Life and investment is like a poker game
Why is the (Texas) poker master ruling the world, not the Go (chess) master?
This topic has occasionally been mentioned, and the conclusion is thought-provoking.
This article will be interpreted from a new perspective:
Go is a simple complex game, and poker is a complicated simple game.
Poker more closely simulates this real world.
Those who have achieved worldly success do not need to be able to focus on the overall situation as well as the masters of Go, and can accurately calculate the ending.
Conversely, “successful people” (especially those who have made a fortune) are more in line with the following characteristics of poker pros:
An individual decision-making system that forms probabilistic thinking;
Understand luck, risk and uncertainty;
the game master;
Control the emotions of yourself and others;
Intuition of repeated training;
“rational + emotion” double brain decision;
Heuristic thinking.
There is no perfect formula in Real world
Some time ago, the famous Stanford Chinese professor Zhang Shouyi died unfortunately. His outstanding achievements in physics and the dilemma of investment are in stark contrast.
Why is Professor Zhang so arrogant in the field of physics, but in the investment, especially the blockchain, is forced into a dead end?
Dai Xi, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, remembers that Zhang Shouyi used a few napkins to tell him about the mathematical principles behind the bitcoin and the blockchain technology.
“I have seen several books on the blockchain, but no one can use such a simple language to make the mathematical principles behind it so thorough.”
However, the reality is that the blockchain is more like a game of game that falls into short-term interests.
Go is the perfect information game. The physical world is also pursuing the use of simple models to solve complex problems.
I classify the two as “simple complex games.”
This kind of thing is a bit like climbing Everest. It is very difficult and has no clue, but the mountain is there. In the end, it is the depth of IQ, perseverance and thinking.
The Russian mathematician Perelman of the seclusion forest, Wiles, who cracked Fermat’s law, is a single-handed man, like a peerless hero. Professor Zhang, who is obsessed with formulas, is also a master in this field.
When we were young, we also dreamed of becoming such a master, walking with great skills and walking.
However, investment, as well as the blockchain of investment games, is more like Texas Hold’em, a complex and simple game.
Buffett said:
“As long as human beings are still operating various institutions, including financial institutions, some people will bear undue risks. Sometimes people will steal, and some people may not even know the risks they bear. This is the essence of business.”
It is simple to say that Texas Hold’em is because the changes in the board itself are not so complicated; it is complicated because the uncalculated variables seem to be more.
Texas Hold’em is an “imperfect information” game with a lot of hidden information, which belongs to the asymmetric information game. The player only knows the asymmetric information. He doesn’t know what card is in his opponent’s hand. He doesn’t know what the five public cards will produce, and he doesn’t know what opponents are holding.
There is more humanity and luck in Texas Hold’em. Therefore, we can often see amateur players, female college students, singers, investors, and burgers who are half-way out of the house, can get a poker champion or something.
But maintaining good results in a row is not easy for professional poker.
In the Go game, amateurs can’t even touch the door.
Someone once discussed:
Under what circumstances will a fool beat a wise man (who under the circumstances will the smugglers defeat Zhuge Liang)?
The answer should be that when people are not as good as days, fools will overcome smart people, because fools have a variety of solutions. From the perspective of mathematical planning, when there is a unique optimal solution in the whole world, Zhuge Liang is often better than the stinky cobbler;
But if the optimal solution is only at the node, that is, the situation is optimal, the smuggler will often be better than Zhuge Liang.
However, the world that dominates the world is indeed a smart person like “Texas Hold’em”.
- Good at calculations, may not know how to calculate.
Jin Li boss gambling lost the company. But it may also be that the mobile phone industry is not good, the company loses, so that the boss loves to gamble out of the water. We will not talk about this cause and effect.
Those who like to play Go, it is reasonable to say that the overall situation is not bad, and there is depth in thinking. For example, Go Fan Ma Yun, although the level is very general, but the company strategy is quite Go.
But why did Kim Li’s boss fall into the casino and even the company lost?
This may be because Go gives an illusion of controlling the situation and finding the optimal solution.
As a go-go enthusiast, when the pressure is high, I will play the game “relax”. Is it not a brain to play chess? But the chessboard with borders, the roughly controllable calculations, the feedback from the opponents and the opponents, and the instant satisfaction of winning or losing can bring me the illusion of “doing something”.
