Session #406: Ilze Zolte on Peak Poker Performance

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 406. Ills ZTE on Peak Poker performance. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett. You are in for an interesting journey as well as a phenomenal story as someone found herself inside of.

Series of personal challenges and suddenly it was this meeting of the two worlds between one hypnosis, the common topic of the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, as well as the game of poker, and not just the friendly game amongst friends. We’re talking about the tournaments and even the professionals. I just had this incredible conversation.

With ills, zte, and the topic was that of poker and how this entry into hypnosis, this introduction into the world met up with her other career of being a crew, a dealer, someone who actually plays the game and deals the game professionally. And how again, these two parts of the world come together to create something that if you ever find yourself working with this category of.

You’re gonna find some interesting insights here, or also listen for how the two of us in this conversation begin to expand the themes of self-hypnosis, state management, reading of the outside situations dissolving away. Emotions that don’t necessarily need to be there and acting without necessary unnecessary conscious judgment.

So there’s a lot of insights, a lot of things we can apply to other principles even far beyond the game of poker. Which actually over the years I think I’ve had. Two or three people as clients, you can imagine not the most common thing being also living in an area before where there wasn’t necessarily gambling yet.

Still, I go to a story of a client who I worked with that by different issue. He was a day trader with stocks and he had a very specific system where on a big news day, he would take like a popular company, let’s say Apple, and depending on the news, the stock would go up. Yet the way that he would time these micro purchases and micro sells, if the stock had gone up four or 5%, he would’ve realized using his strategies upwards of like a 15, 16% gain on his investment.

And of course, though he found himself in my office the day that but a couple of days after he. I’m second guessing myself. My system works yet I’m second guessing my system. When I vary away from the system, it fails and he leans in and he smiles and he goes, and you and I know this problem has got nothing to do with stocks.

And I’m like, you’re awesome. Let’s do this. So we find ways that our personal world influences our. And our game begins to influence our world, and that’s an incredibly inspirational thing that comes outta this conversation with eels inside of this conversation. You can head over to the show notes at work, smartt hypnosis.com/ 4 0 6 for the links and references we make throughout this episode.

And again, I’m inviting you to copy and paste some of my best strategies as a professional hypnotist. That’s why I put together the profess. Hypnotist swipe file. It’s yours. It’s free. It’s available right [email protected] smart hypnosis.com. Head over there and simply claim you’re a free copy of it. 14 specific strategies that I know you were going to use with your clients and inside of your sessions, inside of your hypnosis business.

These are strategies that are designed specifically. To help you to win more successfully at the game of seeing clients. I’m still trying to keep it on the theme of the poker game here, as well as operate with confidence that you are providing a quality service to your clients to also bring in those clients as well.

So check that out. It’s the Professional hypnotist Swipe file, yours free [email protected] smart hypnosis.com. And with that, let’s dive directly in. Here we go, session number 400 and. Eels ZTE on Peak poker performance. My first introduction to hypnosis was through meeting some friends through poker. One of my friends is a comedy stage hypnotist, and the other is a consultant for mental.

So I went to a few performances. I actually worked with the Mentalist as well and had a lot of experience that way of watching it from an outsider. Yeah, looking in. I was quite a skeptic actually. What about it would you say changed that opinion? I saw an advert on Facebook, which was introducing a course on hypnosis, but particularly relating to clinical hypnosis and psychotherapy.

So I did the free weekend foundational course, then signed up and completed it. Nice. Nice. Which I know we’re gonna spend quite a bit of time going into this very unique specialty of yours. Let’s go there right away, which is that this blend between poker and then hypnosis, and I’m just gonna let you.

Take off running here cause I gotta hear more myself. I’ve spent 10 years of my life as a creepier, so I’ve spent 10 years dealing the game. I’m a very passionate poker player myself and as a hypnotherapist. I thought, what better way to improve my own game. By combining the two forces together. Yeah.

For those that are not familiar with it. When you say group air define that for the audience. I dealt casino games in a casino. Yeah. And worked my way up. So I was dealing roulette and card games Such as blackjack and poker. Yeah. Yeah. And then, Just in terms of looking at this, because part of this conversation is, I’m sure there’s gonna be some incredible insights that we can draw out and apply to any kind of, let’s call it sports enhancement, any kind of performance enhancement.

What particularly are the issues that the poker player gets into that there’s now a need to clearly resolve? There are so many aspects of the game of poker that can be helped with using hypnosis, for example, you need to remain calm, cool, and collected at all times. You need to learn how to think under pressure and remain focused, be able to control your emotions at the table.

And just to dive into it right away, like what are some of the strategies that come to mind in terms. Helping to really, take someone who is skilled and really enhance that. I would say first of all, it would be to create the perfect poker face. And I do that by helping them, by using just a simple, deep, progressive muscle relaxation induction.

