Today's poker lesson contains just three words. They arrive from a contemporary tweet by Teller, of Penn & Teller fame. But before I AM GETTING to his three words, we'd like some background.
First, you would like to know that Teller is not only a great magician; he's a lifelong student of the art. He has what could be the world's largest selection of rare magic books, and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of its history.
Moreover, he's deeply concerned with the science of human perception, and the way magicians use flaws in our perceptual systems to tug off their illusions. He has worked with experimental psychologists, using examples from the sector of magic to light up how our senses can fool us.
Speaking of, Fool Us is the name of a TV show Penn & Teller have created, currently in its third season. The basis is that magicians come at the show and perform their tricks. If the duo can work out how the trick was done, the magician is shipped off with a pleasant round of applause, but nothing more.
If, however, the guest manages to fool the expert pair, she or he is invited to accomplish the trick for Penn & Teller's live audience of their self-named theater on the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino — the only where the November Nine might be playing out in exactly a few weeks. As you'll imagine, attending to perform on the pair's show would represent a huge career boost for any working but unknown magician.
On a up to date episode, one of the crucial guests was Chris Rose (not the similar one that hosts televised poker shows), and he performed a memorable and effective trick.
The heart of the trick is that Rose appears to position a cookie in his mouth, chew it up, swallow, drink some milk, spit out the milk, keep talking, after which — most unexpectedly — remove the intact cookie from his mouth. Teller was on stage with him, watching this from about three feet away, while Penn watched from a front-row seat within the audience. Despite their unobstructed view, rigorous attention, and decades of expertise with the usual moves of magicians, neither of them could work out what had happened, and Rose was declared a winner.
Later, a person named Brayden Hopkins tweeted a chain of screen captures from the video with the caption, "How he got the cookie in his mouth":
It's quite obvious on reflection that after Rose seemed to be merely wiping somewhat milk from his lips with a napkin, he was actually sneaking a second, intact cookie into his mouth, which was the only revealed a couple of seconds later.
So that is the background for the message from Teller. He retweeted Hopkins, adding this comment:
There's your three-word poker lesson of the day: "Focus creates blindness."
Expanded a bit, the speculation is that once you cut what you are looking for, you're making it tougher to peer other things. How does this relate to poker? Here's one way:
In my most up-to-date outing to a poker room, I watched a hand transpire between two other players. The overall board was 
.
Player A, having bet the flop and turn, now checked. Player B, who had called the flop and turn, made a pot-sized bet. Player A was visibly agonized. He said, "Why did that last card need to be another club?" But after thinking some time he said, somewhat despondently, "I MUST call you. I call."
Player B turned over 
, for the second-nut flush. Player A, still with obvious disgust, said, "Yeah, I knew it." This was followed, first, by an excessively Naughty Word, then by Player A turning his cards face-up to turn us his terrible luck. He had flopped a flush, with 
within the hole.
It was a miraculous transformation at the face of Player A when the dealer announced, "Straight flush" and commenced pushing him the pot. "I won?" he asked in genuine amazement. He then took another take a look at the board, and only then saw that the at the river had filled a gutshot straight-flush draw. He had a completely unbeatable hand, and didn't realize it until it was too late to make any further money with it.
It's clear what happened: His attention was entirely on first hoping that the river wouldn't be another club, and then, when it was, deciding whether he should call with what he thought was a queen-high flush, against what he correctly inferred was his opponent's bigger flush. On account of that focus, he was ignorant of the precise rank of his own second club and its tremendous significance, for the reason that particular board.
Bonus lesson: That is another illustration of why it's better to show your cards face up, even if you're sure you've lost the hand, because every once in a while, you'll have misread it. Tabling the cards properly gives the dealer and the opposite players an opportunity to recheck who the rightful winner is.
This is an especially dramatic example, but it is a common phenomenon. I've made similar mistakes myself. I remember once playing a hand through which I raised preflop with 
, then flop came 
. I bet my draw and got two callers. The turn was the 
and that i bet again. Either one of the opposite players still came along.
The river was the 
. I missed my flush, dammit! Now my only chance to win the pot was to fireside the third barrel, so I did. I USED TO BE chagrined after they both called again. I turned up my nothing hand and said, "I ASSUME I lose."
When the dealer said, "Straight" and pushed me the pot, I USED TO BE every piece as surprised as Player A was last week. My focus was entirely on either creating a flush or bluffing the opposite players off in their hands. As a result, I had completely overlooked what the Runner-Runner gods had brought me.
To repeat the bonus lesson, with a slight twist: Even though you're bluffing, show your cards, in preference to just throwing them away. Sometimes you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you just were bluffing with the most productive hand.
There's differently that attention causes blindness. Keep in mind that scene early in Jurassic Park where the uppity kid says that the velociraptor doesn't seem very scary? Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill, describes what it will was love to encounter one:
"You get your first take a look at this 'six-foot turkey' as you enter a clearing," he begins. "He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And also you keep still since you think that perhaps his visual acuity is predicated on movement like T-Rex — he'll lose you in case you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's the reason when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the opposite two raptors you didn't even know were there."
I know that usually I HAVE BEEN so intensely targeting the player I concede to be essentially the most difficult opponent in a hand that i am not even consciously aware that there is a third player quietly involved. When that happens, as often as not it is the one I USED TO BE ignoring who seems to be the true danger.
Without much effort, you can most likely recall to mind examples out of your own poker-playing history where you or some other person was so curious about something that something of equal or greater importance escaped notice.
Focus in poker is crucial, of course, but don't let it blind you.
(If you desire to watch the Chris Rose cookie trick — and it's worth trying out — it's here on YouTube.)
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker at the "Poker Grump" blog.
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