Real Poker: What Is Poker “Feel”

Ever look at a person and sense what they’re thinking and feeling? You might not even realize what it is you’re observing that creates that awareness. But you sense something, an intuitive insight. Maybe it’s just a shift in tone of voice, a small change in facial expression, something unconsciously seen in their body language, or it’s merely a case of reading and being in tune with their mindset. Different people display varying degrees of information, often very subtly, and some individuals have no ability to recognize it. Others are highly intuitive. It’s a developed instinct, and the best live poker players have it bigtime!

Generally, people project what they want you to accept as true. But in poker, as in life, if you make all your choices based on their surface level projections, you’re going to make a lot of bad decisions. Fortunately, humans possess animal instincts developed over millions of years when we had to have a strong sense of our immediate environment to survive. These instincts can reemerge in many people in their life experiences, particularly in traumatic situations, and intuition is developed from them. I’m talking about a developed “street sense,” similar to what a policeman might develop working a tough beat. By continuously interacting with, observing and reasoning with deceptively minded people, their intuition in sharpened. Creating an intuitive mindset by intensifying your deep rooted instincts on your opponents at the poker table will develop these senses and will increase the accuracy of your decisions.

Many times at the table (or in life) I sense that something is off. It’s a sensation, transformed into a thought. The particulars of a given situation don’t correlate. My opponent’s actions don’t match the current circumstances or fit the narrative of the way the hand should have been played based on their knowledge. Sometimes it is due to a change in their emotional state, or it may be that a previous event has changed their mindset. Can you correlate anything to the abnormality? Maybe the person is just incapable of connecting the dots? But, if you can’t connect the dots yourself, a strategic change is likely needed.

It’s important to think about how they think, not how you would think in the same situation. It’s likely very different. Events are subject to interpretation. A narcissistic personality will interpret a situation very differently from a paranoid one. You need to be in tune with their mindset, their thinking, their knowledge level, their emotional reactions, and how each factor affects their decisions. By thinking through these things, you’ll sense when something doesn’t correlate. Then it’s time to stop and deeply think through the situation and act upon your thoughts.

Intuitive players have hypervigilant awareness in detecting things. They pick up on the subtle clues of their opponents’ emotional changes. They perceive people’s true character, not the projected one. They sense a player’s awareness levels, contempt, envy, genuineness, narcissism, fears, and know how it all affects their strategic thoughts.

You need to develop and have confidence in your intuition. You won’t always be right. Matter of fact, occasionally you’re going to look and feel downright stupid, though there’s poker value in that too. Of course, success breeds confidence; the more you’re right, the more you’ll believe in yourself.

Highly technical players will say you’re just adjusting to your opponents’ range based on reads. And there’s truth to that. But the fact that those changes are read-based, and many can’t make those reads is a telling factor. Some people lack the intense emotional sense necessary to ever make in depth reads. They’re just incapable of relating to or reading others. They don’t understand how others knew what they knew and dismiss their judgment as a correct guess. And they fail to understand how someone not following the “formula” can be performing better than them.

Intuitive players can make things happen. They are effective in reading people by accurately seeing who they really are, how it affects there thinking and actions. They see through what others falsely project. This “feel” makes for enhanced insights into reading hands. And once you get beyond the fundamentals of poker, reading hands is where the additional edges are formulated.

And there is huge value in some of these circumstances. In non-standard situations, highly intuitive players bluff, value-bet, fold and make all sorts of plays that non-intuitive players don’t understand, and can never realize the expected value (EV) of those situations. Nobody is born intuitive, it’s developed. That said, some have the life experiences and mindset to develop intuitions better than others. But all can improve their intuition with focus and thought.

And if you can do it well, and trust your instincts, you just might make it to the top of the mountain. ♠

Roy Cooke played poker professionally for 16 years prior to becoming a successful Las Vegas Real Estate Broker/Salesman. Should you wish any information about Real Estate matters -including purchase, sale or mortgage, his office number is 702-376-1515 or Roy’s e-mail is [email protected]. His website is www.RoyCooke.com.