There’s a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome - or AS. There are several symptoms of the condition, but today I want to focus on one specific aspect: Failure to understand how other people feel. A classical description of a person with AS is this:

Three people are in a room, one who is the person with AS, and person A and person B. There is a solid box with a lid on the table, and person A puts a dollar bill into it and asks person B to leave the room. Once B is out, A opens the box and takes out the dollar bill and instead puts in a die and closes the lid again. B returns, and the question is now: What does B think is in the box? A person with AS will answer “a die.”

This is the most symptomatic behavior; failing to understand that others do not have the same information we do. Why do I bring this up? Not for shits and giggles, at least, because AS is certainly no laughing matter, but because with or without AS, we all have a little bit of these symptoms in us.

Poker players, specifically, often seem to suffer from what I could coin as “Asperger Lite.” We know what cards we’re holding and we know what cards we’re representing - and we often fall into the trap of thinking that our opponent must see the situation the same way. “I’m value-betting third pair because I know that he knows that I didn’t raise preflop, which I usually do, so clearly it will look like I’m just stealing” or whatever along those lines. Then he raises, but since we know that he knows that we’re stealing, he’s clearly just re-stealing! So we call with our pair of threes, and feel dumb when he shows us his top pair, top kicker.

Let me give you an example:

Online $3/$6 limit hold ‘em. You’re in the big blind with A-4 suited. It’s folded to the small blind, who raises. You know that this small blind is a very aggressive player and the range of hand that he will try to steal with is pretty big here. Probably all the way down to J-9 offsuit, Q-7 suited and any pocket pair or so. Your hand is way too strong to fold, so you call.

The flop comes Q-5-5. The small blind bets. What’s your decision? Well, if you had the best hand before the flop, you likely still do. If he has an A-x type hand, with a bigger kicker than yours, you may very well end up splitting the pot anyway because the board is paired. If he has A-7, for instance, any card 8 or higher will give you a split. You can beat any unimproved king and jack hands he may be sitting on. You call. Raising is an option, but not a very safe one. He’s unlikely to fold to a raise right away, and that may leave you guessing on the turn. But let’s keep the option of raising on the turn open.

The turn brings a deuce, for the total board of Q-5-5-2 (remember, we have A-4 suited). You now picked up an inside straight draw as well. The small blind bets. For much the same reason that you called the flop, you should consider calling again. Raising, the option you left on the table, is no longer very attractive. You have a fair share of outs suddenly, and you don’t want to pay more than you have to, to see this hand through. The combination of the chances that you

a) have the best hand,
b) will split the pot if you don’t (up against another A-x hand as described above)
c) will hit a straight
d) will spike a four on the river and beat a better A-x
e) will spike an ace on the river and beat a hand with a Q in it

means that you should call.

The river brings the very pretty trey, that fills your straight. The small blind bets, you raise, he calls and he mucks Q-J offsuit.

Did you play this hand poorly? I don’t think so. Perhaps a bit passively; you could conceivably have raised preflop or on the flop, but raising or calling in those spots is debatable - it’s close. Why do I bring this up?

Because when I played this hand (go figure why I don’t think you played it poorly, eh?), I got yelled at by the small blind for being “a fukkin idiot who cant play poker worth a sh!t” (verbatim quote - the misspelled swear words is because he had to trick the curse filter). Why did he get so pissed off? Because he’s suffering from Asperger Lite. Let’s look at the hand from his point of view:

QJo in the small blind. I raise, because it’s a better-than-average hand and I want to stay aggressive. Big blind calls. Can be a lot of hands.

I can’t believe it! A runner-runner inside straight! FISH!

Now, I don’t know that this is how his line of thinking went, but I’m pretty sure that that last line was in there somewhere after the fact, at least. In his mind, it was “obvious” that he had a strong hand, and I kept calling with nothing but ace-high. He was neglecting the fact that the reason I called the flop was precisely because hands like QJo were in his range! If QJo is in his range, so is KJo, of course - and I can beat that. But he didn’t see it that way; he sees himself having top pair, good kicker, and it’s obvious that he does.

When he bets the flop and the turn, he does it because he has a good hand. That’s his primary motivation, and that’s what he sees, that’s what he feels. He isn’t betting the flop and the turn because he wants to bluff because he’s not bluffing. This is obvious to him. What’s not obvious to him is that it’s not obvious to his opponents. His opponents don’t know that he has top pair, decent kicker, they only know that he openraised preflop from the small blind and that he does that with 51% of the hands. They also know that someone that raises preflop virtually always throws in a bet on the flop. They know that, statistically, a flop hits a hand about one out of three times and that when the board is paired it’s even more unlikely. They also know that an ace is the highest card in the deck.

Could clearer thinking in this hand have saved him any money? Probably not. But in the general sense, clearing your mind from what you think is “obvious” will make you a much better hand reader. Discounting a possibility, or severely overvaluing another, because you want it to be so is what you really need to look out for. Someone with J-J who folds the river when an ace falls (because “they always suck out on me”) or someone who refuses to lay down second pair, bad kicker to a turn checkraise (because “he could be bluffing”) are victims of letting their feelings take control.

Even if he couldn’t have saved any (or at least not much) money in this hand, there’s still something he should have done when it was over: Take notes. The way I played this hand was pretty telling, and he would be smart to make a note of what happened. And this is the key, the main point of this post! Although hand reading is arguably the most profitable skill to have in poker, even for those of us who are not very good at it, there’s something to be learned. When a hand has played out, re-think it and see if you can understand how your opponent must have been thinking.

Thinking “fish!” and leaving it at that means that you’re missing out on a lot of information. There’s more than one flavor of fish, which kind is this? You must understand that no one acts irrationally in their own mind. No one! Dr. Schoonmaker makes this point in Psychology of Poker. The guy who calls a bet and a raise on the turn with only two overcards does it for a reason. Maybe not a reason that you think makes a lot of sense, but it makes sense to him. If you want to exploit his mistakes, you would do very well to understand the reasons he has for making them.

We all suffer from Asperger Lite to some extent, especially under the pressure of a poker game, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t make the effort of at least trying to understand our opponents. There’s a lot to gain if we manage.

/FP

PS. For those interested, you can read more about the real Asperger’s Syndrome here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_Syndrome