Beyond the table
Making decisions with incomplete information
Poker is deciding without seeing your opponent's cards or the ones still to come. That's why it trains a skill that works away from the table: judging a decision by what you knew when you made it, not by how it turned out. It also teaches you to think in odds, weigh the price, update on new information and know when to fold.
It won't turn you into a better manager by magic. It's a good place to practice, because every hand takes minutes and the math can be checked. Below are six ideas, each with a hand from the course and what it means away from the cards. The chips aren't worth money: they measure the decision.
Two things you can't see
In a hand you know your two cards and the board. Two things are missing: what your opponent holds and what comes next. Someone knows the first, just not you; nobody knows the second yet. Away from the table the same two are missing: what the company knows about the job that you don't, and how next year will go.
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What you know
Your cards, the board and what everyone has done. It isn't much, but it's certain.
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What someone else knows
Their two cards. They know them and you don't: all you see is what they do with them.
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? ?
What nobody knows
The cards still to come. Not you, not them: they're still in the deck.
Annie Duke, who played poker professionally, opens Thinking in Bets (2018) with a chapter called "Life Is Poker, Not Chess." In chess everything is in plain view, and whoever loses almost always played worse. In poker you can decide well and lose. That makes it a good place to learn to tell the two apart.
1 · The result
Judge the decision, not the result
A good decision can turn out badly and a bad one can turn out well. The ending doesn't tell you which was which. What you knew when you decided does.
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Calling with a pair of nines
You
The board
Their list
- Beats you
- Beats you
- Beats you
- You beat
- You beat
You beat 2 · 3 beat you
The price lets you lose to 4
They show the king and jack of clubs: you lose the pot.
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Calling with a pair of sevens
You
The board
Their list
- Beats you
- Beats you
- You beat
- Beats you
You beat 1 · 3 beat you
The price lets you lose to 2
They show a pair of sixes: you win the pot.
At the table
Two hands on the river, and in both your opponent bets the size of the pot. At that price, for every hand on their list you beat, you can afford to lose to two. With the nines, calling pays even though you lose this time. With the sevens, it doesn't pay even though you win this time: call like that every time and you lose more chips than you win.
In the course: "Two scoreboards" (path 13)
Away from the table
You take a job after asking every question there was to ask, and six months later they shut the department down. That was bad luck, not a bad decision. It works the other way too: if you get it right without looking into anything, you didn't learn to decide, you got lucky. What you can review is what you knew, what you could have known and how you weighed it.
Poker players have a word for this, resulting, and Annie Duke made it popular well beyond the table. It's been measured, too: in 1988, Jonathan Baron and John Hershey gave University of Pennsylvania students medical decisions, such as whether to have heart surgery, that were identical except for how they turned out. The students rated the ones that went well as better decisions.
2 · The odds
Think in odds, not certainties
"Will they fold?" has no answer. "How many of the hands they could hold would fold?" does, and that's the one you decide with.
The board
You
Their list
Calls with ace high or better
- Calls
- Calls
- Folds
- Folds
- Folds
3 fold · 2 call
At the table
You hold the queen and eight of hearts and the flop gives you nothing. Your opponent checks, and with a pair they would have bet: that leaves five hands without a pair, and all five beat you. If you bet half the pot, they call with ace high or better. You don't know what they'll do this time. You know that three of the five fold and two call, and at half the pot each fold makes up for two calls: betting pays. If they call this time, the math hasn't changed.
In the course: "The counted bluff" (path 13)
What is a bluffAway from the table
"Will it work out?" almost never has an answer. "Out of ten times like this, how many work out?" does, even if the answer is rough. Saying "I think seven in ten" instead of "definitely" makes you think about the other three, and decide ahead of time what you'll do if one of them shows up.
3 · The price
Know what it costs and what can come back
An option isn't worth it because it might work. It's worth it if it works often enough for what it costs.
