Creating Your Own Reality

By the time you read this, the 2003 World Series of Poker is either over or soon will be, but I'm writing it about one-third of the way through the longest (six weeks) WSOP in history.

We've had lots of exciting final tables (you can read about one of them elsewhere in this issue), and many trends have developed, but one of the most interesting involves players whose expectations seem to have foreshadowed their eventual results.

In just the first 10 days here, I've seen:

One: An unstoppable-looking Mike Matusow, playing what seemed very close to perfect poker and certainly outplaying his opponents. I'd spoken with Mike the day before this event, and he'd told me he was in total stroke, playing as well as he can, and that he knew he would make the final table. He did.

That's not so unusual: I frequently talk with players who say they are playing well and think that "tomorrow will be their day." Mike's comments took on more significance when I continued to speak with him on various final-table breaks, and he kept talking about how he always gets punished whenever he makes a mistake, and about how unlucky he gets at crucial moments.

He was making these comments even though he hadn't, it seemed, made any mistakes, and with only one exception, hadn't gotten horribly unlucky. But he continued to talk about how unlucky he gets, and that when he does make a mistake, he always gets punished for it, and eventually he did get very unlucky, did make a couple of mistakes, and did get punished for each of them.

He eventually got knocked out of this tournament in third place on a hand in which he combined his two expectations: He made a mistake and then got unlucky on top of it (punished, if you will).

Two: Phi Nguyen tell me that after he'd gotten incredibly lucky in an unfortunate situation (he'd moved all in against pocket aces while holding A-K, caught a bad flop that turned him from a 14-1 underdog to a 50-1 underdog, and then caught runner-runner for a straight), he thought to himself, "This tournament is mine," and sure enough, eventually it was.

Three: Phil Hellmuth reach a final table when he'd had "a vision" the night before that he was going to win, and he did. That's not so unusual, you'd think, except that before the previous five final table's Phil had reached, he'd also had "visions," and in all cases the vision was of someone else winning, and sure enough, not only did Hellmuth not win at those final tables, the player he had visualized winning did so.

Four: Hellmuth again – this time going from a quiet and successful Hellmuth to "Bad Phil" (if I can borrow a concept Jim McManus used in his excellent book Positively Fifth Street), the guy who knocks things over and says things like, "When are we going to change this dealer?"

"Bad Phil" immediately went on a losing streak, his negative energy seemingly turning the cards against him (although clearly it could also have been a case of negative tilt energy causing him to play poorly). But when a joke from his wife, Kathy, changed his mood, and he turned into the charming and disarming "Good Phil," the cards changed, along with how well he played them.

Even though there are many people, including me, who believe that the way you view the world can indeed have an effect not just on your perception of future events, but indeed on how future events play out, you don't have to agree with that concept ("changing your own reality") or go mystical to benefit from it.

Throughout history, people have believed and written about the power of positive thinking. Anthony Robbins, the hugely successful motivational speaker, is probably the most visible example of that belief now, although there are many other motivational speakers and writers who take the same approach.

There are also many physicians who have believed in it throughout history, and who still do so. The power of positive thinking helps explain why people who take placebos (sugar pills) often recover almost as well as those who take actual medicine, and why doctors from much earlier eras (and even "witch doctors" who perform some kind of mumbo-jumbo ritual) enjoy success. Their patients believe they are receiving treatment, so their condition improves.

I'm not suggesting that mere belief or positive thinking is all one needs to succeed. Medical patients are certainly better off believing in a skilled doctor's efforts than they are believing in a quack's, and poker players who study, learn from their mistakes, remain focused, and do all the other things the poker books tell them to do are much more likely to win than unprepared players who think positively.

This is, however, one of those relatively rare situations in which there is no reason why you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You can and should work hard on preparing and on learning from your mistakes. You can and should try to find a mentor, keep yourself in good physical condition, and, again, do all those things the poker books tell you to do.

Call it a "chicken soup" (it "can't hurt") theory if you must, but if you can gradually work yourself into a state of mind in which you believe that you are lucky, that you don't necessarily get "punished" every time you make an error, you will find that you probably will be luckier.

I say "gradually" work yourself into this state of mind because you can't instantly make a fundamental change in the way you view the world. You can say the words, but you really won't believe them deep down, where it counts. If you are not already a positive thinker, you will need to take incremental steps, and remember them when they work.

Hellmuth's tilt example is probably the easiest both to remember and to understand. When he was acting and thinking negatively, he "got unlucky." I didn't see his cards, at least not all of them, so I can't be sure what kinds of hands he was holding during his "unlucky" stretch. I could see that when he got away from the negative attitude, his play improved, and when his play improved, he was placing himself in a position where it was easier for him to get lucky.

There is no substitute for preparation and hard work, but while you cannot control what cards the dealer sends your way, you certainly can control how you perceive both those cards and yourself. If you stay positive, you will perform better. I probably can't convince you that if you stay positive, you will actually become luckier and will catch more good cards, but even if you just play better, your results will improve.

Looking at this another way, how many people do you know who expect bad luck at every turn who get the opposite result? How many negative thinkers do you know who seem to get every lucky break imaginable? On the other hand, how many positive thinkers do you know who do seem to be enviably lucky?

You'll probably have to experience "changing your own reality" yourself to truly believe that it can work, and that's likely to take a while. You can change the attitude with which you view the world much more quickly, and the right attitude will take you a long way toward getting the result you want.

Why not give it a try? After all, it "couldn't hurt," unless you try to use attitude as a substitute for preparation and good play, instead of a supplement. If you find that you can't change your attitude, that you are just a negative person and that's that, try something else. Try adding up your poker results. I expect you're probably not a winner.

Boy, playing my best ever in the next tournament I play sure is going to feel good!

Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament editor, writes a weekly gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, and is widely considered to be the world's foremost poker tournament reporter. He serves as a quality control consultant for www.TotalPoker.com, for which he also writes the free biweekly "Wednesday Nite Poker" e-newsletter. Andy welcomes your questions through the "Ask Andy" feature at www.poker.casino.com.