Morning all,

Upon reading some of the guys that made it in poker, one thing that caught my attention in particular is this: they had to become ''robots'' - as said explicitly by the guys in question sometimes - meaning it is **practically** impossible to make them lose focus while they play. Unsurprisingly, it's a life skill, their mental toughness confers them a ridiculously high level of efficiency, in daily life or in other endeavors.

Personnally I'm the tech/engineering/inventive type, though with a non-neglectable debility in character (mental health issues due to external circumstances), which in essence is a technical problem. Controlling my emotions, focus and discipline is a big challenge to me, I'm making poker a tool to correct this in a way. So meditation and brisk walks and a general search for balance etc. is required.

Any advice/references on how to develop mental toughness?

First, no one is a robot, nor should you be. Discipline, on the other hand, can be developed.

Personally, I start with poker knowledge, incomplete as it may be. I mostly know what good and bad plays are. So, I'm looking to see who is making good plays and who are making bad plays. The really interesting plays are where you can't tell and therefore the guy is either a moron, or a genius.

Now, you may think this is irrelevant to your question. It isn't.

It isn't because that's what's of interest to me and it occupies me. I know who to target and who to avoid. A robot will never 3-bet with QJo. However, a good player that sees me 3-bet from someone they view as a LAG is probably going to fold AJo, a hand that crushes QJo. The LAG/moron, however, is going to think you either have a monster, or is full of ****, just like he is.

My point is that you observe the people you're playing against and adjust according to them. That keeps you occupied and moving with the ebb and flow of the game, not leaving time for much else.

There are a few more things you can do to achieve your goal.

A simple change is to move down in stakes until you find one that doesn't hurt financially. Money is a stressor. A bad beat at 2000NL feels a hell of a lot different than a bad beat at 2NL despite the cards being identical. When you play at lower stakes, you automatically become more calm.

Next, adjust your physical environment. Rather than training your brain, restructure your surroundings. Do you play in a room with other people, at a desk with lots of gadgets, on a device with lots of notifications? If so, no amount of brain training will make focus easy. Find a quiet room with a clean desk and use a device that is (to the extent possible) dedicated to poker.

Consider closing the chat function in your games. We always tell ourselves that we might glean useful information, but chat tends to tilt more than it informs.

Tell yourself that you are lucky. This sounds dumb, but try it anyway. When you believe yourself to be lucky, you make better decisions. You are happier and think more clearly. Bad beats are easy to shrug off, and wins reinforce your self image. When you believe the inverse, every loss becomes A THING. Every bad runout affects you personally, and every opponent seems out to get you.

Last, remind yourself every day that bad beats are a part of the game. The more you get, the better you are playing because you only see them when you are ahead. Also, bad beats signify that you are playing with worse players (which should be your number one goal if you want to make money). The bad beats are the only thing that keep bad players coming back, so love and invite them. When you make difficult losses a part of your routine and expectation, they will lose their power over you.

Good luck!

I was reading a post by Mason Malmuth (the first one, fixed at the top), and found his definition of tilt very very insightful. It´s a processing problem that occurs in your brain when it can´t figure something like your AA getting cracked ten times in a row. I would say the brain's OS enters in a type of infinite loop and it can´t really stop it til it either gets a reset or it figures out the issue that caused the loop. While in this process it can´t really do anything else at any reasonable level, including thinking rationally (to be able to play any reasonable type of winning poker for example).

So, the best way to play like a robot (btw, obviously impossible as we still have the typical human limitations, lose focus after x hours, get tired, emotions, problems outside of poker etc) is to improve your understanding, to the point of unconscious competence, of everything related to poker, from the technical part (having a winning strategy that you can easily execute with as little energy as possible), to math/statistics, to human psychology and our own biases, how detrimental and futile it is to form expectations in anything uncertain/high variance like poker etc etc.

My 2c

It's an interesting phrasing of the issue, in part because being robotic generally is a type of rigid inflexibility that is more an opposite of strength. The stronger buildings sway, the stronger people are not inflexible. You'll notice in the "tilt is about knowledge camp" that on virtually any subject they double and triple down with the incessant need to see themselves and defend themselves as right, instead of the "searching" attitude (which is actually stronger than the "I know and I'm right" attitude).

