What is this Choice Center everyone keeps talking about?

It appears in the Spin Offs section of this Wiki article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring

How accurate or impartial the content and general thrust of the Wiki article is, I don't know.

It is a $$$ (ponzi) company for people who want to learn how to self-help themselves in life.

Wait he was a hardcore Christian?
No wonder he fell for the choice center scam so easily.

At its essence, it's an Emotional Intelligence course. They offer several different classes/courses, but their main one where you begin is an Emotional Intelligence course. I know several that have taken it and all have said good things about it. And really it is something that is probably very beneficial to most people. There are many other companies that offer courses in Emotional Intelligence as well.

The bad rap (like it being a cult), comes from the fact that a big part of the course is making you recruit others to come take the same course. So they really pressure and hot box you to call/contact all friends, associates, family members, etc. to try to get them into the course as well. Of course, some participants may love the course so much they WANT to get their family and friends to participate, but it's also clearly a business model of the center to have captive outreach marketing of its participants.

What is emotional intelligence?

It means you set intentions and not goals..... or something like that.

Grunch,

Always liked his banter, still do.

Watching his vlogs is like a tiny look into his mind imo, I called it to my girlfriend that his had left before reading it or hearing about it. Trying to make her mad, cause he knows the dogs mean more to her than him. (why we are seeing them so much all of a sudden) and the "twin" at night time, petty.

and I genuinly didnt like when the bartender asked him if he wanted a double for some person, and his answer was. Basically, Dont care, its not for me. If you have his cash, get the man a double for **** sake.

Danielle if you ever read this, Don't try so hard, just literally be yourself and eventually people who like you for you will gravitate towards you. I spent my youth homeless, my teenage years addicted, and seen both mother and father get cancer, lost a son at 6 months, have two beautiful daughters and no job, and I still would of got the ****er a double.

You love the earth, and vegen etc, take a **** load of shrooms it will help you.

This is truth

Hi Fly:

Relative to what I put in bold, my comment is I don't think so. A while back, I recommended to Negreanu that he read the book 1984 by George Orwell. Of course, I never told him my reason for this recommendation, but I'll explain it here. Towards the end of the book, Orwell describes mind control techniques that are very effective in getting the hero, Winston Smith, to love "Big Brother" which is the name that Orwell gave to the totalitarian government that Smith lived under. (For those who read Orwell's book, remember the rates and what they almost did to Winston Smith until the high level government official saved him from this terrible fate.)

My understanding is that places like the Choice Center are what are known as LGATs, which stands for Large Group Awareness Training, and in my opinion, and again it's just an opinion, that these places do use some techniques similar to what Orwell describes in 1984 which can help explain why a person like Negreanu loves it so much. (By the way, LGATs are known to quickly get rid of people who they determine are not good candidates for falling in love with the LGAT, and I believe that Choice Center does this as well.)

Anyway, if you want to spend some time reading about LGATs, there's plenty of stuff about them on the Internet. Here's what Wikipedia says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-...eness_training

and here are a couple of quotes from the techniques section of the Wikioedia article:

And I believe that this "high" makes many people love the LGAT.

Best wishes,
Mason

Whether the whole self help thing is beneficial or tricking people, or even dangerous, I think very much depends on the individual receiving it and how naturally malleable their mind is or how malleable they allow it to be by voluntarily submitting it to the course/teachings/concepts that they are being exposed to.

For anyone in the naturally malleable or voluntarily malleable categories I think that it is on balance net harmful.

But there are likely also to be many people who go to something like Choice Centre or to an Anthony Robbins seminar and *are* fully aware that there is an element of brainwashing going on, however, they are able to not be brainwashed and are able to cherry pick some of the insightful, clever and good things from it, of which there are definitely some, probably many.

Which category, malleable or cherry picking, DNegs is in?, I don't think we know.

LGATs sounds exactly like military boot camp.

Applied psychology is, incidentally, what makes poker fun.

Hi Sage:

Given how highly enthusiastic towards the Choice Center Negreanu is, I think answers your question.

Best wishes,
Mason

I vaguely remember he once bowed out of a large tournament to honor some personal commitment to Choice Center. They definitely snagged a live one with Daniel, and used him as chum to catch other chumps.

There are hundreds of Tony Robbins and Daniel Goleman videos on Youtube. They are all free. You don't need to spend a penny on Choice Center or even Tony Robbins seminars.

