Poker is a game of imperfect information. A player’s betting, his tells, his personal history, and his personality all come into play while sitting at a poker table. Is he the type of player who will raise with any two cards? Is he experienced in hiding his true feelings? Is he rich or is he just a middle class schmoe? Does he enjoy playing for long odds or is he the type to play it safe? During the poker craze of the early part of the last decade, there were numerous books published to help the aspiring poker player. Most are/were cheap crap put out to make a buck. But how would a newbie know which to read and which to ignore? That’s where on-line forums and bloggers came in. They could bridge the gap between the knowledgeable player and the neophyte.
Often times we are faced with situations in life where we have imperfect information and need to make a decision. Without consciously weighing the odds we assess the possible outcomes of our decisions and proceed with what we think the best option will be. I seem to remember reading somewhere that men will typically underweight the likelihood of bad outcomes and overweight the likelihood of good outcomes. Unsurprisingly, women tend to overweight the bad outcomes and underweight the good.
Mind you this doesn’t address the possibility of unexamined outcomes. Those things that a person never imagined could or would happen. Experience plays a role here, and intelligence too. In fact education, or I should rather correctly say a broad base of knowledge comes into play when determining possible outcomes.
Going back to poker, it takes literally tens of thousands of hands, doing the same odds calculations, and assessing players tendencies to become skilled in the game. Most people who start down the path to become good poker players give up. Those that stick with it end up with varying levels of skill.
All of this is a roundabout way for me to make this one point. Most of the women I know, and many of the men I know spend their lives and make their decisions solely on the avoidance of negative outcomes. There is either no assessment of the probability of said negative outcome, or the assessment is that the probability of that outcome approaches unity. It is foreordained. Furthermore, there is no further examination of the ramifications of the negative outcome if it should happen. It is almost as if the world will come to an end if this bad thing happens. In reality, it might be an inconvenience, or it might cost a little money to fix, or it might just cost a little time to clean up.
Avoidance of risk is avoidance of life. It is sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop, the sword of Damocles to fall. Reaction instead of action. So accept the challenge, take a risk, get out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to fail or lose.
