Poker is a game of logic and mathematics, and it attracts players who excel in the quantitative disciplines.

To many of them, an emphasis on topics like performance, mindfulness, and health, when it comes to poker, might sound like esoteric fluff.

Perhaps you’ve heard about players who have a pre-session routine, and you’ve rolled your eyes.

Or perhaps you’ve thought, “I should probably do that,” but have never considered it a priority.

My goal today is to share the way that my view of poker skill, edges, and performance has shifted over the years.

Let’s begin.

Change your Perspective

You are not a favorite at the poker tables.

You are not an underdog.

This is true because we haven’t given you a lineup of opponents yet, but also because you are not always the you that you are right now.

If you’ll humor me for a moment, I want you to think of yourself as a character in a video game.

You have certain attributes that make up your abilities as a poker player:

Knowledge
Focus
Logic
Discipline
Knowledge recall
Problem-solving ability
Appropriate Aggression
Empathy

Imagine each of these on a 1-100 scale. I’ll do mine as an example:

All of these combine into your overall skill rating. Mine looks to be about an 86.

When you match your rating up to the ratings of others at the table, you determine whether you’re a favorite or not in the game, and just how large of a favorite or underdog you are.

And Then, Stuff Happens

Over time, your rating is going to change.

Your overall poker knowledge remains the same throughout a session, but every other attribute is going to fluctuate.

Your ratings can change before a session even starts - if you have a bad night of sleep, a stressful day, or a great pre-game routine.

If we were to play this all the way out, by the way, there would be a second set of attributes that contribute to how well you retain your ratings:

Endurance
Emotional Control
Experience
Fitness
Etc.

But for now, I think you get the idea.

And that idea is that over the course of a session, most of these ratings will go down.

Perhaps you get more comfortable and can access aggression and knowledge faster one hour in. But over time, it’s likely that everything will decline.

Phil at hour two is not the same player
as Phil at hour fifteen.

He’s just not.

My Knowledge Recall will drop from an 87 to a 75. My Discipline, from a 72 to 45.

It is inevitable that my ratings are going to go down.

I accept that. I want you to as well.

Accepting Reality

The reason I think this framing is so valuable is that it frees you from the misguided notion that you’re “a 3bb/100 winner at $2/$5 NL.”

Over time, perhaps you have been. But at any given moment, you’re almost surely something else.

If you don’t realize that, why would you waste ten minutes on a pre-session routine? Why would you take a break to stretch after four hours of play?

And why would you ever quit a game that looks better than the game that you started in?

We so often look around the table and view our edge over our opponents in a static way.

“I’m better than these three. This one guy is probably better than me. I’m about the same as the other.”

But how often do you look around that table, see that the players on par with you are well-rested and in good spirits while you’re not, and think, “I’m going to play worse than them right now”?

What may have seemed like a video game fantasy is a more accurate portrayal of reality than the delusion you’ve been living in.

Boosting Our Ratings

Hopefully, for some of you, the impact of reality on your poker game has become clearer.

So, what do we do about it?

This is where practices like taking planned breaks, or a pre-game routine, come into play.

If it helps you finally get on board, think of them as spells you can cast on your character to boost your ratings.

There’s no avoiding the fact that cognition declines over time.

Studies have shown that being awake for 24 hours
is similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1%.

But, there are things we can do to boost our ratings for a little while, especially if our ratings have declined not only because of the time we’ve spent awake, but the time we’ve spent actively engaging in a mentally draining activity, or because of emotional turbulence.

Walking, stretching, supplements, drugs, cold exposure, meditation, NSDR, and breathwork are some of the many ways to boost your performance at the table.

Whether you’re looking for a way to snap back into it during a long session, or you’re simply looking to up-level your game during a normal one, start casting some spells!

(Elliot Roe’s Primed Mind has guided audios specifically targeted to situations you might encounter in poker. I have no affiliation with the product, other than Elliot being my coach and a friend)

Boosting Our Supplementary Attributes

Away from the table, we can work on our second, supplementary set of attributes.

By improving our ability to get a good night’s sleep routinely, we’ll start our average day with higher ratings.

By eating better foods, we’ll improve our default mental clarity and blood sugar regulation.

By meditating, we’ll increase our focus and emotional control.

The list goes on and on.

If you play poker professionally, or you have aspirations to, I’d highly recommend that you consider some of these practices part of your job – similar to studying the game or putting in hours.

If you don’t play poker professionally, well… hopefully you have a job that rewards you when you perform well, in which case improving your performance is also part of your job.

The nice thing about embracing these habits is that almost all of them have benefits that carry over into your everyday life. These are things that you’ve been wanting to do – likely meaning to do – for a long time.

Act Now

Has your view on performance, and on the value of these attribute-boosting things changed?

If so, great!

But if you read this, think “Okay cool. I agree,” and then go back to your life as it was, you haven’t gained anything.

You haven’t really learned something.

Pick one thing right now – only one – that you’re going to implement, and start today.

You don’t need to change everything. In fact, I believe you shouldn’t.

I still don’t do everything that I mean to do, but I do more than I did last year. Next year, I’ll do a little bit more.

Improve with me.

Performance: This Is Reality