What do you think about poker intuition, or intuition in general?

Intuition is an interesting concept. It's something that defies logic and mathematics and relies completely on gut feelings. I've always held logic in high regard and tend to be skeptical about things that aren't proven or tangible, but I'm wondering about intuition.

Let's take poker intuition. I'm not talking about having a read on a certain player and definitely not about pot odds or other good reasons to play a hand, or play it a certain way. Do you ever look down at that premium hand and get a gut feeling it's going to get you in trouble? Or see 8T offsuit and just "know" you should play it? Are you right about it when that happens? Are you right more than you're wrong?

Yesterday I played a tournament with a couple of friends, and one of them was at my table. He was a couple of seats to the right of me, we were at the final table and the blinds were big. It was pretty much push or fold time. I was in middle to late position and everyone folded to me and I looked down at AK. I pushed and took the pot. He turned to me and said, "Remember this hand. I want to talk with you about it later." Later he said that he'd had AJ, definitely a fine pushing hand when short stacked, but that he'd just had a feeling that I had a better hand. I hadn't looked at my cards yet, so he couldn't have gotten any kind of tell from me. It was just a feeling he had.

Do you believe intuition is real, or coincidence that seems real because when we're right it feels so much more significant than when we're wrong? Lately I've been wanting to follow my intuition, but deviating too far from logic doesn't seem like a smart plan. Do you use a combination of both?

Although I'm a follower of the measurable and the proven, I think there are lots of things in this world that we don't completely understand and/or don't use to our full capacities. Last year I saw into one of my husband's dreams, which we discovered the following morning. That was freaky....

That wasn't intuition, he watched you play and evaluated your action...

There are reasons for what you call intuition... would the same guy 'feel' you had a better hand if he was sitting at the bar having a drink?

If you ain't a wizard, and you believe in magic...

Yes, I believe in intuition at the tables, pulling the trigger on it is tough sometimes. Example for me from this past weekend...playing in a Sit 'N Go at Wild Wild West in AC...I have 44 from middle position, blinds are 50-100. UTG raises to 300, I look at the 44, I'm thinking, I know a 4 is going to hit, but I let it go anyway. Button calls. Flop is 10 10 A. Both check. Bam, 4 on the turn. UTG bets 400, button raises to 800, UTG calls. K on the river also puts 3 clubs on board. UTG goes all in. Button calls. UTG shows KK for Kings full of 10s, Button shows flopped boat (A 10) for 10's full of Aces.

So I was right about my 4 hitting, but I would have been killed by the button, let alone the UTG guy who caught his K.

For the past few months...

I feel I have lots of intuition!!!

I know that regardless of the odds, when I have a hand I will be beaten

Yesterday, on the bubble, pushed all in with QQ. One guy, short stack, turns Q8, other guy, less chips than me, just, turns 88. Q8 catches his flush, other guy hits only 8 left in pack. Don`t know what the odds were for me to win, but pretty big I think?

Heraclitus said:

That wasn't intuition, he watched you play and evaluated your action...

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I acted after him and hadn't looked at my cards yet.

I definetly believe in intuition and use it in my play. There have been plenty of times were I got that feeling that I should or shouldn't play. I listen to it and 8 out of 10 times I will act on it and hit.

a woman's intuition is a powerful thing!!

It has to do with something that requires an open mind.

Well I haven't posted in a while, but I might as well alienate myself from the uncreative section of the cardschat community by saying this. The age of water <Pisces> ended somewhat recently and the age of air, spirit, and or Aquarius has begun. It is supposed to be an age of higher mental and spiritual development for the world. I have seen <call it recall bias if you want, but I am aware of it and it seems to surpass the regular % of coincidence that one would find from random occurrences> what I feel is a huge example of people becoming a lot more intuitive in every aspect of thinking that requires decisions based on little to no information before hand. Take it as you will, but I have a strong feeling even the most skeptical of you will agree that in the near future people will have greatly increased psychic abilities and/or the ability to harness their subconscious thoughts.
Isaac

I certainly beleive in intuition, but don't always act on it. This is a part of my game I am working on.

I trade alot (financial markets) and in this sphere intuition is king. The subconscious mind is massively powerful. After pouring info into it through the conscious part of the mind it has the ability to function at an incredible level of competence, if you let it. Often I'll see a chart and "know" what will happen next. These are the best trades ever. The problem is that the ego doesn't know where the info came from and so can resist against it.

To relate that back to poker, Brunson calls this "Recall" or "Feel" in SS2. After consciously anaylising so much info, the subconscious picks it up and starts to give back a response. There is a brilliant book called "The Inner Game of Tennis" which explores this phenomenon in detail.

Ya, Doyley sums it up pretty well: 'recall' is pretty much the 'feel' that the subconscious analysis of the situation gives you by using past info from previous hands you've stored in your memory.

