Learn about the spiritual element in Poker!

From ancient times until now, believing in spiritual factors has been a way out for humans whenever they encounter unexplainable problems that are beyond their understanding. In poker, we often encounter situations that are outside our normal thinking habits, when we play correctly but still lose, our opponents play incorrectly but still win, and instinctively, we turn to spirituality.

That said, spirituality is still very important in poker. Just in a slightly different way than you might think:

  • If a person believes that you overpower them and is afraid of fighting you, bluff them a lot
  • If a person believes they are on a lucky streak, as soon as they win a big hand, they will continue to play with all types of cards. Attack this wide range of theirs.
  • If you find yourself clearly losing to an opponent often, instead of blaming it on your being overwhelmed, think about what is in his playing style that counters your playing style. Actively thinking about that problem will help you improve your playing style a lot.
  • If a person thinks he is losing because of bad luck, take the opportunity that he is tilting, exploiting that unstable mentality.
  • If a person believes he is lucky (because he has a mascot, because his cards are up…), he will play very confidently. Limit bluffs when playing against him, but strictly value bet.
  • etc…

However, Poker is an intellectual game, so playing Poker requires technique, skill, and experience in playing cards. Don’t rely too much on spiritual factors but put belief in ourselves and our abilities .

Goodluck and GG!

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You just made me realize that poker goes beyond cards and technical rules! Understanding opponents’ beliefs can indeed influence my game. Now I see there’s more than just luck and technical skill involved. I’ll start paying more attention to these spiritual nuances in my next games!

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Nice post!
I believe as well in feelings and spiritual stuff during pokergames. When we know how to explore them, Its a very powerfull tooll to overwelm the adversary.
Thanks for the post. Keep it up!

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Many players are like Michael Scott from The Office, when he said, “I am not superstitious, but I am a little-stitious”. Also, this post made me remember a quote that I’ve first read on the Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, and it says something like that: “Being superstitious brings bad luck” hahaha.

So true! When playing poker, we must eliminate these beliefs at all costs, and of course, pay attention to those who believe them. Curiously, I am a Christian and I do believe the proverb that says: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”

However, this not necessarily determine how I play. It helps to accept the results. But I keep taking decisions based on math, because poker is a game of numbers, and I might not win this time, or may not win this tournament, but if I keep playing better than my opponents, I will get there.

It is true that many of us let luck affect us either we like it or not, no matter what side of the table we are sitting on. It takes a considerably cool head to play in a neutral way. Like maintaining objectivity is something that is simply not built-in in the human brain.

Yub!
We Asians are still superstitious, but it’s not superstition. Just a small corner of my Poker playing strategy after a period of experience

I feel the same way, you can always rely on this to overwhelm your opponents

Interesting post, dangbaonguyen.

Some things only apply to Live Poker of course. And some of the things are hard to know unless they tell you or show you.

But I agree with your list of responses to the situations listed - in general.

I going to expand on just one point you made:

The one thing that is extremely profitable is to identify a tilting player because even the best poker player can begin to question the randomness of cards being dealt if they get several bad beats and/or coolers in a row. I have seen very rational persons believe that they are being unlucky for a different reason than just variance (myself included).

So in a poker landscape where players get better and better when it comes to strategy and math - the ability to identify and exploit tilting players is more important than ever since they start to play in an unbalanced way.

Most of your money in poker doesn’t come from how good you play but how bad others play

And when players are tilting they can sometimes play shockingly badly.

I think we have all seen players going all-in with garbage after being outdrawn earlier for example.

So psychology really is the not-so-secret weapon in poker (even online).

So reading the player often beats all the GTO knowledge in the world.

Some of the tips are good . I will also try to take advantage of sb who is afraid of me , if he thinks I play tight and very good hands I might try to bluff him . If he believes he can win every hand and he plays every hand I will try to exploit this , make him go on tilt , pay me . There are some other factors in poker generally, but mainly , if we want to tell the truth, the main factor is RNG . So even if you play with the spiritual element or anything else , if RNG doesn’t want you you won’t get too far …

I have experimented with meditation before playing poker and had some success with it.

If it’s a coincidence or not, who knows, but a clear, quieted mind can certainly outperform one that is,

let’s say, cluttered and distracted. The meditation I used can be found on Louise Kay - YouTube

I really appreciate this post! Too often, we get mad when we suffer bad beats. You’ve reminded me how important it is to remain objective and study your opponent’s tendencies and guess at their mindset and motivations and then use it against them. You raise a lot of situations that come up often at the poker table that you can really see versus opponents you play against frequently. I wouldn’t necessarily call it “spiritual” but it is definitely psychological and behavioral. Thank you for the interesting way to look at these situations!

Thank you first for your post and agree with your comment of belief in ourselves & abilities. However, I get both from the spirit.

Great post. If you would elaborate on this topic, you could make the poker equal of “The art of war”!

Very nice and interesting topic!
It is always important to trust in your own strength but is also necessary that you understand the psychology of the game very good. There always spots in poker games where you can win against villains even though your cards are scrap and this is can be a weapon!
So in my opinion this is part of strategy, psychology and knowledge - a good mixture of this components is the key to a solid poker play.

To me, ‘spiritual’ always implies love and compassion. Therefore, at times, I have helped other players who clearly need a bit of help.

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Some nice tips on the topic, although I still believe that hard work, experience and patience are the three big factors for becoming a successful poker player. But the mental game of poker is also important. It’s true that if you sit on a table and you know that a player is afraid of you, then playing a lot of pots with him and bluffing him a lot is a good option. But you have to always remember that this player may react and change his gameplay, so you have to get back into a normal game. Another situation is when you feel that you have very bad luck and you start playing a scared money style of play because you are afraid that you will get a bad beat. This is for sure - EV in the long run.

Poker is a mental game but with a strong influence of luck and skill.

Skill is having the ability to observe your opponent and know what mistakes they make to exploit this.

Also know how to play in position and which hands you should play.

But even if you play correctly, your opponents may win with worse hands for a long time without you making a profit.

Luck plays an important factor in poker but in the long run they say that if you make the right moves you will be profitable.

The problem is that sometimes this long period can be too long, causing many players to end up giving up playing poker.

In short, poker is not an easy way to make money where you need a lot of study and dedication to be a profitable player and the long term may take longer to arrive due to the variation.

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Regarding this topic, I think that each person is free to think and believe in what they want, personally I don’t think that any of this works at least in online games, maybe in live games things would be different

I have an interesting example on this subject. In short, I lived in a house where the wall was relatively low, as soon as I adopted my dog, as an adult, I realized that I should do something to increase the height. It didn’t take long for my dog ​​to climb over the wall and for some reason attacked the neighbor. This was news to everyone as she was a very adorable dog and had never done that before. It’s likely that the neighbor did something to him, but that’s not the point. I needed to install a fence covering the entire structure of the house and the land, so that the dog couldn’t jump and go over to the common area. In the same period, streamer games were taking place at ACR, where you could get a bounty of 1000 for taking that streamer out of the tournament. I needed the money to carry out the “mini project”, put fences and screens on the land. It was a large piece of land, so the price was higher. Well, during this period I managed to win the streamer’s bounty from one of these ACR tournaments and that was what paid for the materials and labor.

So I say that it was a spiritual factor helping me, because: what is the probability of me landing at the same table as the streamer and still knocking him out of the game with any 2 cards? Anyway, it was God helping me.

Yes I think the spiritual Factor can be very important in the game of poker. I had it many times that I could really feel the mind of my opponents when they were tilting or when they felt no one could stop them. It’s very important to see these things and to act accordingly on the poker table. But its also very important to not move away from your general gameplan.

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