Ban Cha, he is both a physicist at Stanford University and a Texas Hold’em player.
Physics training made him accustomed to finding the simplest mathematical laws in complex phenomena, but he eventually discovered:
He can’t count on winning only by counting cards. He also needs to know when it is not enough to just count cards.
“As a physicist, it’s hard to admit that you can’t just win by reasoning, but poker is like this. You can’t build a perfect model for poker because there are too many variables to consider, and you can’t seem to exhaust. From this meaning In fact, playing cards is a portrayal of real life.”
Ban hot said that he had been able to quickly calculate the odds of each hand, but until recently, he began to perform well in the World Poker Contest.
“I guess my skills in other areas are getting more and more skillful, that is, those that cannot be quantified.”
Luck and logic are equally important.
Although Go is complicated, it seems to be completely transparent. Through deep learning based on neural networks, computers have conquered chess players, but against Texas Hold’em, AI is still at an early stage.
Texas Hold’em is a technology and an art. The part that is calculated is called technology, and the part that cannot be calculated is art.
Go has also been considered technical + art, but what is interesting is that the art part of Go has proven to be measurable.
The part of Texas Hold’em that is “hard to calculate” is more able to simulate our real world.
We want to achieve success in secular sense, such as making more money by investing, there is a way of thinking similar to playing Texas Hold’em:
From a technical point of view, you should act as a rational agent, looking for ways to minimize risk and maximize profitability. Class fever followed this approach at the beginning of the game.
On the other hand, accurate calculations cannot eliminate uncertainty.
Many times your cards are not bad or bad, and more statistical analysis will not let you make good decisions.
Many times, thinking too much is still a bad thing, the so-called Over Thinking. The danger of mathematical operations is that you mistakenly think that you can do a lot, but in reality you can’t do it.
It is like the financial failure of Jin Li’s boss as a “go master”.
Fuzzy precision is more important than precise blur.
And some people pretend to think by pretending to calculate, thus escaping from real thinking.
- Poker woman first person, hedge fund trader.
It is said that Texas Hold’em first woman, Vanessa Selbst, may join the world’s largest hedge fund bridge fund after bidding farewell to the poker world.
It seems to jump from one “casino” to another “casino”.
What poker champions and hedge fund bosses have in common is to build systems, build “machines,” and earn “certain” money in an uncertain world.
Selbst won $11.9 million in the previous 12 years of poker. On December 31, 2017, she said she would retreat from the professional poker circle.
Born in 1984, she graduated from Yale Law School. At the table, Selbst has always been known for his radical style and attitude.
“I started doing some trading research and strategy research four months ago. The big environment is generally similar to the environment when playing poker before – a group of nerd kids are working together to try to beat the opponent.
Everyday life is very tired but also very exciting. There are always new things that keep me learning. The day before, I felt that I basically mastered something, and the next day I might face the challenge of failure. ”
Selbst seems to be influenced by her mother. His mother was an options trader and later a lawyer, an amateur poker player.
Debo is a game that financial people love, bet, risk, reason, greed, fraud, and Texas Hold’em is both an excellent simulation training and a highly consistent metaphor.
As a historian said, the lessons learned by the United States in the Pearl Harbor attack should be:
We must “accept the facts of uncertainty and learn to survive in it. Because there is no magic to provide certainty, our plan must be implemented without it.”
Poker is like this, investment is so, and life is like this.
Some people say, how can gambling be used to metaphorize life?
In fact, is life not more difficult to measure than casinos? Are most people more desperate than gamblers?
The genius, like Professor Zhang, can touch the peak of human intelligence, but can’t walk out of the quagmire of the world.
For us and our children, this is a required course of life that should be filled.
Below, we begin to learn the seven secrets of poker masters.
Poker Master Lesson 1
Understand luck, risk and uncertainty
Franklin said that in this world, nothing is certain, except death and taxes.
First clarify the three concepts.
Luck: Luck is a view of life. This is my definition, because literal understanding is both simple and ambiguous, so I simply extract the most interesting part of it;
Risk: Known uncertainty. The word risk is used in different situations, and here I am referring to measurable uncertainty. For example, the slot machine in the casino is unpredictable for each result, but if you play for a long time, the casino will kill you with a probability of more than 50%.