If you're talking about 'oh I have a feeling this pocket pair's gonna hit a set', well I personally don't believe in it. To let something like that take over my common sense would be just...well, stupid.

I certainly believe in intuition. Everytime I garner an intuitive feeling about a hand it comes true, sort of in reverse. If I believe the next card will save me from myself, it usually doesn't. But, if I am sure there is no way that these cards could ever win and I lay down, they usually turn out to win.

Taken further, I try the old double reverse on myself, so if my first intuition is to fold, then I bet, and sure enough... I should have folded. Haha.

Actually I think some people are in tune with things I never will be and if its better at reading the table, isn't that what intuition is?

This is a great thread.

I started to dabble a bit with this after I came to realize I was not to bad at pinning whole cards before they were revealed. This could make a player go broke fast if one wasn't careful. I haven't thought much as to how I come up with the info but sometimes it seems so obvious what the other player has, or DOESN"T have. I recall one hand late in a tourney where another player went all-in on 4th and I called him with a pair of 3's (my whole cards A3) he turned up a 79o and lost with high card.

I didn't re-run the hand in my head before calling and I didn't think to hard about why I called, I just knew he/she was stealing.


It would be nice to have a good gut feeling like this all the time.

I do know of another gut feeling that is confirmed right after calling and then.... "oh it is the flush" "damnit" That gut feeling I need to pay more attention to at times.

Ok i dont believe in intuition even tho i have correctly predicted things before because as many times as my intuition is right it is wrong so i just play my own crazy way and somehow win $$$$$ it gotta be rigged

ChuckTs said:

Ya, Doyley sums it up pretty well: 'recall' is pretty much the 'feel' that the subconscious analysis of the situation gives you by using past info from previous hands you've stored in your memory.

If you're talking about 'oh I have a feeling this pocket pair's gonna hit a set', well I personally don't believe in it. To let something like that take over my common sense would be just...well, stupid.

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OK, so that's an opinion and to say listening to intuition and/or subconscious reasoning which can easily be translated as, "common sense". Well that kind of reasoning can also be labeled as, "stupid". Having never experienced and/or found circumstantial proof to deny or disprove a hypothesis, is a good point to admit that you just don't know instead of belittling people that have found this to be true in their own experience. All I'm saying is think about the generalized insult before you sling it out there with no good reasoning other than you just don't get it or haven't experienced it for yourself.
Isaac

LiquidFire said:

OK, so that's an opinion and to say listening to intuition and/or subconscious reasoning which can easily be translated as, "common sense". Well that kind of reasoning can also be labeled as, "stupid". Having never experienced and/or found circumstantial proof to deny or disprove a hypothesis, is a good point to admit that you just don't know instead of belittling people that have found this to be true in their own experience. All I'm saying is think about the generalized insult before you sling it out there with no good reasoning other than you just don't get it or haven't experienced it for yourself.
Isaac

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blegh; wrote this whole long response and I got disconnected. Here we go again.

I'm sorry I used the word stupid; wasn't aimed or directed at anyone other than myself. Had I depended on a 'feel' that my 67s was going to hit in a highly unfavorable situation and played by this read rather than follow my normal game, it would be stupid.

I mean really, if you've got a raise from a super tight player ahead of you, then a reraise from an even tighter player, and you get this 'feeling' or 'intuition' that your T8s is going to hit, do you play it? That, IMO, is a very stupid play unless you've got a proven track record of your 'feel' actually being right like %90 of the time.

I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong by a person showing me a nice sample size where these 'feelings' came true more often than not to the point of relying on them during a hand. I of course don't mean a read on a player like a feeling that this player was trying to bluff you off of a draw, but that you had a 'feeling' that your draw was going to hit, and it did.

Again, no offense intended. Those who know me know I don't make rude comments on purpose without a reason to.

I definitely believe in intuition, though I've not been able to use it online for some reason. Seems I have to actually handle the cards to get a feel for 'em, and even then it's not dependable... it comes and goes as it pleases. But there are definitely nights when I can have you shuffle and cut a random deck and I can flip over every card in that deck telling you what it is before hand, and I'll be right!

I was playing in a brick n' mortar tourney in Nebraska a few years ago and I had one of those intuition things hit me. I didn't look at my cards and said to the table at large "you better get out of this hand because I'm going to win this one." and the guy across the table from me who was UTG says "Oh yeah, how do you know?" and I said "Because I know what you have in your hand." He kind of snickered and came back with "Ok then, tell me what I have". By this time the actions had come around to me. I said "Pocket Jacks, both red" and pushed all my chips in the middle.

His jaw kind of got slack and his face turned white and he folded his cards. I looked down in my hand to discover pocket 8's. I had two callers. The dealer turns over J-J-8 on the flop, another 8 on the turn and X on the river. This guy started banging his head on the table and quickly grabbed his folded cards from the muck pile to show me what I had folded. I calmly turned over my quad eights and took the huuuge pot.

