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This is the seventh and final part of a series on how cognitive biases can affect us at the poker table.
Part 1: Self-Serving Bias
Part 2: The Curse Of Knowledge
Part 3: Anchoring Bias and the Availability Heuristic
Part 4: Confirmation Bias
Part 5: Pessimism and Optimism Bias
Part 6: The Survivorship Bias
I’ll finish this long-running series with the Choice-Supportive Bias. When suffering from this bias, once you make a choice, you tend to support that choice no matter what.
This bias strikes especially hard for long-lasting decisions. Once you choose a life partner, a best friend, which house or car to buy, which politician or political party to support, it is very difficult to reconsider such decisions. It is emotionally painful to admit that you made a mistake with such an important choice. It is emotionally easier to find and believe in (even clearly mistaken) reasons to continue to support such important choices.
Of course, when playing poker, you make a choice (bet, check, raise, etc.) and find out rather quickly if that choice was the best one. At least, you find out if it was the best choice, in hindsight, for this specific hand.
It’s kind of like buying or selling a stock. Every day after, you learn if that choice made or saved you money, or if it cost you money. However, in both situations, the fact that a choice was correct in hindsight has very little to do with how smart the choice was at the time it was made.This bias hurts us the most when it works in combination with selective memory and reinforces bad decisions. […]
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