The Mental Aspect of Poker
The topic of the mental game of poker gained prominence with the publication of Jared Tendler's seminal work, "The Mental Game of Poker". There were other early mental game pioneers, such as Tommy Angelo and Alan Schoomaker, but Tendler brought the mental game into the mainstream and his book (as well as its sequel, The Mental Game of Poker 2) remains the definitive work on the subject.
Tendler is not without his critics. Acclaimed poker author Mason Malmuth offered some kneejerk criticisms of the book on the 2+2 forum. His remarks are quite lengthy but worth digging through. One of his criticisms addresses the question of whether unconcious competence - and by extension the whole Adult Learning Model - has relevance to poker.
MM :
So what is unconscious competence? Well, without defining it here, let’s say that unconscious competence is what a baseball players uses to hit a 95 mph fast ball or a tennis player uses to hit back a 120 mph serve. And looking at the tennis example a little more, once a 120 mph serve leaves a player’s racket, it’s about one-half of a second until his opponent hits it, and there’s no way this can be done consciously.
So why is this unimportant in poker? Well, if all decisions in poker had to be made in a second or two, then this would be a valuable idea, but as any no-limit hold ‘em player can tell you, many decisions take much, much longer than two seconds.
Tendler's 'Adult Learning Model' is also known as the four stages of competence, which dates back to a 1960's textbook Management of Training Programs according to wikipedia. Wiki goes on to describe the four stages thusly:
- Unconscious incompetence
- The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.
- Conscious incompetence
- Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
- Conscious competence
- The individual understands or knows how to do something. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration, and if it is broken, they lapse into incompetence.
- Unconscious competence
- The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Reddit user Danack made an interesting point about the fourth stage, describing it as follows :
You can do well without even trying.
It's subtler than that.
You can do well and you can't always explain why you can do it well. All the choices that you make are so 'obviously' the right choices that actually breaking down the reasoning about what makes them good choices can be hard to do.
The lovely Day9 has a pretty interesting (as always) video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GsPw7qd2-k&ab_channel=Day9TV - relevant bit starts at 8:30 ish.
That comment is part of a broader discussion which is worth reading.
Perhaps this is MM's live background coming in to play, but I think any multitabler can tell you the value of being able to make good instaneous decisions. One of the advantages to online poker is that it allows you to play 8 or 12 tables at the same time, at which point you become a margin player. In fact many online winners would lose or break even in terms of their table results, and make their money from rakeback and promotions. Just recently I had a great +12 buyin session four tabling zoom where I played 725 hands in just under an hour. Let's say that's an average of 1.4 decisions per hand, that is still just under four seconds per decision. For a mass multitabler achieving unconscious competence seems very important. Especially because if you can get to this state then it shouldn't be nearly as mentally draining as "concious competence", where you can do the thing but it requires intense concentration.
Actually, this raises a second important point. I get that going into the tank, deconstructing a hand and logically deducing the optimal play can be a satifying enterprise. On the other hand, how are we going to make any money if everyone is tanking every street? If you take (in Mason's words) "much, much longer than two seconds" to make your decisions, and everyone else does too, pretty soon it is going to take ten minutes just to play a hand. In a sense, tanking is an arms race. Once my opponents start doing it, I have to start doing it. But once everyone starts doing it, the game sucks, and the fish will get bored and leave. Everyone loses. On the other hand, if we all play fast, especially when most of the decisions are trivial, then the game is going to be a lot better and more profitable. Excessive tanking kills the game. And at the end of the day, how much if anything do you really gain?
But I digress. At other points it seems like either MM is wilfully misinterpreting JT or at least they are talking about cross purposes. MM also disagrees with JT about tilt. You can read my summation of JT
on tilt here. MM however describes tilt on the following fashion.
One of the problems here is that Tendler addresses many different types of tilt, and in my opinion, while these types can and are often problems for some players, many of them are not tilt at all. In my view, tilt is caused by the inability to process information that gets presented to a player, such as getting several good hands beat in a short period of time, and he can’t understand how this can happen. Thus their minds are not able to solve this problem and their brain can get hung up similar to an infinite programming loop. And it’s my observation that with some people tilt can last for days.
MM's criticisms of Tendler's Mental Game of Poker
Tendler's tilt model, with the emotions overwhelming the rational mind, seems far more accurate to me than MM's 'logic loop' explanation, just based on my own numerous experiences with tilt.
Another discussion thread on 2+2, entitled 'How Do You Manage Tilt', has two great posts.
Have to respectfully disagree.
A lot of psychology concepts, coping strategies, and interventions hinge on changing OUR individual perception or response to a situation.
You can give a person all the poker knowledge in the world but then we ask: Do they actually understand how to apply it. Do they understand how to put their perception aside and apply it in the best way?