Uncertainty: Unknown risk. It is unknown unknown.
By comparing “risk” and “uncertainty”, we can understand more deeply.
In a world where risk is known, everything, including probability, is deterministic, and logical thinking and statistics are enough for us to make informed decisions.
But in an uncertain world, everything is not always known, and we cannot make the best choice through calculation.
Why is “Luck is a view of life”?
There is a young professional female player in the United States summing up her experience. After winning the championship in one year, she went through a downhill road.
She felt that she was very good and she was no longer training hard. She overestimated her own level. Perhaps her first champion came from “uncertainty” rather than control over “risk.”
In a fast-rising market, stupidity can also make money, but don’t feel like a genius. How much of this is by luck? How much depends on strength?
Perhaps the real money earners in the blockchain in the short term is that they have once reflected the “all stupid” people.
One of the easiest ways to do this is: When you win, you have to say “I am lucky”; when you lose, don’t say “poor luck” or “poor”, but from a technical point of view To reflect.
With this underlying outlook on life, it makes sense to discuss the following. (From a book on risk and decision making, the title of the book is to be checked)
We must learn to survive in a world of uncertainty. The first step is to distinguish:
(known risks) known uncertainties, and (unknown risks) unknown uncertainties.
We need two sets of thinking tools to deal with both situations (even if the boundaries are sometimes unclear).
Risk: If the risk is known, and you want to make an informed decision, you need logical thinking and statistical thinking;
Uncertainty: If some risks are unknown and you want to make informed decisions, you need intuitive and wise rules of thumb.
The Swiss Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that Texas Hold’em is a game of chance, because “simple math, strategy, and psychology are not as good as luck in this game.”
The Pennsylvania Court of Appeals ruled in March 2010 that Texas Hold’em was illegal gambling because it was determined that Texas Hold’s luck was greater than the skill component.
So is the poker winner mainly relying on strength or luck?
Like real life in the world, it depends on luck in the short term and strength in the long run.
Of course, as I often say, luck may not change, but luck can be.
In games where luck is a large part of technology—such as Texas Hold’em and Venture Capital—the long-term results will always tend to the real technical strength of the player (investor), and in the short-term, luck determines everything.
Steven Levitt, the originator of grotesque behavior, measured the relationship between luck and technology in Texas Hold’em and concluded:
“Those who are identified as masters before the game get an average return of around 30% more than the average player.”
But this conclusion also has a big pit. How do we identify who is a master before the game? Will this conclusion be a statistical illusion of survivor bias?
These are perhaps the places where poker and life are interesting.
Poker Master 2
Establish a decision system for probabilistic thinking
Point 1: Quantification
In the last lesson, we said that nothing is certain.
And in this section, we have to say that no matter how vague and unpredictable a thing is, you have to work hard to quantify it.
British physicist Kelvin said:
When you can quantify what you are talking about and can describe it in numbers, you do have a deep understanding of it. But if you can’t describe it with numbers, then your mind doesn’t jump to the state of scientific thinking.
Just as the weather forecast shows that there is an 80% chance of rain, you have to develop similar ways of thinking and communicating.
For example, if someone asks you to eat on weekends, when you don’t confirm, don’t say “maybe maybe probably”. You better say:
I have 60% confidence.
If you want a bit of dramatic effect, you can also say:
I have a 58.62% confidence.
This kind of communication will greatly improve the communication efficiency between you and your friends, and you can gradually build your own “quantitative life”.
It is extremely important to quantify your own ideas.
Given a valuation, it looks silly, but in my mind, it can be used to distinguish between different types of people. There are very few people who know how to quantify and probabilistic thinking, and they can do less with it.
Marking a value first helps you to focus on the school. You will also gain something in the process of estimating the gross estimate.
Point 2: Grayscale cognition
When you analyze and think about something, you must overcome the binary opposition, the black and white mentality.
You don’t want to come up with a candidate right away. Instead, you should list all kinds of candidates as comprehensively as possible, even from the perspective of your opponent.
I will elaborate on “grayscale cognition” in other articles.
