MY 1K POST : NLP AND COMFORT ZONE

I really wanted to make my 1K post helpful for some people here on 2p2, so I decided to make a kinda strategy post, but not exactly. If there are any typos or some mistakes in this post please don’t kill me. I’m from Russia and we have bears, vodka and beautiful women all around, so probably no time to learn grammar and spelling.


There is an opinion that if you can take something you already know and apply it to the new sphere you can be more successful in this sphere. Moreover, that’s what great achievers usually do. Just a quick example… If you’re good at martial arts, you can apply your skills at different spheres, for example at business(btw, there are several books about it). If you’re good at psychology, understanding people’s thoughts, reactions and emotions and you know how to manipulate different types of people, you can be a very good salesman. Do you see it? From martial arts to business, from psychology and manipulating to sales. These are just rough examples, I’m sure there are some better ones that you can surely find yourself. So, where am I leading to? I’m going to show you that poker is not only about poker, you can apply different set of skills on it and you’ll get some results.
I would like share some of my thoughts about Neuro Linguistic Programming(NLP), comfort zone and how it can be applied to poker.

From NLP to dealing with downswings

NLP is a study of human excellence. It studies what great achievers do and how do they do it, what mental programs they use. To understand how NLP does this, you can think of the beginning of modern skiing. Until 1950’s most people thought skiing was mostly a matter of natural talent. You either had the talent to do it or you didn’t. Then something happened that changed everything. Films were made of some of Europe great skiers; the goal was to identify all the movements that characterized these skiers. They learned there were certain techniques that all of these skiers had in common. Beyond that they discovered that the techniques of these exceptional skiers can be taught to anyone. Than all kinds of people could learn to be very good skiers. The key is to identify the movements that made a great skier, the essence of their skills, so it could be taught to others. In NLP this essence is called a model. That is the guiding principle of NLP. In every area NLP studies lives of great achievers to discover their formulas for success.


NLP is like software for your brain. You can try it just now.
I want to share with you guys two exercises that helped me change my attitude towards downswings and some negative stuff that we often come across while playing poker. You can try them just now, or you can just read them and use when you feel you want to change your attitude towards some negative stuff going on.


Here is something that can be really helpful when dealing with downswings or just your everyday problems. Think about some problem. Not a huge problem in your life but for example you can think about time when you were on tilt. Time when you lost a huge pot and got disappointed, or just downswing time. Something that you may spot frequently in your life. Pick a particular and real event from your past. When you think about this event notice what images and sounds come to mind…
Now go to the beginning of this experience. As you watch it this time, listen in your mind to fun or silly music, I personally find circus music to be best. Play it nice and loud. Have that circus music continue playing all the way through as you rewatch that incident in a new way.
Now you can rewind that movie to the beginning. This time play it without the music. Notice your response to it at this time. I bet it has changed! For some the incident may become humorous. For others previously disappointed feelings have been neutralized or just greatly reduced.


WTF happened? We didn’t do much, but our feelings and emotions about this event have changed just in 5 minutes! In fact the code in your brain for this experience is now different. This code would change naturally in some time, but why wait if we can change our attitude now?


There is one more similar exercise that I find works well with poker. Again, you can just read, or you can try it just now.
Now you should think of another slightly troublesome experience. If your attitude and disappointment from your last exercise didn’t change as much as you like, just use it. Quickly go through the movie of this incident and pick up one frame, like a photograph that symbolizes for you the whole experience. See if you’re in the picture. Like looking at a snapshot of an event you were at. If you can’t see yourself in the picture, begin in your mind’s eye to pull back so you can see more and more of the scene until you see yourself. Watch it all as an observer looking on. Then consider what kind of picture frame you might want to put around the picture? It can be a modern steal frame or some old-fashioned one. Pick one frame that you think will fit this picture. When you picked up a frame, add a museum light. You might even want to see it in a style of a famous painter or a famous photographer. Take a moment to clear your mind… Breathe… Now think of that incident that used to disappoint you…
And again, your feelings have changed. And they will stay changed, because you have used the way the brain codes information to make the change. Check it again now, check it in an hour. Make a note in your computer to check it next week. You’ll find that it stays changed.


