Chris Ferguson poker tip - Intellectualizing Gut Feeling

July 30, 3:55 PMSF Poker ExaminerWarwick Dunnett

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Chris Ferguson poker strategy extract from the book Poker Wizards

Gut feeling—intuition and reading your opponents—is important in a poker game. Subliminal input is a good way to describe gut feeling. It is something that is very hard to quantify. Once you quantify it, it is not a gut feeling anymore. Once you understand why you feel that way, it is an intellectual decision. I would rather make the correct intellectual decision than go with my gut.

Gut feelings can be wrong, so you have to be able to adjust them. For example, if my gut feeling is wrong five times in a row where I thought an opponent was bluffing, I have to understand why I thought he was bluffing. If I don’t figure that out, he is going to keep taking advantage of my gut feeling until I intellectualize that feeling. Why did I think he was bluffing? What is he doing? Oh, maybe he has a big hand when he does this. Or perhaps you could also argue that my gut feeling will adjust. Eventually that will happen, but I think it happens faster if you intellectualize it.

I also use my opponents’ gut feelings against them by making them think something that is not true. I do this by putting an idea in their mind that is false.