3.21.12 – The Mental Game Radio Show
Today on The Mental Game Radio Show, three listeners came on the show for help with a variety of issues. Each story was unique, but the common thread among them was they had difficulty maximizing their learning in poker.
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Learning how to play poker better, is as important a topic as actually what you’re learning, yet it’s rarely talked about. The advice given in this episode is a must for anyone who is serious about taking their game to the next level. Chalk full of great advice tailored to three different players, you’ll be sure to find something that can help transform your game.
I also open the show talking more about a silent killer in poker: Overconfidence. Last week, I talked with Gavin Griffin about a type of overconfidence that few experience, but there are many ways overconfidence can destroy your game.
Overconfidence Is a Silent Killer
You’ll often hear it said that confidence is needed for success. But is that really true?
As with many things in the mental game, the truth emerges once you better understand the nature of confidence.
Confidence is a funny thing because people can be confident while having very little skill. Of course, the poker players who think like this are the ones you line up to sit with, but understanding how this can happen, is important to avoiding overconfidence.
This phenomenon has actually been studied and it’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which the unskilled suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to an inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.
In other words, being blind to your own weaknesses, or worse, blind to the reality that you have weaknesses makes you overconfident. Ignorance of your own ignorance creates overconfidence. This kind of overconfidence has consumed some of great poker players over the years because they were blind to what created their success. Blindness to your own weaknesses is why overconfidence is a silent killer. Read More
3.14.12 – The Mental Game Radio Show
Today on The Mental Game Radio Show, I was joined by the first winner of poker’s Triple Crown, Gavin Griffin. This former WSOP, WPT, and EPT winner wrote a revealing blog on CardPlayer.com detailing his recent struggles. After winning millions, he’s back playing low limit cash games and rebuilding his bankroll.
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How did one of the best player in the world lose millions? Find out in this stellar interview. Gavin openly talks about how it happened and what he’s now doing to get back on top. So many players think that what happened to Gavin won’t happen to them, but it’s become a common theme in poker. Gavin is speaking openly because he wants to help other players. I had him on for that exact reason and it’s a must listen for any serious player.
Towards the end of the interview, I give Gavin some advice about how to better deal with the highs and lows of tournament poker. His struggles are common among many tournament players. The straightforward and practical advice I gave him, can certainly help you too.
Why Do Good Players Go Broke?
Check out this article Barry and I wrote for Pokerstrategy.com.
We often talk about prizes won on the poker circuit as being a “life-changing sum of money”. Indeed, a lot of first prizes in EPT/WPT/WSOP events would easily afford you a nice house, a nice car and enough change left over so you could avoid working again for a very long time.
But why is it then that every week we are inundated with stories of players who have won small fortunes at the tables being declared broke, bankrupt, having bad debt, or even doing scummy things in the name of money? Why is poker so rife with riches to rags stories?
If we really wanted to, we could write a five-part article just listing these tremendous rise and fall stories in poker, but this month two particular ones have stood out. Click here to read more
Improving Motivation
Check out this article I recently wrote for Pokerstrategy.com.
Motivation is an essential ingredient for becoming a successful poker player, but it can often be one of the most elusive. It’s easy to find a short-burst of motivation after listening to an inspiring song, watching an iconic movie clip, or reading dramatic quote. Even a good prop bet can spark a fire that gets you to put in more volume by avoiding another long session of mindlessly surfing the internet. Unfortunately, these sparks are just short lived and you sink back into old patterns of laziness, procrastination, and worse. The longer it goes on, the more it seems like being unmotivated is a permanent part of your personality.
There’s no such thing as being unmotivated. Whatever you do with your time, you’re motivated to do, even if it’s not what you want to be doing. In the film Office Space, Peter was one of the laziest people alive, but that was his goal. Despite appearing lazy and unmotivated, he was highly motivated to do nothing. If you want to stop hanging with friends, watching TV, browsing forums, or anything else you end up doing when you should be playing poker, you need to find out why you’re motivated by it. Once you realize the reason(s) these things other than poker motivates you, you’re one step closer to realigning your motivation for poker in the way you want it to be. Click here to read more
