After more than a decade of interviewing poker winners and losers and hundreds of hours coaching poker players, it is perfectly clear that the line between winning and losing has very little to do with the cards. Sure, at the showdown, your cards have to hold up, however, if you depend on just the cards to get you through a huge multi-table tournament, you will soon be standing on the rail blinking and wondering how that happened.
The 2010 WSOP® Event 3 coming up this Saturday, May 29, is the perfect example. It is the first open field event after a casino employee event and the $50k mixed event.
As the first $1,000 buy-in event of this year's series, I expect the field will be huge. In 2009, there were 6,012 players, second only to the Main Event, which pulled 6,494.
In 2007 when I finished in the top four women in the Main Event out of 6,358, it was like dancing thru a "mindfield". That's not a typo, I intended to say "mind".
I know the moment I lost, and it was not the moment I busted out. It was when, for just a moment, I lost my confidence. For just a moment, fear shadowed my mind. In that moment I felt lack, and I no longer felt abundant.
It took me several days to process what happened, and I soon realized that it was a shift in my thinking. My biggest mistake was refusing to get up from the table and call my poker coach when I sensed I was struggling.
Yes, as a professional poker player and poker coach, I also have a coach. He's the coach's coach.
This past weekend I was talking on the phone with my newest coaching client, and she asked if she had had her head in the sand by not realizing that poker players had coaches. I told her, no, it's just that poker players kept it to themselves for many years.
I don't think it was exactly a secret. I think it was more that people with strong egos sometime feel they are less when they openly acknowledge they also need help.
I look at it simply like this. Every sports great has a coach. If Magic Johnson, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Larry Bird have coaches, well, gosh, poker players deserve to have coaches, too!
Now about how your mind can affect your game:
Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.
– Eric Butterworth
Is it about time you had your own poker coach?
If so, contact me here and let's talk. I will spend a half hour with you on the phone for FREE with no obligation. In the subject line put: "I would like my free poker coaching call"
Until then, remember my motto…
If you can't raise, don't…
Donna Blevins
Poker Coach
Donna
I think it is all in the mind… success, failure, joy, depression. It is the story we tell ourself. It is the story that we believe. Watch what you are believing it. We all need coaching from time to time, be it for poker, weight loss, work or life. It is good to look at what happened, where we "lost it" and where we "got it back". Good to see you again. Enjoyed your blog.
Blessings, Mary Pat
Mary Pat, thanks for stopping by!
Yes, you are right on target. I call it a ‘mindfield’ full of booby traps and land mines. When we focus on the loss, without garnering the blessings within those losses, the universe gives us the right to lose again. When people focus on “losing weight, losing weight” as if by magic they get it back again so they have the right to lose it all over. In poker, when people “fear losing, fear losing” as if by magic they get the luxury of losing more. That’s their focus, so they get more of it.
Change your focus. Change your luck.
Change your outcome.
Donna