Why awareness is better than focus, just be the ball Danny!!

Posted by HypnoBlaz

March 20, 2008

OK, the first thing that I want you to do is take this test. It requires that you focus your attention for a about 30 seconds. If you can’t do that then take some Adderall and come back. Obviously I am kidding.

So before you read on click here and take the test and then come back and read the rest of this post.

Interesting isn’t it? I have been doing a lot of work around focus, and focusing on certain things at the poker table. Well I decided to play a little PLO the other day on Cake. (BTW, Cake is full of really good players so if you fancy yourself a good poker player then don’t bother cause there aren’t any fish there. If you suck then this is the spot for you. If you need an account with 33% rakeback then click here and maybe I make an extra penny in rake back this month.)

So anyway my focus in this session was to put other players on hands the best that I could. I was actually doing really well. Up about $120 at a $1-$2 table and then the following hand took place….

I had AAJT or something in that neighborhood and the jackass($120) at the table who was raising every hand raises, the tighest guy at the table($260) re-raises and I($365) re-raise. The jackass folds, the tightest guy re-raises and I just call. The pot now is about $140 as I recall. So I think that tighty-mc-tight-tight has KK or AA, and I am probably pretty good. I have noticed that really tight players tend to get married to big pairs, not just in PLO but holdem too. So the flop comes 4-7-9 rainbow. He checks and I check behind, I think I probably should have bet here. The turn is some crap card like a 2, and tighty-mc-tight-tight pushes. I really think that he has KK or some AA variant and based on this read, which is what I was focused on, I call. He shows AA44 and flopped a set of fours. I didn’t river the straight and lost a big hand.

Well ok, it’s not a big deal, this didn’t set me on tilt like the FullTilt bonus offer did. But I like to look at this stuff and figure out where I could have made a mistake and then get to the point where I can unconsciously make the right decision. Here is where I screwed up…

Focus…. I screwed up by focusing on putting this guy on a hand. Now this is certainly a HUGE part of the game but that night I made it the whole game. This is a mistake. I focused on one thing and developed inattentional blindness . This is the condition where you are so focused on one thing that you don’t see other obvious things that are in the way. In this case I was so focused on putting him on a hand that I discounted the fact that he may have actually hit a big hand.

Be the ball Danny Now is this really a mistake? No not really. Do you remember in “Caddy Shack” where Ty was instructing Danny to “Be the Ball?” What he is doing is trying to get Danny to trust his unconscious mind to take over implement all of the facets that he has practiced and focused on. So I needed to have this focused practice session where I locked in the skill of reading other players. In the future I can trust that my unconscious mind is taking care of this for me. This is all part of mastering something, where you get to develop unconscious competence.