The Mental Game of Poker Quotes

“YOU CAN’T CONTROL THE CARDS; YOU CAN ONLY CONTROL HOW YOU PLAY.    DON’T GIVE UP CONTROL FOR SOMETHING YOU CAN’T CONTROL.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“EMOTION IS NOT THE PROBLEM. It’s the key to mastering your game.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“solid player is a mental game fish if they: Change a proven winning strategy because they are running bad/hot. Never recognize when someone has played well against them and/or believe everyone they play against is bad and just gets lucky. Try to win every hand. Think the outcome of a hand can be changed by shouting, praying, or playing a favorite hand. Get frustrated when a bad player plays badly and they even educate them as to why they are bad. Feel like a failure when they lose a hand that was played profitably. Think the solution to running bad is to stop playing or change stakes. Read a poker book cover to cover and think they know everything in it. Watch some of Phil Galfond’s training videos and think they should now be able to crush the game like him. Believe that they are cursed or that other people are luckier than they are. Believe it’s possible to own another player’s soul. Play more hands when they are winning/losing. Play fewer hands when they are winning/losing. Play badly when the stakes are too small for them to care. Allow things to get personal with another regular. Tell bad beat stories to anyone that will listen, while doing nothing to improve how they react to bad beats. Say “one time.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“WINNING DOESN’T MEAN YOU PLAYED WELL.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“Identify the entire range of your game from your current absolute worst, to your current absolute best. To do that, think about what mistakes you make when playing your B-game, what makes your B-game better than your C-game, and what defines your A-game. Having that knowledge allows you to make better adjustments because you know how you are playing. Evaluate your game regularly. After every session, analyze how you played, what improved, and what needs more work. Set goals for the next session based on your evaluation.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“Injecting logic works best when: You catch the build-up of emotion, such as tilt or fear, before reaching your emotional threshold. If not, you have a major uphill battle to regain the ability to think clearly and play well without having to take a break or quit. Why? Once your emotions have crossed the threshold, it becomes harder and harder to think clearly. Injecting logic is really just thinking. Therefore, if your emotions have shut off your ability to think, trying to inject logic is the equivalent of trying to run on a sprained or broken ankle. Your logic also corrects the underlying flaw. The fastest way to resolve a mental game problem is by injecting logic that also corrects the underlying flaw that is causing it. Basically, you’re working toward two goals at once.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“Poker players tend to overly focus on money immediately after a session because it matters most in the long run and it’s so easy to calculate. The problem is that because of variance, monetary results alone are unreliable measures in the short term of how you played. Here are a few better ways to evaluate how you played: Look closely at tough decisions to see how you played them. Estimate how much variance influenced results. Calculate whether you accomplished the qualitative goals you set before the session. If you fell short, why? Review how you did in the areas you’re trying to improve (poker strategy and mental game). Did you see any progress? If you’re going to analyze hands later, write some game flow notes or thoughts about them that you may otherwise forget. Spending a short time to evaluate is also a great way to: Put poker down when you’re done playing, so you can go on with your life. Reset your mind before the next time you play.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More

“RESULTS-ORIENTED THINKING Not being results-oriented gets a lot of attention in the poker world these days. The solution most often given is to ignore, block out, or detach from your results. Players know it’s a mistake to focus too much on short-term results because of variance, but stopping is easier said than done. When you only focus on wins and losses, your emotions go on a rollercoaster because they are attached to money and winning. Being focused on winning and money in the short run is not what causes problems; it’s the set of results you’re ignoring. You also need to focus on qualitative results so your emotions can attach to factors that you have 100% control of in the short run. The process model provides the structure and organization to capture qualitative results since they aren’t easily calculated at the end of a session or tournament. Use the model to focus more and more on the quality of your play, your mental game, and overall improvement; and steadily your emotions will reorganize around this set of results.”
― Jared Tendler, The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More