The advice of poker master Annie Duke is:
First, change everything and pursue a 100% determined mindset. Imagine that I really have 100% confidence in this matter? If it is 70% sure, what is the remaining 30%? Just like at the poker table, the master has the same possibility of calculating the next card;
The second is to maintain a more open mind. Get different angles and diverse information from more channels, instead of inquiring with different people, and then constantly confirming what you have already affirmed. “Try to find someone you never thought you need to ask. Chat, you may have an unexpected harvest.”
Point 3: Expectation calculation
Yu Xiaolu, an artificial intelligence expert who has researched Texas Hold’em, said that the financial sector is most interested in risk. A big test for players in Texas Hold’em is to maintain a risk neutral attitude for a long time.
For example, there are two ways to play in front of you:
The first is a 20% chance of winning 5,000 chips:
The second is a 100% chance to win 800 chips.
The inherent risk appetite in the brain makes it difficult to choose the first style of play.
But just in the vast majority of financial markets and Texas tables, to be a long-term successful player, you must learn to naturally choose the first style of play. Because the first type of return is 1000, which is greater than the second, based on the expected value. Of course, this is also related to the total chip value.
If the method you calculate based on the expected value is correct, but the result is lost, this is called “system risk.”
As an investor, how do you face this risk in your investment? You should face it calmly. Systemic risk is unavoidable because of the homogeneity of profits and losses.
What you want to reflect on is not the choice made based on the expected value, but whether your calculation system is accurate and whether it needs to be verified.
Point 4: Black and white decision
The secret of AI’s Go game is to calculate the probability of winning the final game, and then choose the one with the highest probability.
It seems to be very simple, but it is not easy.
In 1968, when Max went to work at Citibank, their slogan was “a timid situation.” It is important to take wise and prudent investment methods, to win more and less, and to earn more from success than to suffer losses in failure.
But avoiding all losses will have serious consequences, and insisting on such an investment method is by no means a winning one. This may ensure that you avoid losses, but it may also result in you being unable to make a profit.
In this regard, what many of the greatest ice hockey players, Wayne Gretzky, might have inspired you, he said: “If you don’t, you will miss the goal 100%. Opportunity.”
Duke used to be an amateur contest commentator. Once she told the audience that the current situation, the probability of A player winning is 76%, the probability of B winning is 24%, and the result B wins the game, when the audience said “you The prediction is wrong,” Duke replied: It is not a prediction wrong. She has already said that the probability of B player winning is 24%, that is, the probability of 24% of the incident has occurred.
Be rational and determined when making decisions. After the execution, quickly return to zero. Separate execution from results.
No matter how dark the reality, how humble the cards in his hand, how embarrassing the future is, still dare to make decisions, and firmly choose the best hand, is a very great talent.
It was like the German team in the heyday, even if it was three goals behind, it was not chaotic, and kicked out every foot.
As long as you haven’t started to give up on yourself, you are still thinking and making decisions. Even if you are beaten, it will not fail.
Point 5, form the system
Everyone understands the truth, I will count the probability, the expectation is not difficult, why can’t I still do it?
This is where the humanity is tough.
Each of us has been designed as a “automated” intelligent creature, and the price paid for it is that it is not easy to overcome the weakness of human nature.
For players, the goal of the game should not be to win a single round of prize money, but to make the right decisions based on mathematics (probability theory) and psychology. Because of this, in the case where the expected return value is positive, the average benefit of each game can be maximized, and the total amount of money won in the long run will be more than the loss.
The poker career, like a long life, is made up of many consecutive decisions.
You can’t care about the gains and losses of a city and a pool, but to establish a scientific decision system that wins with a high probability.
Ordinary people pay attention to the results, and experts pay attention to the system.
For this decision-making system, you must implement it firmly on the one hand, and you must be able to constantly reflect on optimization.
Both of these points are anti-human.
Annie Duke believes that an important difference between top poker players and regular players is:
The top players can always maintain a stable decision-making ability. They will not influence the decision-making because of changes in their surroundings and their own wins and losses. They train themselves and develop a habit of thoughtfully solving problems.
Ordinary players, their mood is easy to change with the surrounding environment, resulting in unstable decision-making levels. In extreme cases, they even rely on conditioning to make decisions.
