Head Games: The Importance of the Mental Game and Common Errors That Hold Back Players From Realizing Their Full Potential

Craig Tapscott: How important is the mental side of poker for long term success? What specific areas of the mental game have you focused on improving the most? 

Brian Rast: The mental side of poker, of course, is all of poker — as it is fundamentally a mental game in almost all aspects. The non-strategic, mental side of poker is extremely important and I think broad enough to ultimately be more important than the strategy aspect in terms of long-term success.

These non-strategic mental considerations include topics such as game selection, tilt control, focus, self control, and determination, just to name a few of the most important. With good game selection, you can consistently be in positive expected value (+EV) spots even if you aren’t the world’s greatest player. With good tilt control, you can avoid the disastrous situations where you are hugely -EV because you are tilting (either by not tilting, or leaving the game temporarily/permanently when you are tilting). With good focus, you can always be picking up reads/tells, following hands for future reference, and generally playing your A game. With good self control, you can avoid pitfalls such as playing too high, gambling in the pits, and other such deleterious bankroll activities. With good determination, you can be that plucky adventurer who never gives up and keeps on fighting—an important attribute of just about anyone who makes it big in this difficult world.

Truthfully speaking, the mental game in life is more important than the actual strategic performance in not only poker, but just about anything that you do in the long run. When you get started out doing something, you are so engrossed in it that you really only focus on improving at that particular thing strategically. But, with time and wisdom, you learn your total mental approach to not only this thing you are doing, but to your life on the whole, is actually the most fundamental key to success. That’s why doing things to improve yourself mentally and physically is so positive, because those improvements shine through to every other aspect of your life.

Gabriel Goffi: It’s the most important thing. If your mind is not well-prepared, your abilities won’t matter much. The thing that most brought me results was doing a morning routine, taking care of my mind and body first thing when I wake up so I can set the right intention for the day.

When you see your performance inside the tables totally correlated with your performance outside of the tables, you start to notice that you have to understand way more things than just the theory of poker. You’ve got to understand emotional control, psychology, productivity, and so on. You learn that you need to win big and fight against the best; you need to be present in the moment. And to do that, you need to prepare your mind for that. Meditating and exercising are key for mental performance.

Elliot Roe: As a mindset coach, I believe the mental side of poker is key to the long-term success of any professional player. Poker is a game of math and emotions; once the emotions get too high, the math is often ignored. In the past – when the games were far softer – I believe it was easier for players to ignore the mental game: huge win rates meant that a few buy-ins lost to tilt or lack of focus didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. In the current poker environment, especially online where competition is intense, the player’s mindset can often be the difference between winning and losing. That is owing to the fact that attainable win rates each year are being reduced by software, training sites, and affordable poker coaching. Thus, mindset is becoming essential to long-term success. I see this with many elite clients who tell me that their biggest current edge in high stakes games is their ability to focus and remain in control longer than their opponents.

In terms of where I focus on improving the mental games of my clients, generally it is on helping them to understand that poker is a professional sport – a necessary endeavor given that 90 percent of the players have yet to realize this fact. Many players are surprised they are not seeing results at the table, but in reality they are only putting in 20 percent of the effort that I see from the top professionals. The top players, with whom I work, typically are in great shape, plan their diet, meditate, immerse themselves in the game and take studying seriously. Once a player accepts the realities of what it will take to reach elite status, we work on more specific mindset or emotional issues that may be holding them back at the table, such as self-sabotage, procrastination, anxiety, or focus issues.  

Craig Tapscott: Other than strategic errors in the individual hands they play, what are the most common mistakes you see players make that hold them back from achieving success in poker? 

Brian Rast: Imagine that instead of playing your A-game, you were doing something that caused you to be playing your C+/B- game. You’d probably want to fix it, wouldn’t you? Now what if I told you that thing was simply not focusing on the game in front of you, on the hands the other players are playing when you aren’t involved, on watching carefully to get tells and reads. Why are you and everyone else doing this? Well, it can get pretty boring sitting at the table for hours on end, and we have a lot going on in our lives. So, we fill up time we aren’t in hands by texting, emailing, playing games, watching shows, conversation, watching the game, and so forth. And that shift of our focus from the task at hand (poker), to something else, has serious negative effects on how well we play.

