Communication in poker is the key that mathematics, on its own, does not hold. In Part 1 we saw why probability calculation, a winner online, is no longer enough in live tournaments: variance dominates and the few hands played prevent skill from emerging. So which tools are needed? The answer lies in a dimension other than numbers.
Live poker is immersed in communication
In a live tournament you cannot ignore the enormous amount of data that arises in every spot, and especially in each of its phases, deeply influencing your choices. The problem is that mathematics cannot handle this data: it does not belong to its dimension. The player is fully immersed in the dimension of communication.
Precisely because of its nature of direct, continuous duelling between opponents, live Texas Hold’em poker is the ideal arena to test a wide range of theories that study communication. It is no coincidence that the study calls it the ideal “empirical phase” for these theories: a laboratory in which, hand after hand, the ability to read the opponent beyond mere odds is tested in the field.
From Shannon and Weaver to complex theories
It was two mathematicians, Shannon and Weaver (1949), who first proposed a definition of communication with the famous “mathematical model of communication”. The unidirectional perspective of that theory was later superseded by more evolved and complete models, which consider the complex components of communication: feedback, context, communicative implicits, verbal and non-verbal language, and the effects of communicating in society [Paccagnella, 2010]. It is precisely context and communicative implicits that the unidirectional model could not capture: at the live table even an opponent’s hesitation becomes a signal useful for narrowing his range.
These studies too demonstrated a decisive point: mathematics cannot explain communication, or rather, like any other scientific discipline that deals with it, can only explain some aspects. This is exactly what every athlete must be prepared to do in a live tournament session.
The tools: from semiotics to body language
From a strategic standpoint, the studies of authors such as de Saussure, Hjelmslev, Durkheim, Bateson, Sapir-Whorf, Habermas, Levi-Strauss, Jonas, Goffman, Bourdieu and Birkenbihl proved useful. With their discoveries about communication, these scholars help bridge the informational gap intrinsic to probability calculation applied to live tournaments.
At the dawn of Texas Hold’em many of these disciplines, which adopt a qualitative method, did not yet exist, and some of the oldest, such as psychology, were often deemed unreliable in scientific circles. Among the most concrete tools is the study of non-verbal language — the “body signals” analysed by Birkenbihl (1990) — which at the live table becomes a source of information denied to online play. The reason is structural: online, unable to access any other type of information, the player can only rely on the EV calculation; live, by contrast, body language reopens a channel that numbers alone cannot replace.
From calculation to signification
The real paradigm shift lies in replacing the traditional process of calculation with the process of signification to analyse each spot. Depending on one’s own degree of comprehension, elaboration, interpretation and application, the disciplines made available by communication theories allow the player to reflect more deeply on the information acquired, with qualitative work that integrates the classic quantitative analysis, filling the interpretive gap.
In this way the communication sciences devoted to the study of languages make it possible to define the situation in a more microscopic way, through the signification of the newly available data: data that, in the communicative dimension, are called “information”. It is this work of interpretation that fills the gap left open by probability calculation alone.
A concrete example? This deeper reading can lead a player to fold a good but non-winning hand: a decision that probability calculation alone, blind to the “here and now” of the spot, could never suggest. In this model mathematics does not disappear, but becomes a complement to communication theories, helping to complete the critical analysis of live poker dynamics.
Beyond the “result oriented” player
In traditional live tournaments all-in situations are frequent, and even a professional struggles to avoid the confrontation. Most players are “result oriented”: they look only at the outcome of an elimination, without giving importance to the manner, ending up generalising negative judgements about opponents and about the very structure of the game. It is an emotional limit before a technical one: focusing on having been eliminated, these players amplify negative judgements and give up truly reading what happened in the spot.
The interdisciplinary approach overturns this perspective: it shifts attention to the quality of decisions and to the ability to recognise and define every game situation. It is the foundation on which the Skill Poker Index are built, the model that turns this qualitative reading into an objective criterion.
In the next article we will compare Texas Hold’em poker with traditional sporting disciplines, to understand under what conditions it can be recognised as a sport.
