It is humbling to realize how much our basic functions can take control of our conscious minds. Remember the study of Pavlov and his dogs? This was a scientific study done on dogs where they would salivate at the ringing of a bell. A ringing bell meant food. No other sound meant food to them. This experiment has been tried with other animals as well, with pigeons, cuttlefish and mice to name a few. The same phenomenon occurs with them. Habit conditions them to believe that specific symbols or signs result in a specific event.

Moreover, additional experiments show that once an individual is thus conditioned, it will not learn what to a more developed mind, such as ours, may seem a variant of the same. That is, once a cuttlefish learns that a pink circle means food is coming and a blue spot means no food, it will take any additional color to mean no food. It has no capacity to interconnect new phenomena and allow hitherto inexperienced possibilities.

Having learnt one condition, the mouse mind is blocked to any other possibility, even if subsequent stimuli are as strong or even stronger. Obviously? Before you condescendingly dismiss inferior mice, rooks, and cuttlefish (all significantly more intelligent then Man previously supposed), ask yourselves if have never been jolted into a sudden realization of a simple possibility that had never hitherto occurred to you: like that the bunch of guys at the top running the country might be as ignorant or even more ignorant than you?

Sometimes a bunch of good players will discuss at lunch the hands they had just been playing and somebody might say how surprised they are the guy in seat 4 hasn’t yet folded, he had been playing so terribly. Upon which another player might add smugly that, yes, and he has a huge tell on him, only to discover that besides one more player at the lunch table nobody else seems to be in on it. Swearing each other to secrecy, these two share their discoveries in somber undertones and immediately discover that each had in mind a completely different thing: the first one noticed that every time 4 has a good hand, he makes his bet and closes his hands in fists on the table and never does it otherwise than with a good hand; the other player noticed that when 4 has weak cards, he fidgets with his chips after placing a bet, never touching the chips otherwise.

So number four has two actions that betray him. The smug, secretive twosome who consider themselves to be good players, each picked up on only one. Their minds simply stopped discovering at one observation and never reached beyond for further insight.

A good player will not consider this realization trivial. He will take advantage of it by learning to be flexible in his observations and keep his mind active throughout play. By classifying other players habits and behaviors as to high and low importance, he is increasing his odds of winning.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Interpoker Rakeback as well as Rakeback at Cellsino Poker.