Thinking Visually: Part One
What & Why?
Just by training yourself to think visually about poker, you can move your game up to the next level. You may have heard about visualization techniques before, especially in the areas of sports performance and success building exercises. The popular movie, “The Runaway Bride,” even spoofed the concept, with Julia Roberts’ characters’ fiancé, the local high school football coach, repeatedly attempting to train her to “visualize the altar; see yourself walking down the aisle.”
However much fun it is to spoof, many highly successful individuals in all walks of life use and profess the effectiveness of this mental focus. To think visually is also to think verbally; through verbalizing in your head, using your inner voice, you automatically focus your concentration on whatever topic you are “talking” about. Add to this process mental images of the topic of inner conversation and you are now thinking visually. Taking and using mental snapshots, or even creating the visual imagery from whole cloth, scales up your concentration many-fold, allowing you to bear more fruit when mentally problem solving.
Now, why would you want to go to all this trouble, and especially why bother when it comes to your poker game? Don’t you have enough to think about and concentrate on trying to steal blinds, bluff opponents and increase your bankroll? Yes, you do; which is precisely why you should train yourself to think visually. By using these mental techniques you will be able to see what you are thinking about when you review hands.
In the middle of a game is not the time to perfect the practice of thinking visually, at least not when you are in the hand. When you fold, during breaks, before and after the game; this is the time you should be seeing the cards in your head, reviewing how you played particular hands and how your opponents used their playing style to either win your chips or give you theirs.
In the next article we will take a look at specific examples of visual thinking and how it will pay off for you by taking your poker game to the next level.
