Three Tangible Strategies to Improve Your Mental Game
By: MICHELE BURGHARDT

As a certified poker hypnotherapist I work with poker players every day to help them control the psychological aspect of the game. With all the mental mechanics I teach I don’t want to neglect some tangible things you can do to send the correct message to your brain.

Of course learning strategy and watching cards is important to improving your game. What we forget is our brain has a way of processing information and connecting dots we don’t even see. Putting our goals down on paper gives direction to the type of dots our brain connects and where those dots connect to.

Most people are visual learners meaning they learn best by seeing how to do something. This is also true on the unconscious level. The more you see something the more your brain works to create the image as your reality.

What does that mean exactly? Let’s use Eric as an example. As a tournament player, Eric’s goal is to cash in a major tournament with a prize pool of $50,000 or more. He feels he is still a student of the game and is giving himself 18 months to improve strategically and reach his goal. Sounds pretty simple. He’s got a great foundation. His strategic skills are already pretty strong, etc. What he is lacking is accountability. Because he hasn’t really committed to it on paper he hasn’t committed to it emotionally. Because it’s not emotional it’s not making much of an impact on the subconscious mind. Virtually his new goals are being ignored by the subconscious. First thing he can do is write it down.

Any time you measure something it has a tendency to improve. This occurs in every area of your life not just poker. That’s why people keep stats on everything from baseball to sales. Measurement guides you to improvement. Writing something down gives you an instant benchmark as to how well you are doing and it effects future decisions you make at the table. With this in mind I recommended he make a progress chart. Some players use a notebook to keep track of their results. This is a similar to that idea however it goes to the next level as part of the goal process. This is a chart that he can see every day that shows when he played, the amount of the buy in and the cash winnings. Using a notebook is great to use for hand analysis but a chart you can see daily works best for tracking results.

Charting your play like this will help you see if there are patterns developing. It will help you determine your win:play ratio. When you do, it will help improve your overall game by encouraging you to examine different aspects of your play in order to improve your ratio. If you cash one out of every four tournaments you can be a profitable player but will that get you to your goal? Wouldn’t cashing one out of every three tournaments put you in a better financial position to be able to buy in at larger tourneys and ultimately accomplish what you set out to? Seeing your results in print will also tell you if your goal is realistic. If you are cashing once out of every 15 tournaments, setting a goal to earn $100,000 in tournament winnings isn’t very realistic. You want to start from where you are so you can see small victories along the way.

The next thing I recommended to Eric was for him to make a Vision Board. This is something I’ve used for the last couple of years and it’s amazing how it actually works. Go get yourself a piece of poster board and grab some magazines. Go through the magazines and pull out the pictures that reflect the play, success, and life you want to live. If your goal is to win a major tournament, tear out a picture from a poker magazine and substitute a picture of you over the actual winner. Your Vision Board doesn’t need to be artistic. It just needs to express your goals as if they are currently happening. Expand your Vision Board to include all areas of your life; family, friends, poker, faith, work, relaxation, health, etc. It’s the wheel of life. It helps keeps your life in balance. It’s understandable that if you have a specific goal you want to be focused. However, you can be focused and balanced at the same time. Balanced people are happy people. If you don’t make a special point to address all these different areas you’ll find your wheel has a flat. Living a life out of balance works for a while, but if you are working on consistent success balance is imperative for long term results.

Any statement you write on your Vision Board needs to be written in the current tense as if it is already happening. The visual images and the thought processes you are sending to your subconscious mind turn on the mental scanner. The stronger the message the more your unconscious mind scans your world looking for ways to create that reality from the life you are living. Your subconscious is like a radar detector. When it finds something that supports your internal image it integrates it into being. We should be grateful there is no auditory beep that goes along with that because we would hear beeping all day long. Your brain is working for you 24/7.

If you are having trouble getting buy-in from your family to support your poker career, invite them to help with your Vision Board. Let them see what you want to accomplish and what it means to the family as a whole. People support what they help create. It may decrease the resistance you feel on the home front.

The third thing I recommended to Eric was to write out some peak performance Brain Frames. Brain Frames are personalized short concise positive incantations used to frame how your brain processes information as it relates to one specific topic. They are written ‘as if’ the behavior is already occurring. You recite these Brain Frames out loud with as much intense emotion as you can muster and as often as you can. Do this when you’re alone or warn people you’re going to sound like an idiot for 10 minutes or so. The intense emotion is what breaks through all the other brain clutter and gets the attention of your subconscious mind. Utilize any free time you have to recite your Brain Frame out loud. Do it at least once a day. Have fun with it, get creative. Change what words you emphasize, put it to music, do what ever it takes to make you feel like Superman or Wonder Woman.

A Brain Frame is a great tool to improve specific aspects of your poker game. If you have developed bad habits like over betting the pot, you can use a Brain Frame to break that habit and develop a new one. You can use it for strategic improvement if you can clearly identify what you want to change. Reciting a Brain Frame also works as well on the mental and emotional aspects of the game.

If you notice you get impatient when you’re card dead and play hands you shouldn’t because you’re getting antsy, your Brain Frame may sound something like:

I have the knowledge and skill within me now to play with patience and purpose.

If you feel your confidence fluctuates depending on your chip stack, your frame could be:

I am confident and competent with every hand I play. Every tournament brings me closer to my goal.

You’ll notice the focus of these three strategies is 100 percent positive. How you talk to yourself and others is such an important aspect of mastering the psychological and emotional game of poker. You can change your entire life just by changing your habitual vocabulary. As you create a positive shift in the words you use on a consistent basis to describe the feelings and emotions you have, you’ll begin to shift your outcome and results. Words are power. Use them well.

For more information on poker hypnotherapy and to see if you are a good candidate visit http://www.CatchTheRiver.com. Learn how to use poker psychology to win at the table.

Hope you always catch the river! Michele Burghardt, Certified Poker Hypnotherapist

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