Developing a Poker Mindset

Poker games often last several hours, requiring sustained focus from you and an ability to maintain that focus for that length of time. Meditation and mindfulness exercises can be effective ways of building mental stamina.

Beware of confirmation bias , the condition where people look for evidence that supports their first hypothesis and ignore contradictory facts. You’re making expensive poker mistakes if you do.

Focus on the game.

Poker needs lots of cognitive stimulation. Whether playing in person or virtually, reading your opponents and making the right decisions are essential to success. It may take wrong choices and high-priced long-term losses to steer clear of the confirmation bias trap – seeking out information that confirms assumptions, but not contradictions.

It is important to be focused while playing poker by setting realistic short-term goals and tracking the results. The creation and attainment of these targets will give you that sense of accomplishment and boost of confidence as well as the ability to improve your poker play and become a more adept poker player.

A successful poker mentality doesn’t grow old and “That’s no good” or “That’s impossible”. Instead, they are constantly open to new concepts and prepared to spend the effort to research and trial them.

Staying motivated.

Keeping your head in the game is a challenge every poker player faces and when your luck fails you or you miss with a big hand, you start to get demotivated and give up – but staying optimistic and working on yourself are also ways to maintain your motivation and get better at the game.

Set clear targets — setting goals to accomplish whatever it is that you want to achieve, whether it is a bankroll goal or learning a new technique, will help you stay focused. The point of a goal will keep you focused on your task and will give you the strength to overcome and confidently engage with the game.

Also, having an overall plan is also important to stay on track over the long-term and not get demotivated to pursue what you’re passionate about. Consider the goals and ambitions you initially had when you were pursuing them, or consider yourself and what motivates you in order to feel more inspired by poker – both can keep you on track for the long term.

Taking risks.

It is an element that all good poker players have: an ability to gamble responsibly. That ability can be learnt positive-thinking so that you’re better able to make decisions and hold your emotions in mind as you struggle with bad runs or drops that happen often in any poker game.

Positive emotions can halt your fall into the trap of “confirmation bias”, in which data that supports your initial assumption is sought out only and conflicting signals are ignored. This can create false beliefs and make for bad poker decisions; based on this, we should always strive to maintain a realistic approach in making such important decisions.

For pro athletes, they can put hours of music or game film into their head before a match; you can do the same in poker! You can listen to some soothing music or do a little bit of meditation before the start of your poker game to stay awake and inspired.

Learning from mistakes.

You must take lessons from your poker flops to get better and make more money at the future. And errors are the golden chance to learn about your opponent’s style and weaknesses, so you can better make decisions when it suits you — just be careful not to jump the gun at the right moment!

Learning from failure — Use your intuition and problem solving abilities. However, you need to keep in mind confirmation bias – people seeking out evidence to confirm the first assumption and skipping evidence that disproves it – because this may lead to biased game interpretation and incorrect understanding of opponent behaviour.

Footballers practice mental conditioning with music and mindfulness sessions before a game, so why not poker players should do those things mentally before playing? — you might also want to hire a mental game coach for maximum results.