Re: Furgeson says have to be very intelligent! Is he right?
The assertion that there is any big inherent difference between being consciously mathematic in your decisions and intuitive is faulty.
If for example a player has played 100,000 hands in his life, but never bothered to calculate the odds of hitting a flush draw after flopping 4 to a flush, if he was a good player he'd intuitively have a very good natural feel for what the percentage was because the situation has arisen so many times and he's witnessed the results so many times. THis recall ability is mathematic based even if it's unconscious and requires intelligence.
Second point is that the math (whether consciously or subconsciously applied) is useless without understanding position, stack sizes, player types, etc. for any given hand. Similarly the converse is also true. If you correctly read a player as having Aces before the flop and fold QQ preflop then you have tremendous instincts and a good read. However if you read someone for AA holding QQ before the flop and they raise only 1/30th of their stack (and 1/30th of yours) and you STILL fold then, despite your good instincts you made a bad fold due to misunderstanding the math (in this situation implied odds) of the situation.
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