Master The Poker Mind Game
Everyone knows that Hold’em is a combination of skill, instinct and luck. How you rank those three is up to you. The real key to consistently playing good poker is to keep your head in the game. But how do you do that?
mind over matterIf one bad beat sends you into a tailspin, what are your chances of making it to the final table? Tilt, lack of concentration and confidence are the top three psychological reasons that players bust out before they get into the money. It’s a pretty big tell that you’re easy pickin’s if your hands start shaking and you can’t catch your breath.
Successful players learn how to control their emotions so they have more control over the outcome of the game. The brain is an intense mechanism: it can work for you or against you. The good news is that you can retrain your brain to respond differently in different situations.
Even though the subconscious part of your brain controls your automatic body functions such as breathing and blinking, you can learn to override basic responses. A simple example: you get kicked in the shin so hard it brings tears to your eyes, but you don’t want anyone to know it hurt — so you just keep walking like nothing unusual happened. How great would it be if you could stay relaxed and focused at will like that during a round? Your brain can be programmed to do just that.
keep your head on straightThere are certain NLP (neuro linguistics programming) and hypnotherapy techniques that can help you eliminate subconscious motions, keep you focused when you’re getting tired, let you quickly move on from a bad beat, and keep the panic down when you’re short stacked. Professional athletes have been using techniques like these for years. This is how they stay focused with 50,000 screaming fans, media everywhere and totally hot cheerleaders shaking their pompoms. It’s all a matter of training.
Hypnosis has been around for ages, while NLP, which focuses on how you use language to change outcomes, is more recent and works extremely well in concert with hypnosis. Hypnosis goes in and out of fashion, but there is nothing more effective to help maintain your composure in high-stress situations.
NLP is a great tool that you can use to change how you process information using language. When we consistently use the same language patterns, the brain learns that pattern and directs the body to put it into action. By shifting your language patterns, you can begin to shift your actions.
More tips for thinking in a new way and how to avoid shaking hands with your sweaty palms…