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Science and technology
科學技術(shù)
How to win at poker
怎樣成為撲克牌高手
A handy tip
訣竅之一
Keeping a straight face is not enough
喜怒不形于色？不太夠
A POKER face. It is the expressionless gaze that gives nothing away.
所謂擺一張撲克臉，就是指那種不漏聲色面無表情的凝視。
To win at poker, the face must be mastered, and master it is what the best players try their best to do.
在撲克游戲中要想成為贏家，面部表情務(wù)必要控制得滴水不漏。賭圣們也正是這么做的。
But a study just published in Psychological Science by Michael Slepian of Stanford University and his colleagues suggests that even people with the best poker faces give the game away.
不過，近期斯坦福大學邁克爾·斯萊皮恩與其同事在《心理科學》上發(fā)表了一份研究報告，即使一個人面容表情控制得再完美，也會泄露心機。
They do so, however, not with their heads but with their hands.
而出賣他們心機的并不是那張臉，而是作為賭徒的一雙手。
Mr Slepian made his discovery when he showed 78 undergraduate volunteers video clips of players placing bets at the 2009 World Series of Poker.
斯皮萊恩做了一項實驗：他為78名志愿參與實驗的大志愿者學生播放2009年世界職業(yè)撲克大賽選手下注時候的錄像片段。
The clips were 1.6 seconds long, on average, and featured different parts of the players' anatomies.
錄像每段平均1.6秒，鏡頭截取了選手不同的身體部位。
Some showed everything visible from the table up: chest, arms and head. Some showed just the face.
從桌子上方看。第一種，志愿者學生能看到他們露在桌子上方的全部身形：胸部、上肢和頭部；第二種，志愿者學生能看到上肢和雙手；
And some showed only the arms and hands.
第三種，志愿者學生只能看到他們的臉。
Each volunteer watched only one of the three types of video, but was shown several examples.
志愿者學生只會看到以上三種其中之一，不過會看到不同選手的錄像片段。
After each viewing, volunteers were asked to rate the quality of the player's hand on a seven-point scale.
每觀看完一段錄像，志愿者學生會給錄像中選手手牌評分。
Then, when they had finished watching all the clips, they were asked to rate their own experience with poker on a similar scale.
之后觀看完全部的錄像，他們還會給自己的撲克水平打分。
Mr Slepian found that students were poor at judging the quality of a player's hand when shown just that player's face.
斯萊皮恩發(fā)現(xiàn)，如果只看錄像中選手的面部表情，志愿者學生在給選手手牌打分時會顯得捉襟見肘。
Indeed, he noticed a negative correlation of 0.07. This is not huge.
而他也確實從中得出一個0.07的負相關(guān)。數(shù)值并不大。
But it meant there was a statistically significant tendency that the better a volunteer believed the hand to be, the worse it actually was.
但是，在數(shù)據(jù)上的確顯示了很明顯的趨向：如果僅從面部判斷，志愿者學生認為哪個人手牌好，那么實際上這個人手牌很差。
When a player's whole posture was considered, this misapprehension went away: if a volunteer could see everything about a player from the table up there was no correlation between his judgments of a hand's value and its actual value.
而選手的身姿全部納入觀察視線中時，這一負相關(guān)便會消失不見。如果志愿者學生可以觀察到選手在桌面以上所有身形時，那么學生通過賭徒身形對手牌好壞的判斷和手牌實際好壞之間不存在相關(guān)關(guān)系了。而
When a volunteer could see only arms and hands, however, Mr Slepian found a positive correlation, of 0.07, between his guesses and reality.
總結(jié)那些只能看到上肢和雙手志愿者學生所觀察的數(shù)據(jù)時，斯皮萊恩發(fā)現(xiàn)猜測與實際之間的關(guān)系呈現(xiàn)出0.07的正相關(guān)。
To confirm his discovery, Mr Slepian re-ran the experiment with a different set of clips.
為減小實驗結(jié)果的誤差，斯皮萊恩用不同的一套錄像片段重新做了一次實驗。
The results were the same.
結(jié)果并無二致。
Students, even those who were poker novices, could judge the quality of a professional poker player's cards from the behaviour of his hands.
即使是那些不會玩牌的志愿者學生也能夠從一位職業(yè)撲克玩家的手部動作判斷出他手牌的好壞。
The next question was, how?
那么，他們是怎樣判斷的呢？
Mr Slepian knew from previous studies by other people that anxiety has a tendency to disrupt smooth body movements, and he suspected this might be the explanation.
斯皮萊恩從之前其他人的研究中得知，人的焦慮情緒會影響肢體動作施展的連貫性，他認為這很可能就能作為自己實驗結(jié)果的解釋。
To find out, he showed 40 new volunteers the clips he had used in the previous experiment.
為了證實這一猜測，他給40名新的志愿者學生播放了之前用過的那套錄像資料。
Rather than asking them to judge the quality of a player's cards, however, he asked them to rate either that player's confidence or how smoothly the player pushed his chips into the middle of the table.
之后不再問他們選手手牌好壞，而是讓其判斷選手是否自信，或者在選手將籌碼向桌子中間推的過程中，動作夠不夠流暢。
He found that when students rated players as being confident or having hands that moved smoothly, the cards they held were likely to be good.
斯皮萊恩發(fā)現(xiàn)，只要是志愿者學生認為選手是自信的或者選手在向前推籌碼時動作一氣呵成，那么他們的手牌就會很不錯。
There was a positive correlation of 0.15 when the students considered confidence and of 0.29 when they looked for smooth movement, so they were actually more capable of determining hand quality from these variables than when asked to estimate it directly. 所以在判斷選手手牌好壞時，相對于直接估量，志愿者學生可以從這些變量中更好地做出判斷。
志愿者學生認為自信的選手，猜測與實際就是0.15的正相關(guān)；志愿者學生認為動作連貫舒展的選手，呈現(xiàn)出的是0.29的正相關(guān)。
The moral of the story for players, then, is don't look your opponent squarely in the eye if you want to know how good his cards are.
本文的寓意則在于，如果想知道對方手牌好壞，選手在比賽時不要只是直勾勾地盯著對方眼睛看。
The secret of his hand is in his hands.
秘訣在于他們的手上動作。