The board
You
25%The price asks for
20%The flush comes in
At the table
On the turn you're one heart away from a flush. There were 12 chips in the pot, your opponent bets 6, and to stay in you put in 6: if you call, the pot will hold 24. Cut it into pieces the size of your call and you get four, one of them yours. Calling pays if you win the pot at least one time in four. Nine of the 46 unseen cards make your flush, so it comes in 20% of the time. Counting only what's already in the pot, you fold, however tempting the flush.
In the course: "The price of calling" (path 6)
Pot oddsAway from the table
Every decision has a price: what you put in against what can come back. An afternoon spent on an application is cheap next to a job that would change your year, so it's worth it even if it rarely works. Two years of your time on a project that works one time in twenty is a different price. The question isn't "could it work?" but "does it work often enough for what it costs?"
4 · New information
Change your mind when you learn something
What the other player does is information. A decision that was right a moment ago stops being right if you now know something you didn't.
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On the flop
Betting paysYou
The board
- Calls
- Calls
- Folds
- Folds
- Folds
3 fold · 2 call
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On the turn, after their call
Betting doesn't payYou
The board
- Calls
- Calls
- Off the list
- Off the list
- Off the list
0 fold · 2 call
At the table
Same hand as before: you bet the flop and they called. Under their rule, that means ace high, so their list shrinks to two hands, ace-king and ace-queen. The deuce of diamonds comes and they check again. On the flop, three of five folded; on the turn, neither of the two folds. The same bet that paid a moment ago now just loses chips: you check and give up the bluff.
In the course: "When they call your bluff" (path 13)
Poker rangesAway from the table
You decide something on Monday with what you know on Monday. If on Thursday you learn something that changes it, changing your mind isn't inconsistency: it's deciding well twice. The inconsistent move is sticking with Monday's plan as if Thursday never happened. And it works in reverse: if you've learned nothing new, you have no reason to change.
5 · Streaks
A streak isn't a clue
Three bad results in a row feel like a warning. Usually they're just that: three results, too few to tell you anything.
The board
You
The last three
- 1Lost
- 2Lost
- 3Lost
Their list
You call- Beats you
- Beats you
- You beat
- You beat
You beat 2 · 2 beat you
The price lets you lose to 4
79%
Make a decision that works half the time twenty times over, and in 79% of those runs you'll see at least three misses in a row. Not seeing them would be the odd thing.
At the table
You've called three times in a row with the math on your side, and all three times they showed a hand that beat you. Now you hold queen-ten, and on the river your opponent bets the size of the pot. You beat two hands on their list and two beat you, and the price lets you lose to four: calling pays, same as the last three times. Every hand is dealt from a full deck that doesn't remember the last one. Same list, same price, same decision.
In the course: "Three hands say nothing" (path 13)
Away from the table
This is where life differs from a deck of cards: a streak sometimes does mean something. Three rejections in a row might mean your résumé isn't working. The question is the one from the last idea: have you learned something new? If the streak teaches you something, change. If it only weighs on you, it isn't a clue. It's noise.
6 · Folding
Know when to fold
What you've already put in belongs to the pot, whether you stay or not. That's why it's no reason to stay.
The board
You
You've put in 80
Their list
Re-raises with two pair or better
- Beats you
- Beats you
- You beat
- Beats you
- Beats you
You beat 1 · 4 beat you
The price lets you lose to 3
At the table
On the river you hold ace-seven: two pair, aces and sevens. Your opponent bets 20, you raise to 60 and they re-raise to 140. You've already put 80 chips into this hand, and they aren't yours anymore: they belong to the pot, like theirs, and you only get them back if you win. Of the hands they re-raise with, you beat one and four beat you. Calling 80 for a final pot of 320 lets you lose to three for each one you beat. You fold two pair.
In the course: "What he re-raises with" (path 16)
Away from the table
The hours you've already put into a degree or a project are spent: they don't come back, whether you keep going or not. The useful question is whether what you still have to put in is worth what can come back. Psychologists call it the sunk cost effect, sticking with something because you've already put time or effort into it, and Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer described it in 1985. Folding isn't always the safe play either: in the streak hand, folding was the mistake. The math decides, not the fear.
Six questions to take away from the table
The six ideas, turned into what you can ask yourself before and after a decision that matters.
