Now I had an interesting talk with myself the other evening (after reading a very good article), as you do. This was after my trip to Newcastle and subsequent happenings on line in the poker world. I have been thinking about that great phrase "Managing by doing nothing".
I play the game for fun but with a hint of seriousness now and again but the basic structure of my game does not really change when I concentrate (which is rare). I have, however, been concentrating really well over the last few weeks in games that I need to. Early on it was profitable and now not so much so (except 1c
PLO). I have been getting them in good and losing. So do I change my game, do I over analyse it?
Professor Tony Greenfield of Queens University, Belfast says.
"People ignore the fact that there are ordinary ups and downs and instead look for some deep meaning in short term change and if anything goes wrong they look for a special cause and tackle the problem by troubleshooting. You set your goal and then try to adjust for every deviation without distinguishing between common cause variation and special cause variation. The consequence is that the total variation becomes greater than it would if the process were allowed to run uncontrolled"A clever man that man...
Is it a myth that when there is variation it requires action? Or do you keep the ship going through the eye of the storm. I have seen many responses to people asking the age old question about losing streaks and is it possible to over analyse your game.
Is there a big risk of over reaction and are we guilty of reading too much into devil that is chance. The ups and downs of bad luck or indeed good luck can mask the underlying quality of your game. I firmly believe few people are confident enough to stand by their judgements about the underlying quality of their game and most remain steadfastly attached to short term goals. Goals that are battered by the god of variance.
Masters of statistics ram home the uncertainty of numbers created by the variability of the game that we love to play. These people also advocate the long term success of playing with these numbers (odds?).
Of course these downs (and to a certain extent the ups) can have real causes that must be eliminated. But I guess my real question is: Can reading too much into the data/analysis of your game be as damaging as ignoring it?.
Do we change our game when we are winning, I am not sure we do. We get more confident and therefore we make correct decisions without too much thought. Conversely, we demand change when we are losing, we try things and we chase ghosts.
As our esteemed PM said in the commons "Calm Down Dear". This ship is steady at the helm.
That is all
