Ive heard Doyle Brunson talk about ESP and I was wondering whats everyones opinion on this subject? Is there such a thing? Is it something your born with or something you can develop?

You are thinking of the number 7 am I right?

What exactly do you mean? Do you mean that people can read the other player or do you mean people can "see" what cards are going to come ?

I don't believe that people have the ability to accurately predict the outcomes with a fair deck/deal.


But I do believe subscribe to the notion of intuition regarding people. Whether it is pheromones, verbal, or visual clues -- I think there are certainly non traditional signals that people send that fall outside of traditional "tells." And like any trait, I think some people are more naturally capable than others -- though I think everyone can improve upon their perexisting abilities.

If ESP were real, there'd be a lot more overlap between the set of great poker players and the set of self-professed psychics.

What Doyle is talking about is the subconcious analysis of tells in order to determine the strength of an opponent's hand. It's not really ESP, it's just analysis of tons of small bits of information at a level you're not even thinking about. I imagine part of this is natural-born, and part is experience (studying tells and always paying attention, even to hands you're not in, would help with this).

Nice post. The term ESP, extra-sensory perception, is not that far-fetched. People can and do have instinct and intuitions based on experience. If you have seen something before many, many times, you can subconsciously process that information without actually thinking it since it is so familiar.

Some people can tell if others are lying. They don't necessarily know why, they just feel. What they are actually doing however is processing all the body language and other factors of the person lying and recognize an untruthful moment.

The problems with ESP arise when people try to predict the future or what's behind door number two or associate it with paranormal activities.

So ESP spans everything from fairly well understood and accepted concepts, some not so understood concepts to utter BS.

just remember... no psychic has ever won the lottery.

i feel like i have ESP sometimes when particular things happen in a hand, then i call out before the next hand exactly what will happen between a number of players, and then it happens. for example, you know the calling stations will always call, and a weak player who just took a bad beat in a sit n go is likely to go all in preflop in the next hand.

on occasion it isn't very hard to predict that mr. calling station will limp from early position, when it gets back around to mr. "can't control his emotions after losing a hand" in the big blind he's going to go all in... it's made especially sweet when in between the two you've also limped with KK, and after the calling station calls the all in, he's forced to call your check re-raise all-in.

just because you can predict the future doesn't mean you have ESP... it just means that people are often predictable, and if you pay even the slightest attention you'll often be able to pick it up.

Yeah, I sorta missed that part about predicting the future although what you are talking about is high probability of something occurring in the future. It's not a 100% certainty but enough to bet on I would presume.

this is good imo

Yeah, they also have sportscenter and stuff

I think the ESP he may have been referring to is the culmination of years and years of poker hands and skill that's made the most elementary ideas seem 2nd nature.

Question?

Have you ever been in these types of situations;

a) You are in a public setting and you see a very beautiful woman from way across the room. You keep gazing at her when all of a sudden, she freezes as if someone has tapped her on her shoulder, then she turns to look directly into your eyes?
b) You are in a public setting and you are feeling and looking very good. You are busy talking to some friends when all of a sudden something in your subconcious mind tells you that you are being watched. You turn and look across the room directly at some chick who is staring at you.

I have been in these types of situations numerous times throughout my life. And I believe that this is indeed some form of 'extra sensory perception' that we have built into us as human beings.

I also think that when you are playing cards at the poker table, and your first gut instinct tells you something about a particular hand or player, that your gut instinct is usually right. This I believe is also another form of extra sensory perception i.m.o.

Jaconda78 definitely hit it the best imo. It's not possible to know what cards are coming, but after tons and tons of experience the subconscious may push a decision one way or another. Not just with physical tells, but overall tendencies people have in certain situations. Our brains are constantly processing info we are completely unaware of at all times.

zis, although sometimes you aren't right

Did Doyle use the actual term "ESP" to describe intuitive reads on players?

The term ESP, strictly used, would be having knowledge of what specific card(s) (rank and suit) are in 1) opponent's hands and, even more, 2) what card(s) will be dealt next (without cheating or peaking) with a higher-than-random frequency.

But you forget the other million times you turn and look around and absolutely nobody is looking at you. Or the times you've stared at the back of someone's head and they've blissfully ignored you. If you look around enough, you are going to eventually look at someone who is looking at you. Same applies to looking at the back of someone's head.

IMO, Jaconda nailed this one.

A guy called James Randi has a $1 000 000 fund set aside to be given to the first person who successfully demonstrates, under laboratory conditions, any form of ESP or supernatural ability. No-one has managed to claim it as yet. I reckon his loot is safe, although I wrote in predicting I wouldn't win it and I was right, so maybe...

1M isn't much if you're able to read minds and predict the future. Busting half of vegas would be much more fun than submitting to hours of lab tests for a measly seven figures...

Equalsfour is right on

That hardly fits my lifes experiences.
Maybe I'm better looking than you are.

I think what doyle means by ESP is nothing supernatural but anything you can use to aid in reading another players hand, but which is too subtle to consciously understand or describe. Presumably an individual contributor to this effect is difficult to isolate and measure becuase there's an array of inputs and the rule determining outputs, i.e. your response, is a complex function.

From Merriam Webster online dictionary:

ESP

Main Entry: extrasensory perception
Function: noun
Date: 1934
: perception (as in telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition) that involves awareness of information about events external to the self not gained through the senses and not deducible from previous experience —called also ESP

Holy crap a song I was thinking about just played on the radio .... see ya later I'm headin' to 25/50 while the iron is hot

When you're such a dreamy hunk that the odds of a woman staring at you are elevated 24/7, the coincidence of looking back at them or anticipating that they will be looking at you is about as far from extra-sensory as you can get.

For the existence of extra-sensory type phenomena to be contemplated, a better definition and standard is needed than two lushes making eyes at each other in a meat market. That doesn't qualify and is just more of the garbage that gives the whole subject a bad name.

you have several types of memory, one being semantic, another episodic.

semantic is memory of facts and concepts unrelated to experience (ex you knowing the capital of Canada is Ottawa without you being there etc)

episodic is you explaining a particular event ("yeah I went to California in 2007 for coachella")

both are from different parts of the brain (dont feel like looking it up) and the memorization of odd things that you dont remember where that fact came from or why you know it are because you have semantic memory of this fact but no episodic. Maybe ESP is remembering something in your semantic memory bank and it seems like it came outta nowhere since you dont remember where it came from (episodic).

**Just thought I'd throw that out there, I had a leading expert in Canada talk to my class about that today so im relaying what i remember while sitting ripped...

I always thought it was a eupemism for card marking.