- What did I know when I decided, and what could I have known?
- Out of ten times like this, how many work out?
- What does it cost me, and what can come back?
- What do I know now that I didn't when I decided?
- Is this streak telling me something new, or just weighing on me?
- If I were starting today, not counting what I've already put in, would I start?
What poker won't do
Poker won't make you a better manager, or smarter, or a better person. What it trains is narrow: deciding with what you know, counting what you don't, and not trusting a single hand. Nothing guarantees that carries over to your job on its own.
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Skills don't travel on their own
With chess, music or memory training, studies find little transfer: you get better at what you practice and barely at anything else (Sala and Gobet, 2017). The sensible assumption is the same for poker.
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It's a good place to practice
Every hand takes minutes, always ends and the math can be checked. Mistakes cost nothing, because the chips aren't worth money. Few decisions in life give you that many reps.
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The last step is yours
What travels are the questions, not the cards. If you don't ask them about your own decisions, poker stays at the table.
Pokeo is a poker course for beginners, not a management course. About Pokeo
Where the citations come from
- Annie Duke (2018). Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. Portfolio.
- Jonathan Baron and John C. Hershey (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 569–579.
- Hal R. Arkes and Catherine Blumer (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35, 124–140.
- Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 515–520.
- The 79% is an exact calculation, not a simulation: the probability of at least three misses in a row in twenty independent tries that each work half the time.
Path 13 · 5 lessons · 37 min
Deciding without seeing the end
In the course
Deciding without seeing the end, played
Four of these six hands come from path 13 of the course, "Deciding without seeing the end": five lessons on separating decisions from results, on streaks and on the counted bluff. They need you to read an opponent's list of hands, and they come in order inside the course, which starts with the cards.
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8 min
Two scoreboards
You will judge a decision by what you knew when you made it, not by the ending.
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6 min
Three hands say nothing
You will keep the decision the count gives even after it went wrong several times.
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8 min
The counted bluff
You will bet with nothing only when their list has enough hands that fold.
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7 min
When they call your bluff
You will count again after their call and drop the bluff when it no longer pays.
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8 min
A whole hand
You will carry a bluff from the flop, decide when to drop it and judge it without looking at the ending.
Frequently asked questions
Does playing poker make you a better decision-maker?
It helps you practice a few specific things: judging a decision by what you knew, thinking in odds and weighing what each option costs. There's no evidence it makes you decide better in general, and studies of chess and other training find little transfer. It works if you ask yourself the same questions away from the table.
What does it mean to decide with incomplete information?
It means deciding without knowing everything that matters: in poker, without seeing your opponent's cards or the ones still to come; away from the table, without knowing how a job or a project will turn out. You can't remove the uncertainty, but you can count it: what can happen, how often, and what a mistake costs.
What is resulting?
It's judging a decision by how it turned out instead of by what you knew when you made it. Annie Duke made the term popular in Thinking in Bets. Poker makes it easy to see: calling with the math on your side and losing the hand is still a good decision.
What is Thinking in Bets about?
It's a 2018 book by Annie Duke, who played poker professionally and studied cognitive psychology. It argues for treating every decision as a bet on an uncertain future and not judging it by the result. This page doesn't summarize it: it teaches similar ideas with hands from the course.
How do you tell bad luck from a bad decision?
Look at what you knew when you decided, not at the ending. If you'd make the same choice again with that information, it was bad luck. If there was something you could have known and didn't check, or you weighed what you knew badly, the decision could have been better, however it turned out.
Do you need to play for money to learn this?
No. These ideas work just as well with chips that are worth nothing, because what you learn is the math, not what's at stake. There's no money anywhere in Pokeo: the chips can't be bought or cashed out.
Before the math, the cards.
All six ideas on this page are settled with a count: how many hands on their list beat you or fold, what share of the pot you put in. Making it takes reading a hand, and that's where the course starts. It gets to four of these hands in path 13, "Deciding without seeing the end".
First lesson · 6 min The cards Every card has two facts: rank and suit. You'll learn to read both, and which one says which card is worth more. Play nowNo sign-up · No money · In your browser
