So I guess the thing you have to think about in any given poker situation is that you're
dealing with a lot of uncertainty, and it's all about how to make the best decision in
any given moment.
So the first rule of thumb is how to extract the most money or chips from your opponent
when you have a strong hand, and how to lose the minimum when you have a weak hand.
And you're never going to be a hundred percent certain where you are: Are you beating them
or do you have a worse hand?
So you have to sort of construct a strategy that is mathematically optimal in each situation.
Well, I guess people tend to think of intuition as their gut instinct and my rule of thumb
in poker is to only fall on my gut instinct if my sort of logical, my slow brain, the
system two as it's sometimes called, has not come to any conclusive answer.
A lot of people are tempted to go, “This is too tricky, I don't know!”
and then go, “Yeah, well, my gut instinct says this; I'm going to go with that.”
But the best thing to do is to work with both, your sort of slow brain and that gut.
Say you were playing against your opponent and you've noticed that actually they’re
someone who's very solid, they never seem to bluff, and you might have a hand that you
would normally call with (say 90 percent of the time), but you know this guy, he's just
never bluffing, never doing it.
Well, actually this might be one of those rare situations where you do throw your hand
in the muck, where you have a very strong feeling that you're just not calling; even
though mathematically it says it should call, you shouldn't do it.
I guess the art part of poker is when you have these flashes of inspiration where you
need to deviate from the math, and the science is knowing whether that deviation is the right
thing to do at the time.
When it comes to your intuition as a poker player I would say do use it from time to
time, but it should not be your starting point.
You, as a rule of thumb, should always go for the slow “system two” analysis, see
what answer that comes up with, and then also to check in with your gut.
Say you're in a really big hand, and your opponent has bet, often I'll have an instinctive
response; I'll be like, “Oh that's a bluff,” or “they have a really strong hand,” and
I'll make a note of it, I won't just go with that answer.
I'll go, “Okay now let's work through the mathematics, let's look sort of through all
the other bits of information: what have they done on other cards?” and so on, and then
see if those two answers match up.”
Now, if they both match up, great, I've got an easy decision, but if one is giving a conflicting
answer to the other, then usually you tend to rely on the sort of the mathematic/logic
part.
However, it's really, really close with the mathematics, then I'll fall back on that gut
instinct.
But as a rule of thumb your gut is not as reliable as you think.
You often see these like memes on the Internet, which is just like, “Always go with your
gut!
Trust your instincts!” and so on.
And I personally think that's a copout.
I think that's often the lazy way out for when we are faced with a really tough decision
in life, of just going, “well… answer X.”
Our brains they love to simplify things, to do things in black-and-white, but we live
in a very complex world, and that's not always the best route to take.
So in a nutshell, your gut instincts can be useful, but as a last resort.
We've evolved of these amazing brains for a reason, so we should be using them.