The Ape Bot

We react to things based on our ability to perceive them. Say for example you’re asked to hold a bowl. You know it’s a bowl and it’s going to gradually fill up. You’re asked to tell when you know it’s being filled. The catch is you’re blind folded and can’t hear. You can only feel.

Now if the bowl was filled a drop at a time, you’d probably never notice until the bowl was full. But if it was filled at a time, you’d be able to tell when the first hit the bowl due to the weight difference. This is a psychological phenomenon we as humans all share in our ability to perceive things.

And this can come in handy when playing poker online. Known as the thereshold of perception phenomenon, this little trick can help you spot tells that you would otherwise miss if you were just focused on polarized signs.

A pro was playing a poker table and watching a guy’s posture (as posture is a huge tell). And he noticed that over the course of a couple hours that a player would be leaning all the way forward if he was bluffing, if he had a draw with a few of outs, he would sit back slightly, with a lot of outs, he’d sit back a little more, and with a monster or the nuts, he’d sit all the way back.

Now to the poker online player this was all unconscious, but to the pro, he noticed the tendency and was able to exploit it simply by depolarizing his tell meter and looking at the threshold of change in a certain player. And this my friends is how you take one tell and maximize the efficiency of what it means.