GTO Poker Theories – the Peak-End Rule


We tend to remember the peak and the end, or in poker the biggest coolers and the bustouts.

poker

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.

Coined by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues, the Peak-End Rule suggests that our memories of past experiences are disproportionately shaped by two key moments: the peak (the most intense or emotionally charged point) and the end (the final moments) of the experience. This cognitive heuristic has significant implications for understanding human decision-making, perception, and overall well-being.

At its core, the Peak-End Rule challenges the conventional wisdom that the duration of an experience dictates its overall evaluation. Instead, it emphasises the disproportionate weight we assign to the most intense moments and how an experience concludes.

Holidays are a good example of the Peak-End Rule, we tend to judge them on the high point and the end, rather than the whole thing. I just got back from Rome where we went on an amazing food tour (the peak) and had a lovely final evening (the end), so my wife calls it our best holiday in years. I actually think our trip to Berlin the year before was much more consistently enjoyable but it didn’t have many peaks and it ended badly (airline strike), so she doesn’t remember it as fondly. 

It also explains why movies like The Usual Suspects and 8-Mile are so popular, despite in my opinion being quite average. They both have amazing endings that make them ‘classics’ for a lot of people. 

We focus on the biggest coolers

poker
We mostly remember the coolers

I think we use the Peak-End Rule to judge poker sessions, and that in turn influences what we study. 

We tend to remember only the biggest cooler hands of the session (usually the ones we lost) and not the many small pots along the way. We also tend to overweight how the session ended. 

I am particularly guilty of this. Unless it has been a big winning session or I brick everything, I tend to be wrong about how my session went. If I take a really bad beat and also bubble my final tournament, I tend to assume I had a big losing session, and vice versa. I am often surprised when I discover the session I was tilting in was a winning session, or the one I thought I crushed was a losing session. 

I think this influences how we approach study, in particular the urge to study the biggest cooler hands. These are usually hands that play themselves (like AA vs KK, or set over set) and studying them does not provide much benefit. We also focus too much on bustout hands, as they are by definition how the session ended. 

This is one of many reasons why I have started filming my sessions. It allows me to pick out hands that are worth studying, which I am able to spot later on because enough time has passed because I am no longer fixating on the peak, or the end. 

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

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