How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[ZeeJustin]

[ QUOTE ]
by the way, your example with the "will he fold TT, nope" is not an example of subconscious, because you are aware of the thought process. if it was actually subconscious you should be aware of the right answer but not the thought process.

[/ QUOTE ]

The hand-reading was done subconsciously. I don't know where the TT thought came from. The answer to the actual question was done consciously.

Learning to fuse the conscious and the subconscious thought processes is what I'm getting at in my OP. It's a lot easier said than done.

[Prevaricator]

[ QUOTE ]
Timing is another thing that the subconscious mind analyzes better. This is probably because very few schools of poker look at opponents timing when making a decision, so this type of analysis is almost completely internalized.

[/ QUOTE ]

okay this i agree with

[Prevaricator]

okay but were caught up in the discussion of whether or not it was good to let subconscious thought process make the decision, ie zoning out or putting the decision out of your mind a sec, as in requins example. i argued that this was foolish.

in your example, in my mind would go like this: I feel like i should check (gut reaction). then i think consciously, he's not folding TT, so i should check, and then i check.

[El Diablo]

ZJ,

"This is probably because very few schools of poker look at opponents timing when making a decision"

Just about every good player I know takes bet timing into account in their decision-making, both live and online.

[El Diablo]

FF, Bruiser, prev, etc.,

I strongly believe there is no better strategy than logically analyzing a hand and as one component of that logical analysis using the "vibe" or "hunch" that you have as part of the decision matrix.

After a while, you figure out the relative accuracy of your vibes about a given hand and can intelligently know how much to factor them into your decision.

[El Diablo]

All,

When I refer to this stuff not being news to live players, I am talking about stuff like how a guy can bet a certain way and you may have absolutely no idea what he has, but you are 100% certain that he will fold if you raise. That is a big part of any top live player's arsenal.

[Ansky]

[ QUOTE ]
Timing is another thing that the subconscious mind analyzes better. This is probably because very few schools of poker look at opponents timing when making a decision, so this type of analysis is almost completely internalized.

[/ QUOTE ]

Personally, I think a ton about timing. I don't want to discuss particular things, but there are a lot of noticable and definitive things to be considered regarding opponents timing. And this is all while playing online-- not live.

[snagglepuss]

ariel is right throughout this thread.

timing eh? brilliant! maybe i can follow bet sizes and bet style, and how comfortable their breathing is.

[El Diablo]

chud,

I'm working on an essay that will be a little longer than ZJ's post, but well worth it - I'm pretty excited about it. I don't want to give too much away right now because I really think people are going to be pretty blown away by some of the concepts I write about. I'll give you the title as a little teaser "When people try to trick you by acting like they have a really weak hand when actually they have a really strong hand."

[Nate tha\\\' Great]

Good post.

I'm fairly intoxicated so I won't go on at length, but I think there are two slightly different things being discussed here.

On the one hand, there is the way that conscious learning becomes unconscious. My biggest strength as a poker player is probably estimating hand equities very quickly. That is, if I said "I'm good 36% of the time here", I think that estimate is going to tend to be more accurate than the average player's. Now and then I'll go through the trouble of giving a player a specific hand range post-facto, applying as much deduction and spending as much time as I can manage, and I'll generally find that the equity I come up with is very close to the snap estimate I made at the table. Whether this really qualifies as "unconscious" or not I don't know; it's really just being able to account for all sorts of information at a hyperaccelerated pace. There's a premium on speed in poker; if poker hands were played by correspondence, I think I'd lose a lot of my edge.

The second thing is analyzing tells, specifically including online timing tells. There are a few fairly reliable online timing tells, but for the most part I process these without thinking: "he's raising me light"; "I've got a set, but that donkbet means he's got the straight". I've learned to trust the sense I get about bet-timing, as well as other sorts of reads (when I play live). Sometimes this leads me to make a "technically incorrect" play. I don't bat 100% on these by any means, but if say I make a bluff-reraise that needs to work 1 out of 5 times to show a profit, and ordinarily it might work 1 out of 10 times, I find that it actually works 1 out of 3 times or something like that.