Now that you’ve learnt two rapid techniques for taking negative memories and changing them so they no longer bother you I would like to speak about great achievers.
What is the difference between you and best players in the world?
“They are luckier” – That’s what fish probably thinks. “ They are smarter and more intelligent, they know much much more than me and have more experience” – That’s closer to the truth but still it’s not all what makes them the best. You may think that now I’m going to tell you that they are more ambitious and have strong mental skills blah blah blah... That’s all true, BUT. There is something more that they all have in common. We’ll get to that shortly, but for now I want to discuss another person.
I think I wouldn’t be mistaken if I say that for everyone who is reading this himself is more important than some poker guru. Come on, that’s just you. You are the most important person. So, let’s try to find out some things about the most important person in the room you are sitting in.


NLP says that every success can be repeated. What does this mean? It means, that ANY of you can become a much much much better player and repeat the success of Brian Townsend, Cole South, or anyone else, who’s good at poker. Ok, how do I do it, you would ask. How do I become the best player in the world or at least become much better than I am now? I’ll try my best to find answers to these questions in the second part of my post.

Your Comfort Zone

Why there are people playing nl25 on regular basis? Or nl50… even nl100… I’m not talking about students of the game that are grinding to the higher limits, I’m talking about people that DO NOT MOVE UP even with a proper bankroll. Let’s pause for a second and say that we are not analyzing people that are playing for fun or people that do not take poker seriously. If you read this post it’s very likely that you are taking poker seriously, but anyway, just to make things clear. So, why don’t they move up? If you ask them or you are one of them the answers are usually not very convincing: “I don’t want much variance”, “It’s not time to move up”, “I don’t know”, etc. I don’t want to even hear these answers because they are all just FOS. They theoretically can move up, but in fact they can’t. Have you already guessed what keeps them from moving up and what lies behind their answers?
There is another example. A friend of mine plays poker online. He started playing nl10, had a hard time beating this game, but finally he moved up to nl50, where he busted. I gave him CR chart for beginners and I came to his house and installed PT2 since he had been playing for a long time without it. Then I gave him some links of great posts here on 2p2, and I suggested him to watch videos. I have to admit, he really wants to play good poker. We even played some sweating sessions together, so he had been working on his game. But why did he go busto? I was thinking about it and here is what I came to: he didn’t work on his comfort zone himself. He did have PT installed, he did watch some videos, he did read some awesome posts that I gave him.
BUT… It was me, not him, who installed PT on his computer, it was me who made him watch these videos and it was me who gave him the links…He just did nothing to broaden his comfort zone. I believe that’s what most of great achievers do. They are constantly trying to expand their comfort zone. I truly believe that if my friend had worked harder on his comfort zone and had been trying to broaden it himself, he would have been much more successful.


Brian Townsend said in “The Well” thread:
“I have spent a lot of time playing poker in the past year. I completely immersed myself in poker. I have read every poker book, spent countless hours browsing and reading forums, spent even more hours analyzing my play and my opponents plays. And then beyond this I have played endless hours. I really enjoy playing and I think if you don't you will never reach your fullest potential. You really have to love to play the game”.
He was good at expanding his comfort zone and therefore succeeded. Now I’d like to illustrate all this stuff I was saying, so for simplicity’s sake let’s just assume that there are only four ways of studying poker. Of course, there are some other ways, but for our model 4 ways are more than enough. Ok, let’s assume that learning poker is only about

a) Playing hands
b) Reading books
c) Reading and posting hands on forums
d) Analyzing your game away from the table

So now let’s try to make some kind of a graph.
Let’s imagine a guy, who is new to poker, knows just some basic rules of Hold’em and who just started playing online. His comfort zone is shown on the graph below (we are speaking about comfort zone here only in terms of poker). In this study comfort zone goes hand in hand with poker experience.
Here’s the graph of his comfort zone:

