blonde poker forum

Most of you guys know that I'm into some bizarre mind stuff. I'm currently doing some experimentation with 'Time Distortion' and would like to hear of your experiences of this while playing poker.

To explain what I'm on about:

You know these expressions? 'A watched pot never boils' and 'Time flies when you're having fun' That's time distortion. i.e. When things happen in your mind at a different speed to reality.

Here's a common example. Have you ever been in a car crash? And did time radically slow down during that experience?

I suspect that good multi-tablers constantly use time distortion when they play, almost certainly subconsciously, but how many of you are aware of doing it?

In live play, those of you who play on 2 or 3 day tourneys. How long does it actually feel like?

I hope to use your feedback to help find ways to deliberately distort time to make multi-tabling easier and, of course, if I figure it out I'll share my findings with you.

Cheers

when i crashed my bike everything went so fast i can hardly remember it

when i got dropped down the stairs everything was a blurr (might have been the 23 vodkas i had to drink)

when i won the wsop 2010 (sorry thats time travel not distortion)

I think fighter jet pilots and F1 drivers must interpret things quicker than us mere mortals, it must seem perfectly normal to them and to us it would be overwhelming

Well LSD would certainly fulfill the time distortion requirements but the hand histories while multi-tabling would probably make for a good laugh if nothing else.

hi sword

are you trying to unravel what happens in the mind in relation to this time distoration? it will be a complicated business if you are. monks and people that get themselves into time distorted states take many years to master this state of altered perception. i would be interested in your approach to the problem and where your going to begin? im not sure automatic pilot can be switched on and off just like that but it would be a great coup for you if you at least understand what variables your working with. im more than willing to help if i can keep up with you :) good luck  :)up

mad

It definitely can be switched on and off easily.....I already do it to some extent playing poker and I have used it for years as a fencer. I not only want to become much better at it but I want to be able to distort time in other people's minds too (e.g. to get the fencers I train to be able to do it).

Yes, it's what happens in the mind to make the time distortion that I'm interested in. Different people do it in different ways. If I can try out many different strategies then I can figure out which ones work best, mess around with the variables to try to improve on them and then hopefully come up with some fab answers.

Oh, and I don't have the patience to be a monk. I'll take the fast route ;)


Are you aware of having distorted time?

I think I distort it the other way, stick on some albums I like so a 4 hour sesh flies by and I can get on with, erm, the next four hour session.

how can it be? do you mean like going into a meditative state or something else? im thinking off and on is a bit too clever :)

This could be interesting. I wonder if you distort times both ways at once.

If you were to 7 table cash games, would you feel you had the same amount of time to make your decisions? If not, then how much, or rather how little, time would it feel like?

When you put these albums on how long does the 4 hour session feel like?

Yes, I change my state of mind. It's a subconscious process so I don't have to think about it or remember to switch it on, it just happens. Although now, I'm able to also consciously 'switch it on' when I want to. If I'm standing in a long queue, for example, I can speed time up so it feels like the queue has moved really quickly and I'm at the front in no time at all.

There is no 'special ability' in this. Everyone does it to some extent. I just want to find out which of you guys are really good at it so I can learn what it is that you do differently to the way I do it.

By the way. It doesn't matter if you don't know how you do it. Just let me know if you've noticed the experience first of all.

Interesting thread, am keen to see where it goes... But having said that, I'm not sure I really understand what you're on about lol.

Obviously I see that time seems to go faster at some times than others - but isn't that a function of what your brain's doing, rather than something you can adjust to help the function of your brain..? For example - in the car crash example, to most people it would seem that time slows down, which is presumably to do with the the adrenaline etc that kicks in when you know you're about to hit something. Your brain becomes completely focused on that, rather than thinking about all sorts of other nonsense that you might not even really be aware of. Similarly in sport - that feeling of being "in the zone" where everything is completely focused on what you're doing, so everything seems slower and you feel in control and as though you have more time to react.

Like you say though, this works the other way as well, as although things might seem to be slower as they're happening, the entire 'activity' might seem to go relatively quickly. I guess for me the best example I could give would be playing cricket - when you're in the zone (it's a few years since I have been lol) the ball might seem to get to you slower. But at the same time you might bat for two hours and it could feel like twenty minutes.

Doing exams used to be similar - three hours might go by really quickly, but when you think back over the three hours and realise how much you did in that time (hopefully...) it seems as if the time actually went really slowly.

Again, it seems to me that's a function of being 'in the zone'.

Obviously you want to be in the zone when you're playing poker, so that you're really focused, concentrating and in control. That will have this effect on your perception of time, just as in the sports, exams or car crash examples.

What I don't really see (and don't understand from what you say) is how you would be able to change your perception of time and hence somehow 'back in' to the zone from there. Or why you'd particularly want to try. Achieving that level of focus is presumably the aim, and I reckon thatthis  is the precondition for, rather than the result of, the different perception of time. No?

 rotflmfao rotflmfao

Paragraph of the year!

I'm deliberately not saying how I do it, not yet anyway. Because my intention here is to find out how other people do it.