Yeah. To relax all of the muscles in the face and keep them at a present state of mind where their confidence is key. They’re focused and in control, and they’re not having to worry about anything that they can’t control. Like the cards they have faith in their good decision making. And they realize that bad beats happen.

They’re more forgiving of themself and they can move on to the next hand. Really by working on your mindset. Yeah. That’s one of those things that pops up in so many categories where we are often playing a game or doing something, and it’s entirely from this mindset of trying to catch up the golfer, the ball goes in the.

The public speaker who one presentation goes bad and then they’re sorting for that do you tend to find that pops up in this world? Oh, absolutely, yes, because players like to keep to their own system. So when they find themselves diverting from their normal system, they can get agitated and frustrated and then, Mistakes happen and it leads to self-sabotage and imposter syndrome and all of those areas where people struggle as athletes come into the game of poker.

But also with regard to managing loss, it’s also very common to, yeah, have to think of strategies and techniques in order to manage that for a poker player. Now something that, and this is part of why I wanted to have you on here, which was that it was interesting how there’s this blend between the poker world and then hypnosis coming in that really became transformational for you in ways that I surprised me.

Could you share some of that backstory? Yes, I started playing poker when I was going through a period of depression in my life. It enabled me to get out of the house and to socialize and meet all sorts of people from different walks of life, and it helped me. Gain confidence and self-esteem, and a lot of players find it as a way of escapism from their general nine to five working life.

The game in particular, I’ve always been very passionate about the game. I’ve loved every aspect of it. I love the psychology involved in it, having. Be able to read players at the table, read your opponents, looking out for poker, tells the strategy behind it, varies significantly from player to player.

Absolutely everything to do with the game. I’m very passionate player. I’ve played all over the place. I’ve played in Malta a couple of times last year. I’ve played all over the uk. It’s a very competitive game, but what you may not realize is there’s different types of poker. There’s tournament poker and cash poker.

Now the tournament poker is what I’m more interested in because it’s very competitive and it’s more sociable. How in the sense that you’re competing against other players and. You’ve got your friends there at the table as well that you’re wishing to do well, or it could be even in a team event.

So it’s a spot which brings a lot of people together who you wouldn’t normally necessarily come across in day-to-day activities. Tell me if I’m connecting the dots here, because I what you shared there some of the more personal background where things such as connecting with others, things such as problem solving day-to-day situations.

And then suddenly it’s here inside of, and not to say these two words together in any way to minimize it, but here inside of a card game suddenly is this thing that connects us to others and it’s about, I love that. The first thing you mentioned was, What we can define in our world as the state control of the poker face, how we can maintain our Cool What?

What are the specific correlations that you’d say became strengths of yours as a result of even just first getting into. Getting into poker. After my first hypnosis session, it was just a simple confidence boosting session. I had a session and I went to a home game. Now, previously, I used to be anxious and nervous going into a game, particularly when my ex-boyfriend was present and playing.

But after the session, I felt invincible. And very confident, and I was the chip leader all night long, so I was winning all night and I took the tournament down at the end and I felt like there was something in that that, it, it just, I needed to know more. But the first hypnosis provider the trainer that I had didn’t really encourage me to go down that route because it was too niche and area.

I was actually thinking about specializing with depression because I had personal experience with that and had learned how to overcome the negative thought patterns that were going in my head. But it was only then afterwards I started training with the Jacque Queen Hypnosis Academy. And became a member of the association.

And it was through that community with Freddie and Anthony who all encouraged me to follow my passion and combine hypnosis with poker. So I did. And I’ve realized that since I’ve combined hypnosis with my poker and. I’ve noticed how much it’s actually helped me improve my game. When you’re playing poker and feel like you’re on a bit of a roller coaster, you’re full of adrenaline.

You are winning and losing hands consistently. How you deal with losses contributes to your success, so it’s just essential that you learn from him. Mistakes rather than be too critical of them. You need to be mindful. Bad beats do happen, and you have to be more forgiving of yourself. Now, when you say bad beats, can you define that for us?

Unfortunately we can’t hypnotize the cards and we don’t have any control over which cards come out. So there is an element of luck to the game. It’s not just fully skillful game. So that’s what I meant by the bad beats happen. It means when the card comes out that. Theoretically you are ahead in the game, but then a card may come out that will give your opponent the edge and the better hand, even though your probability is to win, is a lot higher than theirs.

It’s so many other things that it’s not just the what happens, it’s the how we respond to it. Absolutely, yes. You need to train your mind for endurance as well for the long grind because these poker tournaments can last eight to 10 hours a day and can even last nine days. The biggest tournaments.

