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A recent article in Scientific American discussing this very subject concluded that to be successful you must act in a non-rational manner. The basis of acting rationally is the assumption that your opponent is also rational and will always act in a manner that will maximize his gain. Countless studies have proven that this is not true. Even advanced game theory students, who you would think would always act in the most rational manner, as dictated by game theory, do not act rationally during some games. The game that demonstrates this over and over, with large sample sizes, is called Traveler's Dilemma. The conclusion the author reaches is that it is a fallacy to assume that your opponent always acts in a rational manner.

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This is what I've been saying all along, and is the main problem I have with the strictly math/logic players. All of their fancy algorithms and logic chains are based on presuppositions and assumptions that will often not hold true. Most, if not all, of the tables where they do hold true, it's because said table is populated with players who believe the same thing and play the game of poker the same way that they do (This seems obvious, but it wasn't to me.) It creates this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that the instinctual players are a dying breed, soon to be replaced by a bunch of math nerds. It also explains why when a good LAG shows up at the table, the rational guys run for the hills.

I am most certainly an instinctual player who plays by feel, as I'm sure you could have guessed. I got off to a great start when I began in 2003 and fooled myself into thinking I knew what I was doing. My leaks weren't just leaks; I'm talking Titanic-into-the-iceberg. I had some painful memories when I read ZeeJustin's quote:

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I am often shocked at how many terrible plays the successful non-rational players are capable of making.

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Well, just imagine the plays they made before they became successful.

Predictably, I lost everything I had won and then some. It was only when I started reading poker books and learning the more analytical side of the game that I started to become a consistent winner. That, and I realized I'm much more suited to live ring games than online games or tournaments. (Guess I'm a throwback.)

I like to compare the "logic vs. instinct" debate in poker to the "scouts vs. stats" debate in baseball. You had this long tradition in baseball of scouting and believing what your eyes told you. Then Sabremetrics came along, and everyone started poring over stats. Nowadays, the real smart teams, like the Red Sox, are synthesizing the stats with the scouts and are forming more sophisticated opinions than either camp can do by itself. I believe that poker is headed in the same direction.

It's easier for those like me, who can read the 2p2 books and learn all we need to learn. For the math guys, learning poker instincts is much more difficult. I wish I could offer greater assistance in that regard, but I can't really explain some of the plays I make or even how I decide to make them. The math guys see some of my lines and think, "What is this fool doing?" The best way for me to explain it is to use a conversation from Seinfeld. The instinctual player is represented by Kramer, the rational player by George:

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Kramer: "Now, what does the little man inside you say? See, you gotta listen to the little man."

George: "My little man doesn't know."

Kramer: "The little man knows all."

George: "My little man's an idiot."

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The analytical player has been taught not to go with gut feelings because they aren't reliable in their minds, hence their misguided idea that they should not listen to their instincts. As a wise, old puppet once said, "You must unlearn what you have learned." Don't fight against your instincts; embrace them. That's probably the best advice I can give anyone.