spotting AK

Does anyone else experience this kind of thing? I've had extraordinary luck recently picking off Cbets when the villian was holding AK on a missed flop. Perhaps it is just luck. 3 times this weekend, i called a standard bet preflop, the flop was ragged and my out of position opponent potted it, I RR and he folds, showing AK twice. The third one said in the chat window that he had AK. This is 3 different villians on 3 seperate tables. Once in SNG, 2 at Ring. I went back thru my notes from the sessions and found that I was faced with this situation many more than 3 times but for some reason these 3 just screamed AK!! to me. I was not multitabling this weekend because I was using a laptop and the screen is too small. I was hyper focused on the game making way more notes than usual.

So my question, is it luck? Am I subconciously noticing a pattern? Or am I being possessed by the spirit of Daniel Negranu? God I hope its him and not Helmuth!

I feel the easist way to pick off AK or AQ to a dry flop is when i have position on them. I let them bet out first and I just smooth call. They usually will check the turn if they have one of these two hands and I will fire out on the turn to take it down. Sometimes you need to fire even two barrels but make sure not to make it cheap enough for them to call on the river with A high.

Py

OK. Nice question.

Basicly alot of poker tells/instinct is based on recall. Your subconsious minds remebers patterns. I think its luck and skill. Luck that it was AK all 3 times, skill that your recall said "Hey, this is a cbet with overcards, ive seen this before, raise it playah!!"

Live its even better, somtimes i look at someone, mabey onnly at the table an hour or less, and i know when he has it or dosent. Im not sure exactly how, but it relates to recall. Same way you might not be able to sing all the lyrics of said song, but if it comes on the raidio, you could sing word for word with it, the music activates your recall.... Same way with be sizing, body motion, time taken b4 acting and a slew of other things that alert your subconcious to similar situations. If you pay attention to other players while your not in the hand, id say its definatly your recall. If not, probly luck.

With that said paying attention and taking notes IS the workout to strengthin your brains recall muscle. You wont rember off hand every detail, but like a song, when it comes up, you just know.

Hope that helped.

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Originally Posted by SHAKE

OK. Nice question.

Basicly alot of poker tells/instinct is based on recall. Your subconsious minds remebers patterns. I think its luck and skill. Luck that it was AK all 3 times, skill that your recall said "Hey, this is a cbet with overcards, ive seen this before, raise it playah!!"

Live its even better, somtimes i look at someone, mabey onnly at the table an hour or less, and i know when he has it or dosent. Im not sure exactly how, but it relates to recall. Same way you might not be able to sing all the lyrics of said song, but if it comes on the raidio, you could sing word for word with it, the music activates your recall.... Same way with be sizing, body motion, time taken b4 acting and a slew of other things that alert your subconcious to similar situations. If you pay attention to other players while your not in the hand, id say its definatly your recall. If not, probly luck.

With that said paying attention and taking notes IS the workout to strengthin your brains recall muscle. You wont rember off hand every detail, but like a song, when it comes up, you just know.

Hope that helped.

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I love that song analogy. That is exactly how it felt. Strange too that you should mention live play. I played about 8 hours in Vegas last wednesday and tuesday and I had the same feeling a couple times but didn't act on it in the same way. Probably because live play is pretty unfamiliar to me still. I guess all the note taking and reading is taking root. 2008 WSOP here I come :-)

Seriously though, I've always thought that all the math could only get me so far. To really turn a corner and start believing I'm good I'll need to play the player as automatically as I calculate pot odds. Gotta work on that.

Thanks for the insight.

your definatly on the right track. Asking the right questions is key. Just watch everything, get in the zone. Go with your gut. Even when your wrong, its still valuble.