Intuitive Decision Making

[traynor]

"Intuitive" decision making may be seriously mislabeled. In most cases, intuition is "subconsciously competent" pattern-recognition skills--a topic with which all blackjack players should be intimately familiar.

We are developing (and have developed) training methods that greatly accelerate the "internalization" process for pattern-recognition. Those methods will be presented (no charge, no hassle, no commitment) in the next 3-4 issues of our newsletter (again, no charge, no hassle, no commitment). You don't even have to sign up for email delivery if you prefer not to; the newsletters will be available posted online at: http://ddssratings.com/eng/Home/Newsletter.aspx

We are aiming for mid-January completion of a state-of-the-art online tutorial for basic strategy, and basic high-low counting skill development. It is not intended as a commercial product, and will be available without charge to anyone who wants to increase and improve his or her blackjack skills.

Any recommendations for inclusions, or comments on the topic of pattern-recognition as an adjunct to decision making in blackjack would be deeply appreciated. We are pragmatists; we use techniques that work, as opposed to techniques that comply with theoretical mandates, but always seem to come up short in the real world.

We will expand the tutorials to include other casino games, particularly craps, roulette. and baccarat, but our primary focus in the coming weeks and months will be on blackjack and Texas Hold'em.

This is not a sales pitch or attempt to market anything. Everything, from the newsletters to the tutorials, will be freely available to any BlackjackInfo.com forum member who wants to use them.

[sagefr0g]

i guess the big question is does intuition have any value for a blackjack player. i guess i'm a proponent of using intuition in those situations that require action but for which there is really no known best action to take.
doesn't really seem to plausible for blackjack advantage play but we are all human and can find ourselves in shallow or deep waters at times that we have become disoriented or lost with respect to our cognizance of what can and should be known. at times like that what else does one have to make a decision other than intuition?
the great hope with regard to intuition would be to me that it holds a shrouded allure of the possibility of doing the wrong thing at the right time and comming out smelling like a rose lol . too where in blackjack we all know that negative and positive fluctuations are going to occur despite our best advantage play efforts. the question being can intuition help a player decrease those negative fluctuations and increase the positive fluctuations?
well i sure don't know but it's a compelling thought.

[Cardcounter]

There is only one way that intuition can work in blackjack is when the dealer hand checks underneath the 10 for blackjack. If you can read people like as in poker you might make the decision to stand on or stiff if you feel that the dealer has a stiff. However in 99% of casino the dealer has a peeking device and does not know his hole card in this case I would just go with the basic stragedy.

[traynor]

It is normal for people to affix labels, then to proceed as if the label were the thing itself. Korzybski, of Science and Sanity fame, explored the phenomena in detail. My point is that most of what people call "intuitive" is in fact finely tuned pattern-recognition skills, rather than something "extra sensory."

The link posted on this thread was to a later issue than I thought was online. I am posting the correct excerpt on the Other Games thread to avoid cluttering this forum with topics that are only indirectly related to blackjack, but are still of vale to blackjack players.
Good Luck!