Theory of mind and card games

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Are any of you here into card games? Would card games, like poker fall under the theroy of mind issues that have been discussed here.

I mention this since over the weekend, a person taught me how to play egyptian rat-slap, and I was getting extremely frustrated trying to play it.

For the those who are unfamiliar with the game, it's a game of speed and rote where people who play it throw cards down onto a pile looking for two certain patterns to appear in the cards on the top of the pile. When they do appear, you have to "slap" the pile. The first who's hand hit the pile, gets all the cards in the pile.

Anyways, at a normal pace, I simply cannot keep up with the game. The cards would come too fast for me to keep track of, and when the time came to "slap" the pile, there was a great delay for me to recognize the patterns required to "slap" the pile.

Even when the game was slowed way waaaaaaaaaaay down for my own sake, I was still god-awful at it.

Is this like 'snap'?

I cant play any games that require thinking and reacting at speed. Im not sure its entirely connected to Theory of Mind though.

I love card games (and most board games), my family always played them when I was a kid, so I learnt a few basics. I'm probably bad at poker and things where facial expressions will tell other players how good your hand is, but I only play online now, so it doesn't matter. I'm completely hopeless at chess....too many things to think about before you can move. I think that type of 'snap' game might be a problem, but there's lots of others. Beginners usually play rummy or some type of 'collecting' game... collecting suits or ranks.

The only time I ever entertained or invited people over was for cards or scrabble. I think the appeal for AS types is that it's an 'eyes down' thing, you don't have to make eye contact as much as in a purely social occasion and it gives you something to do, something to talk about, so you don't have to think of things to say. I also find cards attractive, the design and the idea of them appeals to me.

I play at yahoo games, you can teach yourself games and play with bots until you feel confident.

PP

I don't really see any connection between card games and theory of mind.

I don't particularly like them, either. I have a hard time understanding the rules (even in board games, I am constantly referring to the rule sheet or asking questions of other players), and, as you have mentioned, I do not react quickly enough. I just don't find them enjoyable.

Heh, I'd probably be the opposite. "Flat affect" and all. People generally can't read me in normal conversation, so I guess it would be an asset in a game like poker.



This is not exactly on topic, but oddly enough, I really enjoy staring contests. I'm a staring contest champion, among my friends here at school. What I find so interesting about this is that I don't actually stare at the person's eyes, but stare sort of unfocused and past them or at their hair, mouth, or forehead, yet they don't seem to notice this. That's generally how I make "eye contact" in conversation, as well.

Poker and a lot of card games rely on you being able to predict what your opponents have. Oddly, I can do this well, but cannot tell when somebody is mad at me. Partly, this is because I have watched my dad's poker videos by Mike Caro and Howard Lederer about tells. In poker, it is equally important to know the statistical odds of your opponent having that hand, not just what they represent. I am helped a lot by the fact that I give off no tells, unless I intentionally fake them; because of my lack of facial expressions. Hand flapping I do at random, so it is a *misleading* tell if anything. Also, people think I'm a poor poker player because I'm a girl! How stupid. (Annie Duke wrote an article recently about how this is an advantage though; to be underestimated) So, I think people with theory of mind defects still can be excellent card players; because their are many more factors invovled than just understanding people. A video I would recommend is Mike Caro's Poker Tells.

When I'm not hyper, I enjoy playing Texas Hold'em Poker online. It involves probability estimations, and also thinking about how your opponents would behave in this hand. In a sense there's Theory of Mind involved, however it's only for that game and it's hard for me to relate it to other social things.