Tons of free stuff on Youtube. Robbins, Covey, Goleman, Kahnnenman, Ariely, etc. Choice Center just copycats from these guys. Go directly to the sources.

For brainwashing techniques, go on Youtube and type: Kevin Hogan, Richard Bandler, Robert Dilts, Jack Trout, Al Ries. Choice Center is expensive and inoriginal.

One could speculate that his keenness on goal setting may have been instilled in him by Choice Center or by similar teachings, where they say things like, "you can be anything you want, and achieve anything you want to", "All you have to do is set your goals, then visualise them....... and they will happen".

(teacher still speaking) "Look at me, 18 months ago I was living in a run down apartment and 3 months behind on my rent..... and now I am driving a brand new Mercedes e class and have just put a down payment on my first home......". etc etc

So people listening to this and applying it may well start blanket applying it to any and every aspect of their life, but not differentiating between things that they have ~90% control over (e.g. diet and exercise) and things that they have <50% control over.

Perhaps this is why DNegs sets end of day chips stack goals (now "intentions"). Clearly this is a goal over a small sample size of hands as well it being influenced by how his opponents play. So a goal that most outside observers would think is an illogical one.

Most people who set a goal or intention before a tournament will set a goal such as, "my goal is to play my A game and maintain a high level of concentration from start to finish", or "my goal is to get into more pots with the weaker players to target them and to avoid getting into pots with the stronger players". Or it could be a leak fixing goal like, "my goal is to take more time thinking through big decisions on the river", or "my goal is not to play medium strength hands out of position".

But goal setting one's chip stack growth over such a small sample size is frankly weird and doesn't make sense.

Does DNegs also have the following goals for the year on January 1st:

My goal is to not claim on my car insurance.
My goal is to convince >75% of my Twitter followers that The Democrats are better than The Republicans.
My goal is to convince >25% of my Twitter followers that drinking cow's milk is a completely irrational thing to do.
My goal is to convince the poker world that more rake is great for the poker eco system.

I mean, just visualise all of the above, and unless you are really, really unlucky and so many bad things happen all at the same time (like in this year's WSOP ME), well they are bound to come true...... especially the car insurance one, just visualise every errant driver on the road swerving around you and every car thief walking past your car because it has the protective shield of positive thinking surrounding it.

I think this may explain why he has been so astonished that he has had a bad WSOP, because it just shouldn't happen to a person like him, someone whose fundamental poker skills (these are not in doubt, he is certainly a very good poker player), combined with his positive thoughts and positive visualisation, must surely mean that he will at the minimum get really close to the goals he has set himself.

It ("visualise and it will happen") might also explain why he took a bet I think last year or the year before to win 2 bracelets at 3/1 or some stupid odds when the real odds were about 10 times higher. It may have been an even worse bet than this, I don't remember the details.

I enjoyed Today's vlog, not sure if that was another stab at Marissa after that studio thing i didn't get that, and yeah J6 hand he buchered that one.

Of course it was a jab at Marissa!

The AJ86 hand is an auto fold on the flop against a bet and a call in front of you.

I 100% agree with your assessment.

nah, i am potting that 2 pair on the flop all day long....Daniel chose to call which is the worst option as he is very unlikely to improve , makes it very difficult to play on turn, unless you are going for a shove on unconnecting turn which i dont think Daniel is quite capable of.

You may be able to get away with potting it OTF but that is more of a cash game "we block a lot of the sets" play.

Big difference between PLO cash and MTTs is that in cash our opponents are much more often turning up with any old junk and it tends to play way deeper in a cash game giving more scope for a metagame, but in a comp we are going to run into JJxx more often, or a player who is stubborn and will get it in with a massive draw or with a hand that is slightly ahead of ours, or level with ours but with some redraws or backdoors that we don't have.

In a tournament I may consider potting there but only if I have a huge stack compared to my two opponents as I can pressurise their tournament life and ICM but not risk much of my own.

I think the best play is a fold because we have no back doors and like you alluded to there are not many good turn cards for us.

I think potting it mostly either wins us a relatively small pot or has us almost drawing dead or getting it all in as a ~flip, so not optimal PLO tournament strategy in my opinion against 2 opponents as it will be hard to get both to fold.

yup, agree with that.