So then here you are inside of the poker world, either as a player yourself or as the dealer. As the hypnosis came in, what did you say? What would you say that kind of filled in the gaps for? What did that help to improve upon? I have a lot of anchors that I use before my game, during the game and after the game, and I find that the subconscious anchors that I’ve had installed are very beneficial to improving my game, reminding me.

That patience is rewarded while I’m playing, reminding me of keeping my composure not being distracted. I can use visualization quite a lot with regard to going through the process of winning a tournament, the state, the different stages. So I visualize the different steps that need to be taken. And can get myself into that flow state where I can imagine myself being in the zone where the cards are in my going in my favor.

I’m making the right moves, I’m making the right reads. It’s very much a mental game. Part of that too, it is that, imagine that. We I go back to working with athletes and I always have to smile when it’s the oddly specific niche market. Because there’s always a community that’s gonna have a need for it somewhere.

And surprisingly, the better we can speak about it, the better than that others can then go. I don’t have that exact issue, but that’s what I need. And they’re then reaching out to you for things even beyond that specific, specific thing yet it’s the correlations, it’s the connections.

But I think back to, I had this weird moment that kind of helped to launch my business early on, which was that a newspaper ran this article about me and it was this newspaper in the US here in, it was when I lived in Northern Virginia. And that was an area that. Like in this one county, like 24 different cities, and the phrase was let’s not print it in the location where Jason is, otherwise it’ll look like advertising.

So they printed it like 15, 20 miles away from me. And then it was a gymnastics coach who read that. And thought, oh, that’s what my kids need. And he started to send me all these referrals for gymnastic stuff. And what was interesting was, again, you find how, not that we never look for specific patterns and just put people into a, round hole.

It was again, some of the themes you’ve hit of when the competition does this, when the competition does that. And it always came back to playing to the best of abilities state. And how as I’d worked with these teenagers, it would be the parents who were then calling up and going, Hey I’ve got this presentation at work.

Could you help me with that? I’m like, you wanna flip in a high beam too? No. What ways have you found it helps to correlate to other things, other issues that often may pop up in your world? I would say a lot of these techniques that I use with my poker players can actually be adapted and used for business, so for CEOs of companies when dealing with loss and things like that.

Also, money blocks is another area that I’ve looked into and I would say a lot of my work would be adopted to. Chess players as well, because that’s very much a mental game. Yeah, absolutely. And it involves the same type of thinking and strategy and skillset that poker players acquire. I’d be curious to know, does when you talk about being able to read behaviors and the poker tells, does the story come to mind of either person you’ve worked with or even yourself where here’s what the response would’ve been before, but because.

This specific work we’ve been chatting about, here’s the result they had instead. Absolutely, yes. I would say that some of my clients have definitely reported back to me feeling that they have more control over their actions at the table. So they’re more patient and they can wait for the opportunities rather than just dipping straight in and rushing to get to the end of the tournament.

Yeah. Talk to me about that sort of place where towards the end of the game, This is something I’ve run into with marathon runners, that it’s toward the end where some of the mental noise starts to really kick in. How does that pop up in this? At the end of the tournament, depending on how you’ve actually played, a lot of players can be very critical upon themselves and too judgmental and give themselves a very big, hard time if they’ve played a hand differently to how they should have played or that they lost more chips than what they should have done.

So therefore, they. Took a big setback to what they should have done. So then it’s all a case of that self-sabotage kicking in. So it’s dealing with that at the end and learning from your mistakes. Making a mental note of each one that you make, and then looking at the hand histories and looking at progressing and dealing with that mistake at a later date.

Because the problem with a lot of poker players is that they let a lot of their outside. Problems come in to affect the actual game in hand. So therefore, it’s very useful to have hypnotherapy help all like areas of life because any stress and arguments away from the table can be brought onto the P poker table.

So it’s great to detox your mind and clear out any negativity, leaving yourself refreshed, calm and collected, both at the end of a tournament and at the beginning and throughout really. Yeah. Yeah. So then you’ve got an interesting project in the works around groups and specifically a category that I’d love to chat about that of women poker players.

Yes. As you probably aware, women are the man minority in the poker industry. However, more and more women are playing poker and more are crushing the tables and improving, I must say. So I’ve combined forces with poker power. They are a company that encourages and supports women to improve their game on the technical aspects, and I’m going to be helping them work on their mental game by giving them and providing them the confidence that they need in order to get onto the tables in the first place, because a lot of the women are just learning on apps and online.

That brings in an interesting point, which is. Building that confidence, building that skillset, how is it that practice comes into this, where here’s that experience of actually playing versus now, the more mind game, the more mental side of it. I think with anything practice makes perfect.

