Trait Ascription Bias

[shipitfish]

Back in March, I mentioned that I was hoping to write up various cognitive biases and how they relate to poker. I'd first like to cover the trait ascription bias, because I think it drives at the heart of one of the first things poker books teach us.

All introductory poker books tell us to profile players at our table

Comments

[patty_bush]

I still think that it's a bad idea to not take notes. Some players are bad and predictable and have decided to plop down a crap load of money to play with online. These people are only going to be online for a couple of weeks or so, until they burn through their deposit. You need to learn as much as you can because they'll likely be playing a lot in a short period of time, and will have one set style of play.

Maybe a compromise will be to date your entries. If it's a note you tookd four days ago, it's likely valid, but if you took it four months ago... maybe not. What I do is make notes about what level they're playing. I think that's the most important. If you have a lot of notes at say 5/10 and then you read those same notes at 10/25 they must have gotten better and have moved up, but if you have notes at the same level, they likely haven't changed much...

I don't know, I'm a little drunk right now, so I'm rambling. hey when are you going to be at the WSOP? I want to come watch!

[shipitfish]

Oh, I definitely agree that you should take notes; I gave the example of
Greg as an extreme. I still take notes, and am sure to note as much
about the context of when something happened as well as what happened.
My notes usually look something like:

When short-stacked in a 1/2 cash game, tends to move in
preflop with weak hands of the AJ/88 variety, but seems to be only
when it is folded to him or if there are limpers with big stacks.
Doesn't reraise much preflop.

I like your idea of dating them, and I'm going to start doing that
too.