This is the 13th installment of my weekly poker column in the Economic Times, Range Rover.

In a local poker room where I sometimes play, there is an inscription on the wall that says: ‘It’s unlucky to be superstitious.’ As this is the 13th installment of Range Rover, it’s an auspicious time to take on this subject. Sportspeople tend to be notoriously superstitious: cricketers, for example, often have particular rituals they do not deviate from before going out on the field, such as wearing the left shoe first, or looking back up at the pavilion before going out to bat. When a crucial partnership is going well, the players in the dressing room may be stuck to their seats while it’s on so as not to disturb the fragile equilibrium of the universe. It’s quaint and sweet and does no harm – not in cricket, at least.

In poker, beliefs lead to actions, and actions lead to money won or lost. An irrational belief, thus, can have expensive consequences. I play a local cash game sometimes with a group of builders, and one of them believes that 23 is his lucky hand, and that it will never let him down. He has lost a minor fortune because of his faith in that hand, and it is worth asking, how did he arrive at this belief, and why does he persist with it even when it’s obviously counterproductive?

At the risk of simplifying, I’d say that there are two key cognitive biases that lead to the birth and nourishment of superstitions. The first is a tendency to mistake correlation for causation. A man walks under a ladder in olden times, is attacked by a horse a little later, and boom, walking under ladders becomes a no-no. Black cat crosses path, wife runs off with neighbour; break a mirror accidentally, relative dies; call someone from behind as they’re leaving their house, they lose their job. We are pattern-seeking creatures, which is an important reason for our being the dominant species on this planet, but we often tend to go overboard, and ascribe causation where there is none. This is how superstitions are born.

Superstitions are sustained by another cognitive bias called the confirmation bias. Basically, we ignore all evidence against whatever irrational belief we have, and pounce on anything that seems to confirm it. If you believe a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, you’ll ignore all the times it happens and you have a good day, but pounce on the one time it is followed by some unfortunate event as evidence for your belief. My builder friend probably arrived at his superstition about 23 when he won a big pot early on with that hand. (Correlation-causation.) Since then, he shrugs off all the money he loses while playing that hand, but cites the pots he wins with it as evidence in its favour. (Confirmation bias.)

Poker players might have superstitions like having a favourite hand, or a particular seat ‘running hot’ during a game. But the flawed thought processes that lead to superstitions apply to every aspect of poker. For example, I used to overplay small suited connectors out of position until recently, a tendency that surely began when I cracked aces with it at some point. So I started overestimating the implied odds, considering the big pots I won with them as validation, and ignoring all the times I bled money getting into difficult marginal spots with them out of position. My mistaken belief had the same anatomical structure as a superstition, and I could only eliminate the leak when I came to terms with the cognitive frailties that gave birth to it.

To excel in poker, we have to draw conclusions from limited information, and put our opponents on ranges based on patterns of past behaviour. This is perilous, and it’s important not to get lazy, to constantly revisit our assumptions, and to think of the game in probabilistic terms, with few certainties. As for black cats, them kitties should not be feared, but cuddled.

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Previously on Range Rover:

Beast vs Human

Unlikely is Inevitable

The Colors of Money

Finding Your Edge

Raking Bad

Om Namah Volume

Make No Mistake…

Kitne Big Blind The

Sweet Dopamine

The Balancing Act

The Numbers Game

The Bookshop Romeo