Archive for September, 2009

Charity poker tournaments and casino nights bring the excitement of gaming to your back door without the expense of travel and lodging, not to mention the toll travel takes on the body and mind. It's the new way to stay at home and have a vacation. There is even a new word that someone coined – Staycation.

Poker and gaming is the focus of this night on the town in Lecanto, Florida, October 10, 2009. Download information about this charity event sponsored by Citrus County Senior Foundation at Black Diamond Ranch, the swankiest place in town: (Click here for pdf with details about the October 10, 2009 Charity Poker Tournament.)

Do you want to attend? Send me a message through the "Ask Donna" box to the right along with your email and day phone number. I will personally see that you are contacted within 24 hours with ticket information!

Charity poker tournaments are some of the best ways to gain experience playing in structured poker tournaments while helping worthy causes. Sometimes, they are even close to home. Just ten days ago I discovered these diamonds were in my own back yard in Citrus County Florida.

On October 10, 2009, the Senior Foundation is sponsoring a Las Vegas night at the ritziest place in town, Black Diamond Ranch in Lecanto, Florida. To help the event flow smoothly, I have donated a mini-workshop just prior to the event to get all the participants on the same page. Since this charity poker tournament may be the first time many people have ever played in a structured event, I'll go over the finer points of how to play poker during a live event along with some trade secrets that will make the evening more fun and exciting.

Prior to the poker tournament, participants can also choose to experience an elegant three-course dinner at Black Diamond Country Club. Since poker tournament play continues until only one player remains standing, as players bust out they can still have fun playing other casino games with professional dealers and Las Vegas style tables.

Prizes for the evening include two, 4-day, 3-night getaways for two aboard Carnival Cruise Lines plus much more. The Senior Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization and donations are tax deductible to the fullest allowed by law. (Suggested donation: $145 per person for dinner, poker tournament and casino access)

TICKETS: I had hoped to have my shopping cart set up to help with tickets, however, just send me a message by way of the question box in the right column along with your day and evening phone numbers. We will contact you within a few hours.

For more information, call Cathy Pearson 352.527.5907 at the Citrus County Senior Foundation. Looking forward to seeing you October 10, 2009, at Black Diamond Country Club, Lecanto, Florida, for this Charity Poker Tournament.

Luck seems to bless some people more than others, both at the poker table and in relationships. Ask me if I’m lucky. I say, "Absolutely. Today, more than others!"

That said, I also feel that we make our own luck. Luck is a piece of our life that we have more control over than we might first expect. It has to do with things like preparing for it and expecting it. There’s an old saying: Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet.

Do you ever feel down on your luck? The cards are just not coming, and your hands don’t hold up at the poker table? Does your relationship with your significant other suck because of reasons that seem out of your control?

It is painfully obvious that when my relationship with my husband, Gregory, is strained, my poker game also suffers. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. I am a whole person, and every part of my life affects every other part.

How many times have you brought a bad day home with you from work, almost as if it was a pet on a leash? I know I have. I told it to heel; don’t leave my side. Stay. Gooood girrrlll.

Have you ever taken the energy from a home argument with you to work and been uncharacteristically short with your co-workers? Often when I see poker players act out when they first sit down at a poker game, I wonder what the fight was about at home. It’s like brown-bagging negative energy. You take it with you just as you pack a lunch bag.

Why am I talking about this today? Because over the past four weeks, I have been impatient and cranky with everyone in my life. Gregory has been sick, and the multitasking associated with care giving, expanding my business, while running a household with five dogs and an 83-year-old mother has turned me into a raving bitch. (Phew. I’m glad that’s out… surely, no one has noticed!)

This email from my husband showed up in my inbox today and reminded me of how lucky I am and how easy it is to forget and latch onto the negative:

"Donna, if I have been remiss in telling you how very much I love you, please accept my apology. Baby, you are the absolute most important thing in my life."