Your comments on the 'precondition' as opposed to 'the result of' are interesting. This is a part of what I've been playing with in my mind. i.e. 'Did I really experience time distortion' or 'Is my memory of that event distorted'. I have experienced examples of the former being true for at least some cases. I've a great piece of video footage for example of a fencing fight I had. My opponent and I did 4 moves each.... paused....... then did another 2 moves. The referee made a decision after saying there were only 2 moves. Both me and my opponent (apparently also good at time distortion) argued with the ref over the decision and explained what we thought had happened. It was only when I played back video footage of the fight that I discovered the whole sequence took less than a second (and that's including the pause!). If I was refereeing I might only have seen 2 moves also. With hindsight, relying on my memory, I reckon the sequence felt like 8 or 9 seconds long. So, when I'm in the zone, I know I can slow down time by at least a factor of 8. My memory could still be distorted but our argument with the ref and discussion with a spectator definitely shows me that he had a very different perspective on 'how fast' our fight was going.

It seems to me that you are very aware of having distorted time yourself. I'll pm you with some questions.

Really two different subjects are being discussed here, one is phsiological and the other psychological.

In sport, and from studies that i have looked at reaction times are simply a process which can be developed. Its not hard to understand that Tae-kwondo experts have a much faster synaptic response to stimulus than a normal person walking down the street. It is fairly easy to train somebody to respond quicker to a stimulus and react quicker but it is impossible to say that that trained person then sees everything in slow mo and has more tme to think about what he is going to do because he doesnt. Its more like an automated response, if somebody raises their arm to punch at me (in the scenario of me being the expert) then i react quicker yes but only because i know what im going to do because it has been drilled into me through sparring, training, previous fights etc. What i would not be able to do is think about what i am going to do and then do it because he will have hit me.

You cannot use the car crash as a way of showing it is possible to slow perception of time down because that is a subconcious response which IMO cannot be brought through to the concious.

And again in my opinion pro multi tablers dont use a method of slowing time down, or 'time distortion' but instead act exactly in the same way that the above mentioned tae kwondo martial artist would. He knows exactly what he is going to do with each hand and classes his opponents like a fighter would before it all kicks off. He knows who to tackle and knows who to avoid. It is almost just an automated response and has a more developed synoptic pathway from the eye to the brain than the average player.
 
So dont go wasting your time trying to control time, just take up a martial art! Or in a more sensible way to develop your multi tabling just play play play and you will find your game will become more automated and take you a lot less time to make each decision (maybe that is what can be said to be time distortion, who knows!).  
 

I see what you are saying but you seem to be looking at this like you were in a zen like state. You wernt. It is just simply (in my above post i could have used the fencer instead of the tae-kwondo as is basically the same) that you as a fencer have a highly developed synoptic pathway where your reactions may be up to 8 x the speed of a normal person. If i were to go into a fencing match with you, by the time i have lifted my sword (correct term?) to go for you, your eye would have seen me lifting my arm, sent that signal from your eye to the brain, the brain interpreted the information, decided how to respond, send that response to your arm and your muscles in your arm to be stimulated and nail me all in around 200th of a second where as if it had been you attacking and me having to respond it would probably take me around 700th of a second to respond, a massive difference!
But give me 6/12 weeks of fencing lessons and i may have that reaction time down to 400th of a second and further down the line i may be able to react at the same speed as you.
So my point being the subject you are referring to is a physiological one and not psychological.

I'm not sure you could put it all down to physiological training - there's definitely a mental state that can be achieved where senses are heightened and intuitive responses are faster and more accurate. I'd say it probably is close to a zen-like state - certainly it's more than simply concentrating and reacting to stimuli - and I'd have thought most people have experienced it in one form or another. I suspect that the more often you experience it, the easier it is to get it back again. Professional sportsmen are presumably pretty good at turning it on when necessary, so maybe it is a 'trick' that can be acquired on some level.

I'm experiencing time distortion reading this thread

Takes 5 minutes to read, feels like 2 hours

there is only one true way to experience time distortion, have children.

I think I'd have the same amount of time to decide in cash, but I'd be slower at doing so because I'm less used to it. I don't think this has much to do with time distortion and slowing things down, just a case of knowing what to do in situations you've been in 1,000s of times before.

One of the possible reasons there is no slowey down sensation for me is that I think it is linked to adrenaline, and I try to keep myself as calm as possible.
I think you should get your fencers to take off their protective helmets and such, sharpen their blades, maybe get them to have their bouts on a narrow plank of wood traversing a piranha shark pool. If that doesn't distort time then nothing will.

That's what drunken topless sabre is for Tank.

I've just lost 45 min's reading this.....does that count for anything?

 :dontask:

My question is....is there a huge benefit to the poker player?

IMHO, training and fitness play a part, both mental and physical. As with all sports, the trained athlete with more experience will generally win out & find the battle less of a stress because both body and mind are ready for the challenge.

