To be good at poker "psychology" - to effectively predict your opponent's likely thought processes - there is no need to take a seminar on Card Games and their Relation to the Unconscious. Your opponent is not your patient, and even if he/she is, no matter how well you apply Jacques Lacan to their neurosis, you are still not guaranteed to win.

Strategy is more basic to poker than psychoanalysis. But strategy is only the first step on your way to fame and fortune. "Reading" your opponents' minds is the key to smart play, but such "reading" does not require you to listen to the other's life story.

Outstanding players, like outstanding artists, don't get that way from reading a manual. They progress intuitively, summoning their powers of observation, diligently practiced and enhanced over a period of many years.

Good technical manuals on poker psychology are rare. This is at the very crux of the matter. Whatever tips and advice you may find off the net or in the bookstore, you can not practically or successfully put them into real play. You must have that inexplicable talent of intuition that puts your own creative mind processes over the limit of your opponents.

Most players will lose more than they win because they depend on strict models of play, much like computer programs, or simulations that present themselves as predictions to be used robotically by the savvy player. This could be quite simple depending on the number of variables involved in the prediction.

Such schematics are disdained by the professional player, who makes their own observations regarding others methods of play as well as their own. Using their well-developed intuition, they take those observations and mix them into principles according to their own thought processes. This results in a strategy known only to themselves. The most talented players use these complex (or deceptively simple) secret strategies to make them less vulnerable than their opponents.

Artists and good poker players do not reveal their secrets. They may give advice or even write books on their art, but they will never reveal what really sets them apart. Remember this, they did not achieve their lofty peaks by relying on someone else's tips.

The first and most vital principle of any game then seems to be this: to commit oneself to intense individual study from individual practice; develop observational and imaginative skills by individually engaging similar activities; and become as independent in one's ways and views as is sanely possible in order to acquire a manner of playing which is uniquely yours in its minutiae.

Everyone is familiar with the common concept of bluffing, for example; but the best bluffers are those who do it consistently in a way which other players, no matter how smart or experienced, have no way of "reading." And the only way to be able to do that is to employ a well muscled intuition which only you have access to.

You will have to work hard to develop your unique manner of play. Even more difficult though is to have the courage and independence to use your carefully developed imagination in successful ways while sometimes appearing idiotic. This personal quirk will lead to a spirit of discovery and innovation that will set you ahead of the pack.

All of us have intuition. Few of us have the persistence and wherewithal to aggressively fine tune it and use it, and use it often. This is something everyone has to work on by himself. While everyone has intuition, that intuition is unique to the individual.

Which brings to mind the old vaudeville routine: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Practice, practice, practice.