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Use Intuition as a Last Resort: A Case Study in Decision-Making from a Poker Champion, with Liv Boeree, International Poker Champion
People tend to think of intuition as their gut, their gut instinct, and my rule of thumb in poker is to only fall on my gut instinct when my logical, my slow brain – the System 2, as it’s sometimes called – has not come to a conclusive answer. A lot of people are tempted to just go, “Eh, this is too tricky, I don’t know. Well my gut instinct said this, I’m going to go with that.” But the best thing to do is to work with both your slow brain and that gut.
When it comes to your intuition as a poker player, 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 System 2 analysis. See what answer that comes up with and then also 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 think, “Oh, that’s a bluff”, or, “Oh, 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, ok, now let’s work through the mathematics, let’s look 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. 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 mathematics, the logic part. However, if it’s still 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 memes on the internet: “Always go with your gut”, “Trust your instincts”, and so on, and I personally think that’s a cop-out. I think that’s the lazy way out for when we’re faced with a really tough decision in life. Our brains love to simplify things – to do things in black and white – but we live in a complex world and that’s not always the best route to take. In a nutshell, your gut instincts can be useful, but as a last resort. We’ve evolved these amazing brains for a reason, so we should be using them.