Intuition?

[CrisBrown]

Hi All,

A horse that's probably been beaten to death here, but I thought I'd trot it out again.

How often do you rely on intuition when making decisions at the table? One particular example comes to mind for me. I often will muck a quasi-playable hand, even in fairly good position, because "I can smell a big hand out there." I've no other way to explain it. It's probably some combination of the betting patterns, the pauses before betting, or some such, but I just KNOW my AJo is dead meat, even from the CO, even for a limp or a min-raise, and in the muck it will go. And FAR more often than not ... someone behind me will toss in a big raise, and some early limper comes crashing in over the top, and I think ... I knew I smelled a big hand....

Oddly, I never PLAY a hand because "I have a feeling...." But I'll often MUCK a quasi-playable hand because "I can smell a big hand out there...."

Does this seem bizarre? Is it subconscious reasoning, pattern-recognition in what's happening at the table, etc.?

I don't know. But I do trust it.

Cris

[jrobb83]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll often MUCK a quasi-playable hand because "I can smell a big hand out there

[/ QUOTE ]

I find myself doing this sometimes too. I look down to see a lower-level good hand like AJo or AQo and something in my head will tell me to lay it down.

I think is probably has a little to do with subconciously recognizing betting patterns, reading pauses, something like that. Also I'm sure we remember the times when we "had a feeling" and laid down AJo pf and feel great when we see AK take down the pot much better than when we pay that hand off all the way.

[Eskon]

I have on several occasions mucked hands preflop because they didnt "feel right", and on a few that a can recall, they flopped extremely well (2 pr, trips, flush, 4 to a flush ect) only to be beaten in the end (in which case I would have lost big had I played) And at no point that I'm aware of was there a logical reason for the much.

I dont know what causes me to muck them(some of them would have won) but I do know it has saved me alot of money

[Al Schoonmaker]

The critical words in your post were: "on a few that I can recall." You and most other people have selective recall. You remember those hands or other events that support your belief that you have intuition or ESP, but forget the (probably) much greater number of times that your hunch was incorrect.
The scientific evidence could not be clearer. NOBODY has ESP. When you control adequately for various forms of error, it disappears. You can read more on this subject in my article, "ESP is nonsense," at cardplayer.com. Click on magazine, writers, and my name.
Regards,
Al

[superleeds]

[ QUOTE ]
"ESP is nonsense,"

[/ QUOTE ]

But I knew you were going to say that [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Al Schoonmaker]

Very funny.
I tried to write "touche," but couldn't make an accent on the "e."

[eric5148]

I never ever make decisions based on intuition. It's possible you are getting intuition confused with having a good read on the other players. You can get a "feel" for how your opponents are playing just by watching the game for while, even if your not really trying to focus on their play.

I think it would be interesting if you made a spreadsheet of all the times you made a decicion based on what you believe is intuition. Then post it here after about a thousand of these decisions.

[Dynasty]

I've never folded AJo and especially not AQo based on intuition. I doubt I've ever folded a hand pre-flop for these reasons.

But, I have folded hands like top pair after the flop for reasons which are best attributed to intuition or subconcious reasoning.

[James Boston]

I have nothing to back this up, and someone like Dr. Al probably knows much more about this than I do, but here goes. Things like "intuition" and "gut feelings" are most likely the result of you processing information subconsiously and then not reckognizing it when you have a "feeling." My play on the flop and beyond is often guided by this, and with good results.

[Kinli]

I'm a relatively inexperienced player, so anything I have to say must be regarded with suspicion.

However, most of my play *is* intuitive, and that intuitive feeling steadily grows better. I'm not one who can quickly calculate odds or outs and never will be. But the simple fact the my "intuition" seems to steadily improve leads me to believe that experience is building a data bank I'm tapping into without realizing it... in short, reading my own hands better, reading flops better, and, most importantly, reading the behavior of other players better.

I'm convinced that intuition is the sum of experience processed at a subconscious level.

Kinli