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Fixate on that narrow bit of data, stand too close to the barn, and you only get a partial, myopic view of what’s really going on. But if you step away, view the building from a distance, the cluster loses its significance. Loses its power to make you feel as though fate has singled you out to be a victim.easy cards tricks
The real danger happens when we allow these I’m-so-unlucky beliefs to influence our play. If a poker player is convinced he can never (or almost never) win a race – and then is faced with a borderline decision to shove his chips on a likely coinflip, can he make the correct choice without the wussifying influence of fear? easy cards tricks
Can the poker player who feels that it’s his special curse to get unlucky against morons continue to play his best game when he finds himself in a hand against one of those overly-fortunate idiots? When the answer is no, losing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Weak-tightness creeps in, as we don’t get enough value out of our winners, fold hands that would have been winners, and perhaps worst of all, fail to protect hands that should have been winners. What poker player hasn’t ever been guilty of failing to bet or raise enough with a made hand because we were half-convinced the idiot opponent was going to suck out anyway? marked cards
Fearing a loss, we end up guaranteeing it.marked cards
But the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy isn’t just about the way we view bad luck. We’re often just as guilty of painting a circle around a few chosen bullet holes when the cards are falling in our favor. Belief in good luck is dangerous too. “I always win coinflips” is every bit as fallacious as “I never win coinflips” and just as expensive, if not more so, if even once that belief coaxes you to put your money in bad. Yes, it’s good to have confidence as long as that confidence is rooted in genuine skill. But the poker player who comes to the battle believing he is going to prevail because “I always win with <insert favorite junk hand here>” is asking for trouble.
It’s a matter of perspective. By drawing a virtual circle around a few chosen bits of information – a handful of bad beats here, a lucky break there – we can convince ourselves of almost anything. And like the ersatz sharpshooter, it’s all about making ourselves look better than we really are. Looking back on a tough losing streak, we paint a circle around the bad luck and disregard the bad plays. Or after a big winning session, we paint a circle around the great plays and ignore the hands where we got lucky. It’s soothing , it’s reassuring, and it’s a trap. Every time we do this, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
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