How Do Non-Rational Players Succeed in Poker?

[Ansky]

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All I have to say is that it's funny when you watch Taylor's videos and he consistently has no idea how much pot equity his draws have. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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This struck me as odd when I first started watching his videos. I always assumed one had to be a giant math geek to be really good at poker.

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I've always found it interesting how many 2+2ers think this.

The math involved in poker is really really simple.

[Fly]

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The math involved in poker is really really simple.


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You are confusing math with arithmetic.

[samoleus]

Thanks for the compliment duck. Though I have to say that hand and the call could be deconstruced logically and did not really require great "feel".

[Tox]

The fact of the matter is that even the players who happen to possess the allround qualities dont always do as well as one should think because poker still has such high variance. A very bad run can easily provoke a player into thinking that his subconscius skills are not as trustworthy as his conscious simply because he understands the conscious and therefore concludes that the problem doesnt lie with those decisions ( when the problem actually doesnt lie in either skillset).

This way players swing in skill level. Of course an adequate amount of experience will eliminate this effect but imo variance is a bitch so I think it takes millions of hands to be totally comfortable at high stakes while in any point of a swing timewise..


- Tox

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

ZJ,

have you considered these guys have poor social skills, dont like you, or just dont want to discuss their strategy with you?

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

I have often stated on here, or atleast in PM, that several LAGs play strong by accident. That they make money in places that they dont realize, and that the reason they make money is often because of the mistakes tight players make against them. So its very possible that some of these players think they are making money doing X, then it is really Y which makes them their dough.

Realize that I am excluding Blds because his LAG game is much different than many other LAGs, in the fact that he does not play sloppy at all (as Diablo stated in other thread, I think Blds game relies heavily on math and logical analysis as opposed to shooting from the hip)

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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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.

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[Fight Club]

Interesting post. It may explain why I got 'suck' at particular levels in my poker career (200s and 600s) yet had much more success after eventually skipping them.

[sunek]

ZJ

Fantastic post. I really think your point:

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The turning point for me was when I learned to trust my gut.


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Strikes the nail on the head. Brunson describes the gut feeling in SS and Phil Hellmuth emphasizes the importance of trusting your instincts.
I am very mathematically minded my self (master of computer science [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]) and find it hard to base my decisions on my subconscious – it feels irrational despite the fact that I win more when I listen to my “gut”/ subconscious. I think I will listen more to my subconscious the next few months and see the and see where it takes me – I expect to cut down on my “cry calls”.

Thank you for sharing you thoughts

Regards

sunek

[72hearts]

Great read, you should write a poker book, seriously.

WhatI found really interesting about this post is that it highlights so well the fact that dissecting and discussing hand histories in online forums can sometimes be a pretty futile excercise. Often the amount of different things we are supposed to have considered in order to arrive at the correct play is way too much information to consciously process in 30 seconds when you're actually in hand. If you arrive at the correct play in one of these situations where there is so much to consider, it's either by luck or because your subconscious has decided it for you. Not because you have consciously processed the information in a way that some people who post on poker forums claim you should have. It's quite easy to do this in hindsight when you have a few minutes to think about everything and write your thoughts down, but on the spot it simply doesn't happen that way.