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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

July 17, 2004

Imagining Your Way To Better Poker

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Hoarding and risking chips when you are in the heat of battle (to advance to the next limit, the next segment, the final table, in the money, the last three contenders, the final two, the championship), you are probably going to make mistakes.

It's inevitable.

You've wrestled your way through a large field of players, concentrating all the way, trying to nail every opponent down within a short period of time, and along the way you promise yourself you will not make any foolish moves. You will play by the book, making the best of those strong hands, those semi-bluffs in the right position. You've advanced again and again and suddenly, you're within a few heartbeats of the final table.

Soon you scrape in a nice pot with a made hand and the cards come flying at you before you have a chance to arrange your stack. You peek at your hole cards and find a J-7 suited.

Call it a momentary lapse of reason, a sudden brain freeze or a failure to stick to your guns but those clubs look so good together and you could be on a rush so you call the big blind and get involved. The flop brings the queen of clubs, seven of hearts and ten of diamonds. You pick up some chips from the still unkempt pile and toss them into the pot. One player in late position smooth calls as does the big blind. The turn brings a jack and suddenly you have two pair. You think perhaps it was kind of adventurous to play the hand but surely nobody else can put you on two pair with those rags on the table so you go fire the chips in this time, your confidence soaring.

But something goes wrong. Your first opponent raises and the big blind reraises! "What? Queens and tens? Three ladies? Three tens? Oh, rats! I should have though before I fell in love with the J-7 suited."

It's going to cost you to find out who has you beat but you figure that your opponents must have been on drawing hands or they would have been more aggressive. You call the raise but suddenly realize how many different combinations of two-card hands could beat your two pair.

The dealer turns over a nine on the river. You check, your self-assurance waning and you say a silent perhaps sarcastic thank you when the next player bets, the next raises and you fold. Your stack has gone down significantly but mercifully you are out of a potential raising war.

At showdown you get confirmation of your earlier (but not early enough) suspicions. You had the third best hand in a three-handed pot.

Ah, but what has this error done to your psyche? Bet it threw your frame of mind into a tizzy. Bet it had you talking to yourself about how you promised you would play only premium hands; you wouldn't go in looking to complete a drawing hand; you would stay away from the biggest stack and maybe only attack the smallest stack.

Like it or not, you have condemned yourself to failure this time around because unless you have a very strong mind and the right flow of cards you won't be able to recover from this mistake.

This is a scenario almost identical to what happens after a bad beat. That balloon of confidence deflates with a resounding "whoosh."

Now there's nothing you can do about the flow of the cards but for if you're like many people, there is something that can be done to (1) avoid the negative situation and (2) help cut down on the devastation that occurs when you forget to pay attention to what is in your mind.

You can use imagery! Put simply, you can apply the age-old techniques of conditioning your mind into a habit by imagining the way you want things to be.

For certain, skeptics will stop reading, claiming that this topic has nothing to do with improving poker skills. Suspend your disbelief for a moment and give it a try. It won't happen overnight, but with practice you can teach yourself the habit of discipline that becomes second nature.

You can do it with reminders, perhaps a rubber band you snap before you pick up your cards, perhaps a lucky charm you look at or a ring you turn. Basically, with this method you're using a physical movement of some sort to snap your mind into remembering something.

You can do it with self-hypnosis, with meditation, with subliminal messaging, with constant self-talk, if you have the self-confidence that allows new thought processes to enter your life.

You can do it by constantly imagining your goal, willing it to happen and creating it.

No, imagination itself won't magically erase the wrinkles on your face or suck the fat away from your midsection, but it can lead you to places that make those things happen. Trust me.