Quote Originally Posted by Ripptyde
I'm not sure if anyone caught yesterdays episode of the WSOP on ESPN but Gerry Drehobl had been playing POKER for only 6 months and took home over $365,000 dollars. I doubt seriously he had all the odds charts memorized to a T.

http://www.harrahs.com/wsop/event_re...SOP_Event7.pdf
I saw Gerry play, he got some cards and played them well. He didn't make any mistakes. I was more amazed that Negranu only got 3rd. He was dominating for a while and it was amazing that he lost his lead.

As far as your theory goes, I totally agree. I heard a good analogy in the movie Shine.

David was practicing for his important piano recital. His teacher told him, "You have to learn the music backward and forward, memorize every note... then forget it all. Play the music from your heart, not your brain. Don't just tap the notes, live the music through your fingers."

To a slightly lesser extent, it is the same way in poker. You have to know all the odds and have them ready in a moments notice, but don't play by the odds.

I'm sure that Ferguson gets "feelings" on what hands to play. Those feelings aren't a I-feel-lucky-it-will-hit feeling, it's a billions-of-hands-of-poker-under-my-belt-tells-me-this-will-be-a-good-hand feeling. He has been playing so much and so long that he looks at the hand and just knows to play it. He is sub-consiously thinking about the odds, the other players and the cards, but he has done all this so much, it has become a feeling rather than a thought process.

Last night on WSOP Ferguson did a "card trick" He took a well-shuffled deck and told someone to pick a card out of the deck. He looked at all the remaining cards one by one and after he was done, then he knew what card was missing.