Dan Harrington, one of the greatest poker players ever, said that, "Over the long run my results will be roughly equivalent to the sum of my opponents mistakes less my own mistakes." But as I have said regularly in the psychological posts, most people don't recongize their mistakes.

Let me give you an example from poker. In a low-stakes no limit game, I called a bet of 3.5 times the big blind with a KT unsuited and there were four people in the pot. My KTu is about the 45th best hand in poker so I could have easily been outclassed by one of the other hands. However, the flop was very favorable K42 with two spades. I check and someone with a small stack went all in (which was about twice the size of the pot). One other player called and I called.

On the turn an Ace came up. The next player raised enough to put me all in. I thought for as long as I could. I was beaten at this point with A anything and only a ten out there could save me. I was also beaten by an KJ and a KQ. And there was always the possibility of a flush. One of these two probably had me beaten and I assumed it was the one who just went all in. At this point I really assumed that calling was foolish and I folded. I lost most of my winnings by that fold, but I was still ahead in the game.

The last card came up as an insignifcant 6 of diamonds, so there was no flush for anyone with two spades in their hand. But I was shocked when the other players cards were revealed. The first one to go all in had a nut flush draw. He would have beaten me on the initial all in with his pair of aces. However, the other person who went all in second and would have put me all in revealed a 74 of spades. He had called the intial pot with trivial cards and my fold had cost me a lot.

I think my original fold still made sense, but it was a mistake had I known this player a little better. Over the course of 90 minutes, this player had lost three times the maximum buy in. Knowing that I should have taken a chance, but I didn't. It was clearly a mistake.

Ironically, I've found in cash poker games that you only get to see other peoples whole cards in one hand out of five or six (sometimes even more). That means that most of the time, people fold to big bets. There are a lot of opportunities for bluffs.