Poker is a demanding game. It requires clear, rational decisions in the midst of a complex and constantly shifting landscape. The more bad decisions we make, the more bad results we get. And in a poker game so many things can influence, interfere with, and generally muck up the decision-making process for us, including a little-known problem called the anchoring bias.easy cards tricks

Anchoring is a cognitive bias that describes the human tendency to rely too extensively on one piece of information, the "anchor”, when making a decision. An investor looking to buy a stock might focus too heavily on the current price relative to the 52-week highs and lows, and neglect to take into account the P/E ratio or the future earnings potential of a company. Similarly, a home buyer might zero in on square footage to the exclusion of other critical factors such as the age of the house or the location. Anchoring undermines our ability to see – and then make an informed decision based on – the big picture. marked cards

For poker players, this bias can affect us in a number of ways. At any given moment in a poker game, we have many factors to weigh and consider when making a decision. Position, pot odds, number of opponents, playing styles, stack sizes, etc – and that’s just in a cash game. Tournament poker brings a whole new host of new things to take into account. And realistically, most of don’t weigh all these various factors as much as we should because, just like the stock investor and the home buyer, we have a "favorite” factor, a go-to factor, that we consider first and above all others.

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