I believe, and I can't speak for Tendler, that the application of the inchworm concept is valid for poker because most players aren't going to be able to take the knowledge (from strategy, math, edge standpoints) and apply it both "quickly and consistently accurately." They also are going to naturally seek markers of improvement or milestones to see where their learning is taking them. It's of course a matter of opinion whether players should seek those in a game like poker. I would at least argue markers of improvement (from a measurable perspective) are useful as long as we don't slip into results oriented thinking beyond seeing it as a yardstick for how well or poorly we're understanding/applying a poker concept.
Not to mention the mental game aspect, which IMO as both a poker player and given my career, is perhaps more crucial than the poker knowledge alone. You can give anyone one of your well written solid poker books, but can they apply it or will they? How do they respond in high pressure spots? Even if the "know" what to do theoretically, do they do it when it matters? Do they know how they respond enough when the pressure is on the ensure they do what they know is correct from knowledge and not from emotion?
In any event, inchworm is useful because it gives poker players a way to progress their understanding AND application of poker knowledge over time. No one sits down and immediately executes proper range analysis most hands. No one sits down after studying whatever concept they just learned in poker and execute it correctly in every situation. There's a lot to learn about poker and often times we get in the way of ourselves when applying what we learn.
Even more importantly inchworm concepts allow players to SEE what is and isn't changing over time which can be both a reality check to see what needs work and a motivator to see what they've mastered at a level of unconscious competence.
Overall I think inchworm is a motivational mechanism especially for people newer to the game or stuck not improving in the game.
On another note, inchworm isn't really related to tilt and tilt management.
Not to sound like a cliche therapist...but often what is the biggest cause of loss of emotional regulation in a situation (i.e. when tilt happens) isn't what's going on...it's how we react. And honestly we shouldn't take it personally if we tilt or donkey rage or whatever...we're wired to react to situations. But we can work to change it. Hell I even still experience some tilt , some I was able to see myself and address. But we all have blind spots and resources like Tommy Angelo books/sites, Jared Tendler books, Zen and The Art of Poker book, and sometimes just someone in my life pointing out something seemingly small like: "gee it seems you type a little more furiously sometimes while playing poker online but not other times" can uncover what we can't see ourselves.
I do 100% agree there's probably some really bad mental game coaches out there because they lack any form of training in psychological theory and concepts.
And in Tendler's defense I believe I read he was trained in sports psychology not clinical or social psychology. Also to be fair, "inchworm" concepts stem more from cognitive approaches to learning, not mental game or mental regulation (i.e. tilt control). But since learning knowledge to apply in poker is still learning, it does indeed have a function in poker learning.
His books do a great job of aligning how our mind often gets in the way of our performance; even with all the poker knowledge in the world, it doesn't mean we can quickly master and execute it sufficiently. Until we get ourselves prepared to do it.
Finally as it relates to "psychology" of/in poker I find that many poker books have a few pages or a chapter on it applied mostly to understanding it through the lenses of how to outplay/read/understand opponents.
Found this a fascinating thread and wanted to chime in. Interesting stuff, maybe I should look into writing a book.
Tilt
Tendler's work breaks down why Tilt occurs. Each time you get angry or frustrated, a little residual emotion gets left behind. Over time these left over emotions slowly build up and eventually you reach a crisis point where your emotional regulation gets shut off and you start playing horribly. You stop playing logically, and start playing emotionally, with no respect for risk or proper play. You get looser, way more aggressive, and start to punt.
Okay. So how do we defeat tilt? Well one simple answer is to stop playing when you tilt. And that is definitely better than playing and tilting. Here semi-pros have a big advantage, especially if they have flexible work, because they can switch to other work while they cool off. But this is an imperfect solution. It is better to not tilt in the first place and to be able to play through the variance. And as a professional, you need to be able to put in the hours, which means playing well even when running bad. So how do we defeat tilt?
Well, the mental game is a skill like any other. Tilt control is also a skill. So one way is to focus on developing it better. Start a session, evaluate your mental game. Did you have any run bad? How was your mental game in response to it? By conciously working at our mental game we can be become better at regulating our emotions and ensuring that they do not overwhelm us.
One tool Tendler advocates for is to 'inject logic'. When you take a bad beat, you say to yourself, "okay, I took a bad beat. That's too bad. That makes me angry or frustrated, and it is natural to be angry or frustrated, but variance is a core part of the game of poker. You can't have poker without variance, and that meand bad beats and coolers. That is ok. But what is not ok is allowing my emotions to overcome my rational mind."
Also, taking a break can help. It doesn't have to be long. Just a few minutes to cool off can make all the difference. Playing fewer tables can also help, even if it is a stop gap measure until your mental game grows to handle more tables. Fewer tables means it is less likely you get a series of negative events in a row which can be tilt triggering.
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