However, in the “uncertain” world of poker, like our real world, the “system” is temporary.
If the bottom layer of a person’s decision-making system is not connected to the learning system, it will soon become a “sword-seeking sword.”
Poker Master Lesson 3
Become a game master
Concept and principle
Strategic thinking is about the art of understanding how an opponent intends to overcome you and then win.
An act of competition or confrontation is called a game behavior.
The science of strategic thinking is called game theory.
In such acts, the parties involved in the struggle or competition each have different goals or interests. In order to achieve their respective goals and interests, all parties must consider the various possible action plans of their opponents and try to choose the best or most reasonable solution for themselves. For example, playing chess in daily life, playing cards, etc.
Game theory is to study whether there are most reasonable behavioral schemes in the struggle parties in the game behavior, and how to find the mathematical theory and method of this reasonable behavior scheme.
For Texas Hold’em players, there are two ways to win the prize in the pot:
In the battle card, the hand and the card can form a card that is greater than or equal to all other uncovered players.
By betting, all other players are forced to fold out of the hand and give up the chance to win the prize.
Poker masters must know how to count cards, but also masters of psychology, but also must be a master of the game.
Why do people like tall children?
In other fields, such as biologists, it is the use of game theory to establish a mathematical model for evolution.
The individual of life may not rationally choose many different survival strategies, but discover the optimal strategy through accidental trial and error. After all individuals have completed the “natural selection” of the optimal survival strategy, the Nash equilibrium is reached.
Pu Yongjian mentioned an interesting question in the preface to Strategic Thinking:
Why do people like tall people?
In the East African Grand Canyon, the tall human ancestors are more difficult to survive (higher ones are more likely to be seen by wolves and tigers, and more difficult to avoid when the beasts are chasing), the heart is heavy and needs more food. At a disadvantage of survival.
So, should a tall man be eliminated?
However, precisely, only those high-skilled genes with strong viability are inherited. This is a signal game phenomenon in an asymmetric information game.
A tall man is a signal to send good genes, so when people talk about objects, they generally like tall people, because they may contain more excellent genes, and they can inherit their genes by combining them, because since they are taller Survival is more difficult, but when they are still alive, it means they have a more powerful survival gene.
On the surface, I like tall people because we think that tall people are pleasing to the eye and are beautiful elements. In fact, the beauty of human beings is linked to the ability to survive. This is the discovery of the so-called evolutionary game theory.
What should I do when I lead?
What strategy should you take when you lead?
Game theory teaches us that we should adopt a conservative strategy that allows our opponents to move ahead.
Let us look at a key node analysis of a vivid case:
After the first four rounds of the 1983 America’s Cup finals, the “Freedom” ranked first in the important event of the seven rounds of the event with a 3 wins and 1 loss.
At the beginning of the fifth round, the “Australian No. 2” had to take off before returning to the starting line and started again. This gave the “Freedom” a 37-second advantage.
“Australia No. 2” intends to go to the left of the track, full of hope that the wind changes, can help them catch up.
The “Freedom” decided to stay on the right side of the track.
This time, “Australian No. 2” was boldly bet on the bill, because the wind direction was deflected according to the wishes of the Australians. “Australia II” won this round with a huge advantage of 1 minute 47 seconds.
People criticized Connor, saying that his strategy failed and failed to follow the Australian team to adjust the course.
Strategic Thinking has made an incisive analysis of this:
The sailing competition gave us a good opportunity to observe a very interesting counterexample of the “follow the leader” strategy. Sailing ships with leading performances usually follow the strategy of trailing ships.
Once a trailing vessel changes its course, the leading ship will do the same.
In fact, even if the ship with the trailing trail adopts an obviously inferior strategy, the leading ship will still imitate it.
why? Because the sailing competition is different from dancing in the dance hall, it is useless to get close to the results here, only the final victory makes sense.
If your performance is ahead, the surest way to maintain your lead is to see what others are doing and what you do.
In this regard, I have a very good example. This is an amazing puzzle:
On a symmetrical table, the two people took turns to put coins, could not be tied together, and whose coins could not hold down the table, even if they lost.
Now, it’s up to you. You have a strategy to win, what is it?
