Well let's see.

Tendler has a whole sub-chapter called "Preparation/Warm-up." It begins with

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There's a sub-chapter called performance that begins with:

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In the Introduction under "Golf Sets the Stage" Tendler writes:

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On page 109 Tendler writes:

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On page 6 Dusty Schmidt writes:

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Page 159:

Tendler then goes on to write:

What's happening here is that execution, which doesn't play much of a role in poker, is being confused with knowledge, which does play a big role in poker.

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page 162:

No. This statement is so bad it's laughable and shows why I believe Tendler's understanding of poker is limited. In poker, you don't have the answer to every situation. What you do have is a finite number of strategic concepts that govern play. That is, when Tendler writes

this is just a fancy way of saying "Trust your gut," which is certainly not the best way to play poker.

To see this, suppose you're a top tennis player and are facing an opponent with a 120+ mph serve. You have about half a second to hit it back, and this takes a lot of athletic skill plus thousands of hours of practice to achieve this. But in poker, you have plenty of time to make your decisions. If you only had one or two seconds for every decision, then Tendler would be right and things like unconcious competence and trusting your gut, which is what a skilled athlete does, would be important. But poker is not an athletic sport with a large execution factor, and you have the time to think through tough situations.

Tendler's next sentence is:

Which is just more confusion of execution and knowledge.

MM

My experience with poker-related life coaching is that it didn't help me at all, was a big waste of money. That's because I was looking for a magic pill instead of fixing the root cause - my inherited personality disorders, whose symptoms, as far as I've read, can be eased by simple adjustments to nutrition, e.g. adding foods that adjust neurotransmitter levels, but only a qualified psychotherapist can help design an ultimate road map towards sanity, to be implemented by the client. Life coaching only works for completely sane (but just lazy for some reason) people.

Can you share your reading on this, because I'm not aware of any good evidence for diet treating a personality disorder.

My specialisation in Psychology is Unconscious Processing. A top tier university runs a phD program based on what I unearthed and a paradigm I developed. Not being bigheaded, but I know how it works. What Tendler says is nonsense. The reader assumes it's gospel.
Check the cardrunners link I posted then someone can explain how this guy is a psych expert.
People that read that stuff and let it govern their game could make £££ just by cutting back on crack.

Are you taking what I was quoted as saying in this thread or what I've said in my book? I'm just curious because if what I'm saying is nonsense, I'd love to be corrected - I'm always looking to learn. Can you share a bit about your research or what I can learn about unconscious processing? Thanks in advance.

I'll give you credit, unlike Cardner, for the ability to be polite when your work is pointed out to be poor, and in my opinion, it has virtually no value for the large majority of poker players. However, please notice that in my post above I quoted directly from your first book and have been very specific in these threads with my objections to what you advocate, and if you like, I could post many other direct quotes from your work with explanations as to why they I think they are way off base.

Mason

Well this thread appears to have not gone as planned. Although I do understand that there is no magic pill to help anyone I do feel that if someone is truly motivated to change certain aspects in their life then having a guide can be extremely beneficial. This thread has kind of turned into a bit of a pissing match on who is right or wrong on certain issues regarding psychology. I didn't mean for it to turn to this.
I did listen to Cardner giving an interview and it was interesting. I have read your books Jared and there is some very useful information in there and I believe that both people could help me in my life, unfortunately I cannot afford $400/hour at the moment, but I do understand the value.
I really don't think there is one absolute right or wrong way on how to give life/mental coaching lessons as everyone is unique. I guess it boils down to what for you at any given period in your life.

Relax . . .............................................

Before Mason quoted it I was aware of it from your book, the Unconscious Competence explanation of but was attributed to Barry Carter? Barry's a great journalist but broadly ignorant of psychology. You have an academic background in Psychology (you have a joint major business/psychology undergrad followed by masters in counseling, am i right?) but don't understand poker. So between the two of you how were you ever going to come up with a reliable explanation of the psychology of poker gut feelings? Why do you think it's right? Your book represents as the best poker book ever written and yourself as the leading expert in poker psychology so I'd expect you to be able to explain to me clearly why the statement in your book can be relied upon. Similarly if I pay Cardrunners for vids I expect that your vids will contain complete and reliable information.
My research is in subconscious priming. Unconscious Processing is well dealt with in any decent psych course.

I'm intrigued by what university based its program on the findings you unearthed about subconscious priming and what exactly those findings were. I'm also interested in the paradigm you created. Can you link us to your research?

It was an extremely robust finding that uses subconscious forces to overwhelm and override one of the most basic (but little known outside academia) cognitive processes your brain employs most of the time. I get obsessed with things, I got obsessed with this realm, and paradigms and the subconscious in general. One day they all just clicked together, I ran a bunch of experiments, worked a treat, and it became a funded program. I ain't no genius, possibly thick a f, suppose I partially got lucky.
This has nothing to do with me or what I've done, the quoted statements have in/validity independently. What is your take on them?

Why respond with so many words if you're not going to answer the question?

What?

You quoted Dr. Meh as if you were going to answer his questions, but instead you just talked about the topic related to the answers you didn't give. It just seemed like an odd response to me.

Cmon . I quote him to reply to him.
Here's a reply to you. I know nothing about the Subconscious and I lied in my previous assertions. But my lowly opinion is that MM is correct in his criticisms and the UC explanation for gut is false.

This is a bold claim.

