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Poker players are often making quick logical deductions and calling it intuition. They are responding to cues that they may even have trouble rationalizing. That doesn't mean its 'magic' or 'paranormal.' For instance, if a person breaks a pattern, you may subconsciously recognize that something is different even if you haven't figured out what it is. You may then decide that a player is very strong because of this change. Because you can't articulate the change, you call it 'intuition' when in reality you are simply processing information readily available to your senses.

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What you just described is modern psychology's understanding of intuition. Quickly processing subtle environmental cues is the process of intuition. I can't stress how important it is for a person to understand neo-cortical neurology to better understand any neurological phenomenon. The design of the neocortex is hierarchical in nature, and the higher the activity, the more the thought is understood by the individual (or so its thought, at least). Lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy are more sensitive to small changes in the environment because they are less subject to interpretation from other areas of the neo-cortex. That's precisely why logic can actually be inaccurate.

The neo-cortex is a feedback system, and the higher parts of the hierarchy are more reliant on feedback from other levels than the lower, as they receive no direct information from sensory input. The lower levels, however, receive input from both the higher levels (there is actually more connections going from the top to the bottom then there is going from the bottom to the top) and sensory organs. If you've ever watched that special on the man with 'The highest IQ in the world' that is a perfect example of how having excellent logic can be detrimental to one's ability to perceive reality accurately. My guess is that if you looked at his brain it would have a low cell count in the lower areas of the neo-cortical hierarchy.

Also, its important to mention that some people would naturally have better intuition than others. It all depends on the individuals particular neo-cortical arrangement. It's my guess that having a high amount of direct sensory to low-hierarchy connection/cell count AND having low-hierarchy to the highest levels of neo-cortical hierarchy connection count would result in individuals with phenomenal intuitive abilities.

I mean, there needs to be more research though. This whole field is very fuzzy, and very misunderstood. They need to start dissecting people's neo-cortex after they die (from causes that were not a result of brain trauma or degenerative diseases), while attaining as much personal information about these people while they are still alive and healthy.

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To whoever said intuition is just shoddy logic, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. Intuition is so much more than 'shoddy logic'. For some people it's more reliable than actually being logical. For others, its a lot less reliable. It really varies from individual to individual.