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Mike Caro audio lecture - Law of Loose Wiring

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Mike Caro audio lecture 1:
Caro's Law of Loose Wiring
in association with Doyle's Room (DoylesRoom.com)

Things get strange in poker and in life. But you have a great deal of control over the weirdness.

Understanding "Caro's Law of Loose Wiring" will give you a huge headstart toward controlling your opponents.

Listen! (Click here to listen to Mike Caro). If you'd like, follow along with the text below...

By special arrangement with DoylesRoom.com, this is “the Mad Genius of Poker” Mike Caro, beaming directly to Earth from my galaxy, where all truth is known…

Nothing I could possibly teach you is more important than Caro’s Law of Loose Wiring. It not only governs the vast majority of the poker hands you’re ever going to be involved in, it’s the key to understanding why so many strange things happen in life.

Imagine wires for logical circuits that are loose and need to be connected. They can be connected in various ways to accomplish things – some wanted, some unwanted; and they can short out. Here’s what Caro’s Law of Loose Wiring says:

“If choices are not clearly connected to their benefits, people usually interact in ways that make outcomes unpredictable.”

And with poker players, it sounds this way: “If choices are not clearly connected to their benefits, players usually interact in ways that make outcomes unpredictable.”

In the first column I ever wrote defining my Law of Loose Wiring, I used a poker example from an imagined $75/$150 limit hold ’em game – Pot A and Pot B. In pot A, the pot was almost $4,000 large and the showdown was between seats five and six. In pot B, the pot was only $950 and the showdown was between seats three and seven, instead of five and six.

Then I showed the hands that led to the eventual showdowns for both pots, A and B. And, by golly, they were the same, seat for seat, card for card. What was even more mysterious – I explained that these two pots were actually played in parallel universes with identical players, having identical personalities, with the same chips, the same moods to begin the hand, everything the same.

Now, you’re saying, something must have been different. You can’t have one pot of $4,000 and one pot of $950 at the same limits, with the same players, the same moods, the same chips, the same cards, and a different pair of opponents competing at the showdown for vastly different-sized pots. Oh, yes you can. And when you understand this very important fact, you’re ready to enter the next tier of poker training.

What happens is that most poker decisions are not clear cut. The decisions are made by whim. A player confronts a hand that can either be played or not be played, that can either be called with or folded – or raised. And if the benefits of making one of those decisions over another is not clear to your oppponents, anything can happen.

And it gets stranger. Not only can anything happen with the first players to decide, but their decisions greatly influence the next players. Now, other players are faced with a different situation, and there are different marginal decisions to be made where the benefits of one choice over another are unclear. And the result of this interaction among players can be almost anything at all.

So, you need to remember that outcomes can only be predictable when your opponents have clear choices. They are guided by invisible forces influencing them at the last second. Maybe a clatter of dishes across the room breaks their concentration and makes them call rather than fold. Maybe a bad feeling caused by a chance fleeting memory makes them get out of the pot. Who knows?

And who knows in real-life beyond the poker table, either? That’s where Caro’s Law of Loose Wiring really comes into play. Most decisions that people make are not clearly connected to benefits. So anything is possible, and when those decisions at whim influence other people’s marginal decisions who act later, almost any history can be written.

But what this means in poker is that you have control of your opponents most of the time. Since most of their decisions aren’t clear, they’re willing to be steered. They’re precariously balanced and a small gust of wind can send them toppling in the direction of your choice. You are that wind. That’s why psychology is important in poker.

At poker, your opponents will usually be playing borderline hands, not extremely strong or extremely weak ones. And their decisions won’t be obvious to them. Their choices will not be clearly connected to their benefits. Realizing this, you now know that you have a great deal of control over your opponents. Anyone who ever told you that psychology doesn’t matter much, because the cards play themselves in poker, didn’t understand this powerful universal law of behavior. But now you do.

One last time – Caro’s Law of Loose Wiring:

“If choices are not clearly connected to their benefits, people usually interact in ways that make outcomes unpredictable.”

On behalf of DoylesRoom.com, this is “The Mad Genius of Poker” Mike Caro and that’s my secret today.

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