Intuition?

[deacsoft]

In the words of "Amarillo Slim"...

"Hunches are for dogs making love."

[Reber]

Well, since Dr. Al has referred to my research, I thought it time to wade in here on this topic. For some 40 years now I've been studying a process called "implicit learning" which is how people learn about the regularities in their world without being aware of either THAT they are learning or WHAT they are learning. What this process produces is best described as "intuition." That is, they have a vague sense that they know something about a situation, how someone will react, what the appropriate thing for them to do is, what the best decision is and so forth. It seems pretty clear that this process pops up in poker on a regular basis. It is the kind of thing that leads Chris to muck his AJo. He'd likely have a lot of difficulty telling us why he felt that way and would be very unlikely to able to specify exactly what elements in the situation were responsible but, as he suggests, if he's had enough experience playing the game, he is likely to be right here more often that wrong.

BTW, as another poster noted, this kind of intuitive feel can't be right all the time. And that's what we find in our research. People are typically correct in these settings about 65 or 70 percent of the time. That's not bad and if you muck an expensive loser (AJ against AQ or AK) 70% of the time you're intuition will save you a bundle.

Our research, of course, doesn't use poker. The situation is just too complex and it takes too long for people to develop the implicit knoweledge. We use simple displays like strings of letters that follow complex rules or sequences of lights that flash at various locations on a computer screen --- again, following rules. After a while people develop this vague, intutive sense of which sequences are "well-formed" and which violate the rules.

And, again, for what it's worth, other posters noted that highly automatized behaviors like driving a car or learning a complex skill like basketball seem to go in "the opposite direction." That is, you seem to learn these skills in a very slow, conscious fashion and only later on do they become automatic and carried out without thought. This is correct for many aspects of complex learning; it often goes from conscious to unconscious, from slow and labored to rapid and automatic. But implicit learning often goes the other way; it starts out with the learning taking place unconsciously and only later, with considerable struggle, is the person with the implicit knowledge able to make what he or she knows conscious.

There is, of course, a lot more behind our work but I don't want to bore you all here. If anyone is interested you can check out an early monograph on this topic: "Implicit learning and tacit knowledge: An essay on the cognitive unconscious" (Oxford University Press, 1993).

And, for whatever else it's worth, I'm a mid-stakes player of reasonable skills. I write often on poker and gambling --- frequently with Lou Krieger and, like Chris, I have learned to trust my intutions. A lot of hands get mucked based on vague intuitions that I couldn't explain in sufficient detail to satisfy any sensible sweater.

Arthur S. Reber

[CrisBrown]

Hi Reber,

Thanks for an informative and insightful reply. (For the record, though, I'm a she. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img])

I agree that there's a two-way process working here. Some of our intuition is shaped by formerly conscious behavior that has become so ingrained that it no longer requires any conscious thought. And some of it consists of what I think of as passive pattern recognition, where we have seen some event play out dozens or hundreds of times, and recognize a pattern in its flow, even if we can't articulate why.

I think an interesting question is whether some people, or some types of people, have a greater capacity for intuition (implicit learning, passive pattern recognition, etc.) than others. Some people talk about "women's intuition," but I really don't think that's true. Nor do I think intuition is an "either you have it or you don't" quality. It may be that many women are more prone to trust our intuition than are many men, but I don't think there's much difference in my intuitive sense of combining and contrasting tastes when I prepare a gourmet meal, and a skilled carpenter's sense of shape and texture and grain when he builds a fine piece of furniture. Both call for something that goes beyond pure logic, to a sense of "fittedness" ... again, pattern recognition.

And I think most poker players can learn this as well, if they truly focus on the game. Yes, we have to apply logic and mathematics; I certainly try to. But at another level, poker is more than a card game played by people; it is a people game played with cards. And a lot of that "people sense" is necessarily intuitive, and develops only with a lot of attention and experience.

I guess what I'm saying is, people who feel as if they have no poker intuition shouldn't give up on developing it. It isn't something that happens immediately, for anyone.

Cris

[Reber]

Ooops.... Okay, I see, Cris without the 'h'... Sorry.

Anyway, our work shows no gender effects. The notion of "women's intuition" as you guessed is due more to the fact that women pay more attention (particularly to social situations) than men. It is true that attention is critical. In our experiments, when a participant's attention is diverted by some other task, their ability to pick up the patterns in the displays is dramatically reduced.

Generally speaking, there aren't many individual differences. We find, in our studies, that most people are pretty much the same in their ability to learn in this implicit, intuitive way. And, for whatever it's worth, we also find no relationship between implicit learning abilities and intellgence --- at least intelligence as measured by standard instruments like IQ tests! The key, again as you noted, is practice. Folks like Doyle B. who are legendary for their ability to read people in this intuitive manner acquired their skills only after astonishing amounts of practice.

But enough of this. We're on our Spring break this week and I'm off to AC to play a whole lot of poker!

Arthur

[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]

[Ben]

If you're talking about a live game, I'm totally with you.

Online, my reads are weak and I tend to not trust my intuition much.

However, when playing live, I very frequently use intuition to read players. I start out by watching for common tells and obvious behavior, but after that I just tend to stare a player down. I don't really look for any particular behavior, I just clear my mind and wait for impressions to form. As human creatures, we're very adept at reading other humans without really trying--I think it's an almost subconcious ability we're born with and develop throughout life.

I find myself naturally able to read people with great results. It could be this wouldn't work for everyone, but I imagine most people would have some success with it.

-Ben

[Al Schoonmaker]

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

[superleeds]

é