly realizes that perhaps that was wrong and, if so, he might look foolish for saying it, so he amends it by adding, "or strong," thus covering all the bases. Then when Bellande belittles the notion that Hellmuth was weak, it suddenly becomes more important to Matusow not to lose face than to provide a faithful recounting of what he had been thinking, and he goes to some trouble to revise history in such a way that he will be seen to be in agreement with Bellande.

It seems completely outside of Matusow's capacity to say, "You know, as it was happening, I really did think the bet represented weakness, but you make a good point, and in retrospect maybe I was wrong."

Matusow is hardly alone here. It seems to be a common malady among poker players to want other players to perceive them as having figured out the puzzle that every hand provides. It seems that after every big pot, when the hands are revealed, somebody will claim, "I knew what he had."

Of course that's a lie, or at least a gross overstatement, every time. One never knows what another player has, short of seeing the cards. One might achieve a feeling of a high degree of certitude, but I'm sure we've all had the experience of feeling extremely confident about what another player's down cards are, only to be surprised when they are finally shown. Nobody ever says "I knew he had aces" after the guy shows jacks.

Of more relevance to my argument here, however, is noting that there is only one reason for such crowing: The crow wants the other players to believe he's a poker genius. What other motive could there possibly be for making such an announcement? Maybe I should refer to that kind of player as a peacock rather than a crow, because the bragging resembles an attempt at a gaudy display of feathers.

Whenever I hear somebody claiming to have known what another player's cards were, I have two instant, automatic thoughts: (1) Yeah, sure you knew, buddy. (2) There's somebody to whom it is very important to be thought well of by a bunch of strangers. Poor guy to be a slave to the opinions of every random person he meets.

I don't suppose I'm entirely immune from impulses like that, but I'm glad that they are mostly of such low force that they don't surface. (After all, a guy who routinely goes out in public in a 20-year-old car, a wrinkled shirt, a fanny pack, and a three-day beard is hardly showing desperation to garner the world's approval.) There are only a few people whose opinion of me generally, or of my poker playing specifically, really matters to me, and they are almost never the ones gathered around the table. If somebody thinks I'm an idiot and a bad player, fine, I don't care, and, moreover, I'll try to find a way to use that impression against him.

Anyway, I'm opening the door to a somewhat different understanding of Matusow's contradictory claims. I'm now thinking that they may be the result of a desperate desire for others' approval instead of (or in addition to) being the result of thought processes that are actually as disorganized as a literal interpretation would suggest.