So you’re going to improve all of these skills and all these techniques with the more practice that you put in order to get yourself into the zone and to visualize success, to learn different techniques, including self hypnosis, just to get them in that present state of mind. Let’s talk about that self hypnosis.

Is there a specific way. Let’s say you’re applying it so that then it’s gonna be beneficial in the game. Are there things that then carry over to do this in real time during the game? Absolutely. All the breathing techniques, especially that six, six breathing comes in handy when your SAB at the table and.

You’ve got an opponent facing you and you’ve put in a massive bluff. So you need to compose yourself. You need to retain that poker face, and you’re effectively lying through your teeth, but you just need to remain part of the game. Part of the game. Yeah. So self-hypnosis definitely helps at the table because if you think about it, your opponent wouldn’t have a clue what you’re actually thinking if they’re even trying to read your.

So really it comes back to the state control. Yes. Side of things. Yes. It reduces your blood pressure, obviously it regulates your breathing. So when you’re looking out for poker tails with your opponents, you’d be looking out for the increased heartbeat. There, there’s all sorts of tells that you can look out for in order to see.

Whether your opponent is potentially bluffing or whether or not they’ve got a strong hand, yeah. Let’s talk about that because a lot of the focus here has been on how the player responds. What is it that is being addressed Then to enhance that ability, let’s say, to read others. As a player, you tend to give away certain tells.

They’re called. So you could potentially subconsciously move in a certain direction, like your eyes could move in a certain direction and look at and glance at your chips when you are intending to place a bet and your opponent can pick up on that, for example. There’s just various subtle movements that players can make that you can pick up on.

So that, of amplifying that awareness of those things. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yes. How does that usually let’s talk about the reset, cuz I’d be curious around, let’s go back to some of the older school stuff that would be modeled inside of N L P. What would say, oh, if they’re looking this direction, it means this, if they’re looking this direction, it means that, And the reality is nothing has any value unless it’s actually calibrated, cuz what it may be for one person may be different from one to another.

Are there specific things you’re addressing then that are from one game to the next? It’s a different set of players. It’s a different set of people around. It’s normally circumstantial and yeah, environmental, definitely it’s in collaboration with a lot of other supporting factors at the time. It’s not a case of.

You know if you wipe your nose or something, if you rub your nose, then you’re lying. It’s nothing like that whatsoever. It needs to be in context of the game in hand. So it’s more situational. Players will tend to display certain behavioral problems during certain stages of the game. Yeah. So it, it’s very technical and goes into a lot of depth really.

Excellent. Excellent. So then before we wrap this up, I know looking at. The one-to-one work looking at the groups. For someone who maybe a client reaches out and it’s of this category, if you had to break it down to go, here’s where to start, what would you recommend that be part of the process in terms of truly helping that person activate that change?

First of all, I would ask them what they’re struggling with because different poker players struggle with different areas of the game. But most of all, it would be getting rid of any limiting beliefs and fears, empowering the person, installing them with confidence. And also you can use various techniques within hypnosis.

You can use parts therapy, you can work on the ego. You can delve into so many different areas, even regression, using Roy Hunter’s Effect Bridge is helpful when analyzing why a player reacts in a certain way during certain times at a tournament, if that makes sense. Yeah. If somebody tilts, which is effect effectively losing emotional control and then playing erratically afterwards, then it’s finding that the root cause for that, and that could link to something away from the poker table.

Awesome. Awesome. I gotta thank you for coming on here that I really when you find a whole other world that’s out there and a specific set of needs that people have, and to see some of the insights and understand the insights within it thank you for sharing that as well as your personal journey of how it was the combo of hypnosis as well as this game that helped to lift and elevate you.

For those that are curious to learn more, how can. Get in contact with you? Where can they track you down? I’m on all different types of social media, including Facebook, Instagram. I have a website, hypno poker.co uk. You can message me, email me. I’m very happy to meet and talk about poker and hypnosis all day long.

Awesome, and we’ll link to that over in the show notes work smartt hypnosis.com. This is session number 406. So if you just go over to work smart hypnosis.com/ 4 0 6, you’ll see a direct link exactly where to go to check out exactly how to meet with ills. Before we wrap this up, any final thoughts for the listeners?

All these techniques that we’ve learned in our hypnosis training can be adapted and applied to so many different areas that we never even thought possible. Jason Linett here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with our guest, for leaving your reviews online. You can find exactly how to connect over at the show [email protected] slash four zero.

And while you’re there, also head over to secret.work smart hypnosis.com. It’s a free book I’ve put together exclusively for you. The professional hypnotist swipe file. It’s your opportunity to copy and paste exactly what I’ve proven to work not just in my sessions, but also inside of my hypnosis business.

Stop guessing and use what’s been proven to work. Heading over to secret.work smart hypnosis.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis [email protected].