Poker Master Lesson 4
Control emotion
Point 1: Overcome fear
First of all, you have to overcome fear.
Mrs. Curie said:
There are no terrible things in life, only things that need to be understood. Now is the time for us to understand more things. Only in this way can we become less and less afraid of things.
A system that never makes mistakes is not smart.
Point 2: “No memory” playing cards
When a player answers “What is the most impressive thing about playing poker,” there is a wonderful answer:
It is possible that every long-term Texas Hold’em player has its own “sudden” moments. The “immune” that I personally impressed was not realized at the poker table, but when I was studying physics many years ago.
Everyone may have heard of the Brownian movement, that is, the pollen particles keep moving irregularly in the aqueous solution. I remember that I studied the theory of Brownian motion in mathematics, called the Markov process.
Simply put, this process must have a “no memory” nature: the probability distribution of the next state can only be determined by the current state, and has nothing to do with the previous history in the time series.
After learning this, I suddenly got a big jump and realized that the Texas Hold’em game is a Markov process, and the state is the amount of chips on your desk.
For example, I have 10,000 chips on the table, just doubled from 5,000 chips, or 20,000 chips lost by someone else, a Bad Beat. The mathematics is absolutely indistinguishable. That is to say, my performance in this game is only related to the fact that I have 10,000 chips now, and it has nothing to do with the history of how I have 10,000 chips.
But for people, the difference between the two is heaven and earth. Although human nature can’t be completely overcome, from this time on, I try to make myself like a pollen in the water, playing cards completely without memory.
I once said that every cow is a human meat alpha dog. What are the characteristics of Go under the Alpha dog? Every move under it will rethink and estimate the probability of winning from the final game.
Don’t negate the right choice because of bad results.
In reality, you insist on doing the right thing, and you may not have a good return in the short term, but you still have to insist on doing the right thing.
Point 3: Control your emotions
In the process of playing cards, everyone will have emotional out of control. The terminology in poker is called “on tilt”.
For example, sitting at the table, your emotions will get out of control whenever the system risks are unfavorable, and you will start to indiscriminately add pools, scams or buy cards that you should not buy. Then in this case your decision is an irrational decision and it is more likely to cause losses.
Buffett said: When you fall into a pit, you will dig more hard, and the result will get deeper and deeper.
“Gambling Thinking” writes:
Top poker players also make mistakes 40% of the time, and objectively facing mistakes is more important than any skill.
The author of the book, Annie Duke, has always emphasized one point:
Poker card technology is not the key to success. Every gambling win is not a prerequisite for becoming a top player. It is a psychological war. One of the most important strategies is to overcome the Self-Servicing Bias. Mental disorder.
“Self-profit deviation”, in short, is shirking responsibility and self-deception.
According to Annie Duke, this “self-interest bias” is the watershed of the top players and ordinary players in poker. One of the most important ways to become a top player is to overcome this mentality.
Specifically, what should I do?
The key to Annie Duke’s success is that, shortly after the end of each card, she will quickly go back to the game and summarize her successes and mistakes in the decision-making process:
“The worst decision may also win with the help of luck, and the best decision may also lose money because of the wrong timing. Good or bad cannot be defined by results. I have to distinguish between what is my technology. It is still very helpful to help with luck.”
Point 4: Control the emotions of others
Take the Texas Hold’em raise behavior as an example. On the surface, it seems that the player shows confidence in the cards, but it may just be a bluff and wants to steal the chicken. So professional poker players always have to interpret each other.
So the best poker player is also the best liar, using the most sincere bluffs and the most unexpected bets to disrupt the opponent’s position. They know that for a player, the most important thing is not what card you have in your hand, but what the opponent thinks you have in your hand.
Players must randomize their actions so that when they bluff, they can’t be sure of the truth.
Libratus, an AI program developed by Carnegie Mellon University, has done this to the extreme. Its bet is very random, even surpassing the level of the best human players.
So poker masters need to perform psychological warfare with performance techniques, which makes it a black art.
When the poker game enters the deep waters, it is the moment of relying on gambling skills, and the player surpasses the probability.
The game turned into a swindle.
The poker master mentioned above, Stanford physicist Ban Hee, met the lucky luckmaker Golder in the final stage of a major competition.
