I have days my attention is amazing and I just notice "everything".
Then other days where at every showdown I have no clue what is going on.

There are so many distractions when playing live.
People are talking.
There's chips to play with.
Food to eat, drinks to drink.
Girls to stare at.
...

How do I get better at paying attention to the hands while they're in progress?
I've been trying to work on this for so long, but it's hard.

I very often notice that I have no clue what happened when I see a showdown and then tell myself I'm going to pay attention the next hand.
But then by the time my cards are in the muck again my attention is also gone.


I probably already pay way more attention than the average player.
I'm never on my phone or tablet. Not wearing a headset or anything.
Always following the action when I'm in the hand.

I'm just missing tons of information by not paying attention while I'm not in the hand.

I'm looking for practical tips that I can use while playing.
My attention just disappears every time without me noticing it.

Having a good warm up routine helps a lot with this for me. Like a little meditation thing I do in my car before going inside. I would really recommend the mental game of poker by Jared tendler. He describes a lot of things like this in the book

Yes/Mental Game of Poker is good.

Attention/focus is something that you can improve on with practice, like playing a musical instrument.
Like learning a musical instrument, you'll have good sessions and bad sessions.

Focus can have 2 components. Intensity (scale 1-10) and longevity. I suggest in the beginning to try to have an intensity of 6-8. Then build off that gradually. This will avoid mental burnout and make it easier to maintain longevity. Don't shoot for intensity of 10 constantly or you'll fail quickly and easily. Be more like a marathon runner. It's better to maintain a constant 6-8 score than a variable 10-3 score.

Suggestions:
Start strong mentally and have a predetermined take-a-break time (~1hr) and get up from table/walk around and review your focus performance.
If you have a habit of starting strong but fading, try to identify your longevity fade time. Then keep your sessions short and gradually increase your session length as long as your intensity will allow.
Understand when to use your intensity watching hands and when to let it "take a break". When watching hands you're not involved in, use it on the good players, let it slide a bit on the bad players.
Let your intensity relax on small pots/limped pots or pots without a flop that you're not involved in.
Focus is like a muscle. It can be strengthened but also it can get too weak from constant use that is unnecessary. Be able to pick your spots.

I agree with almost everything you said but just another point of view on the "pay attention to good players and let the bad players slide" comment. I do the opposite of this, good players tend to play logically and therefore I don't need to pay attention to them since I already have a baseline strategy vs them. Bad players come in all different shapes and sizes and I need to start figuring out how best to exploit their weaknesses. I pay much closer attention to bad players than good

Have an idea of what you're trying to figure out, and pay attention for that instead of trying to memorize how people play hands. I usually start with how loose people play and a rough idea of what level their poker thinking is on.

Also decide which players are important to pay attention to (looser and fisher) and pay attention when they're in a hand.

I mostly gave up trying to pay really good attention and play in a way that isn't heavily dependent on individual reads. I think the value of reads is overstated. Understanding population tendencies, only gathering shallow reads and otherwise playing a solid game can win >10BB/h no problem.

When I'm trying hard I try to focus on just one player who I expect to play a lot of hands with, usually a weak player close to my right. I don't think I ever manage to do this for more than an hour.

Edit: Want to clarify that I don't try hard to pay attention because I suck at it, not because I don't think it has value. I just want to point out that you can crush the game without being good at paying attention.

The owner of this website has written over the last few years that paying intense attention to the table can wear anyone out over any extensive period of time. My baseline hypothetical LLSNL villain is a loose passive. This is the person that limps in a couple of times per orbit and calls raises pf. They'll only bet out or raise if they have it. I only pay attention to those who act differently. That means I'll play even tighter than normal for the first couple orbits or so while I look for exception. Once that's done, I'll look at the outliers to see how to exploit them. Fortunately, there is rarely more than 1 at LLSNL.

My average session is 8 hours, so I'm certainly guilty of not paying attention to every. single. hand. Cuz I'm sure it would completely drain me if I did (and that isn't going to be good for me either).

So I typically try to not beat myself up too much about it and allow myself some down time. As a compromise, I try to do my best to focus in on particular situations every once and a while. For example, maybe there's a guy that I don't know too much about; well, if he's in a hand then I'm going to try to pay more attention. Or maybe there's a weird showdown that has created a ruckus and I've missed the whole thing, where maybe I'll talk to my neighbour and be able to glean what just happened.

GcluelesspayingattentionnoobG

I definitely don't focus intently on every hand...like most have said that will wear you out. What I do practice, however, is constantly giving a general half-a$$ focus for all hands. I define this as, I'm not focused enough to pick up on any physical reads, but I'm paying enough attention so immediately when the hand is over, if needed, I can recall how each involved player acted through each street. I use this info if there's a big hand, then immediately after I can go back to my memory bank and review how a certain player played it, and store that info.

Every now and then I will pick a certain player (just one) and study them carefully through the hand. Using my full focus to put them on a hand from beginning to end. But I only do this every once and a while, as this will grow exhausting.

The key is you need to schedule breaks then come back sharp and motivated to focus on the other hands. Too many players who consider themselves a pro love to stare at their phones or listen to music and not even pay attention to getting a better understanding on the tendencies of every player at the table that they might be up against for stacks.

Everyone loses focus from time to time. Leaving your phone in your pocket and taking more regular breaks should help. The good thing is you're on the right track on the things that will help make you a better player.

The most important factor for me here is probably sleep. Unfortunately getting good sleep is easier said than done. When I haven’t slept well it usually hits me during a poker session .