One of the most fascinating and exploitable facts about our brain is that it does not distinguish between reality & imagined reality. This means we can train and prepair our brain and ourselves for an unlimited amount of scenarios and millions of spots on and off the poker table. If you do this right you will be prepared for every possible outcome at all times. Let me show you how you can spike your winrate through visualisation!
What is visualisation for poker players?
Visualisation is a technique that has proven it’s value for decades at the Olympics. One of the biggest advocates for this technique is the most succesful Olympic athlete of all times: 13(!) times gold medallist Michael Phelps.
Note how he says at the beginning: ‘When I got to the block there is nothing I can control at that point’. That remind you of anything poker related?
Okay now but what exactly is it? Visualisation or mental imagery is rehearsing vivid mental images of different scenarios or specific situations before they happen. Simply put: playing the same movie in your head time after time.
Like I said in the intro, the brain does not distinguish between a mental image or reality. This creates an opportunity for endless training and preparation. It means you can train yourself and your brain for every possible situation on and off the poker table.
Visualisation can become part of your mental toolbox. There is only one but… You have to be willing to put time and effort into honing this mental sword. If you do put the time and effort in, your results will definitely show quick results.
Why visualisation is important around the poker table
It might be difficult to comprehend that last part: I said endless scenarios and situations you can prepare yourself for. Let me help you out with a couple of spots visualisation comes in very handy.
1. Structure & routine
Structure & routine are among the biggest leaks for most low to midstakes, even high stakes players. Visualisation can boost your discipline in these areas.
After a bad period a lot of low to midstakes players crave a new start. You want to forget everything that happened in the last couple of weeks and want a hard reset. Sound familiar? But okay sure let’s do it!
You decided you want to play 4 or 5 days a week and Tuesdays are for study. The first Tuesday you feel super motivated and are able to grind your butt of in the lab for 4 to 5 hours, but the rest of the week didn’t really go as planned. Come next week you either decide you need another day off or you might as well play because ‘the games look good’.
This is where the art and science of visualisation comes in very handy. In this tiny little story I can come up with a handful of ways where we could’ve been preparing ourselves through mental imagery.
If we start each day with 10 to 15 minutes of visualising:
- How this day could go,
- What setbacks we can encounter and
- How we are going to respond to this
- How we want this day to go.
2. Tilt triggers
The 2nd thing you can prepare yourself for with visualisation is tilt triggers. Tilt comes in many shapes and sizes as we all know thanks to Jared Tendler. From the moment the first signs of tilt pop up, we have to act very quick before our thinking brain (neocortex) shuts off completely and we are thinking and behaving through our monkey brain (limbic system).
Acting too late on your first tilt signs, well then buckle up mate, because you’re about to go on a rollercoaster and you are going to lose a lot more money than needed.
With visualisation we are going to prepare you for this tiny window of opportunity where we can act before it’s too late!
What I want you to think about before starting your session for the day is what your biggest tilt triggers are:
- Is it the 3-outer against the calling station on the river?
- A paired board on the river after you hit your straight on the turn?
- The feeling of being outplayed?
- Regret after a mistaken herocall?
- Losing a couple of big pots in a row?
- The feeling of being bullied?
3. Losing 80% of your stack deep in a tournament
One of the worst and uncontrollable scenarios playing deep in a tournament is losing most of your stack. Lots of low and midstakes players will be taken off guard by this inescapable reality that is going to blast itself through your frontdoor without knocking every now and then.
They then find it impossible to control their thoughts and emotions in these situations and will find the felt max 3 hands later, because they lost their discipline.
Online this tends to be even worse than offline, because you can easily reg another one right?
Only world class players are able to keep themselves together in these moments and will be trying to find windows of opportunity to fight back.
Preparing yourself before the session for these spots through a 10 minute visualisation excercise can easily increase your bb/100.
4 . Crafting your poker vision
Visualisation is a powerful technique that helps you create a clear picture of your poker career. By visualising a vision, you can make your goals and ambitions tangible. You can read more about this in our other blog about crafting your vision as a poker player
How can I use visualisation to spike my winrate?
We talked a lot about the possibilities, and again, we only touched the surface with these three examples. If we wanted, we could write a trilogy, but instead we want to talk about how you could visualise in the most effective way. This is through a guideline called PETTLEP:
- Physical – You want to include as much of the physical sensations included in the visualisation. What do you see, what do you feel and where do you feel it, what do you smell, what do you hear?
- Environment – Where are you? Are you in your local casino, the EPT in Barcelona or in your own office? Include this in the image
- Task – Maybe the most important part of the whole visualisation. What is your task at hand? Is it a cognitive decision, is it a way to keep your emotions under control? What and how are you going to manage the situation?
- Timing – This is something that will improve over… time… But seriously, the better the visualisation, the more exact it corresponds with the timing of the real scenario or situation. So make sure you work on this.
- Learning – Continuously adjust your imagery as your skills evolve. As you gain experience, adapt your visualizations to include more advanced strategies and scenarios. This is something you can do through goal setting.
- Emotion – What are your emotions in the scenarios and situations? Try to find out what and where you are feeling them so you can recognise them at the tables when they occur.
- Perspective – You can play around with different perspectives, first person, eagles eye etc. This makes it easier to detach from unhelpful feelings like anger, anxiety or stress when encountered in real life.
Conclusion: Spiking your winrate through visualisation
As you can see, visualisation or mental imagery is a skill you can add to your mental toolbox as a poker player. It will help you become more prepared, structured, disciplined, resilient and emotionally more in control.
When added to your daily routine for 10 to 15 minutes it can make a huge impact in your bb/100 and will guarantee a spike in your winrate as an ambitious poker player!
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