Ban Ge got a pair of K, he planned to play a big one, all put on, which makes him look a little exaggerated his strength, but in fact, by pretending to be strong, and make the other party think he may be weak. The other party counted.
This has nothing to do with mathematics, but some kind of adventure. Based on gambling intuition and emotional control of the opponent, Ban Heat won the opponent’s millions of dollars in chips.
Point 5: Control emotional bandwidth
The bandwidth of emotion, attention, and cognition is limited.
“Why gorillas are better than experts,” the players know the importance of luck.
Many competitive players and financial professionals will maintain certain consistency in life, wear the same style of clothes, underwear of the same color, and so on.
Because fate is so uncertain, they express their fear of uncertainty.
There is a ridiculous saying: superstition is unlucky.
Attention resources are very scarce. During the class hot card, his breakfast was a sandwich, a small glass of orange juice, a cup of strong tea, and after 10-20 minutes of digestion, drove to the gym and exercised in strict accordance with the procedure.
He explained:
All of these habits seem crazy, but when you participate in the competition, you can’t be distracted to think about what to eat for breakfast, how many laps to swim, which is crucial. The advantage of routine habits is to keep life simple so that I can think about poker, poker, and poker.
Point 6: Training self-control
Self-control is the best tool to fight anxiety.
You can have the following methods:
Focus on noisy environments;
Practice yoga and meditation;
Exercise;
……
Panic makes people focus only on instinct. Such people can only be used as amaranth in the arena and capital markets.
For a decision maker, good quality first manages your emotions.
Deliberately calm is the essence of rational decision-making.
Only in this way can we overcome the emotional brain and avoid “sense narrowing” to prevent falling into cognitive blind spots.
Poker Master Lesson 5
Training intuition
What is intuition? From the perspective of Alpha dogs, intuition can be calculated and trained.
Einstein said:
Intuition is the sacred gift of mankind, and reason is the faithful servant of mankind. We have created a society that values servants but ignores talent.
First of all, I oppose the intuition of mysticism. Intuition is a shortcut to the brain, but the bottom layer is still computationally based.
Second, only intuition based on a large amount of professional training is valuable.
The purpose of a lot of training is to program, modularize, and shortcut the slow and meticulous analysis.
Take the intuition in sports as an example, professional skills are an unconscious wisdom. German player Muller said: If you start thinking, then you will lose.
Intuition is the reflection of internalization.
We cannot ignore our intuition, but we cannot believe it too much. Non-professional intuition is meaningless.
We must deliberately train the “intuition that is taken care of by reason.”
Mother’s instincts to the child, the wife’s instincts to her husband, often quasi-astounding, are based on the wholehearted input.
Poker Master 6
Double brain decision
“Why gorillas are better than experts” writes:
In short, consciousness consists of two different systems of thinking, one is a conscious system of rational thinking, and the other is a system of unconscious, rapid perceptual thinking.
The key to good decision making is knowing when to rely on which system.
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that stockbrokers were too rational, too emotional, and the results were very bad.
The best investors, like the best poker players, need to find a balance between the two, properly use the two brain systems, coordinate with each other, and learn from each other.
In bad times, use the rationality of the prefrontal cortex to control your “emotional brain.” So you have to switch back and forth between the two.
The value of the rewind is two:
One is the reflection and verification of the rational brain, and the other is the training of the emotional brain.
Just like the deep learning that Alpha Dogs develop through neural networks.
The emotional brain, that is, the computational power of the intuitive part, is very powerful, but you have to have a strict rational system to use.
In reality, we should find a professional direction or application field, practice it, form a feedback loop, turn thinking into intuition, but constantly adjust, so that we can become a master of “double brain decision”.
Poker Master Lesson 7
Heuristic thinking
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, we need to rely on intuition and rules of thumb in the face of “unknown unknowns”.
The rule of thumb is, in a sense, a way to prun the decision tree.
When solving complex problems, “heuristics” are often effective as simple solutions.
For example, “Single Reason Decision Rules”:
Find the most important reason and ignore other reasons.
Another example is the rule of thumb when ordering:
You can ask the waiter, if you are a guest, what would you order tonight?
