The following is reposted from a 2015 piece I wrote for Bluff magazine. It was originally located at this URL but has become unavailable due to Bluff going out of business. I saw this study mentioned recently in Maria Konnikova's book 'The Biggest Bluff' and was reminded about this piece and noticed it was offline, so I wanted to share it again. A few notes on this piece: The original title ...
Study looks at gaze direction tells in blackjack
An interesting study that took place a few months ago, where psychologist Kevin Holmes, at Colorado College, studied if there'd be gaze direction differences when study participants played blackjack. He did find differences: in short, participants looked slightly to their left when holding low-value hands, and more to the right the higher the hand's value became. An email subscriber of mine ...
Mark Sherman: The Greatest Poker Player Ever? (guest blog post)
This is a guest post by David Alzofon about a colorful, loud high-stakes poker player, Mark Sherman, who frequented the San Francisco cardrooms in the 1980s. Here's David's bio: David Alzofon grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent 20 years slogging away in the salt mines of Silicon Valley. During a brief period of unemployment in the mid-'80s, he chanced to come across ...
Talking to John Wood, mental game coach
John Wood recently reached out to me to do a short interview for a site called PokerHeadrush. You can read the interview here. Things we discussed included: the general usefulness of live reads, the importance of the mental game in poker, and the poker scene in Portland. John is a general mental/life coach who also coaches poker players. He's worked with poker players Alex Fitzgerald and Chris ...
What Scientists Have Learned From Studying Poker Players
The following article was written by Dr. Jaclynn Moskow. It's an interesting look at some psychology studies that have involved poker and poker players. It was originally published on Cardplayer.com. Jaclynn has given me permission to post it on my site, which I am honored to do. Jaclynn is a mid to high-stakes cash game specialist who lives in South Florida. She's also adjunct facility at ...
Mental and emotional stress of poker
I'm posting an old piece piece I wrote, from two years ago, about the emotional stress of the game for me specifically. I wrote it right after I’d been knocked out of a tournament by playing a hand very badly, and while I was very frustrated with myself. I’ve been planning on reading and reviewing Jared Tendler’s The Mental Game of Poker as soon as I get some extra time, because I’ve been ...