Hey everyone, my name is Alex Morgan.

I’m a mindset and performance coach for poker players and I’m part of Elliot Roe’s group of coaches.

I realise there are players who can’t afford coaching so I’ve got a free newsletter in which I go through mindset and performance tips.

The latest newsletter goes through how to turn your poker mistakes into valuable lessons.

So one of the tips I give my clients is to start concentrating on the positive outcomes of mistakes. Start to change the relationship you have toward mistakes. Seeing them as more of an opportunity to grow rather than the fixed mindset of it being right or wrong.

If you want to read about other tips I advise, my latest newsletter goes through them.

You can find it here - https://pokermindset.substack.com/

And how are you going to know if you made a mistake. Because of the large short-term luck factor present in poker, bad players can sometimes play a hand poorly, make a terrible mistake, and win a big pot. While experts can play a hand extremely well and lose a big pot. Also, if you knew a certain play was a mistake, why would you make it in the first place?

In poker, it can take a large effort to root out mistakes that you may be making. This can include a thorough examination of your play and an effort to improve your understanding of exactly how some poker hands should be played.

I'm sorry, but when I read stuff like this my initial reaction is almost always "how much about poker does this person really understand." When I play tennis and hit a ball into the net, it's often clear that I made a mistake and exactly what that mistake was due to the fact that athletic sports have a large execution component. But when a game, like poker, is mainly based on knowledge but also has a large short-term luck factor, seeing mistakes that you're actually making can be a very difficult thing to do.

Mason

Because poker players are human, not robots. Even the most elite of the elite make mistakes from time to time. Sometimes people don’t make the “correct” play for a variety of reasons including intuition or simply not being focused enough in the moment. All good players will analyze their hands after a session or at least reflect on their play in certain hands to determine whether or not they made a mistake.

I do agree, however, that most players reflect on the hands they played poorly and try to identify mistakes but rarely do they look at hands they won to try to ascertain if any mistakes were made in those.

What are your qualifications as a “mindset and performance coach?”

I've written about the four losing states of poker. Don't misconstrue what I say.

MM

I’m replying to your comment and there’s absolutely no misconstruing anything you said in it.

You said:

implying that I don't know this, and the opposite is true, plus I've written a lot about this exact subject.

MM

And yet you said this:

To which I’ll reiterate - because poker players are human, not robots.

Not sure why you’re coming at me sideways and acting so angry over my reasonable response to your statement.

In a nutshell, Mason thinks the whole industry of mindset coaching in poker is complete crap. That's because he effectively denies there is any emotional or psychological element to performance in poker. In his view, people only make the wrong plays in poker because they lack the knowledge of the correct play.

Sent from my SM-G781W using Tapatalk

Obviously you have little knowledge of what I write about i this field. For starters you can look here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...poker-1756469/

Mason

Not 100% true.

People do many things on automatic. The most common example is driving home from work and not remembering the trip. There are many other examples.

Do you recall folding the last 93o you were dealt? No? Just folded it on auto.

Why did Stu Ungar fail to show up for a final table of the WSOP Main Event? Was it lack of knowledge about tournament poker? Or was it something completely different and unrelated that was determining his behavior? Poker mindset coaching, as a subset of psychotherapy, is a valuable thing. I mean if you are human, and you are therefore behaving according to your personality attributes, wounds, defense mechanisms, etc. -- and most certainly not by just what is rational or logical or optimal -- then poker knowledge is not the corrector of "misbehavior."

I never heard of this. I do believe that the last year he was alive and was defending Main Event champion, he didn't show up for the tournament. Is that what you meant?

Mason

This is what I recall from Stu's biography.

Just curious, did you ever meet him?

I never met or talked to him. But I did play briefly with him twice, probably no more than an hour total, both in limit hold 'em games.

Mason

Hmm. May have been some other main event, Super Bowl maybe back in the day. He made the final table, was coked up in his hotel room and wouldn't show. Famously had a backer who couldn't get him to show, maybe Puggy, maybe Baxter. They blinded him off.

Update: Looks like it's the 1990 main event WSOP sure enough, Baxter backing. Unconscious in his hotel room. Blinded off and finished 9th. Stu the Kid, immortal legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CxhliSgwEY&t=610s

I listened to the end of that video from the time it started, and it talked about how the year after his third win he was broke and didn't show up to defend his title, but nothing else. Am I missing something?

Mason

You're missing something. Or I am. 1990 WSOP Main Event final table. (Long before his non-defense of this third title.) Stu is the chip leader, unconscious in his hotel room, blinded off at the final table. Finishes 9th. Nothing to do with the year after his 3rd title.

From Wikipedia (also covered on the previous video):

1990 Main Event
There were 194 entrants to the main event. Each paid $10,000 to enter the tournament. For the first time since the 1984 WSOP Main Event, the final table had nine players. On the third day of the tournament, Stu Ungar was found unconscious on the floor of his hotel room from a drug overdose. However, he had such a chip lead that even when the dealers kept taking his blinds out every orbit, Ungar still made the final table and finished ninth pocketing $25,050.[1]

Final table
Place Name Prize
1st Mansour Matloubi $835,000
2nd Hans Lund $334,000
3rd Dave Crunkleton $167,000
4th Jim Ward $91,850
5th Berry Johnston $75,150
6th Al Krux $58,450
7th Rod Peate $50,100
8th John Bonetti $33,400
9th Stu Ungar $25,050

Okay. I guess this is true. But I certainly didn't know this.

Mason