I am psychic.... or am I?

[dagreez]

So I'm playing some 2/4nl, been at this table for a while, and been playing with villain for about 50 hands. He's been raising a lot and losing pretty regularly. I didn't have stats up at the time but he's about 29/26/1, not that aggressive, just raises a lot preflop but doesn't seem very experienced with postflop play.

So this hand came up...

Full Tilt Poker, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP: $381.60
CO: $287
Hero (BTN): $581
SB: $308.90
BB: $132.50
UTG: $449.90

Pre-Flop: 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] dealt to Hero (BTN)
2 folds, <font color="red">CO raises to $14</font>, Hero calls $14, 2 folds

Flop: ($34) 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (2 Players)
CO checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($34) 2[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (2 Players)
<font color="red">CO bets $15</font>, Hero calls $15

River: ($64) 2[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (2 Players)
CO checks, <font color="red">Hero bets $30</font>, CO calls $30

After he calls the river and his cards get mucked (I don't have PAHUD up so I can't see what he called with), I say out loud, "you had AJ". Check HH and sure enough he had AJ.

Now, in the background I have the TV on and psychic Sylvia Browne is on Montel doing one of her standard shows where audience members ask her questions... about dead loved ones and how they're doing, or missing daughters/sons, or pets or something.

So a lady stands up and asks what Sylvia thinks about the future for her son whose in law school at the moment... just a general question about his future.

Sylvia answers pretty quickly, "Well he's gonna become a lawyer," in a serious tone. Then lady asks some questions about his mental and emotional well being and Sylvia says some stuff I don't remember.

Now, how does Sylvia know Son is going to become a lawyer? Obviously there is the option that he may drop out of law school for some reason, or maybe he'll just fail, law schools tough right? So how does she know?

I knew villain had a hand like A high since my impression of him so far was that he'd bet the flop with any pair. That he thought my check was weak on the flop so he thought he'd take a stab on the turn. And that he might think A high was good when the board paired on the river.

How I knew that was built off my experience of playing the poker, which includes playing with various players having varying 'poker' abilities. It was that experience that led to an impression of this specific villain which dictated how I played the hand, the river especially, since I had the most amount of information by then.

Now, my past experience dealing with different players in general along with the present action of villain in this session led me to form this impression, which turned out to be accurate, in my mind.

My issue is that I could've been wrong about my AJ shout out. I was also thinking AT at the time, but then felt right about AJ... why? I don't know, there's no reason. AJ was the first thing that popped in my head. There's no rational reason for me being right with AJ over AT. Although now that I think about it, if he does have a hand like Ax, he'll be much more likely to c-bet with AK or AQ since he'll feel more comfortable doing it for value, but would be more likely to check with AT and AJ, and A9- he's gonna be less likely to raise pf anyway, though he prob still would with some frequency. So with that new piece of information, I'm thinking that my exact call of his hand was the result of narrowing his range down along the way and then maybe getting lucky with a 50/50 guess between AJ and AT. Actually that makes a lot of sense to me.

So back to Sylvia now. Isn't this the exact same process that she is going by... predicting what the 'future' will hold by narrowing down the information provided to her.

The lady asks 'What will happen to my Son in law school!!!' and Sylvia deduces, '''well he's in law school, he's gonna be a lawyer!!!'''.

I mean, is that really wtf is going on with that stuff or is there something I'm missing there.

Thanks and congratulations if you made it this far.

DA

[madnak]

Short answer - yes. That's what she's doing. She's using a technique called cold reading, which is similar to poker in some ways.

[Nielsio]

You're not psychic, and no I didn't read your post.