Play By Feel

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers! This is a beautiful thought. This is how your life is already wonderful.

And I’d like to talk to you about “playing by feel.”

So, in the introduction to “No Limit Hold’em – Theory and Practice” by David Sklansky, and Mila.

Sklansky tells us that he held off from writing a book about No Limit Hold’Em, the so called catalogue of poker games, he held off from writing about it for so long, because it’s such a difficult game to analyze.

Because the money can go in very quickly.

It’s very different to other types of poker, which were previously popular.

And he noticed that a lot of the time, a lot of the game, a lot of the winners aren’t actually, the people who play technically correctly.

A lot of the game depends on feel on reading other people’s emotions, understanding their psychology, or simply having some kind of unexplainable intuition about the game about a particular situation.

And I find that very interesting, because a lot of card players today, while since the books of Sklansky, and others have been written, Sklansky being the, well as it says in the description, or the blurb of the book, on Amazon, it says, “Sklansky is the world’s foremost poker theorist.”

And I’d say that title it’s accurate.

His books are really excellent on the subject.

Unsurpassed, as far as I know.

At least in the time when I was playing poker.

I find this very interesting, a few months ago, or about a month ago, I suppose, I was playing a card game with some friends.

And this situation came up.

We’re playing for pesos and it’s like a one, two peso game.

It’s like 200 pesos buying or something like that.

It’s not a big game.

It’s like a 10 dollar buy basically.

And there was this one hand where the board comes out, and it’s like there are four clubs on the board, I think, four spades on the board, is also four to a straight.

So there’s like a, quite an obvious, straight flush possibility or royal flush possibility.

It’s like 10, Jack, Queen, King, all in spades.

Anyway, I hit my card on the river, I get an extra 10 or something.

And I go from having two pairs to having a full house.

It’s a very strong hand.

And it means I beat all of the streets and all of the flushes that are possible, but not the straight flashes.

And on the river, my friend Timo bets like 50 pesos into maybe a 100 pesos pot.

And I think about it.

Normally in this situation I would raise because I would think, “This is where I want to get the money in.”

But I think twice considering the texture of the board.

It’s possible that he has just the ace of spades and that would be me.

And I have to think for about two minutes about my decision.

And in the end, I just call and Timo turns over his cards almost immediately and chose the royal flashed ace of spades for Royal Flush, the best, the best possible hand.

He has the one card that will make the absolute, unbeatable hand in the game of poker in any game of high wins poker.

And I show my full house and he is shocked. He is astonished basically.

He can’t stop going on about this hand for the rest of the night.

And even after we finished the game, I think he was still talking about it.

He couldn’t believe that I didn’t raise on that hand.

It’s like, “What was going on in your head?”

I say to him, “The thing you’re not realizing here is, I was right. My read was correct. Whatever you think about, you know how ridiculously I played poker, I was right.”

And, you know, maybe I just made a silly mistake and got lucky.

Or maybe I had a genuine intuition.

This is the thing, just like Sklansky says, a lot of this game has to do with feel.

Now there are things that go beyond theory, or things that go beyond what is correct in our lives.

So, sometimes we think, “Well, if I do things the right way, maybe everything is gonna work out or right.”

I remembered, there was another example.

This is a curious example.

Owen Cook, who is one of the founders of Real Social Dynamics.

And he teaches men how to be more confident and how to meet women.

And he told this story about how he is in a club and is trying to coach this man.

And the man has heard that somebody shouldn’t lean in, a man shouldn’t lean in, because that’s sort of weak body language.

So what happens, there’s a woman who very much is attracted to him. And she starts to lean in, because she’s trying to kiss him. But he does not reciprocate. Because leaning in is bad.

The point of the story is, sometimes we do things that are against the rules.

Sometimes we do things that aren’t accounted for in our theory of the world.

And if we are in touch with the deeper part of ourselves, we might actually be doing these things out of intuition.

Not just randomly, not just because we want to break the rules. Or because we’re being disciplined, sometimes it is right to follow our intuition.

So likewise, sometimes when I’m giving coaching, of course, I’ve taken courses in cognitive behavioral therapy, and I’ve read a lot of self help books, and this meditation practice that I’ve done, and meditation theory and all kinds of things that I learned.

Sometimes what comes to me, isn’t anything to do with what I’ve learned.

And I don’t really know exactly where it comes from.

And I tell my client to close their eyes and start imagining that sudden scene.

And when they open their eyes, they’re changed. They’ve had some experience.

Something, what I said and what they started to imagine from what I’ve said, has provoked something within them.

And now they know, previously they didn’t.

These things can surge up from our intuition.

We listen closely to our bodies and our own minds.

And we trust what comes out, using our discernment to try, a,}nd this is difficult, to try to separate what is just a simple urge, or an instinct, from a genuine intuition.

For example, in that card game when I was in that hand against Timo, while I could have easily folded just out of fear, and that wouldn’t have been right.

But if I have a genuine intuition, and I’m correct, that is right.

Well, it’s difficult to tell the difference. But that is our challenge.

How do we tell the difference between a whim and an intuition?

That is a question that can last us a lifetime. And it’s a valid pursuit, because there are, in my experience, there are real experiences of intuition, that can guide us, that we can trust in, that we can put our faith in.

And that is how we play by feel.