I think everyone, if they are honest with themselves, will notice how poorly their opponents play when they are focused on something else. They lose their edge and toughness, and oftentimes play mechanically—as their decision making ceases to be based on reads and game flow, but simply on their cards and their style as that is all they have to base their decisions on. Guess what, you aren’t special. You aren’t the one amazing player who plays great while focused on everything else but the poker game in front of you. You also play much worse when you’re doing other things at the poker table, just like everybody else does.

Don’t think that this is some sermon I’m giving with nothing to do with myself, because my number one mental leak in recent times has been a lack of focusing. The other issues like bankroll management, game selection, and tilt control have all come to be rather second nature after playing so long; but staying rapt at attention at the poker table is one thing that got more difficult with time, not less. So much so that I recognized the problem and did a few sessions with hypnotherapist Elliot Roe in order to work on this focus right before and during the 2015 WSOP. I can tell you that I was extremely focused throughout the 2015 WSOP and played great. That, along with some good luck, combined to make for my best WSOP performance yet.  

Gabriel Goffi: The biggest mistake I think players make is not preparing themselves before playing. You’ve got to be very focused about your habits, your physical health, your mindset, and so on, because all of this will have a strong influence on your performance at the tables. Playing high stakes cash games forced me to pay a lot of attention to that, because every decision I made could cost me thousands of dollars. But preparing yourself only before a big game or every once in a while isn’t enough. Poker is each time more and more competitive, being well prepared should be the only gear you have. 

Five years ago, I started investing in this mental side of the game. It was something that made a huge difference in my career as a high stakes poker player who was handling huge variance day in and day out.

Elliot Roe: This leads back to the concept of viewing poker as a professional sport, as I detailed in the previous question. As an extreme example, I’ve always found it surprising how many players in their initial consultation tell me that they’ll play their Sunday MTTs drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana. Many players that defend smoking say it improves their play; however, when I ask them if on a final table they could choose for their opponents to be high or sober, they quickly understand that in reality it’s a handicap rather than an advantage.

Players often use these drugs to mask emotional issues at the table, such as frustration or anxiety. But, unfortunately, they also reduce focus and limit a player’s ability to consistently stay on their game. If you are a professional player or an aspiring pro, you should really question yourself if you are choosing to dampen your mental faculties prior to starting a session. Any player using drugs to reduce these feelings at the table should seriously consider working with a mindset coach like myself, or a therapist, to understand and resolve the root cause of the problems.

Some other examples of a lack of professionalism that I often hear about include:

• Procrastination at the table: where players describe short, unscheduled, and unfocused sessions. They do the bare minimum to ensure an edge in the game.
• Lack of focus on physical fitness and correct nutrition. A healthy body increases energy levels and can make a huge difference to performance late into a tournament or long cash session.
• A belief that they have moved beyond study, as there is nothing left for them to learn.
• And finally, which is possibly the most damaging of all, is the belief that although they are making these obvious mistakes they still blame variance rather than their own work ethic or level of effort. It’s important for players to accept the reality of professional poker in 2015. It’s no longer easy to just switch on your PC and print money. Typically, players get paid what they deserve and many of the players at the top are ensuring that all of these bases are covered. ♠

Brian Rast most recently won the 2015 Aria Poker Classic Super High Roller event for $7.525 million. He is also known as one of the best high stakes cash games players in the world. In 2011 he won the WSOP Poker Players Championship. He is a strong proponent of exercise and nutrition in order to be his very best on and off the table. Rast has more than $15 million in career cashes.

Gabriel “verve.oasis” Goffi has more than 100,000 followers on his Facebook page where he posts about high performance, mindset, and productivity. Goffi is a high stakes poker player and entrepreneur and plays the highest cash games on PokerStars and live games in his home town of Las Vegas.

Elliot Roe is a hypnotherapist and mindset coach who specializes in helping poker players perform their best at the table. He has worked with some of the biggest names in poker, multiple UFC champions, stock market traders, and many other athletes. Elliot runs a weekly mindset podcast with Dr Tricia Cardner (The Mindset Advantage Podcast on iTunes) where they discuss the mental game with different elite professionals. You can find Elliot at www.pokermindcoach.com.