We introduce the class of slicely countably determined Banach spaces which contains in particular all spaces with the RNP and all spaces without copies of $ell_1$. We present many examples and several properties of this class. We give some applicatio
ns to Banach spaces with the Daugavet and the alternative Daugavet properties, lush spaces and Banach spaces with numerical index 1. In particular, we show that the dual of a real infinite-dimensional Banach with the alternative Daugavet property contains $ell_1$ and that operators which do not fix copies of $ell_1$ on a space with the alternative Daugavet property satisfy the alternative Daugavet equation.