That issue aside I love your meditation and walking strats. Using poker as a way to redress that personality feature is super cool, for it shows itself so starkly in poker. It's about frustration tolerance, and frustration tolerance is about ego strength. Not the BS kind of egotistical ego, but the strength of mind type of thinker/learner/executive function CEO/ego. Tilt is frustration waving and cresting over one's ego strength, not over top their knowledge.

What makes a robot different to us?
1) The ability to compute every spot to a complexity and accuracy that is way beyond any human's capabilities
2) Robots have no desire or use for money

If you play blackjack you stick to basic strategy, right? You don't suddenly hit on 17 v an 8 or stick on 16 v a 10 just because you want to win more or lose less
But that's because the strategy is relatively easily to implement

"Correct" poker strategy is impossible to implement, there is always an area of uncertainty. However, that area of uncertainty shrinks the more study and learning you do
but where there are those areas of uncertainty it is easy to let your emotional desires affect your play. You want to win, so you bluff too much in a spot. You don't want to lose so you shy away from a big call, telling yourself, "it looks like he has it"

Play money poker is boring.. why? because you can't win any money
So understand that "wanting to win and not wanting to lose" are a fundamental reason for playing the game (duh) and combine that with imperfect information and knowledge and strategy and there is plenty of room for your fears and greed to affect your thinking. Imo, awareness of and isolating those thoughts and impulses is a way to start eliminating them as much as possible, combined with increasing your knowledge of how to play "correctly" in each spot.

Poker is a game that you can learn in a day, but takes a lifetime to master. So, thinking that mastering poker knowledge makes you rigid is more than a little narrow minded and rigid in itself.

Mastering or gaining poker knowledge doesn't make one rigid ... trying to be a robot and denying emotions does. Hello.

Even the most mentally toughest people I know get Stressed. And it eats at them. Really really tough people get tilted or mentally overextended.
People are not robots, they're people. The idea of becoming a robot is wrong, instead of being emotionless, instead learn how to manage stress. Learn how to take hits that knock other people out by being risilent. Nothing is sexier or stronger than real risilience.
The mentally toughest people I know DO fear things and when they meet their fears, it's not that they don't worry about it; they worry about it in an intense and constructive way.

Definitely agree. The more you work on being resilient , the better you will get at persisting and playing good even when things aren't going well. It gets to the point where you start to build up a history of knowing you can deal with these events, and snowballs in a positive way.

I think you misread what I wrote, as we agree on that point.

Very interesting what you're bringing there. Having post traumatic disorder, frustration - and general managing of my emotions - is a major, if not THE issue as far as I'm concerned. If I can get my mind to be in CEO mode while sitting at the table, being physically exposed to the action on the field so to speak, that would be remarkable as to my ability to sustain heat and remain stoic, genuinely unattained, or capable of tolerating it as a minor inconvenience.

My condition has to do with self-preservation instincts, a.k.a ego, in fact that is exactly where the wound is located. I need healthy human contact first, to relax that hypervigilance and establish safety to my core, so that flexibility is possible.
I just have to find ways to develop my resilience, but I have to be productive at some point. If things are going nowhere, if I lack purpose and don't have a clear idea of my goals (which is the case, finding myself wondering from to time if it's even worth it even if I make it in poker, or in anything for that matter), if I am still uncertain as to what will come out of succeeding in building my base as a person in spite of past damage, then poker will just remain a reminder of the pain of reality, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there are less painful ways to remind oneself of the dangers of getting things done.
Seems to me that being my worst opponent is a notion that far outweighs having to manage and watch for other players at the table - although it's important to see to that too. I must heal that at all cost; another interesting phrasing here, for I can only go to a user-friendly pace, taking the time needed.
As you know, having to temper oneself is problematic when when ones needs action.

Regards!

Statisticians often like to look at the extreme of statistical distributions for guidance, So, if all you did was constantly meditate and/or go for walks, your poker emotion problems would probably be over. Of course, you wouldn't play much poker.

Mason

This is a good point.

If you're using a GTO style you will play like a robot simply because you'll ignore how your opponents play.

Unless you're playing in a very tough game against excellent players, I agree that this is the approach you should take.

Mason

Playing in stakes that are too low for your mental makeup may result in you paying less attention to what's going on than you should.

I guess this advice is okay, but learning more about all things poker, and this includes strategy should be better.

