A popular theme in the poker world today is to enlist the help of professional coaching to become a much better player. Many websites offer these services to players who desperately want to become better players but can’t get there by themselves.
However, there’s a brand new phenomenon that’s starting to gain a foothold that I never even thought of before. And that is the use of hypnosis to make people better poker players and it’s being offered by a company called Think Like a Poker Pro.
Now I thought that this was really interesting news because, as I mentioned before, I never really thought about the usage of hypnosis to make one a better poker player. But hypnosis has made people do some amazing things in the past such as quit smoking, become better athletes, overcome fears, etc.
it has especially helped people in the way of sports as a lot of pro teams utilize hypno-therapists on a consistent basis to enable their athletes to gain confidence and play better. But therein lies the problem as compared to something like poker: Poker involves a lot less confidence than sports employs and a lot more knowledge of the game.
For example, I’ve seen plenty of 6’10” basketball players who could jump out of the gym never make it in the pros when compared to their less talented counterparts who simply had a much higher level of confidence when taking shots and handling the ball. Thinking like a pro in this sense does make a huge difference.
On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how high you can jump or how fast you can run at the poker table. Just knowing the game, studying players, and making correct plays will help a person greatly in the long run while playing poker. To me, hypnosis doesn’t stand to make the average player into a Phil Ivey-type clone
Now I can see where it might help one avoid going on tilt or to keep a better poker face in live play but beyond this, I don’t see it making a huge impact otherwise. I could be wrong though and I’ll be interested to see the results and feedback on this poker hypnosis thing.