3. Hypnosis

Because the good player is able to intensely study and closely scrutinize each poker opponent, he quickly gets to know their minds and psyches. With planned experiments, he can discover subconscious responses in many players and then actually hypnotize certain players—particularly the dull, emotional, or mystical ones. Typical hypnotic stimuli are— • staring into the subject’s eyes (psychological)

• moving a finger through the pot (visual and motion)
• breathing audibly during a tense silence (sound)
• tapping fingers on the table (sound and motion)
• repeating sub audible chant-like commands (e.g., “fold— fold—fold,” or “raise—raise—raise”).

Various repeated motions, sounds, or muffled voices can subconsciously instruct or signal vacillating opponents to make specific folds, calls, bets, or raises. The alert player can discover subconscious or hypnotic signals that will trigger automatic or trained reactions in his opponents.

While the good player can get certain opponents to bet, call, or fold by hypnosis, he uses hypnotizing actions cautiously to avoid revealing his own hands and intentions to alert opponents.

After the draw, John Finn takes the final raise for $100. He has Scotty Nichols beat and wants him to call. Scotty groans. Looking at the huge pot, he sees John’s finger slowly stirring the pile of money—stirring slowly and smoothly. Ten and twenty-dollar bills are moving in circles. Scotty’s floating brown eyes start rotating with the money. His chubby hand slowly picks up a $100 bill. He calls the bet.

Scotty tries to smile as John pulls in the pot. Eventually he may become aware of that hypnotic trick. But then John will simply use another trick.

John estimates his earnings per life of hypnotic trick range from several hundred to several thousand dollars.