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Analytical vs Instictive Play

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  1. #1
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    Default Analytical vs Instictive Play

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  2. #2
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  3. #3
    Wow dude big post, I'd post a counter argument but it would take to long so i'll go with

    I agree with some of what you say and disagree with a some of what you say
    Poker is all about the long long long long long long long term . . .
    Barney's back . . . back again . . .
  4. #4
    Great Article , agree with the most part of it .
  5. #5
    I'll start a poll
    Poker is all about the long long long long long long long term . . .
    Barney's back . . . back again . . .
  6. #6
    Anyway i still think you can make an aproach based on maths and instict combining the best of each field, but since ive been working in my game, especially in Tournments the Key is Playing the Player, and if cards arent coming you will only stay alive with Cirugical Bluff´s,and risking more than you should, and i completly agree Instict its a big part of the game but needs to be TAMED.
  7. #7
    Yeah, i'd agree with what leon just said. You be a numbers cruncher and still have moves to your game, you know. I'm an odds cruncher kind of guy. Sometimes I raise with rags....but I do it for a reason. I'm not hoping to be called, I think I can steal the blinds. If I'm called and miss the flop, I might bet my rags again if I think they didn't have anything. Being an odds guy doesn't mean you can't make a move without cards.

    If being an odds guy means that I fold my AQs to somebody who makes a big pre-flop raise, that doesn't mean I don't have balls, it means I've decided that it's more likely that he has AA/KK/QQ/AK to dominate me than having AJ/AT for me to dominate him. Calling in this situation doesn't make you a ballsy poker player, IMO. It makes you a gambler. If you want to gamble, go play slots. If you want to play poker, play the odds. But playing the other player and what they don't have is PART of playing the odds....you just factor that in. It takes a much better hand to call a raise than it takes to make one.
  8. #8

    Default Re: Analytical vs Instictive Play

    Quote Originally Posted by Ripptyde
    There is no ultimate 'formula' for folding and raising and calling despite what the BOOK says. Players like Dan Negreanu and Johnny Chan and other legends aren't afraid to play outside the box.
    Taken from a road trip Dan wrote:

    My opponent bet $2,000, which made me feel even more confident that he didn't have a club. Still, a $2,000 bet into a $1,725 pot wasn't the right price. The odds of my hitting the straight were 4.5-to-1 (36-to-8; I am assuming that I "know" he has two aces, so there are 44 "unseen" cards), but the current price was only about 1.9-to-1 ($3,725-to-$2,000).

    Wait, there's more. What if the river brought a club, or a queen? Was there any chance that I could win the pot anyway with a bluff? That was my dilemma. On the turn, I took more time than I normally do, because I was also thinking about what I would do on the river if I called this bet. I finally decided that if one of those cards came, I would go ahead and try to bluff it.

    So, now I had eight outs to win the pot legitimately, and an additional 10 outs to potentially bluff the pot: three queens and 7 clubs (the K wouldn't be a good one, and the 6 and J would give me the straight). So, of the 44 cards I don't know, I believe that 18 of them will help my hand.



    Although it looks like certain players are playing by the seat of their pants, they are calculating odds and pots odds. Whether this invloves made hands or bluff attempts it comes down to the same thing +EV
    Poker is all about the long long long long long long long term . . .
    Barney's back . . . back again . . .
  9. #9
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  10. #10
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    The best part of that road trip is that he's calculating his odds including outs that he will bluff with.

    I think that playing instinctively is a huge part of poker. However, even then you're playing the odds, but they are subjective odds rather than the objective ones we compute based on probability. You know which players you can bully and which ones will call you down. When you make an aggressive bet with nothing in your hand, you have internally calculated the odds that your opponent also has nothing and that he will fold to your aggressive bets. Coupling that with betting patterns (e.g., in tourneys, players often invite you to buy the pot by checking everything down) can be extremely effective.

    If you read Theory of Poker closely, you'll see Sklansky talking about these subjective odds frequently. He says things like "if there's a 20% chance your opponent will fold..."

    Where does this 20% chance come from? It's your instinct, something you develop from watching others play, and you should use that information + the mathematical odds to make the correct play. You don't use one or the other, you use BOTH.

    Two nights ago, I ran over a $2-$4 limit table because I had reads on a couple of weak-tight players and there were about 4 loose-passive "see the flop" types with us. There were lots of limpers, so I was raising reasonable drawing hands in late position because the table was giving me odds to draw and I wanted to isolate the weak-tight guys. These guys would often fold on the river to a single bet, so I kept the pressure on and won several pots without showing down. One of the guys folded on the river to my $4 bet into a $40 pot. All I had was A high. On the next hand, when I raised from one off the button, he said "lol, this isn't a 2-4 table, it's a 4-8" and left. I ended up winning 37BB/100 hands (!) over two hours, mostly because I had a read on the table.

    One other point I would make is that ring games are a lot different from tourneys. You might find yourself with a 35% chance at drawing the nut straight and call (but hopefully raise!) without odds in a tourney *even if you know you are behind* because the $ expected value of doing so is greater than the $ expected value if you fold, even though the EV with respect to tournament chips is negative. In a ring game, consistently doing something like that without odds is money out of your pocket, even if you win once in a while.

    On this board, a lot of the hand histories are posted without comment with respect to the opponent's style of play. Most of the posts are simply the hand history with a question like "Did I play this correctly?" In such cases, how is one supposed to respond except by looking at the numbers?

    (As an aside, I would add that one of the most analytical posters (Fnord) is about the only one I see adding things like "UTG+1 is LAgg." He might rub you the wrong way, but it's clear that he understands more than just the mathematics behind the game.)