There are many ways of thinking that humans usually solve problems. One way is logical reasoning and calculation. This is to search for all possible solutions to find the best solution.
There are also some methods that do not need to search for all the problems to solve the problem, but only based on our experience, intuition, and choose a less problem-solving solution, this is called a heuristic problem-solving strategy.
The rule of thumb is not stupid. In a world full of uncertainty, simple rules of thumb help people make better decisions than precise calculations;
less is more. Complex problems don’t necessarily require complex solutions, so you should look for simple methods first.
I tend to classify the “vision, philosophy, culture, and principles” of individuals or institutions as rules of thumb.
This part is often able to go beyond calculations and lead us out of the fog.
Realistic fault tolerance and possibility
Why can’t smart people conquer the world?
I understand that this is some kind of love for the real world “designer.”
We often feel that life is powerless, but as a result, we are placed in a protective pad.
The world is designed to be a complex, simple game, not a simple, complex game that gives every participant a chance.
Therefore, reality is both very fault-tolerant (look, you are so messed up, the days can continue), and there is a great possibility (everyone may be in a certain life lottery).
In this way, you can conquer the world with cleverness, calmness, camouflage, persistence, sharing, and even luck.
You can beat people who are smarter than you, those who are stronger than you, those who are smarter than you, and those who are hardworking.
This interesting design maximizes the individual’s free will. As long as you are a “awakening” person.
Use your own reason
For individuals, they need to learn to think strategically and expand their face in the game of life.
First of all, we need to read Kant’s “What is the Enlightenment”:
The Enlightenment is the immaturity of human beings from their own, and the immature state is that they are powerless to use their own reason without the guidance of others.
When the reason is not the lack of reason, but the lack of courage and determination to use it without the guidance of others, then this immaturity is what you have added to yourself.
Sapereaude! Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the slogan of the Enlightenment.
Second, we have to think about the inspiration of poker games for education:
From children to adults, you should master the skills of cognitive risk.
In my opinion, the goal of this training is to establish a cognitive closed loop based on the feedback system.
Two teaching principles that all schools should uphold:
Teaching solutions to real life problems;
Don’t teach for the exam, but teach for life.
The ancient Seneca said that we are not learning for life, but learning for the school.
Many years have passed and the situation may not improve.
In Kant, the judgment is “a special ability that intelligence is put into practice, but cannot be taught.” Judgment deals with special things. If I leave the field of general concepts and enter the world of special phenomena, then the spirit A new “talent” is needed to handle them.
Kant believes: “A slow or mentally savvy person… can indeed become a learned person through study and training. However, such people still lack judgment and can often see that learned people are applying When they have scientific knowledge, they often violate the original intention and cannot get good results.”
Let us courage, dare to make decisions ourselves, dare to take responsibility, and dare to pursue the truth.
Poker master thinking list
Even with the rest of this article, I am still tired of listing the following list of thoughts:
What is the most powerful person? They think about their own thinking.
All science is based on the concept of approximation. If a person tells you that he knows something accurately, then you can be sure that you are talking to an inaccurate person. (Russell)
The future is unknown, but you can try and evaluate it.
Risk does not equal uncertainty. The best decisions for known risks are not optimal for dealing with uncertainty.
Approximate correctness is better than accurate mistakes. The risk comes from not knowing what you are going to do. (Buffett)
The next realm of scientific decision-making is to separate decision-making levels from luck.
Wisdom and luck dance together. In the short run, luck is very important. In the long run, wisdom is decisive.
Long-term success with a large sample size is the sweetest.
Texas Hold’em is a simulation of life. Constantly training themselves, the aircraft industry relies on simulation training to reduce the accident rate to near zero.
last of the last
Turing Award winner Richard Hamming talks about how to become superior when thinking:
In many areas, the path to excellence is not the result of accurate time calculations, but vague and ambiguous. No simple model leads to greatness.
Roger von Ock said:
Life is like a poker game.
Sometimes you dominate life, sometimes you are dominated by life, skills and luck are important elements of life. You can bet, check, fool, and improve yourself. Sometimes you win a deck and sometimes you lose the entire house.
No matter what happens, the best way to deal with it is to always shuffle.
So, as long as you have a sigh of relief, you still have cards in your hands. Cherish her, beat her, and lose again.