How To Be A Better Poker Player
Relax your face and jaw. Remain calm and maintain a poker face by relaxing your face muscles. Avoid tightening your eyes, raising your eyebrows, or smiling. Even if you perform minute facial changes, these changes can tighten your facial muscles and give your opponents an idea of your hand. Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a mathematical solution to figuring out a poker player’s commitment level on any given flop in cash games. The SPR is represented numerically and is calculated by dividing the amount of the flop into the effective stack size of the players involved in the hand.
Good poker playing demands an advantage. Here are some alternative methods you may want to consider to improve your game and give you an edge over other players.
HYPNOSIS
What your mind can conceive, you can achieve: these eight little words can be the key to attaining your goal, whether it be to quit smoking, stop biting your fingernails, or even play better poker. Hypnosis can be very applicable to poker when used for self-improvement. It can also be highly effective in helping you stay relaxed, increasing your attention and focus, controlling emotions, and improving your unconscious memory.
The word hypnosis is derived from the Greek word “hypnos,” meaning sleep, but it’s so much more. A better definition of hypnosis would be the art of communication and the avoidance of conflict. The act of hypnotizing is making someone go under a state of reduced consciousness while the person remains awake. The general state of mind of those under hypnosis is extremely open to positive suggestions and able to achieve an elevated level of relaxation.
Professional athletes have been using hypnosis for a long time to help them be their best, and you can use the same techniques to help you sharpen your poker game. Hypnotists can give positive suggestions, provide encouragement, eliminate fear of failure, and conjure up motivation, all necessary qualities of a successful poker player. It is now a proven fact that with the help of hypnosis, one can simply change his frame of mind, helping people to quit smoking, lose weight, and even overcome fears. Matt Damon, poker playing star of the movie Rounders, said, “I should have done it years ago. It’s amazing. I didn’t even want cigarettes anymore.”
Of course, studying, learning, and implementing poker strategy, along with practice and experience is vital to being a good poker player, but improving your mental game could give you the edge over opponents that makes you a winner. Poker requires its players to focus for long periods of time, and winning at any sport requires you to believe and exhibit confidence in yourself and your abilities. Through hypnosis, you can train your mind to think more like a poker pro. Hypnosis, coupled with good coaching from your hypnotherapist, can allow your subconscious mind to search out anything that blocks your success and eliminate it, changing the misunderstandings that lie deep within you.
MEDITATION
In today’s world of competitive poker, the skill level is so high that the difference between winning and losing may have to come from the way the player monitors and modifies their internal tells. A highly skilled player who can also work with his distractions, personal demons, and internal life is not only more likely to win, but obtain a significant competitive advantage over his opponents because there are few who actually do possess this.
For two of the world’s biggest poker players, Howard Lederer and Phil Hellmuth, an urge to conquer this heightened level of mind set has led them to the study of Eastern philosophies and the practice of meditation. In 2004, Phil (at his wife’s urging) spent two weeks at Esalen, a world famous new-age spiritual retreat located on the Monterrey peninsula in California. There he attended a workshop on Tibetan Buddhism to learn the art of meditation and how to channel focus.
How To Play Poker Better
Howard Lederer, considered to be one of the most intelligent poker professionals and known as “The Professor” for his work as a poker coach, also became interested in the study. Lederer read some books on Zen Buddhism which gave him a greater understanding of the process one must go through to master any art form, mastering the art of poker being his desired goal. Lederer believes you must possess a passion for the game and believe that poker is fun and there is no place for fear within it. As a result of his study, he has developed a four-stage evolutionary chart for the course of a poker master derived from the four stages of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.
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While it would be nice if the average Joe could pick up and visit the ancient Asian temples to find his inner-Zen and return a poker master, it’s not really a feasible journey for most. However, like everything else in the world, you can find a treasure of resources on various types of meditation and methods of practice online. You don’t need to buy expensive clothing, equipment, or a club membership to learn how to meditate. All you need is an open mind and twenty to thirty minutes a day. Nothing calms the mind and body like meditation. Once you have learned the basic principles, you will be able to introduce the concepts into your daily life and engage in spiritual practice at any point in your life, even before a poker tournament. Today many people are meditating—not just Buddhists—but people from all cultures and faith including sports players, CEOs, and even poker players.
NEURO-LINGUISTIC-PROGRAMING (NLP)
This is a popular self-help communication tool, which in layman’s terms could be described as sort of like hypnosis, but with your eyes open. NLP explores the relationship between how we think (neuro-), how we communicate both verbally and nonverbally (linguistic), and our pattern of behavior and emotions (program). NLP claims to sharpen your observation and listening ability and enable you to identify patterns in people’s behavior and language, so you can respond accordingly. This enables you to communicate more effectively and cut through distractions.
One of the major elements of NLP is gaining rapport. Once you have rapport with someone, you can take the pace and start to lead them in the direction you want. If you have every bought something you did not want because of a sales person’s persuasions, then these techniques were used on you. Whether they knew they were using NLP or if it just came naturally is irrelevant. To paint this picture in poker terms, you may have already used such tactics if you ever encouraged an opponent to doubt his hand. To use this technique, you have to be a fast talker.