You gotta’ love that guy! If that isn’t enough, here is the attachment that came with the email:

"Relationships and friendships are a lot like backyard gardens. We plan to tend to them; we just seem to put it off until next week." Boston Legal TV show

Yes, I am very, very lucky in poker and in love.

NOTE: On August 12, Gregory had major surgery number three and has had huge challenges with healing and pain. The doctors put him on mega pain meds that were interrupting some of the pain, but it was also making him so sick at his stomach he was unable to eat. He was literally losing weight so fast he was wasting away before my eyes. He was very thin to start and lost 20% of his body weight in four weeks. This past Sunday I screamed at the Universe for help. That very day without any prompting from me, he withdrew himself from the pain meds and started to rally. What a wonderful answer. I am grateful and so glad that I remembered to ask.

Physical anchors can help a person perform better at the poker table, on the golf course, in business, and in everyday life. If you did an Internet search for physical anchoring, your head might spin out of control trying to make sense of it. When I use the term, I simply mean our ability to recreate success by repeatedly preceding it with specific, physical actions of our own choosing.

A perfect model of someone using a subtle physical anchor is Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, the 2000 World Poker Champion. Let me stress ’subtle’ as compared to Candace Parker’s three bounces, arm touch, bounce, and shoot that I wrote about in my August 29, 2009 blog, Woman Basketball Star teaches Poker Life Lesson.

When the action comes to Ferguson in a poker tournament, he becomes a statue. He looks at his cards and takes at least four full seconds before he moves a muscle. That may not sound like a lot of time, but in the world of poker action, four seconds can seem like a lifetime.

Some might also say that Chris’ stillness is just to avoid giving away any ‘tells’ or hints about the cards he is holding. Certainly, that is part of its effect. Since I see Chris repeatedly lasting longer in poker tournaments than many of his peers, I believe this is a physical anchor. Effectively, it helps him to access his decision-making intuition. Side note: Chris "Jesus" Ferguson is an honest to goodness genius with a PhD in computer science and has a strong knowledge of game theory.

The first time I remember actively using physical anchoring was in the ninth grade. Even though it was inadvertent, it was highly successful. It came about because I could not keep my eyes open in Coach Riggs’ science class. I know what you’re thinking… a football coach doing double duty teaching science is a surefire sleep aide. However, he was a great teacher, and I’ve been grateful to him more than once for teaching me how the internal combustion engine works.

Despite being eager for his class to start each day, my eyes would literally cross about half way through the session. It was a fight to keep them open. Concerned, Mom took me for an eye exam. The doc said I had prefect vision but had a lazy eye, correctable over time with a certain type of glasses. Looking back at some of my early school pictures, one of my eyes obviously pulled to one side.

When I was openly resistant to wearing the glasses, the doctor told me that when I wore them, I would remember everything the teacher said. No, I did not buy into what he said, on the other hand, what could it hurt?

Faithfully, after I sat down in every class, I consciously put on my glasses. In a very short time to everyone’s surprise, my grades went from C’s to A’s.

Was it a result of solving a vision problem, the power of suggestion, paying more attention in class, or had the glasses become a physical anchor? Even though I suspect it was some of each, I believe the conscious repetitive action of putting on the glasses became a physical anchor. 

The steps to creating and using physical anchors are simple.

1.  Identify your objective. Keep it simple, just one thing at a time.

2.  Set your intention.

3.  Pick a series of physical actions.

4.  Raise your consciousness so you are actively aware of what you are doing.

5.  Take the same action immediately preceding your objective.

6.  Repeat consistently.

What action would you like to anchor so you can successfully repeat it at will? Do you want to remain calm and focused at the poker table? Do you want to have a better golf swing? Do you want to make better decisions at work?

Try the steps. What do you have to lose? On the other hand, you could just get another pair of glasses. By the way, in an upcoming blog, I’ll deal with some actual eyeglasses specifically made for the poker table.