Here “a” is playing hands, “b” stands for reading books, “c” is reading and posting hands on forums and “d” is analyzing your game away from the table. So, a guy that only knows basic rules of poker (let’s say he read them in some book, but didn’t read anything else except the rules.) After that he played some hands and you can see his experience and comfort zone on the graph above. He is also known as “fish”. He doesn’t work on his game and plays online for whatever reasons he may have.
One day he realizes that he sucks and it’s time to learn the game. He finds some poker site containing strategy of playing No-Limit Hold'em. He is given a chart of starting hands and he tries to play tight-aggressive poker. He has some set of skills now, but he rarely posts hands, someone on the forum said that there are no good no-limit books, so he doesn’t bother reading them and, finally, he’s too lazy to review all his hands after a session. Instead, he thinks that he’s good and plays ton of hands at NL25. He’s a marginal winner like 1PTBB/100, plays many tables and doesn’t think about his game. His comfort zone now looks like this:

As you can see from this graph, he has improved as a player, but he’s still not on the effective learning path.
If he had been doing everything in a right way and had a balance for studying and playing, his comfort zone would look like this:

Your comfort zone grows exponentially at first and expanding its boundaries is easy, but the more you work on it, the harder it becomes to improve.


There are different types of people. For some of them it’s essential and natural to expand the borders themselves but others have a very hard time doing it on their own. That’s why some people still can’t beat micro stakes. They just have no balance in their game and they don’t expand their comfort zone effectively.
Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish.
But you don’t need to be a genius to work on your comfort zone. If you have troubles expanding your borders, a person that is beyond your comfort zone can easily help you. He can help you with your game and expanding your borders but only once you are working on them yourself. This can be also shown on the graph:
Here a person with green comfort zone can help us to expand our borders(our comfort zone is red here).
Someone who has already stepped outside your comfort zone can help you improve your game drastically. But you still have to work on expanding your comfort zone yourself. Here by expanding your comfort zone I mean doing something that you haven’t done in the past, it may be watching vids, analyzing EVERY hand you play, playing less tables, making portfolios on regulars, even finding a coach, a man that is beyond your comfort zone.


So, today is a fine day to ask yourself: what’s my comfort zone?
And more importantly: what can I do to make a step out of it?

1fineday

nice post, well done
edit: had to re-read the NLP stuff a few times, also did a bit of background reading...v interesting stuff

just finished, this is sick sick good.

thank you for writing this and my mind feels seriously ****ed now

Good quote, did she write that before or after getting 20 million for the Compaq merger??
Maybe right after she got fired because HP was so close to bankrupcy with her...

The funny music and picture frame examples seemed to work right away, cool stuff

Are bears really a big deal in Russia?

long post, going to read it after my session!
nice you do this for the forum

Nice post, thank you for contributing this =)

just posting so i can easily find this again tonight when i have a bit more time

Yea she was fired right after she said this=)

just listened to circus music to clear my mind

Tagged. I'm assuming its good though.

this nlp stuff made no sense to me, but forcing yourself to get out of your comfort zone is definatly something everyone (including me) should do A LOT more, both in poker and in life

Good stuff - thanks!

Well-written and some awesome thoughts here that can't be preached enough, but NLP is a pseudoscience.

This is going to get my career off the ground. Ty I owe you a BB at whatever stakes I play in 2 yrs.

Sick post!

ty

This is really good

The circus music really works...will use this for my next downswing

Thank you for this contribution! Now I'll expand my comfort zone and start posting instead of lurking around.

Damn scary you mean. It's not right! I was thinking of a pretty bad accident that happened to me few years ago. Now when I think of it it almost makes me laugh. And that's really freaky.

Edit: And oh. Thank you! I can see how this can help me in poker and life. But damnit. It will destroy my mind. I'm scared.

I warned you

Top Notch.

* Gonna apply this concept and go shopping naked tomorrow.
* Gogogo Russia, make it to the finals.
* Nice post OP.