Subconsciousness is a very interesting subject to talk about. There may be people in this forum who may know about it less than you do, as much as you do or even more than you do.

If you declare something, I think you also have a moral obligation to follow up with it, by answering the questions which inquiring minds might direct to you. I'm sorry but you show a tendency to excuse the questions. Same thing happened at the other thread, ESP thread.

The forum is not a monologue.

P.S. If you're not allowed to do so, why did you have to say anything in the first place, anyway?

Why is it a bold claim?

It was not centrally about me making a claim. A claim about UC being behind gut feelings was made, without anything to back it up. It's the author's job to explain and support it, more than my job to prove why it's wrong.
I'm very sorry I did not answer you in a timely manner. Do you think information processing in the brain, and consciousness, are interchangeable?

Yes, in my opinion they are.

And when I said bold claim, I said it because I liked it. I just wanted to know more about the whole thing. I think we are thinking on the same wavelength.

Good luck with your research and hopefully someday I'll hear about it.

It feels like your conscious experience of perception and cognition are their totality but they are really the tip of the iceberg. I don't think your brain needs you that much and works its merry way and passes you what it needs you to make decisions on.
The easiest investigative tool is sublimina , flashing fast on a computer screen for example. Your brain can detect and understand the meaning of words without you even experiencing it consciously. You can detect the effect by various tests, eg forced choice.
When you think, your brain exhibits various patterns in computer imaging. It exhibits the same pattern when you are carrying out a V basic tasks but your brain is doing the reasoning for you without your knowledge.
The stuff I did, kind of got stolen from me, and the friend who took it stalled due to a nervous breakdown. I want to reprise it myself so don't really want to broadcast it.
Thanks for the kind words.

You are welcome! Thank You!

It's no dispute from my part with your ideas expressed in #38 and #50 posts.

As I felt, basically we are on the same page. Again, good luck in your future endeavors. Life could be cruel sometimes. Don't give up!

Hi Mason, yes I'd be interested to hear what you think about life coaches and
- Tilt as a fight or flight response
- Confidence
- Positivity
- The Zone

Just watching Murray thrash Djokovic here, seems like the mental game super important in these situations.

This is covered in my book. If flight or flight was the cause of tilt, we should see a fair number of fights in the poker room, and over many years these just about never happen. In addition, we should see someone grab his chips and run out of the poker room every so often, and I've never seen this.

You need to understand that to these poker mental coaches, who charge a lot of money for their services, need tilt. They also need it to be something that takes a long time and lots of effort to cure. And fight or flight, since they don't seem to have anything else, is what they have grabed onto.

This is also covered in my book. Being confident is fine, and a good poker player, who has a history of being successful should become confident. But it's also my experience that many poor poker players are also confident, and if you don't have the knowledge to play well, being confident won't do you much good.

Also, the large short term luck factor can at times make many players over confident. Now after a nice winning streak, it's not uncommon to see a mediocre player go to higher stakes where the players are much tougher and where he expects to lose significantly in the long run.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's a term I'm not familiar with.

This is something that comes out of the sports world. When I was a kid playing tennis, we also referred to it as "playing out of your mind."

What happens is as an athlete, you'll occasionally have days where your timing and coordination just seem to be exceptional. Diet, sleep, stress reduction, good attitude, etc. can contribute to this. But notice this falls into what I call the execution basket as opposed to the knowledge basket, and poker is mainly a knowledge game with a small execution factor. You don't need timing, speed, and coordination to throw your chips into the pot.

It probably was. But why is that? In a sport like tennis the short term luck factor is very small compared to the expectation. So if one tennis player is just a little better than another tennis player, he'll almost always win. Compare this to poker where one player always winning when he's just a little better than his competition just doesn't happen.

Now let's look at Murray and Djokovic, two incredibly good players. But is there really much difference between their skill levels? I don't think so. But if the mental game can help their execution be a little better, it just might be the edge that one of them needs to dominate the other. But also keep in mind that most of this mental game stuff, assuming it works, will improve the execution basket, and not the knowledge basket, and again, poker is mainly a knowledge game.

Since I got into this poker psychology stuff in a big way, it all seems to come back to these same issues and the answer is always the same. What this current crop of poker mental coaches that I'm familiar with advocate, should have at best have very little value (if any) for most poker players. But if it takes you away from getting a better understanding of all things poker -- strategic concepts and poker theory, understanding the short term luck factor, and understanding how and why probability theory can be counter-intuitive -- then it can be detrimental to your long term results.

Best wishes,
Mason

Fight or flight doesn't mean the person will literally fight or flee. People in modern times have the fight or flight reaction all the time without taking either action.

Hi ganstaman:

I know the poker mental coaches are making this claim since I criticized the idea of the fight or flight reaction as the cause of tilt. But you need to understand that I've been in public poker rooms for a lot of years, and this never happens. That is, if the fight or flight reaction is the reason for tilt, I should have seen some extreme cases where either a fight breaks out or the person runs out of the poker room, but I haven't.

Also, in my book, Real Poker Psychology, you can read about what does cause tilt, and it's closely related to humor. Also, despite this new information being out there, no one has challenged it in any way.

Best wishes,
Mason

Fight or flight response, aka acute stress response is more a characteristic of animal kingdom.

It happens in humans of course but humans have the cerebral cortex which gets the signal and appraises the situation allowing humans to adjust themselves and do neither fight nor flight.

"Obeying" the fight or flight response in today's world is counterproductive. Today's stress is more emotional, anyway.