One of the most romanticized poker playing styles is to play based on “feel” rather than by relying on a more mathematical approach. Getting into the specifics, playing based on feel depends more on your reading abilities and knowing opponents, as opposed to constantly taking pot odds, implied odds, and +EV plays into account. Some poker players swear by this style of play such as Chad Batista (pictured), who has made several million dollars in online poker tournaments, despite having never cracked a poker book!
Success stories such as this often get players to thinking about whether they’d be better off focusing more on opponents and the situation rather than the math. In fact, some players believe that they play better when they put statistics and math on the back burner during poker games. But when you really stop and think about things, it seems a little silly to truly believe that you’d actually be a better player by not taking poker math into account.
Sure reading abilities and analyzing your opponent are extremely important, but you don’t have to abandon poker odds in favor of dedicating everything to how you feel at the table. And while Batista may condone not using conventional poker strategy methods, the average player is going to be better off combining every facet of poker strategy that they have time to study.
Going further with this concept, do you think that Daniel Negreanu or Erik Seidel play entirely based on feeling? Well maybe in the 80′s they did, but this is a new era of poker, and you really have to focus on all factors in the game instead of just your reads and experience.
In addition to this, even if you experience quite a bit of success without taking math into consideration, you could just be running good, and this style of play won’t hold up over several hundred thousand hands. After all, it’s hard to tell if you’re truly a good player or not until you get several hundred thousands hands into your career.
