Howard Lederer article about Zen

[TStoneMBD]

I thought I would share this article with you guys because I feel it's one of the best reads that I've encountered by a pro poker player of late.

http://www.howardlederer.com/article9.html?aff=0&code=W-0019

[The Truth]

good read, thanks for the link.

[eastbay]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought I would share this article with you guys because I feel it's one of the best reads that I've encountered by a pro poker player of late.

http://www.howardlederer.com/article9.html?aff=0&code=W-0019

[/ QUOTE ]

Kind of useless, really.

Stay focused on the present hand, don't let bad beats get to you. Well, ok, but... duh? And it's not even really true. You also want to think about what you know of your opponents from other hands.

I don't know, this Zen sh7t doesn't really speak to me. Seems kind of trite. Cue the Hellmuth clip of him finding his energy center or whatever...

eastbay

[Lawrence Ng]

Reading this article was kind of scary. It felt like he was describing my last 5 years....

Lawrence

[bernie]

Great read. I've sent it on to a few people.

It can apply to much more than just poker.

Thanks again.

b

[theredpill]

Wow, what an article. That is some messed up stuff and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I'm getting that "whoa" feeling. Reading this article. I hate to say it but Howard sounds like God. Like he's channeling some kind of devine intervention. I like this line, " The master archer hits the target without having aimed. "

I have sometimes played a poker tournament and at the end when I won it, I feel like I barely did anything at all.

[JohnnyLaw]

Nice read. I've been meditating off and on for the past three years and I've been playing poker for about 8 months now. I've been making an effort to meditate more while at the table. The tournies/games where I've had the most success are the ones where I've been most attentive to the moment. When I meditate at the table, it's almost like being "in the zone." This is especially true in tournies where my sense of timing greatly improves.

3 years ago, I went to a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation course (if interested, check out Vipassana Meditation Courses (http://www.dhamma.org/) ) The basic principles of Vipassana are to:

1. Maintain awareness of the moment. Focus is to be directed on your breathing, thoughts, and bodily sensations.

2. Remain equanimous. Don't react to your observations. If you feel your heart racing or your breathing getting deeper or shallower, don't label it as positive or negative, just let it pass. The idea is to not judge or jump to conclusions.

Both are important skills in poker. They help you to pick up tells from your opponent and avoid tilt.

Meditation is incrediably difficult, but I feel that it is beneficial in poker and more importantly, in life.

[SlowStroke]

[ QUOTE ]
The tournies/games where I've had the most success are the ones where I've been most attentive to the moment. When I meditate at the table, it's almost like being "in the zone."

[/ QUOTE ]

When I'm really in the zone, this is what sometimes happens - I'm sitting there, in a sit-and-go, calmly waiting for the next hand to be dealt, then I realize, oh, the game it over, I've won.

It's a beautifully feeling.

[SlowStroke]

[ QUOTE ]
When I meditate at the table, it's almost like being "in the zone." This is especially true in tournies where my sense of timing greatly improves.

[/ QUOTE ]

It has a huge impact on intuition also.

When I'm in the zone, my ability to call when someone is bluffing, or bluff when someone is weak is so accurate that it is scary.

[Dawdy]

Thanks for the link.

"Beating myself up over a bad play serves almost no purpose other than distracting me from the task at hand." Howard Lederer

Something to live by I'd say.

Dawdy

[maryfield48]

Good article. Writing well runs in that family.

I found his use of female pronouns interesting, viz.,

[ QUOTE ]
After years of study, a poker player can achieve expert status. If, however, she becomes satisfied in her success, then mastery will be forever beyond her reach. Improving as a poker player is a never ending process. The competition is always changing and adapting. If a player fails to change and adapt also, then the competition will close the gap or, even worse, pass her by.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ZeeBee]

Yes, it's all well and good to forget the pain of a beat and to avoid mulling it over - but to forget hands completely kind of precludes learning from them.

ZB

[AEKDBet]

This brings up an interesting point. Howard states in his article that
[ QUOTE ]
I was pleased that only 30 minutes after what might have been my worst play of the day, I had already completely let go of it.

[/ QUOTE ] (he claims to have forgotten about it completely until reminded by this other player)

Counter-productive? +EV or -EV?

Sure everyone knows that to become a better play you must focus on your mistakes in order to learn from them. In defense of Howard saying this however, he probably understands his mistake completely in that he has encountered it before - its just a matter of being hit with it.

Once the cards are turned over it could just be lumpped into one of those "mistake categories". Hand over, move on, focus, get chips. It would still seem to me however that you should still keep a mental tally of mistakes you made, especially recent ones which oppenents are aware of and may harp on in tournament play.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Also I think knowing excatly what the mistake was, would shed more light on this than anything.

[Megenoita]

Although I am completely in opposition to Zen Buddhism as a religion, I find value in this article. I think it is revealing as to the nature of poker. There is little live table calculation for game time decisions...mostly, it is an overall and immediate assessment of a plethora of factors which cannot be consciously taken into account at the time of the decision (or rather, it would be very hard to do so). When we try to quantify all these abstract factors at the table, we often make the wrong decisions because we neglect some less concrete information. For instance, we may think of our relative position, odds, our table image, the opponents' play throughout this hand, but in determining our opponents' hand ranges, maybe we identify him as a LAG in our mind, so we think he could have just about anything, so we decide to call down--but we unconsciously neglect the fact that 2 hands ago, we called down HU against him with A high and took an embarassing pot off of him, and he showed us respect for that hand, so now it's more likely that he wants to show us down a good hand. We should perhaps fold considering this information, and we had "felt" like folding before thinking it out, but then changed our mind when logically hashing through the hand.

I find that when I'm playing in the game itself, I try to think of everything I'm learning in SSHE, HEPFAP, TOP, and 2+2, and what some respected people have said, YET in doing that, I neglect some game time information that is unconsciously accounted for in how I "feel". In other words, I may "feel" like I should fold even though the information in my mind from what I know through learning tells me to call. Later, upon closer examination, I see why what I "felt" was correct--there were more factors to consider than I could readily bring to mind. I think this is why many poker players say that it is very intuitive for them, and why experience plays such a big role in success.

I think that while learning the game it may be good to do what you "feel" so long as you can logically examine it later. In the moment, I've found it's better to go with your gut even if you think you're wrong, logically. This is dangerous if you haven't the fundamentals, but don't you guys think it is beneficial to the learning process? I've spent 70,000 hands doing what I think a book would do, but how does that help me? If I go with my gut, examining at the table as much as possible but then looking over it more later, then I think I will not only find more immediate success, but also be playing myself, not from a book.

M

[AEKDBet]

...[ QUOTE ]
it is an overall and immediate assessment of a plethora of factors which cannot be

[/ QUOTE ]....

good use of the word plethora

[TStoneMBD]

i fully agree that intuition is a vital utility a player uses in progression to become great. i think its important to understand the fundamental aspects of the game first, but i feel strongly that sometimes intuition should override rational logic on occasion as long as you understand what the rational logic truly is.

[klagett]

Very interesting read!

[mrpurple]

As someone who is fascinated by Zen, I found this fascinating. I've read several books over the years and would love to live it. But, everytime I try to meditate I fail miserably to clear my mind and indstead focus on feeling silly.