As you begin learning and more and more about poker, your intuition begins to sharpen. You become better at pinpointing opponent hand ranges, or in some cases even putting them on an exact hand. Every pot your opponent plays or doesn’t play gives you more information as to their way of playing poker. Each bet he makes reveals that much information for you to go off of. But as your intuition sharpens, you need to remember to listen to it.

Its much harder for an amateur to trust their gut than it is a professional. The amateur is playing for much lower stakes and has yet to determine whether or not the information they’re going off of is actually accurate. The more hands you play, the more you can trust those feelings. The biggest flaw for the amateur poker player is their ego. The ego prevents players from making correct folds as they don’t want to feel as though they were pushed out of the pot. Being that the stakes are lower, the financial loss also isn’t high enough to make the fold play scream out to the player.

My intuition has been good for awhile but occasionally I still go against it. Today I was playing in a pot when I looked down and saw Queens in the pocket. I’d been playing fairly conservative and went for the raise from early position. An opponent in middle re-raised the pot. Everyone else folded. I hesitated for a moment as I had a feeling he was holding Aces or Kings. My opponent had been playing very conservative the whole game and there was no reason why he would raise me unless he was holding something great. I ignored it and called anyway. Flop came Jack 7 7. He bet instantly.

Now everything in this hand, as well as the information I had collected on my opponent from previous hands told me that I was beat. Yet I ignored this information and pushed all in anyway. He turned over Kings. Long story short, I lost the hand.

Had I trusted my gut instincts and my ability to read opponents in situations I would have folded. However, in this case I was also paying for information. I wanted to show my ego that I was right all along. Reading opponents is easy after you’ve played for awhile. Now conquering your ego is a whole other story. If your gut tells you to fold then folding is most likely the correct play. Let your intuition guide you through your play, and check your ego at the door.