The Holy Grail of Poker submitted by DotaSG_Kel aka kilkelly on stars
For me, the holy grail of poker will be to play poker painlessly; taking the negative feelings that shouldn’t be there. I’ve always been searching, trying to find out and gain understanding on how to do so, only recently that I came across a couple of people that is able to explains this well.
Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker, page 226, “Breathing”
Quoting from Elements of Poker
” Eugen Herrigel studied archery under a Zen master in Japan for 6 years. He said he had trained hard at archery, but his arrows still wobbled. The Master told him, ” You cannot do it, because you do not breathe right, concentrate on your breathing as if you had nothing else to do! ” It took me a considerable time, but I succeeded. I learn to loose myself so effortlessly in the breathing that I sometimes had the feeling that I myself was not breathing but – strange as this may sound – being breathed. And even when, in the hours of thoughtful reflection, I struggled against this bold idea, I could no longer doubt that the breathing held out all that the Master had promised. In talking over with Mr. Komachiya ( his friend ), I asked him why the Master took so long at my futile efforts to draw the bow well, why he had not insisted on the correct breathing right from the start. ” A great master. ” he replied ” must also be a great teacher. The two things must go hand in hand. Had he begun the lessons with breathing exercise, he would never have been able to convince you that you owe them anything decisive. You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts, before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw you. ”
For so many years I watched my own “futile efforts” to “draw the bow spiritually”. In my case “drawing the bow spiritually” translate to “play poker painlessly”, Tiltless. That’s what I had been after, That was my holy grail. I practiced concentrating to my breathing at home, and while walking, and driving, and pretty soon I got to where I could remember to pay attention to my breathing while I was playing poker. The effect on my game was as dramatic as what happened to Eugen’s archery. After twenty years of nearly constat chip-shuffling, I just… stopped. And I stopped second-guessing my decisions altogether. And I was remembering to look left far more than ever before. And I was quitting impeccably every session. And I had become unannoyable. And no matter how much I lost, or how I lost it, I didn’t lose it. ”
end of quote.
I understand now why learning to breathe right is so important – it helps us to get into the right state of mind, relaxes our muscles and allows us to think to the best of our ability. That is why top Olympic atheletes meditate and focus on breathe all the time. I begin to understand that being better skilled and improving and being talented in poker probably attributes to a small amount of everything we need to be a good poker player. Maybe its the mental and psychological state of mind that we can outlast the field we playing against, maybe that’s the new edge we can have. Breathe.
I would honestly recommend avid poker players to buy this book. Its the best book I’ve read and has helped me played poker with a good mentality this past 2 years. There are 144 elements of poker that he talked about in this book, and I had only shared one – Breathing.
http://tommyangelo.com/index.html His Main website
http://tommyangelo.com/buy_EOP.html How to buy his book
Since I’m taking out direct content from his work, I need to give him some credibility back. Learning to breathe is like an art, some Olympics Athletes use it to calm their body-mind-and-nerve before the competition, Snipers use it to control their body movement and concentrate for the bulls-eye shot and accuracy. I think learning to breathe right can help poker players too, to get their mind into a good mental state for the game, calm their nerves if they’re feeling nervous, and so much more.
I have my own experiences as I recall some sessions that I played poker, there were those bad-suck-outs sessions that I went on tilt after getting sucked out on. My breathing pace increased, it gets faster, louder – and all of a sudden I’m unable to control my mind to think logically, I act irrationally, calling with hands I wouldn’t call, raising with hands I normally wouldn’t raise! As my breathing gets out of rhythm, so does my thoughts and actions. That alone can could serious damage to my win-rate.
So here’s what Tommy Angelo says about breathing.
“Breathing”
Quoting from Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker page 242-247
1000 is the number of times you breathe in an hour. You can be mindful of as many of your breaths as you possibly can. There are 4 ways of doing so :
1) Controlling your breathing
2) Counting your breaths
3) Following your breathing
4) Just breathing
( I would only share one as I don’t wanna rip off too much off his book )
1) Controlling your breathing
When you control your breathing, you can decide to breathe slower than you would have, or you can decide to breathe faster. Or, you could just as easily choose to make your breathing shallower. Also you can make your breathing louder on purpose, or you can decide for no reason at all to see how quietly you can do it.
Reviewing, we have 3 pairs of options so far : faster and slower, deeper and shallower, louder and quieter. All of your breaths will vary one from the other in these, whether you are paying attention to them or not. Controlled breathing is when you have a say in these matters.
None of these breathing options are better or worse than the other, UNLESS you have a purpose. To elevate your calmness, the best way to breathe is slowly, quietly. through the nose, using only the diaphragm. For the purpose of mind training, any breathing works.
end of quote.
I noticed recently that when I was playing, subconsciously at events where I start to feel any form of uneasiness – be it bad beats or facing tough aggro opponents, I was controlling my breathing to a slow, collected manner, with each breaths taking about the same time. And it worked! I feel calm and level-headed to continue my hours long session. It is only about two days ago I read the Tommy Angelo’s book that I realized all these actually make sense.
