Hoss TBF - part of Think Tank?

[sobefuddled]

Actually, there is no such thing as instinctual reasoning. Instincts are. Period.They cannot be trained. They can be used or buried but not trained.
Eating whatever is at hand when we are on the brink of starvation is instinctual. Defending ourselves when someone is trying to harm us is instinctual If we were to override instinct with rationality we might not choose to eat locusts because we have a visceral adverse reaction to them. That is not training our instinct at all. That is making an irrational decision based on an emotional reaction.
Choosing to kill someone when we are afraid of them is an irrational choice based upon the visceral reaction of fear. It is the emotional reactions that are learned-not the instinctual reactions. There is never a need to shut off emotion. As human beings we simply choose whether or not we act on emotion. That is a rational choice.
At their core instinctual reactions are rooted in truth. We do not train our instincts. We are born with them. Emotions are what they are but our emotional reactions are learned and can be unlearned.
So yes, understanding how another player might react emotionally to something we say or do might help our game. Might. However, to base our play on just this would be a serious error since at its core Poker is rational. It is math. Emotions are irrational. But they do make life and poker more interesting.

[NoSoup4U]

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Actually, there is no such thing as instinctual reasoning. Instincts are. Period.They cannot be trained. They can be used or buried but not trained.

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People commonly use "instincts" to refer to unconscious decisions that are made very rapidly. Many (maybe even most) of these reactions are a product of your limbic system, more specifically the amygdala. It is sometimes called emotional learning and it results in a very rapid recognition of situations that could bring rewards or danger.

In nature, if someone hit you with a concealed rock, your limbic system would create a catalog of the circumstances and would automatically alert and send "fight or flight" chemicals out when it recognized these conditions again. In poker, your limbic system might learn to recognize facial expressions or circumstances where the other player stacked you or was bluffing and give you the "instinct" that you should raise or fold. Everyone would call that instant emotional reaction of fear or confidence "instinct", but it is definitely learned.

[admiralfluff]

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Also, though I am a little unclear on this point, it seems that there is simply no such thing as an unexploitable strategy (i.e. solution) to multiplayer poker.

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Haven't read the whole thread, but in case no one has corrected you, this is wrong. I forgot who proved it for multiplayer games, but Nash equilibria do exist for multiplayer poker, or any multiplayer game.

Also, the strategy bears a striking resemblence to certain examples illustrated in parts of MoP. Anyone read the section dealing with 'games of chicken'?

[etherealpat]

fwiw, hoss > (strictly not >=) cassidy on tests i'm running on secret military computers.