Tilt is not caused by chatting to other people. However, it might contribute to your brain having difficulty to resolve situations that are difficult for you.

This is just silly. If you think you're lucky, why not go play in a biger game where the players usually are better and where you can now expect poorer results.

It would be much better to improve your understanding of variance in poker. Now your brain will be able to figure out why certain difficult situations do occur and tilting should disappear. It's not the bad beat that causes the tilt, it's the inability of your brain to understand why these bad beats happen.

Mason

Hi Faz:

Obviously, I like a lot of your post. But unconscious competence is not the answer. This is easily seen by watching top players take needed time in tough poker decisions. What you need is a top-notch understanding of the appropriate poker concepts that apply in the specific situation and then the ability to work through them and sometimes balancing them against each other. Having lots of experience is important here.

And one last thing, you also need to understand that many things based on probability theory, and this includes some poker situations, will appear counterintuitive to most people. So, this is something else that you'll need to understand.

For more discussion, see my book Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition.

Mason

Except that a game theory expert will play like a robot. However, in most games he won't win as much as an expert exploitative player.

Mason

This is a good post. In addition, I would add that as your knowledge of "all things poker becomes strong" those tough spots you're talking about will be close and your decisions, in the long run, won't matter that much. But if your knowledge of "all things poker" is poor, then these same types of decisions have the potential to be costly.

Mason

I would say that the goal is to improve ego strength and thus frustration tolerance, to master impulse control, and to remain level-headed in our decisions in spite of when emotions arise. Not to deny our emotional nature by trying to be a robot, which can short circuit and blow up in one's face.

Your essays never fail to give me a chuckle. Many thanks for the laughs. Stay warm.

To me, mental toughness has little to do with poker. It's an idea that obviously comes from contact athletic sports like football. How well can you handle the pain after getting hit a lot?

Again, poker is essentially a game of knowledge. And your knowledge should inform you, in most situations, what you think the best play is and then you just do it. On the other hand, if your knowledge tells you that strategically the best play is to raise and you're afraid to do it, that's not usually a mental toughness problem. Reasons for behaving this way are 1. You're not sure your opinion on how to proceed is right; 2. You're afraid of the short-term variance; 3. Your bankroll is in jeopardy; 4. You're against a superior player who you suspect may have you somewhat fooled; 5. Probably lots of other things.

Notice that none of these have much to do with being able to "take a punch."

Mason

I'm not sure, and I'm not an expert in this area, but it seems to me that you're describing someone with serious mental issues.

But one thing that I want to point out is that I don't set goals and believe they're detrimental to success.

What I do is to find something I like, such as poker, and then work hard at it. Since I like doing it, my working away won't seem like work. And the knowledge I gain, if we're talking about poker, should help to solve the problems that you bring up.

And for those interested, here's a book that I helped the author with these exact ideas:

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Expect...s%2C129&sr=8-1

Mason

I don't agree. I would say that what you want to do is to get your knowledge "of all things poker" to a very high level. Then you'll almost always just go ahead and make the right decision and you'll have no concern about the issues you bring up.

Mason

Your posting name gives me a chuckle, and I assume it's accurate.

By the way, due to my statistical training, I think very differently from most everyone else and often come to much different conclusions.

MM

So, what if you find yourself in a spot where you know (or are at least pretty sure) what the best play would be, but you find yourself making a different one? I'm guessing that this doesn't happen to you, and maybe it never has, but I think it happens to a lot of people. It used to happen to me when I was running really bad and getting upset about it. And the problem was not that I didn't understand the variance in poker; I certainly did understand that it was possible for a winning player to go through very long stretches of losing. Knowing that didn't make me any less upset.

I respect your opinions, have read all of your books, and credit reading 2+2 books with much of my success as a poker player. I read your psychology book when it came out, and I thought it had a lot of good information, but I still have to disagree that poker knowledge is the only thing (or even the main thing) that all people should be seeking to improve their game. If someone often knows what the best play likely is but is making different plays, they are going on serious tilt, and some work on frustration / impulse control could be very helpful. And, depending on the person, doing some of the things to improve "mental toughness" that other people suggest could be helpful. In fact, I don't understand how "mental toughness" is even applicable to sports. I'm not a sports guy, but I would think what you need there is physical toughness, not the mental kind. Mental toughness, to me, is exactly what you need to perform well in mental activities such as poker.