    Finally, I would say that if this site is to be useful to people trying to learn poker, it needs to include a mix of ideas about the numbers behind the game as well as the psychology of the game. Suggesting that you can get by without learning about one or the other is a disservice to FTR's readers, IMO.
  11. #11
    I think that anyone who is a contributor to this forum knows that you cannot simply play "by the book" poker and expect to be successful However, I think that the opposite side of this argument is also true. You cannot play the "Feel" side of poker exclusively and expect to be successful either.

    There isn't anyone on this message board (at least I would think not) that doesn't know that you have to have a sound understanding of both in order to be successful. The two aspects do not result in success if they are kept mutually exclusive.

    You say your friend Mike has an incredible mathematic mind yet he is a terrible poker player. I would expect that this is because he hasn't yet garnered the ability to be able to read players and situations. I would venture an educated guess that if YOU had no understanding of the math concepts of poker that you would also be a terrible poker player if all you did was play the "Feel" side of poker.

    You call out Robert Varkoni, Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer for being great mathematical minds yet being oblivious to the "Feel" side of poker. yet each of these men makes their LIVING playing this game. If you think for one second that they are oblivious to the "Feel" side of poker than I must say that you are sorely mistaken. They could not be as successful as they are by playing only the mathematical concepts of poker. The last time I checked no one on this forum has quit their job and sustained themselves solely on their poker earnings.

    Now, that being said, I firmly agree with you that there is no absolute "formula" for playing correct poker. Math, feel, balls, etc., all play an integral part in being successful and striving to achieve that delicate balance of all of them is what I think we are all trying to accomplish here. Kudos to those professionals who have been able to grasp all of these concepts and integrate them into their makeup as a poker player. If they were lacking in any of those areas they simply would not be successful.

    Just as you point out that "sooner or later following the 'bible' you are going to get burned when it matters most.", playing by "Feel" alone will lead you into that same fire.

    One last thing. You mention that "...you will NEVER win playing 'by the book'...". Remember this, you will also NEVER win without it.
    "The urge to gamble is so universal and it's practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil." - Heywood Broun
  12. #12
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    Default Re: Analytical vs Instictive Play

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  13. #13
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  14. #14
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  15. #15
    Probably the biggest problem with poker in playing in any given tournament is that, over the short-term (one tournament, one session in a ring game, one home game), you are largely at the mercy of luck. If you have it then that, coupled with your above average poker skills will most likely allow you to prevail or at least fare very well. If you don't have it, no matter how soundly you play you will most likely not do very well.

    The other problem about being at the mercy of luck and playing against players that are worse than you is that no matter what you do as far as playing sound poker you may not be able to control these bad players from getting lucky. If they do not know poker concepts they will stay in most every hand until showdown and because of this they will get lucky and the sound poker player will be the victim of this luck. It is a fact.

    So, I guess this begs a question. There is no doubt that over the long run we would all acknowledge that it is far better and more profitable to be a "good" poker player who knows the math and is able to play the other players and willing to take a risk here and there. However, in the short -term (one tournament, one session in a ring game, one home game), is it more profitable to be lucky than good? Keep in mind that just because a person is lucky doesn't necessarily mean that they are a bad poker player.

    Thoughts?
    "The urge to gamble is so universal and it's practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil." - Heywood Broun
  16. #16
    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.
    I don't know what they have to say
    It makes no difference anyway.
    Whatever it is...
    I'm against it.
  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by jmrogers7
    Probably the biggest problem with poker in playing in any given tournament is that, over the short-term (one tournament, one session in a ring game, one home game), you are largely at the mercy of luck. If you have it then that, coupled with your above average poker skills will most likely allow you to prevail or at least fare very well. If you don't have it, no matter how soundly you play you will most likely not do very well.

    Thoughts?
    Yes, I have one...

    Luck is a definate factor. I could clean up quickly at any table if I had pocket pair after pocket pair all night long. I will end up down at almost any table if I keep getting 72o all night long. Also, I feel I could do a lot better than a below-average player with the exact same cards.

    However, you make the most with what you have. In tournament it is more important than in a ring game. You can always walk out at any time of a ring game, there are only 2 ways to leave a tournament, with everything or nothing. It is this reason that I would like to focus more on ring games.

    I played over at a friends house a while back. I feel that I was better than anyone else at that table. We played with a $20 buy-in and $2 max bet. I still believe to this day that I had one of the worst string of cards I have ever seen. T/3o, J/2o, 3/"how to order more cards" off-suit. But at the end of the night, I was $4 up. $4 is not a lot, especially when the buy-in is only $20, but the fact that I was up at all says a lot for my skill. I was able to exploit people. I out-bluffed one guy. I was very mad at my cards, and happy with my preformance.

    This is true about most ring games. 1st and foremost, if you don't like your cards, get up and go to another table. 2nd, and still important, skill plays a big role, more important than the cards is the skill to use them.
    I don't know what they have to say
    It makes no difference anyway.
    Whatever it is...
    I'm against it.
  18. #18

    Default Re: Analytical vs Instictive Play

    Quote Originally Posted by Ripptyde
    Watching Howard Lederer fold A/Q suited pre flop to a moderate raise pre flop in last years main event to Chris Darden is a textbook example of how players who approach this game with religious devotion to the numbers...are doomed to fail in the long run.
    How do you know he folded for that reason? Isn't it very possible that he folded because Darden was on a huge rush at the time and Lederer took a big hit from him?
  19. #19
    I've also seen HL push all his chips in on a total bluff, I wouldnt call that dedicated to the numbers.

    Nice Post Koolmoe.
    Poker is all about the long long long long long long long term . . .
    Barney's back . . . back again . . .

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