sorry, this is probably rambling and useless, but bear with me:

i consider myself a pretty smart guy (straight-a student at a top 20 school, ranked top 10 nationally in debate, 170+ on the lsat, etc.) but do not "get" poker for the life of me. i read lots of books, understand a lot of the "fundamentals" in theory, but when i sit down, i feel like i constantly end up levelling myself and overthinking the game, with disastrous consequences for my bankroll. when i'm on my A-game and running well, this obviously works out, but when it's not im constantly losing by doing things like running elaborate multi-street bluffs, compulsively getting tricky and winning small pots with really good hands, playing as if i have fold equity against terrible players, etc. i know the solution is to nit up and play ABC poker, but i feel like that doesnt really address how to structure my thinking to avoid these plays in the first place. any suggestions?

You structure your thinking to avoid those plays by avoiding those plays and playing ABC poker. Playing ABC poker IS structuring your thinking to avoid getting overly trappy or bluffy or whatever. If you do this for awhile and do well, you'll start finding yourself much more competent ant feeling when to deviate from ABC strategy and when not to.

I am a three standard deviant guy, it was hard for me too. Simple thing that may help. The Neurology/Cognitive Psychology of the matter is counter-intuitive. The book "Blink" has a red deck blue deck anecdote that will help with the idea that the amazing neo-cortical alacrity that you have is in this exercise secondary in importance much of the time in poker. The low road is what you use when making "gut" plays. You must have already had encyclopedic exposure to truly similar spots before it can work though. Then and only then when you have an amygdalic response, you go with it. If you don't have a low road response, then and only then, reason it out. Then you will have a huge advantage, because of properly using your brain and because of your intellectual super-powers. LOL On average this will take 2-3 years, three deviants that are wounded critter focused on the game, maybe a year is possible if you play and then THINK quite a bit.

As Jaconda suggests, even then ABC is the basis, and you learn when to break the rules, but most of the time you don't. There is no substitute for fundamentals no matter how good you are. I have a picture of Roy Jones Jr. getting KO'd on my desk to remind me of that EVERY day!!

Great Post..Really good stuff.

Just please clarify that this is correct:

A "low road" response is essentially a "gut" response. An intelligent person has better low road recall once they absorb the intricacies of a certain poker situation and the decision becomes internalized.

However, when faced with a poker situation that you havent come across, raw intelligence is fruitless and a different part of the brain is at work?

Technically, it is an advantage to be "IQ intelligent" as you point out but not for a direct reason. The amygdala is the almond shaped piece in your "lizard brain" that activates your fight or flight response. When you see something that your lizard brain can recognize as dangerous, you will feel it. Technically, a person with a high IQ has a faster processing computer so to speak. The guy with the best software and more experience has an advantage. But since the faster computer can acquire data at a faster rate...technically it IS an advantage. If there is not enough experience then it is a LARGE advantage, because reasoning/logic is a powerful problem solver. So, fruitless is not accurate, but it is the enemy of doing the best you can for sure. The case I referenced in the book Blink, was a study that showed people in who were playing a rigged card game in which one color deck was on the square one wasn't. The people in the study had a physical reaction to using the rigged color deck far faster than they intellectually caught on. Thus the wisdom in trusting that brick in your gut when you see the river card peel off, and you thought you were good on the turn. You can reason your way into or out of anything. The old timers used to say "You think long, you think wrong", that's why.

Make no mistake though the two things are not close in value though, being just smart versus just "gut trusting". Doyle Brunson, even if he were not very bright(though I think he IS FOR SURE) would still drub the living crap out of Marilyn Vos Savant who is the the person with the highest IQ ever!!! Why because he has more experience that has been vetted with afterthought than anyone! He sees something that doesn't look right his amygdala goes off like a fire alarm, and he makes the right decision more often than not. NOTHING is perfect. Well maybe it is! If you put the two together maybe you get Phil Ivey!! LOL

Clearly it is best to be both.

my IQ is certainly not at the level of the loquatious Kentucky Buddha or the self-effacing asmitty, but here are the problems i would imagine an Alpha-citizen would have playing poker compared to a mere Beta-citizen like myself.

poker, due to the entirely random nature of the cards tends to f*ck with our brains, to put it politely. having an inordinately high IQ probably means that your brains possess an accelerated ability to organize information, and recognize patterns among other things. these are advantages to figure out how other players at the table are thinking, but when it comes to interpreting the fall of the cards, or the intentions of a clueless player (neither of which should be interpreted at all), i would wager this could cause a serious short-circuit for a highly trained thinker. i could see how just a couple bad beats from a complete moron could cause a highly logical person to start questioning themselves and their play, and bring them to a place where they feel fancy plays are now absolutely necessary because the standard ABC game just wasn't producing the intended results.

it took me a while, but i eventually came to a few logical conclusions in my mind that helped me a whole lot. i play a lot of sit n gos, and i know that an expert player (an EXPERT) will be able to maintain at most a 20-24% ROI over the long run (or less depending on the stakes). when you think about what this looks like in practice, in a 20 game stretch at $10 a game you're expecting to make $40 profit. this intuitively doesn't seem right considering you could win 3 tourneys in a row and be up $120... but in the long run, an EXPERT is only favored to win $40 on average for every 20 game set. similarly, an EXPERT cash-game player is expected to win 3-5BB/100, and much less at the higher stakes.

the lesson? don't get caught up in those moments of brilliance where you took down several hundred dollars in a few hours and think that's what poker is all about. in the end you're only expecting to make about 20%, or 3-5BB/100 which really isn't a whole lot when you think about it...