I'm not one to discount other peoples ideas, so will be following this post with interest.

ah so you are trying to find the mechanism by which the process happens? what preceeds you going into this state? how can you switch it on? im thinking its about what you concentrate on. like the longest meeting in the world can be speeded up by focusing on something a bit more interesting while trundling through the agenda? id like to explore this with you the next time we meet. i need a bit of skill around switching on and off :)

I remember watching Jeremy Clarkson testing Michael Schumacher's reaction time (the old 'catch a falling ruler' test), expecting him to be super quick, but he found that his reaction time was no quicker than normal. In fact, there's not much difference in most people's reaction times to a random stimulus - we're all much of a muchness.

However, in specialised circumstances (like fencing or taekwando, the two examples used so far) seasoned practitioners appear to react much quicker than the untrained, when in fact they are not. What they are doing is recognising the events leading up to the stimulus and starting to react before it has happened.

For example, if I was playing taekwando and my opponent hit me, the first I would know about it would be seeing his arm move towards me, by which time it would be too late for me to do anything. However an expert would know the punch is coming before the arm even moves. Because he will have been in this situation thousands of times before, he will subconsciously recognise the things that happen before the arm moves. A tensing of muscle, a subtle shift in weight, a change in where the opponent's eyes are looking etc. By the time the arm actually moves, he will have 'sensed' it was coming and will have already begun to defend against it.

To a casual observer, it will look as though he has reacted super-quickly to the punch coming when in fact he hasn't.

It is this 'my subconscious brain has seen this situation a million times before and so has already decided the best course of action' which is at play in poker. To the conscious mind, it's as if you have come to a decision much quicker than everyone else, when in fact it is that your subconscious has used information tucked away in your brain that your conscious mind isn't even aware of.

It's been mentioned before when we've had similar discussions but I would recommend the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which goes into this sort of thing.

Getting into a focused state of mind to play poker is a different thing entirely, and is more to do with getting into a set routine of 'resetting' your mind at the start of every hand so that you are in the same place every time and able to run through a checklist of the things you are consciously looking out for. The subconsious stuff can only come with playing thousands and thousands of hands.

Kingpoker,

These figured sound about right to me. Normal reaction time is around 230-270 milliseconds. If those with the best reaction times are doing it in 170 then thats a significant difference. But if this leads to my concept of time distortion then time would only slow down by around 1/3. Athletes though, feel time distorting huge amounts more than that. Perhaps 10 or 20 times slower, or even more.

Mad,

Sure, I'll give you some strategies to play with. Maybe you can use them at the blonde bash to make your final table experience last longer  ;D

Digger,

Good question. I definitely think it would help someone wanting to learn how to multi-table, or how to play more tables than they currently are. Other than that, I don't think there is much real need. Perhaps though, some players make the mistake of distorting time the opposite way to what would be useful. Ever felt the pressure to rush a decision when, in fact, you had plenty of time?

Andrew,

Superb post. It's possible to 'fake' a great result on the catch a ruler test by finding out the physical tells of the person dropping the ruler. They always give away something. So poker players might be proven to have better reactions than formula one drivers some time in the future :D

Thanks for the book recommendation. Someone else has also told me about that book so I'll be reading it soon.

Playing thousands of hands, of course, will help. But rather than use trial and error, I'm looking for good strategies that I can apply. Then perhaps I can get in sussed in a few hundred hands and by the time I reach a few thousand, I'm much better at it than I ever would have been without the strategies.

Typical poker player's response to being told there are no short cuts to something - 'What's the short cut?' :)

That's what I'm attempting to learn.

So come on guys....gimme your experiences.

Yes but im afraid we on here arent who i was talking about. I watched a Dicovery Science programme not long ago trying to use the latest technology to find which was the "best" style of martial art. They tested rection times and they had the reigning world tae-kwondo champion on there and it the test was the one where the light comes on and you have to hit it as soon as it lights up. This guy did the whole process in less than 170th of a second. Faster almost than me or anybody on here would even see the light come on. The kung fu champion came second with around 200th of a second and the karate champion in about 230th of a second. Now these times are about as fast as a human can have. So yes IMO reaction time can be developed to the very highest and fastest a human can possibly achieve.

Am I missing something here. Surely "230th of a second" is faster than "170th" of a second?  Now that would be time-distortion! Or do you mean 0.017, as opposed to 0.023?

Yes, it's milliseconds.

Why not have a go yourself and measure yours - http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php (http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php)

My average over ten goes was 216ms.

204, 207, 209, 208, & 1minute, 17 seconds. (The 'phone rung).

169.7 after 10 goes.

That puts me at No.7 on the recent scores and No. 103 on all time ranking.

:)

Must be down to luck

I bet the reason you were so quick was because you were using your 'checking' finger to press the mouse button.

Rumbled. My "Pass" finger is even quicker.

I tried the "be more aggressive early" trick yesterday in Cardiff. 17 minutes I lasted. Not bad. I think the aggression setting needs a bit of fine tuning.

yes but i want them now. im in an instant gratification type of mood :)

Wow. Sing my song!