math vs instinct

I think and hope, that at least some of you, if not most of you, do have "feelings" about some hands, and i mean here about that " interior voice" that says one thing even if poker math says the oposite.
What should we do in cases like this when we know we can call an AI during a hand but you really have a bad feeling about it? or the other way around, you have no odds to call but something inside says that this time villain is bluffing?

It may seem stupid, but i would really like the opinion of experienced players, if should always play by math, ranges or i should also listen to my instinct.
So, do we listen to our heart or base our actions just on math+reads?

reads and math

It should always be based on math. Always!

The point you are making is valid though, just not in the way you think.

The basic math of poker is pretty simple, expecially with softwere such as pokerstove. So if you crunch the numbers and it says it's a fold, then one of two things has happened.

Either the resulting decision is correct and you should fold.

Or you have put in inappropriate ranges and the result is irrelevent.

If you put garbage in you get garbage out.

Just because a guy is running 12/8 doesn't mean he is only ever raising with 8% of his hands. You should use the stats as a guide, but the game dynamic can change everything. This is the bit about instinct you're referring to. If you've been punishing him with 3 bets and he suddently shoves over a couple of times and you think he has adjusted due to the way you have been playing, then you need to change his range in the formula for deciding whether or not to call.

If you play around with pokerstove and no matter what range you put him on it's never a call then it's still a fold regardless of your gut. But if you only need to widen the range a little and it becomes a profitable call then, well, maybe it's a call. Also, don't forget you can remove cards from villains range as well as add them, ie you think he'd slow play big hands at a particular point in time, therefore his range should have a greater weighting towards bluffing.

If you play around with stove you can see how certain cards play against certain ranges, and also how dramitically or otherwise adding or subtracting a few hands can change things. This is good to be aware of, especially if playing short handed where you have more opportunity to build up a reliable read on someone and manipulate them somewhat.

The instinct is all about getting information (mostly about opponent's hand range, sometimes also about their likely reactions to your actions). But instinct can never tell you what to do with that information.

Math, on the other hand, is all about using the information. Math can never tell what your opponent is likely to have.

Therefore, there can never be a conflict between instinct and math. They operate in separate realms.

I'm still new to the game & only a winning player from the last 50k hands but I know what you mean.

My gut is based on an online tell wherever possible. An example would be a super fast c/bet which I'd previously noted was a sign it was air. EG he is slower to consider the bet size if a made hand rather than a snap pot or 80% bet otherwise.

Say I have a drawing hand and position so I may call because I believe he has air due to the speed of his cbet but also have weigh it up with the maths (looking at my implied odds if he's heavily stacked). I got a lot out of watching grinder school in that respect of the maths on both the current decision then the reaction to his subsequent action.

If you have a gut shot draw & need to call a pot size turn bet against a short stacker, it remains a bad decision to call no matter how hard the gut is screaming he's got air.

i think the first three responses are pretty damn solid. instinct is one factor which goes into what we decide our opponent's range is (this often refers to gameflow/dynamic and guaging our opponent's mental states. danaron put it well). and the maths tells us what to do based on what we think our opponent's range is, ie call/raise/fold etc. however, instinct as you seem to be conceptualising it (OP) seems to be referring to some instinct regarding what to do, which is wrong. maths owns that aspect of poker. don't be the fish who makes calls or whatever because you have a "feeling" that your draw will come in when you don't have adequate implied odds to be drawing in the first place.

I think bringing instinct into play can be dangerous, you might decide to make a bad call when you can see you don't have the odds , because you feel like it, your card comes in and your rewarded. After a few more bad calls and your +6 buyins up, your the King of the world.

When your instinct over rules the maths and your instinct is proved correct it can boost your ego and lead to more busto.

When your instinct is drawing on experience, stats, reads , stuff youve worked out on pokerstove (copying DanAronG ) etc and your instinct is proved correct it can lead to more Euro.

Instinct is good. Instinct saves money. Math sucks. Math says, I'm kinda priced to call, although instinct tells you different story. I'm not saying you should disregard math. I'm saying that once you see/sense that villain has done something out of ordinary, you should get worried. Instinct is nothing else but a good read.

all answers aprreciated and i also think that first 3 were great.

maybe i havent put in the right words to describe what i want, so i am gonna give some examples.

lets's say we are EP with KK and get a 3bet 3x from LP from a villain we know 3bets QQ+,AK and on a 4bet from us he folds all but KK,AA whick he shoves over, so we flat his 3bet to keep his range wide.
flop comes 269r and we check because we know he cbets all of his range 2/3-3/4 pot, which he does now also, turn is 6, we check again because we know by the way he plays, he fires again AK,QQ+ on that board, but when he bets, before calling my instinct says that this time he has AA, even tho i know he bets all of his range and i have odds to call vs that. so in this case, math says call, but my instinc says fold because i am vs AA, i just have a bad feeling about this hand.

this is just an example, but it happend to me in similar spots, with overcards, or set vs set and ussually my gut is right, but because of math i kept calling. so my question is, did i proceed correctly based on math and reads or i should also fold sometimes based on this "bad feelings"? i never call if math says no, no mather what my gut says, i an interested in the folding part.

i had a sweat sometime ago with CBat, he had KK IP on Q77 vs an EP opening where he just called pre, CBat called the flop bet but folded the turn ( was a low card which didnt affect the board) and when i asked why he folded when the opp had enough AQ in his hand to bet, CBat said is just a " bad feeling" and he prefers to fold. maybe he will remember the hand if he reads this thread.

You would be surprised how many times you are right when your instinct tells you you are dominated and you are holding two overcards. I'm right like 90% of time. I know because i call 100% of time and lose.

There are really two types of "instinct" at play here. The first is a process of thinking that help us make correct decisions based on large samples in situations where we know the best play because we've seen the situation so many times we don't really have to think about it. This type of thought process will almost always match our math unless we did the math wrong. It also will rarely give us any "feeling" about the matter because we know we're right and there's no need to get anxious about.

Think about it like driving a car or riding a bike. When we're learning to do these things we're anxious because we don't know what we're doing or what the outcomes gonna be, the feeling gets stronger the less we know about/ understand it and goes away when we've mastered it.

The second, which is the one I think you're describing, is an irrational thought process based on small samples in which we've seen an outcome a few times (usually more recently) while we were running good or bad. These more recent events will allow our subconcious to override our longterm stored information and send warnig signals to our brain saying "remember the last few times we were in this situation? We got totally screwed." And even tho we know the correct move is to call or shove or whatever, we feel uneasy about it because our illogical subconscious is dwelling on variance based shit. The same thing goes for when we're behind. We made a few bad decisions and got lucky. Our subconcious says that making this decision has been working for us and we should keep doing it, even tho all our data says not to.

Making decisions based on the first type, along with correct ranges and math, is +ev. Making them based on gut feelings that go against everything else you know is -ev.

^^ nice post.

yep, supa touched exactly what i meant and his post i great, thanks all.

I'm in the situation supa describes right now and I'm trying not to let affect me.

I'm running sooooooooooo freaking bad that every time someone raises me and I don't have the stone cold nuts I start to get worried and think about folding. Even if my range for villain says it's a snap call or shove or whatever I still start to get that "bad feeling".

I find this harder to work through than when I'm running good and get a "good feeling" about my FD hitting or whatever. That kind of feeling is very easy to spot for me and I rarely make the mistake of calling if the math isn't right. This "bad feeling" thing though is driving me nuts and I just try to keep reminding myself that if my read and range for villain is good then the maths and odds will work out in the long run.