Tournament Iii
Yoga and Poker- Part III
Part III
Any professional poker will tell you that one of the most important aspects of the game is learning to read other player's reactions. Also known as "tells", entire books have been dedicated to examining this complicated, unreliable, yet extremely crucial aspect of a well rounded poker player. Of course, this no longer applies in the world of online poker, but for the multitudes that still flock to casinos to test their live poker skills this article will be prove to be of great value in both improving the way you detect "tells" as well as boosting your concentration.
If there is one word that captures the essence of what it feels like to be at the final table of a poker tournament that has tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line it is definitely STRESS. The adrenaline pumping through one's body after hours of poker play, only to end up in a heads-up round can be overwhelming. Smoke-filled rooms, loud casino noise in the background, a crowd of excited spectators anxiously watching every hand, and a formidable opponent are enough to test anybody's nerves. With so many distractions going on it can be easy to lose your concentration, and one minute slip-up can make the difference between $10,000 and $50,000. This is where yoga can come into play.
Concentration
A typical yoga class generally lasts from an hour all the way up to two. The vast majority of classes that you will attend will last about one and a half hours. When a person first begins a yoga class, being able to stay in various poses for prolonged periods of time can be a daunting task, and it takes months - even years - to be able to hold even the most basic poses for more than a few seconds. According to the ancient yogic philosophy this is not a result of any physical shortcomings, but a result of a lack of mental conditioning, and the most important text in yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, addresses this issue from the very start. These sutras can be most easily understood as practical yogic advice and every serious yogi studies this text like a priest studies the bible. The second sutra, one of the most important of all the sutras, basically says that yoga happens when there is stillness in the mind and when outside distortions become observed instead of identifying with them. To attain this state of bliss takes years of hard practice, and most of us spend our lives trying to reach it.
This does not mean that our efforts are fruitless. Every time that you practice yoga you get a little bit better at controlling your mind during poses - B.K.S Iyengar claims that the mind gives out in poses well before the body does. If one can maintain their focus and concentration you can stay in poses for much longer than you thought humanly possible and also find the full expression of the pose much easier. It is this yogic concentration that has the potential to tremendously help one's poker game in all types of situations, but especially in competitive tournament play.
The ability to maintain one's concentration during a poker game is a crucial ingredient for consistent wins, and it is this break in concentration that often leads to those silly mistakes that can cost an entire tournament. Every poker player has committed the fatal error of misreading the suit of a card, forgetting a move a player made on the flop to indicate what hand they might have, or just plain spacing out and making a stupid bet. We've all done it, and if you never have you either have just started playing poker yesterday or are superhuman!
Thus the concentration gained through the practice of "asanas" - the name for poses in yogic terminology - is one of the key skills learned through practicing yoga and also one of the greatest possible benefits for poker players. One of the most important effects of acquiring this level of concentration is being able to focus your attention inward, thus increasing your self-awareness in your body as well as outside.
Self-Awareness
What does this mean exactly: self-awareness (also referred to as self-realization). Self-awareness is, simply put, an increase in one's awareness of all things in the body through continued observation. Yoga helps us cultivate our self-awareness inside of our bodies and without through the practice of asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing), and meditation. How exactly this happens through practicing yoga is a long and complicated question, one that an amateur practitioner such as your author could not begin to tackle. Perhaps a yoga master could answer this more fully. The beautiful thing about yoga is that much of the knowledge that you acquire is purely experiential: nobody can tell you how you are supposed to feel, or what you are supposed to feel at any given time. It's a learning process whose greatest teacher is none other than you: the guru within.
Perhaps a better way to explain what an increase in self-awareness means is through a personal example as opposed to trying to convince you through detailed explanation what it could be. Before I began practicing yoga I would clench my jaw, hunch over constantly, and eat too much. All of these things I did without even knowing that I did them! The reason for discovering these various learned physical improprieties was through my practice of asana. I can say from personal experience that after practicing yoga for very little time you truly begin to notice things in your body that most people never even realize they do. After I began noticing these various learned habits that were unnecessary and even unhealthy, I also began to notice these things in other people. You start looking at other people's bodies in a whole new light, noticing things that you never even thought of before.
The importance of this raised sense of awareness during a poker game is immense. Before, when I used to look for tells, I would maybe look at a person's eyes to see if they would give anything away. Now everything has changed. After practicing yoga for some time you can begin to notice they precise way in which a person breathes and how those patterns change when given different hands. Are they holding their breath, increasing the pace, or forcing themselves to keep on breathing to try to not give anything away? Did their lip tremble slightly when they saw the river? How about their bicep, did you notice a twitch in the arm before they raised you all in? What these various giveaways mean can be completely different from person to person. For one it may mean they're bluffing, for another person it could mean that they just flopped the nuts.
Also of great benefit due to an increase in self-awareness is the fact that you will become infinitely more conscious of your own tells. Being more aware of all functions in your body means that once you notice you smile slightly every time you're bluffing, you will learn to hide that smile making it seem like nothing important has happened whatsoever. In fact, imagine trying to play poker against a veteran yoga master. They would be able to tell exactly what emotion you're feeling simply by observing your muscle movements and your breath. These powers can too be yours - all it takes is a little commitment, patience, and practice.
About the Author
This article was published courtesy of BonusWhores.com.
Bonus Whores (www.bonuswhores.com) is the best site to find the most current and comprehensive online poker bonus information on the Internet, as well as Game Quality Grid and site reviews.
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