Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger on Intuition vs GTO & His Poker Journey

Long-time American poker pro Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger has recently appeared on the interview show hosted by Poker.org, where he had an hour-long conversation with poker journalist Craig Tapscott.

As we learnt from their discussion, LuckyChewy is quite interested in matters of the metaphysical and supernatural. The question then arises: how does he square that with being a professional poker player for over a decade, a career that is supposed to be built on cold, hard, emotionless math and probability?

As he put it, building up poker intuition is a “natural process” for a professional poker player that comes with experience and picking up on “the underlying patternistic nature of the game”. It simply does not “feel right” to shut intuition off at a poker table, according to Lichtenberger, and it did not really work out for him either when he tried to do so, he shared.

However, he also pointed out that a player should engage in their creativity and intuition in spots when the possible decisions at their disposal are close in Expected Value.

When asked for a specific hand as an example, Lichtenberger recalled a time when he defended the big blind with A9 off-suit. The flop came AQ8 with a diamond flush draw, and he called a medium-sized bet. The turn was an off-suit 5. While he did not specify the action on that street, he recalled that his aforementioned intuition told him that if the river was going to be a third diamond on the board, his opponent would bet big as a bluff. The diamond did come, his opponent did bet big, and Lichtenberger did catch the bluff with top pair and weak kicker.

However, he also noted that he is aware that “there is a fine line between what I just described and being completely delusional”.

In fact, Lichtenberger is so interested in exploring instinctual feelings that he developed an entire iOS application called Khemset, which features an "intuition trainer”. He took the opportunity to promote his endeavor in his Poker.org interview. 

How “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger Got His Start in Poker

Lichtenberger wins WPT Alpha8 Las Vegas 2014

Before the interview got into the discussion about the immaterial poker instincts, “LuckyChewy” briefly went over how he got started in his poker career.

Growing up, he enjoyed playing Blizzard video games such as Diablo and Warcraft III — he pointed out that Doug Polk, another well-known poker pro, was also a highly ranked player in Warcraft III.

When he got a job as a young man at a bowling alley, he saw his bosses play online poker on PartyPoker in their spare time. He immediately took a liking to the game he just found, so he started playing it with his friends and deposited some money on PartyPoker.

Given that this was in the Moneymaker boom era, he was quite successful from the get-go. He recalled that he played the highest stakes NLHE cash tables on Party, which were $2/$4/$6 at the time, as soon as they were introduced.

In the meantime, LuckyChewy befriended fellow poker player Aaron Jones through the 2+2 Forums, whom he considers his mentor. 

Lichtenberger did attend college, but dropped out after three semesters to pursue playing poker for a living. For this, his mother made him pay back three semesters of tuition — something he completely understands and views now as “a good lesson in accountability”.