thinking under pressure

hi...I've just started hanging around here, so I apologize if this has at all been recently covered...I've been playing hold 'em for about three years and have worked my way up from three-six to the ten-twenty level where I feel quite comfortable ability-wise...I think of myself as conservative, tight, mostly typical...I used to be tight/weak when I first started out, but have worked on this tendency a lot and have made good progress...I would say the biggest weakness in my game right now is thinking under pressure...while playing a hand I tend to get a lot of adrenaline with rapid heart beat etc. and this sometimes makes it difficult to think clearly at the very time when it's most needed...this is not nearly as bad as it used to be, but I know that there are times when I don't play as well as I might....does anybody have suggestions?


thanks,


al

How much are you playing? Typically, the easiest way to deal with this is just to play a whole lot, so it gets so routine that you don't get so anxious anymore. If you can't do that, might you at least be able to set aside a couple of weeks to play nearly every day, to see if playing a lot temporarily helps? Otherwise, you may need to look into some slightly more formal methods. Try a google search on "systematic desensitization" or other techniques used by therapists to deal with anxiety or phobias. You may be able to adapt them to use on your own. (No, you're not describing a phobia, but you may be able to use tools used to deal with them to calm the anxiety you're dealing with.)

The best way for me was to start playing the cheap tourns. With this low cost method I was able to practice reads - low chips - hand selection - position and all the other thinqs that make poker great.

al,


If you want to think well at the table, do lots of thinking away from the table.

Usually, nervousness is caused by anticipation which is a form of future orientation. You can't get nervous thinking about the past (past orientation) or the present (present orientation). You can only get nervous thinking about the future. It can be the very far future (years and decades) or the very near future (something that could happen during the next ten seconds or a few minutes and thus seems like the present because it is just a few seconds away) or anything in between. In your specific case, it is the very near future that may be making you nervous, anxious or excited. That is, a part of you may be anticipating what card will show up next, how the hand will turn out, etc. I suggest you take up a class in Zen. In these classes, you will go thru exercises called "mindfulness meditation" which will train you to develop the habit of naturally having a present orientation.

thanks for the thoughtful input guys...I have found that the more I play the less of a problem it becomes (exposure, John?)...I don't play as much as I would like, maybe two five hour sessions a week...I did spend some time in vegas recently and was able to play every day, so that helped a lot..it's weird though in that the improvement is slow and very non-linear..at times, for e.g., I think I'm almost cured and then suddenly it will set in again and even seem worse for a while..but again, the trend is toward improvement..I very much like the suggestion to do lots of thinking away from the table so that one has an arsenal of basic strategic principles that can be relied upon when the going gets really tough...I guess I'm just wired this way..I play golf and am subject to many of the same problems there...in fact, it has occured to me more than once that golf and poker have many common themes...they both involve a giant battle with ones own mind..

You know, the post by "Titch Nhat Han" is interesting food for thought. The idea that anxiety involves anticipation of something in the future is in agreement with psychoanalytic (Freudian) theory. One of the major American psychoanalytic theorists, Charles Brenner, has spelled out an elegant little theory that says that anxiety involves unconscious fear that certain events will happen. Depression, on the other hand, involves the feeling they have already happened. The prototypes for these events are found in developmental stages in early childhood and include such things as fear of loss of someone important to you or of very punitive self-criticism. At any rate, while the basic idea is fairly simple, it's interesting to see the same idea about anticipation coming out of both a major eastern and a major western disciline.