I once saw a Patrick Antonius video where he attempted to explain his thought process. It was absolutely horrible, was completely useless at explaining why he did certain things. But I do not doubt his abilities.

I think it is possible. However, I think being able to explain your thought process, discuss the game with others, and properly interpret other peoples views on things is HUGE on your development as a player.

I think it is fine if you're a winning player, but if you can't describe your thought process, it's definitely a weakness.

I play a lot of golf, and this dicsussion reminds me of a special on TV with Tiger Woods and another pro, Anthony Kim. They were conducting a clinic and talking about how they play the game, and how they hit certain shots. Anthony Kim is a total feel player, so when he explained how to hit the ball high, he just said something like, "I imagine the shot going higher, and make my swing feel like it will go high." He had zero idea why the shot went higher, or how to alter his technique to hit the ball higher. He was basically worthless as an instructor, but funny to watch because he admitted it. Tiger Woods on the other hand, knew exactly how to alter his setup, and why the ball went higher, how to execute it, etc... THEN he used feel to accomplish the task. They're both tour pros making a ton of money, so obviously it wasn't necessary for Kim to understand why he plays well. But, as we all know, Tiger is on another level.

If Anthony Kim ever has problems with his swing or anything else in his game, he's going to have to rely completely on feel to get his game back, or he'll be in big trouble. Tiger, on the other hand, _knows_ what he has to do to fix his swing.

I think understanding and articulating your thought process is the bedrock you can fall back on when you're having problems, or when you want to improve. After all, how can you improve if you don't know what you're doing right or wrong? Feel is the same as executing a golf swing without any instruction--you might not know why you're doing what you do, but you do it right anyway. That works well enough until you have a problem or want to get better and can't feel your way out of it.

So the short answer is, I think it's a weakness to not be able to articulate why you play certain hands the way you do, but it can be made up for by having a very good feel for game flow and decent fundamentals.

I sorta get owned when discussing poker lol

Hey, I thought the people who answered this thread might be interested I have made a video of myself playing 100nl hu trying to commentate on what I'm doing and why. Its short and sweet so hope you can all watch it and give me some feedback!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/58...-video-569392/

Barry Greenstein discussed this a little when he was on the pokercast, saying that Ivey worked really hard on his game and thought and analysed a lot about it. http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/poke...p?pokercast=75 around the 1hr 20min mark.

A little off-topic, but I completely agree. All players are just assessing the mathematical probabilities based on what they "feel" they are. Poker is just math, and players err either by not correctly picking up on information they should be or not understanding how much equity they need to make a certain decision. I guess "math players" tend to make mistakes on the first point and "feel players" tend to mess up on the second, but in the end "math" and "feel" are basically ways of saying the same thing.

I think that people would like to be "feel" players because it's easier. That is, it takes more effort to know something for very specific reasons (i.e., mathematics, deductive logic) than it does to know something "just because."

I probably write better than i play because i think i make decisions too quickly or go on autopilot too easily when im playing

is it possible that we are the same person ?