That's not the only time either. There've been hands that I play entirely blind, raising and calling as I feel the action deserves it, only to have someone turn over a monster at the end, then I shrug and say "yep that's a great hand" and turn over the only two cards that could possibly beat their monster.

I don't know how often that's happened to me in real cash games... but it doesn't work that way for me online for some reason. I've just learned to trust my gut instinct on certain hands. It's like being semi-drunk. I get kind of buzzy in my head and I just KNOW it's one of those hands. Not once has it failed me, not yet.

Lana_Faith said:

His jaw kind of got slack and his face turned white and he folded his cards. I looked down in my hand to discover pocket 8's. I had two callers. The dealer turns over J-J-8 on the flop, another 8 on the turn and X on the river. This guy started banging his head on the table and quickly grabbed his folded cards from the muck pile to show me what I had folded. I calmly turned over my quad eights and took the huuuge pot.

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What kind of poker you play where quad 8s beats quad jacks?

Really, does it exist in poker? Unfortunately I think it's more common in players with the most talent. That little voice is your poker talents analyzing information and comming up correctly. As far as your buddy knowing that you had him beat before you even looked at your cards. I'd find it interesting if he came up on the correct end more than 50% of the time.Call me a skeptic.

baystate123 said:

Call me a skeptic.

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You're a skeptic.

ChuckTs said:

Again, no offense intended. Those who know me know I don't make rude comments on purpose without a reason to.

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I actually know your a REALLY intellectual person from the posts I've read of yours. I also know your very respectful. I think it is me that should apologize for putting you on the defensive considering my previous knowledge about your disposition. With that being said, I understand that at one point it was unreasonable to think other than you are thinking. However... Like I said, I feel that it won't be long before it has become a reality that our intuitions will become stronger than most people imagined they would be at an accelerated rate. I don't know any other way of proving it other than to say, "Open your eyes to what may come and open your hearts to it not being bad or weird when it comes to pass".
Once again, I have a lot of respect for you just as I have a lot of respect for Sleazy E < It's a compliment to him if you can believe it:rofl: >
BTW how do you give respect? I know I'll never get any, but I see a lot of posters that deserve mine.
Isaac

ChuckTs said:

What kind of poker you play where quad 8s beats quad jacks?

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Lana_Faith said:

His jaw kind of got slack and his face turned white and he folded his cards.[[<<perhaps you didn't see this sentence]] I looked down in my hand to discover pocket 8's. I had two callers. The dealer turns over J-J-8 on the flop, another 8 on the turn and X on the river. This guy started banging his head on the table and quickly grabbed his folded cards from the muck pile to show me what I had folded. I calmly turned over my quad eights and took the huuuge pot.

That's not the only time either. There've been hands that I play entirely blind, raising and calling as I feel the action deserves it, only to have someone turn over a monster at the end, then I shrug and say "yep that's a great hand" and turn over the only two cards that could possibly beat their monster.

I don't know how often that's happened to me in real cash games... but it doesn't work that way for me online for some reason. I've just learned to trust my gut instinct on certain hands. It's like being semi-drunk. I get kind of buzzy in my head and I just KNOW it's one of those hands. Not once has it failed me, not yet.

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He folded his cards preflop. Perhaps you didn't see that part of the story.

That I did :/

I swear my mind is already fading at age 20...

Well, Seems to me the stages is set for an in depth, comprehensive, pseudo scientific study of the intuition conundrum.

Lets get those who believe they are 'intuitive' into a team tourney against those who would never entertain the notion.


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Intuition to me suggests internalized knowledge. Like a newborn knowing what to suckle. Or in baseball, a hitter being unconsciously aware of the spin on the ball when pitched, or any hubby out there who knows to avoid answering the 'How does this look" question.
Intuition goes right along with my flopology theory.

As has been said by some people; if you're talking about intuition regarding if a player is bluffing, has a hand, anything involving a read, I think this can be legitimate because it can be based subconsciously on observations you've made, the things you have learned, and a number of psychologically valid things.

But as far as playing a hand because you intuitively believe you will hit, I find this incredibly silly. I defy someone to try proving, over a gigantic sample, that you hit more often than normal when your "intuition" tells you you will. The cards are determined by some little machine that spits out random numbers based on microscopic differences in the timing of mouse clicks and things like this! How on earth can you intuitively read something like that?

combuboom said:

I defy someone to try proving, over a gigantic sample, that you hit more often than normal when your "intuition" tells you you will. The cards are determined by some little machine that spits out random numbers based on microscopic differences in the timing of mouse clicks and things like this!

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How about 100% correct in every instance that "intuition" has told me to be in a hand, in a brick and mortar situation? Would that suffice?

combuboom said:

How on earth can you intuitively read something like that?

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I don't pretend to understand how, I only know that it does happen. Let's not forget that science is the study of phenomenae that exist, it doesn't pretend to answer the questions "how" or "why". Those are left for the philosophers.