Sports Psychology Guy

Anyone who has seen my feature on Pokernews will know that I have been working with a sports psychology expert lately. He is actually a very well respected figure in online poker,Jared Tendler, who is a Stoxpoker coach. We are working on a few worky things together and he is giving me a taste of his program, I must say its been an amazing experience so far. The article is here and its actually a few weeks behind and we are deep into the program. He wont make you a better player, but he will give you the tools to always play your best and learn to become a better player. When I met him my biggest issue was that I have had this victim mentality after year where I thought I ran worse than anyone in the world. A few weeks on and I dont feel like that (as much) any more and although I ran quite bad, I have realised that I am not as good a player as I thought I was and wasnt as unlucky as I thought either.

It sounds awful, to admit you are not as good a player as you thought, but it actually feels liberating. The world seemed small and progressing as a player seemed impossible a month or two ago, because I was so poorly equipped to handle the massive downswing I went on. Now it feels like I have something to work towards and I am processing information and learning at a much faster rate than I thought possible. The other day I had a sweat session with someone and probably had the most complex mathematical discussion I have ever had, and it all went in, whereas normally I would just agree and look for a spot to change the subject.

I'm not crushing or anything, in fact this is only just a winning year for me (Partially because I haven't played much at all, barely played live either) but what I am learning is basically, how to learn. Making small incremental changes each and every session and documenting everything, it makes a massive difference and with the exception of one particularly awful session, I havent tilted at all (Tilting for me, btw, is playing passive and defensive).

Whats more, I have been able to apply what he has been teaching me in my day to day life. I have become much better at managing my time overall, I have been really consistent with going to the gym and have even started to review my spending habits, which were getting out of control.

I know sports psychology seems a bit wishy washy to some, and many turn their noses up at in in poker circles, but its all really solid, commonsense stuff, small useful, incremental changes that all add up. I'm going to go on about it a whole lot more on this blog, but dont want to go ahead of myself on the pokernews articles I am writing.

Finally, this made me lol