Such was the case during a weeklong training-of-trainers our union had in Baltimore a few months ago.  The segment was called “The Ladder of Inference.”

We were learning how people use their initial impression or pre-conceived notion about something or someone to justify continued feelings or thoughts along the same vein.  They infer bad intentions, for example, from behavior that in and of itself may be benign.  And as they make these inferences, their level of distaste or repulsion grows.  They, in effect, climb the ladder of inference -- augmenting their level of anger, insecurity or hostility as they step up from one conclusion to the next.

This all happens in their heads: That voice sounds natural, it progresses by tiny increments, and it is believable.  That’s what makes the voice of conclusion so pernicious.  And it speaks unopposed.

Here’s an example.  You work in the mailroom of a big company.  One of the young women from an office upstairs whom you’ve been kind of flirting with invites you to meet her at a Christmas party at someone’s house.  You decide to go -- since it’s a chance to get to know her better.  You come a little late.  You’re nervous about this party because you only really know one person -- the woman from the office who invited you and said she’d meet you there.  It’s in a wealthier part of the city than where you live.

It’s raining.  You take public transportation near to where the party is but you have to walk a couple of blocks to get there.  When you arrive the door is closed, but you can hear partying noise on the other side.  You ring the bell.  You wait.  You get wetter.  No one answers right away.  You think that they probably don’t care that you’re waiting outside.  Finally, someone comes; he opens up the door.  he's talking to someone as he does it, looking back over his shoulder as he opens the door.  It's not the host, just another guest.  You conclude that no one gives a shit about you or the fact that you went out of your way to get there.  You figure they’re too stuck up to care about some guy in the mailroom.

You walk in; one says hello to you, they’re all talking to each other and laughing it up.  You don’t see your friend -- she probably forgot that you were coming.  Maybe she decided not to come to avoid you.  This really steams you, since you don’t know what to do or whom to talk with.  Everyone else seems to be having a great time and they’re ignoring you.  They probably see themselves as better than you, since you’re a lowly mailroom clerk.  In fact, the girl who invited you probably did it as a joke.  These people are probably laughing at you for being the butt of the joke.  You decide to leave, mentally cursing them as a bunch of stuck-up jerks.

It all seemed so reasonable, so natural to conclude as you did that this was all a big joke on you.  But conclusions like this may or may not be based in truth.  We may believe them -- inferring one conclusion from a set of data and then climbing up to the next observation and drawing new conclusions.  But since we aren’t testing any of the conclusions as we climb this ladder of inference, we have no way to know if what we are inferring is correct or not.

Maybe it was a joke.  Or maybe your friend was waiting in a different part of the house, eager for your arrival.  Maybe the other partyers really do think little of you.  Or maybe they’re just paying attention to the folks they know.  You have no way to test your conclusions or weigh the data you are gathering objectively, since it is all your data.

We tend not to argue with our own data, our own opinions.  Left unchecked, we tend to spiral up this latter of inference, moving from one conclusion to another, without testing any of them.

You can change this behavior, but it requires you to challenge yourself and your conclusions, which is something that is not habitual, or comfortable for most of us.  For example, you could have asked someone where your friend was and, finding her, could have asked her directly if she invited you as a joke.  You could have put your assumptions and inferences aside and engaged people to test out your assumption that they were stuck-up jerks.

That was the idea of the training: to exhort us not to draw inferences from incomplete data, and to test our assumptions as we go.

How the heck does this relate to poker?

In this way: We climb this ladder of inference at the poker table all the time.  We infer all sorts of things from the players we compete with and then we strengthen our inference from all their future behavior.  This, in and of itself, doesn’t hurt us.  But we fail to test our initial assumptions, compounding any misimpressions as we go.  That hinders our ability to maximize our profit from the play of others.

Consider this example.  A middle-aged guy sits down at our poker table.  He’s got a deep tan, a silky, loud shirt with a couple of the top buttons open revealing a gaudy gold chain.  He also has on a fat gold bracelet and a pinky ring.  Right off the bat you’re thinking, “gambler.”  He pulls out a fat wad of bills and buys in for a very large amount for the table.  He asks loudly for the waitress, and orders something from her.

First hand in and he raises.  Everyone folds.  You think, “wild man,” and get ready for the ride.

Thereafter, every little thing he does away from the play of the cards, from waving to his buddy Anthony at a nearby table, to sending back his drink, to how he holds his cards, and how he says “raise it up” convince you that he's a free-spending, high-rolling gambler -- a maniac, as we call them in the poker room.

As the session goes on you’re focused on your dipping stack and his rising stack.  You attribute it to an unfair burst of good luck he’s had at your expense.  Your initial impression now firmly cast, you are unable or at least unwilling to actually view the data available to you about how he is playing his hands.  Had you not climbed up this ladder of inference -- where you convinced yourself of the correctness of your early characterizations and assumptions about him -- you would have been able to see that, far from being the reckless gambler that you believed him to be, he was a crafty, careful and skilled poker player who artfully cultivated his image just for the purpose of throwing off opponents like you.

Had you been willing to see the data objectively, you would have noticed that while his style was generally looser than yours and more aggressive than yours on the early rounds of betting, he rarely played to the River without a very strong hand.  You would have seen that while he gave a lot of action early, and coupled it with a hefty dose of acting and talking at the table, he was camouflaging a selective style of play.

In poker we must, of course, rely on our initial impression of our opponent to determine a course of action against him.  That’s what it means to read people.  We get a general impression, place them into a general category of player, and then try to exploit his style of play with our own countermeasures.  But we must constantly update that assessment based on the data that is continually presented to us during the play of the hand, and as the poker session develops.  If we stick to our first impression and use all future observations just to justify that assessment, we will fall into this trap of climbing the ladder of inference.  Once climbed, that ladder offers only a false perspective.