I am at times loquatious to a fault! I was framing the response to the OP. I don't think there are or should be different levels of citizenship.
Cognitive Psychology proves your point in Memory Theory. People that are extremely IQ smart are just as liable to mistakes of this kind. The problem is memory does not work like videotape. We remember what we are familiar with better that what we don't. For example if I give you a list of 40 names 20 you know 20 you don't, you will think it is more like 75% names you know instead of 50%. Unfortunately, this will also reinforce opinions as well. If you literally can trust your memory, you have to take good records of what happened to you in a session. Otherwise you may have very distorted views of what happened as you suggest. Also, there is the outstanding observation that expectation, even when playing GREAT is not what you might think.
But Memory Theory doesn't just affect us at the felt, that warped perception is why people think all kinds of stupid things, like racism, xenophobia, agism, etc. They remember things that align with their beliefs at a rate far beyond reality.

This game is a long hard slog sometimes, and you are not nearly as brilliant as you think you are when you are on a rush, or as stupid as some think they are when they are in a slump. The ROI is pretty narrow even when you play great, that was an excellent point!

Remember my key point was that the IQ thing is not a HUGE advantage over time especially. Most of the thinking it out "HERO" plays you make are -EV. Mostly you have to get enough experience to trust your gut, if that doesn't work...think it out but don't trust what you think as much. The other day on Poker After Dark Phil Hellmuth with all kinds of experience made a donktastic laydown with QQ pre-flop. So even when we get good we won't get 20% all the time either.

Thanks for the information TBONE I did not know that rate% for ROI of experts in STG. I think I need to do more to focus on the long term realistic ROI and how the Law of Large numbers makes it very very unpredictable for a given session or even a few sessions even if I am playing well. I think if you look at what I said again you will find that I was not suggesting that any group of people is "better" than another. We are all differently in abilities and there is all kinds of smart.

oh, the Alpha, Beta thing was actually a reference to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

I suppose if you enjoy being a Beta, as you were taught! LOL I am not a big Huxley fan. I still hope you know I meant that any +EV poker players are all alphas not matter what their capacity, the fish are the epsilons. I don't think there is a middle. I don't know that I have seen a blithe beta in a poker game.

Have a good one!

By telling yourself you are "levelling yourself and overthinking the game" you get to feel smart and superior to your opponents. It seems being smart is important to you and as such where is your motivation to improve? You have to pound into your brain that you are not overthinking the game or levelling yourself but your are playing poorly and like an idiot. There is a correct stategy required to beat the game and if you are not beating it over a decent sample size you should view yourself as failing and not as "being too smart" or "making plays above your opponents thinking".

If you are playing against a donkey and then call his flop bet and check-raise turn as a bluff hoping he'll lay down a medium strength hand for example its not playing fancy or overthinking the hand it is just plain bad.

Putting opponents on a first, second, third level, etc thinking is something that is more advanced than the OP seems to be at the moment. I think he is going to have to ABC it until he learns enough to know how to peg his opponents though....agreed?

I love the Rock, Paper, Scissors (Roshambo) chapter in the FTP strategy guide that goes into that point.

For that very reason Wotawaster, I have had real problems at times when I moved down limits. I just couldn't make myself read the basic players as basic as they were for comical amounts of time. It was a huge leak. The capacity to really adapt quickly is a tough lesson to learn. I don't think it comes fast either.

I had a huge problem with this concept too which is why I spent far more time at microstakes than I ought to have relative to my performance in other disciplines.

In the end I realised:

- that your edge is pretty ****ing small in this game and you really shouldn't be expecting much. You can catch the negative side of variance for a long, long time and when you're learning, the effects are exacerbated.
-that the mind needs to be retrained not to be quite as results oriented. It doesn't just happen, it needs to be a systematic process that encompasses a better grasp of the statistics and also of the psychology behind your neural pathways. Blink is a great start.
-that forming your own theories must come secondary to first copying, and then understanding, established winning plays as evinced in videos from winning players.
-That it takes far more brain power for people to represent a big hand than it does for them to have a big hand and that most people are simply not using their brains very often. Ie. stop being such a passive station and stop paying off too often against mediocre players.

Your first two points were Very Very tough for me to absorb. I had to ultimately order a class from the Teaching Company on Probability and Statistics, and if finally finally got the Law of Large Numbers. Only then did I get how likely it is that you can be doing the right things and lose, or do the wrong things and win.
It takes a lot of wisdom to get out of your own way, and play ABC as long as you need to. I leaked off a whole lot that way too!
It takes a while to figure out what you don't know...then a lot longer to figure out how to do anything about it.

The easiest way to get rich quick....is don't.

A whole lot of people go a whole life and never get it.

Oops, when I said do the wrong things and win....etc. I meant how long it takes the random walk to catch up with you and you get punished for making mistakes, or rewarded for doing good things. It can be a while, but it will happen eventually. You can have bad habits deeply ingrained for a while before you can figure out what you were doing wrong. It's best not to experiment with too much at once for that reason.

My guess would be that you are playing levels that are too low. What limit do you play?