After you’ve established the rapport, then you’ll want to move on to anchoring. This NLP technique “anchors” a feeling or emotion to something tangible or real such as a movement or physical touch. This concept is the same that you experience when a certain smell suddenly returns your mind to a place you haven’t thought about in years or when you hear a song that has memories and emotions attached to it. When you hear that song, those associated memories come flooding back to you.
The next time you are at a poker table, try “anchoring” an opponent to doubt his hand. Once the player is in the peak state of realizing how bad his hand is, you anchor this state with a touch or gesture, such as tapping the table in a particular manner. You have to repeat it a few times to enhance the association. Later, you can then use it to conjure up those feelings in your opponent again, creating the desired response, which in poker would be for your opponent to doubt his hand and then fold.
You can also use anchoring on yourself. You could anchor the feeling of having the best hand, and then firing this anchor when you want to bluff. You’ll have to have the perfect poker face, though. If you are interested in this practice, you can find a multitude of websites where you can purchase books and CDs on NLP.
Bottom line. If you really want to do anything, including win at poker, you need to discipline yourself into believing you can do it. Failure is only apparent when you believe that you have failed. As poker is by definition a very psychological game, it only makes sense that utilizing psychological tactics like hypnosis, meditation, and NLP would only serve to benefit your game; thus, making you a better poker player.
Being a successful poker player requires much more than learning strategy and establishing a solid theoretical base. Once you have studied the game and reached a good skill level, you will still need to work more than others — especially others who are good poker players, too — to develop an edge and be able to crush them.
Some of the habits you should have go much further than the poker tables. It is essential to have a balanced life and mind in order to achieve your goals as a poker player.
Here are some of my recommendations to those wanting to go further than just to learn the technical aspects of winning strategy — 14 tips to becoming a better poker player.
1. Eat a healthy diet
Eating a healthy diet before and during your poker sessions will help with your focus and your performance. Heavy food may make you feel tired and distracted. Choose options that are lighter and better for you.
2. Sleep well
A lack of sleep can cause irritation, increase your chances of being distracted, and generally disrupt your thinking.
3. Work out
Besides being a healthy habit to have, working out regularly will help you sleep better, enable you to have better control over your moods and emotions, and ensure you feel fresh during a long poker session.
4. Practice yoga or meditation
To be able to control your emotions during a poker game, you must have a well-trained mind. Yoga and/or meditation might help you to become 'tiltless' — or at least to be able to avoid tilt on a more frequent basis.
5. Take breaks
You should always take breaks during your sessions. Walk a little bit, stretch, drink water, and clear your mind. Your focus and performance when you return to the table will improve.
6. Avoid alcohol
Your thinking process will be hightly affected if you play hungover or drunk.
7. Stay off your phone
Staying glued to your phone during a session means that you are not paying attention to details such as potential tells and other information available to you as hands are playing out. Every bit of information you can gather about your opponents is valuable and will help you to make profitable decisions.
8. Review your session
Take time after you play to work on your leaks. The best way do to it is to make notes regarding any doubtful moments that come up during your session and review those decisions later.
9. Table selection
You should be thoughtful when selecting the tables before you take a seat. Don't just jump into a game without at least taking a look at who you're playing against, and try to avoid joining games in which you are going to be without too much of an edge.
10. Take a day off
The human brain is not a machine. You can't just turn it on and leave it running endlessly without fatigue setting in. Playing more does not necessarily translate to profiting more. Give yourself some free time to have fun away from the tables. That will keep you motivated and playing well when you return to the games.
11. Practice smart bankroll managment
You must play according to your bankroll limits. It is very difficult to make the best decisions in a given hand or session when you are worrying about the possibility of busting your bankroll.
12. Don't chase losses
On a related note, if you are feeling 'stuck,' remember that only means you've lost a few hands. That's all. Don't think too much about being 'down' in a given session, which really is just an arbitrary way of keeping track of hands played.
The only 'session' that really matters is your lifetime session, the one that started a long time ago and will be continuing tomorrow. You shouldn't be trying to reach some 'peak' with your profit, or to get even or play a certain number of hands before leaving. Don't stay in bad games, and don't stay if you aren't playing your A-game, either.
13. Keep a strong mindset
How often do you think you are unlucky or that things are unfair? Don't be results oriented. A strong mindset will help you keep looking forward and be less stressed.
14. Be mindful of your table presence
You don't want to be seen as the 'reg' with whom nobody wants to play, not even the 'fishes.' Learn to talk to people and socialize. Don't come to the table all wrapped up in a cocoon like the typical poker player wearing a hat, sunglasses, scarf, and headphones. Strike a balance between being friendly at the table but still paying attention and not giving away information.
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I am sure if you follow some or all of those tips, your performance will improve a lot at the tables. Keep crushing and good luck!
Primarily an online player, 888poker Ambassador Vivian 'Vivi' Saliba has recently collected numerous live cashes including making the money in both the 2017 WSOP Main Event and 2017 WSOP Europe Main Event. Pot-limit Omaha is her favorite variant, and among her many PLO scores is an 11th place in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed Championship at the 2017 WSOP.
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