Odds vs. Gut Feeling

[Kinnipak]

I have been doing my homework on Odds/Implied Odds. I am starting to get a
reasonable grasp on how to apply them. My question for you is this. There
have been times, where even though I am getting very good odds to call a
hand, I have the gut feeling I am beat. If I treat every session as "one
big session", I know that over the long run, it makes good poker sense to
call the raise because of the odds I am getting. But there have also been
times, where I have called because the odds were heavily in my favor and
have lost.

So my question is this. When do you listen to your head (odds) and when do
you listen to your gut (feeling)? I know enough to get "reads" on my
opponents before getting into any serious hands with them, I am not just
flying blind. Also, I am sticking mainly to Limit HE, .5/1 and lower.

Thx for any insight.

[tinhat]

$0.02:

I don't believe in psychics; and I don't believe anyone can talk to the dead. But I also believe information is acquired and assessed in non-metaphysical ways we probably aren't too aware of.

If this were live I'd probably pay some attention to it and all other things being equal it could sway my decisions depending on how reliable this sort of thing has been.

But online and without stacks of experience I would trust the math over feelings any day. There may be times when you're 99% certain a good call is a waste of money; but the only thing that's always 100% is correctly executed math. Human judgement is necessarily fallible; math is not so I follow the math without hesitation.

/$0.02

[Kinnipak]

Xcellent thoughts. Thank you.

:-)

Situations such as this happen frequently, and many times you are getting the odds to call (even when your hand is not the best at the time).

Taking into consideration what your opponent has is good, but unless you can be 100% certain that you are beat (something you can never really be) there are times you just have to call.

For example, say you have TPNK and are HU on the river. The pot is 10BB and your opponent bets. You have to be better than 90% sure you are beat (i.e. think you lose this pot more than 9 out of 10 times) to fold in this situation. Such certainty rarely presents itself in a game of imperfect information such as Texas Hold 'Em.

Hope that answers your question, if not let me know.

[tiltaholic]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't believe in psychics; and I don't believe anyone can talk to the dead.

[/ QUOTE ]

[tiltaholic]

hi

like tinhat said -- the math is 100% correct. assuming you start with the right math.
however, we often and almost always use our gut (aka "our experience") in determining the framework in which we begin to think about the math.

so there is room for both.

however, learning which gut feelings to trust learning which gut feelings to have in the first place and which gut feelings to unlearn or ignore is the tricky part.

[Dieter01]

Kinnipak, what you need to do is read this classic thread:

Ed Miller will just love this one : KK in MP

GoT, Joe Tall, Homer, sthief09, Trix and a lot of other heavy hitters chime in on this one. It discussses exactly what you are addressing here in a very clear way.

[Dieter01]

One prime example of the best play being different from what looks like the best (gut feeling wise) can be found here:

AKs River Decision

This one is also by GoT, The Dude is his roomate and it was actually GoT who played the hand. The two links I have provided here were the ones that made me understand that you need BOTH gut feeling and math to suceed at poker. You first use your gut feeling to break down the villains holdings, then use math to make the right decision. I think this concept is very important to understand, as you can't always break it down to a pot odds vs out problem, and merely applying gut feeling to a final decision is not sufficient.