GTO Poker Theories: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Why is it that the worst poker players think they are the best ones at the table? Because of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

One of the real gifts poker has given me is that it has been a great jumping off point to learn things from other disciplines like economics, AI, psychology and Game Theory. So here is a series of articles where I bring some of the most interesting things I have learned from other subjects outside of poker which are applicable in this game we know and love.

Of all the cognitive biases in poker, the Dunning-Kruger effect may be the most significant of all, and it perfectly explains why poker is both popular and profitable.

The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability delude themselves into thinking they are more skilled than they are, because they lack awareness of how unskilled they are. They literally suck so much they don't even know why they suck. 

The initial tests made by Dunning and Kruger involved a general knowledge quiz where the participants who performed the poorest rated themselves as having done better than the people who had actually done very well (and when confronted with the quiz answers, didn’t change their opinion). You see this in sharp focus on a show like American Idol were some of the early contestants are so bad at what they do, they cannot comprehend why they are so bad, so instead they think they are highly talented. 

Have you ever worked with somebody who was truly terrible at their job, but they went around suggesting the company would fall apart without them? That’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s when you are so unskilled at a particular endeavour that you lack the necessary critical skills to assess your performance, so you default to assuming you are very good at it. Ironically people who are highly skilled sometimes have the reverse of this bias, where they are so cogniscent of the minor errors they have made that they act like they are doing a terrible job (known as ‘imposter syndrome’).

Why poker is profitable and popular

This is a really important bias to be aware of in poker and we have all fallen prey to it. Poker is a game of incomplete information, we often have to deal with not knowing something. However, because there are so many unknowns in poker and because variance plays such a role in the short term, in the absence of information it is very easy to assume all your wins are down to superior skill rather than luck.

All you have to do to recognise this bias is look back at how you played your hands early on in your poker career compared to now. You will almost certainly cringe when you think of how you played them knowing what you know now. However, now think back to how confident you will have been at the time in how you played those hands, and how you felt like you ‘owned’ or ‘soul read’ your opponents, when in all likelihood you probably got lucky. I really like what Lex Veldhuis did recently on his YouTube channel where he looked back on his old hands and analysed them knowing what he knows now.

If you are growing as a player not only should you cringe at your old hands, a year from now you should probably be cringing at how you play your hands today.

The Dunning-Kruger effect also explains the popularity of poker, which as the saying goes "takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master". A game like chess is hard to pick up at first and the better player almost always wins, but a complete newbie can not only learn poker in minutes, they could beat the best in the world in their first try with some good fortune. As a poker player you should thank the Poker Gods for the Dunning-Kruger effect, which keeps people playing in games they have no business being in.

Maybe the most important part of all about the Dunning-Kruger effect is knowing that it still affects you in a number of different ways. You don’t know what you don’t know, after all. So maybe the biggest takeaway of all is to assume you don’t have all the answers and get input from people who know more than you (like a coach or in our hand review forum) so that you can lessen its impact.

What theories from outside of poker have helped your game? Let us know in the comments.

Related

• The Matthew Principle
• The Tragedy of the Commons
• Gambler's Ruin
• The Pareto Principle
• The Ultimatum Game
• The Survivor Bias
• The Cobra Effect
• Black Swan events
• Prospect Theory
• Marginal Utility
• Illusion of Control
• The Bike Shed Effect
• The Peter Principle
• Commitment Devices
• Flow