WSOP Final Table/Overconfidence

There's been a lot of mentioned in the poker media, blogs written and discussions on forums about Joseph Cheong's shove with A7o in the WSOP final table last night against Jonathan Duhamel's 5bet. You can also check out his exit interview here, Duhamel talks about the hand about 40 seconds in here too for their take if you missed it.

When I first heard about the hand, I assumed he cracked under the pressure and wasn't thinking clearly. The more I read, and having watched his interview and Duhamel's I don't think that was the case. I'm obviously not going to comment on the actual decision itself, but it seems to me that at a minimum, he made a decision that was unaffected by the pressure of the situation.

In my speculation prior to getting more information, I wondered if the people watching him play (or heard about it later, like me) that thought he went crazy and tilted or cracked under the pressure, think they would make the correct play in that spot? Players often think to themselves, watching someone else tilt, make mistakes, or struggle under pressure, that they wouldn't have the same problem. They assume if the roles were switched they could handle it no problem. It's the same thing that happens when you're sweating a friend and see everything they should do, but the second you sit down, suddenly it's not as easy.

It's subtle, but this is a good litmus test for overconfidence. Unless you've been in the same or a similar enough situation, you cannot know for sure how you'd handle it. But that doesn't stop many players from feeling 100% confident or 100% certain they could handle it easily. It's only real success that is proof, until then you're just estimating.

If you tend to estimate too high, that's overconfidence and you want to make sure that it isn't an issue in other parts of your game.

Despite what you may have read or hear overconfidence is a major issue that should not be taken lightly. Yes confidence is necessary to succeed in poker, but too much of it makes you prone to playing equally as bad as when you're tilted, tired, bored, etc. That's right being overconfident is just as bad as tilting. In fact, what player's commonly call 'winner's tilt' is actually overconfidence.

Overconfidence isn't something that just strikes players who are cocky, arrogant, full of themselves, etc...it happens to players who generally have a pretty good head on their shoulders. One of the reasons it's a major issue is the feeling of crushing the games, or imagining that you would fold to Duhahamel's 5bet, feels so good. Why would you want to stop that? Because the feeling is based on a lie. Not entirely of course, what what isn't true creates positive emotion that you didn't earn. In other words it's a fantasy.

One day it might come true, but until that point, make sure overconfidence doesn't prevent you from actually doing the work together. Sometimes the fantasy or dream world can seem so real that you lose motivation and focus...which is why player's spew money when they are up - the game is assumed to be so easy they're just sitting and printing money like poker is an ATM. Of course logically you don't think that way, but the unconscious flaws that create overconfidence do - and that's what causes winners' tilt.

It's a random way to get to talking about overconfidence, but I've been wanting to write about it for a while now, and it popped into my mind today while thinking about the final table.

Is anyone not overconfident enough to admit this is a problem for them? If so, describe it and the problems that happen because of it in the comment section.