Playing on Instinct

As a poker writer and teacher, I often present a poker situation and give a concrete answer as to how you are supposed to handle it. By my categorizing situations and offering solutions, it might appear to some people who do not read my words carefully that I am trying to "program" a player into handling a given situation the same way every time. That is not the case. I say up front in books and lessons that you may have to vary your game if you play with the same group of people regularly or against some kind of greenhorn or goofball. (I should not have to tediously restate this every time a poker problem is discussed.) This means that in combat, you are fully entitled to follow your gut feelings and depart from the generally recommended way of handling a situation. In fact, to optimize your results, you must do this.

Besides the quantitative tools we have to measure a situation (the chance of making a certain draw, how much is put at risk and how much may be gained, and so on), there will always be several elements that cannot be quantified easily, if at all. Some of these might be what type of player you're facing and what sort of mood he might be in. A good poker decision is normally a blend of what you can quantify and what you cannot. That little voice in your brain that guides you when a decision is not purely mathematical - that is, the majority of decisions - can be called your "gut instinct." What is gut instinct, and how reliable is it?

I recently read an article in a business magazine called, "How to Think With Your Gut." The author was trying to talk about how to make good decisions in business, but in my eyes, what he had to say had even more applicability to poker. The point to the article was in his first sentence: "In a fluid competitive environment, the best decisions come from intuition." (If a poker game is not a "fluid competitive environment," I'd like to know what is!) Here is another sentence along the same vein: "People who make decisions for a living are coming to realize that in complex or chaotic situations - a battlefield, a trading floor, or today's brutally competitive business environment - intuition usually beats rational analysis." Once again, he is describing a poker game perfectly (using terms like battlefield, trading floor, brutally competitive environment), even though that was not his intention.

The author discussed lots of studies and events to back up his premise. He quotes from what he claims is official Marine Corps doctrine, which says, "The intuitive approach is more appropriate for the majority of decisions made in the fluid, rapidly changing conditions of war, when time and uncertainty are critical factors." Once again, "war," "uncertainty," and "fluid" sound to my ear as if they are extremely applicable for poker.

If gut feelings are so important to playing poker well, what exactly are they, and how should we improve their accuracy? The article I mentioned quotes Harvard professor and psychologist Howard Gardner as saying, "Gut instinct is basically a form of pattern recognition." Psychological experiments on chess players show the importance of pattern recognition. A group of master chess players was asked to analyze some positions. Then, a group of lesser players analyzed these same positions. Naturally, the masters did a more accurate job. However, their superiority was much more pronounced when looking at positions that had come from actual games than from mere compositions. The value of pattern recognition was apparent.

How do we improve pattern recognition to assist us in poker? Obviously, by playing a lot of poker! I learned the game at age 9. Most strong players had already taken up the game as teenagers. A lifetime of playing the game is certainly a great asset. But, of course, anyone can get better by gaining experience. Aside from simply playing a lot, there's a number of things you can do to hone your poker instincts.

The number one thing for you to do is derive every ounce of benefit you can from each session you play. All the great players have tremendous concentration, even though they may differ from each other in lots of other respects. If you keep your mind on poker while playing, you will of course watch other players and try to get a line on their play. But you should do much more than this. For example, notice when a player does something unusual and gets a good result. Know who the good players are and see if you can use some of their favorite plays yourself. Particularly, if you are playing limit hold'em, watch how often the good players throw in a raise on only a so-so hand when they have position, and what happens when they do.

You should also be introspective and scrutinize your own plays while they are fresh in your mind. I used to have a tape recorder; at the end of each session, I chewed myself out for any bad plays, then played the recording back in my face the next morning.

I suggest that you keep a pocket notebook and write down hands of interest, or those that you think you might have misplayed. Lots of people are afraid of the social consequences of taking notes at the table. But if you take notes only about yourself and not about your opponents, they will not mind much. It also helps if you have someone, such as a friend who is a good player, to discuss these hands with after the session is over.

We all can't have 50 years of poker experience to draw on for honing our instincts, but we all can try to get the most out of the experience we do have - especially from this point forward! Good gut instincts are not innate; they are the result of recognizing patterns and acting accordingly.

Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone's new book, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, co-authored with Jim Brier, is available now (332 pages, $25 plus $5 shipping and handling). This work and his other poker books, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker, can be ordered through Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons. E-mail [email protected] or call (989) 792-0884. His website is www.diamondcs.net/~thecoach, where you can download Robert's Rules of Poker for free.