On Focus
Aside from the obvious focus that you need to maintain on the poker tablethe awareness of other players, their images, and the cardsthere are other tactics that one can use to help improve one’s focus prior to the cards ever hitting the table. There is an old saying “A hungry dog hunts best.” Now take a minute to think about this. After you’ve just consumed a meal, your body wants to rest, it had no need to “hunt” anymore, and as a result, your mental focus isn’t as sharp as it would be otherwise. There have been several poker players who will fast right before a big tournament, after all, they’re hunting the money, and being hungry for it makes their game that much more fierce. Other avenues a player can take before hitting the table are the paths of Yoga and meditation. In certain forms of Yoga, you learn to focus your mind on certain parts of your body. This kind of training, enhances your focus overall and moreover enhances your ability to “close the lens” so to speak. I call it pinpoint focus, where you zone out everything but that one thing that is sticking out as not quite right. Finally on meditation. This is a tradition in Zen Buddhism, but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to benefit from some healthy meditation. During meditation periods, you usually have visualization periods followed by periods of clearing your mind. You also learn to control your breathing, and to some extent your heart rate. If you can take just some of the benefits from these external focus enhancing activities and apply it on the felt, then you’ll be light years ahead of your poker online opponents who haven’t.