Back in 2005, Poker Hall of Famer Doyle Brunson published an article in which he talked about some “mind tricks” that worked for him and some that didn’t.
In this article, Brunson tells the story of a man named Keith who seemed to achieve great results in poker by filling himself with confidence and positive thoughts before entering the game. However, after a while, this wasn’t enough for him, so he decided to take his mental tricks to the next level.
“So he decided he would play even better if he could convince himself that he was losing a little at the beginning of the session,” Brunson writes. “That way, he figured, he would be even more determined to win until he eliminated his losses. Even this mental trick seemed to work for him—for now.”
“One day he tried his greatest psychological trick yet,” Brunson writes. “He spent hours convincing himself that he was down $100,000 in a game of $300 limit hold’em. Clearly he was in his own fantasy, because when he won the first pot and was up $2,000, in his mind he was still down $98,000 and still seemed desperate. That’s when he was disintegrated like grass squeezed between your fingers during a drought. In less than two days he had lost his bankroll. It was all over.”
How Doyle concludes the story of Keith's mind tricks
Brunson concludes poor Keith's story this way:
“Personally, I stick to simple facts and leave more elaborate mental tricks to the more adventurous – like Keith. Poker players should have faith in their own ability. It helps. That’s how I look at it.”
It doesn’t take much courage for me to admit that I agree with Doyle Brunson when it comes to playing good poker. I agree that an attitude of self-confidence is much more constructive in improving your game than a pessimistic thought, for example, “I’m destined to lose.”
I believe Keith's mind tricks were lost in two ways.
The first boundary Keith crossed was trying to believe something that wasn't true and that he knew wasn't true.
As I have commented many times in previous articles, we humans have an incredible capacity to disappoint ourselves. I have even advocated a form of self-deception, especially when bluffing, where I suggested that you should tell yourself things that you would be telling yourself if you were actually in the nuts.
The goal of doing this is to make your body language convey confidence in a more natural way than if you were deliberately trying to force it. The real goal is to deceive your opponent, not yourself.
Keith's trick was not of that nature
His attempt at self-deception was not deceiving his opponent, but rather himself.
It's hard to convince yourself of something you know isn't true. I know a lot of people who set their watches forward five, ten, or fifteen minutes to compensate for their tendency to be constantly late. This doesn't work, because you can't forget that you set your watch forward. What happens is that you end up mentally adjusting for the difference you know there is between the displayed time and the real time.
You could argue that Keith apparently succeeded in fooling himself into believing he was missing out on a lot. No, I don't believe he was, but that leads to my second point about what he did wrong.
The unstated assumption behind his attempts at self-deception was that he would play differently if he could convince himself that he was playing to recoup his losses. This is terribly misleading.
You should play each hand optimally
The first thing wrong with this is that your strict habit should be to play each hand optimally, regardless of whether you are winning, losing, or how you started the session.
Of course, there are some metagame aspects to playing when you're winning or losing, such as how your table image is. However, these are secondary factors to be considered and applied only after you know what the right play would be in your absence. It shouldn't be true that you generally play differently when you're losing than when you're winning.
The second thing wrong with Keith's mental tricks is the failure to recognize that, assuming he and others play differently when they are trying to reverse a loss, it will almost always be the case that they play worse, not better. This tends to make things worse, a desperate play that relies not on patience and skill, but on having more luck than the statistics suggest you should expect, and on bluffing more often than you can realistically expect to.
That's what's wicked about Keith's mind tricks. It's not that he actually convinced himself that he was at rock bottom, but that he made himself play off his A-game, and into playing his B-, C-, or D-game.
Imagine if he had done the opposite – somehow convinced himself that he was already winning $100,000 in the game. How would he be playing?
Naturally, he would be playing with great confidence, unafraid of losing small fractions of his immense bankroll.
It is worth remembering that you should also not play without commitment.
However, assuming you are playing within the standard bankroll guidelines, this should always be your approach. These chips are merely tools to get more chips. They have no other value. If you lose them after making good decisions, it doesn’t matter – there are plenty more where they came from.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that you play without any commitment. However, it does mean that you play without fear, which is not the same thing at all. It means that you evaluate each decision based on which action has the highest expected value. In this mental approach, there is no room for worries, for example, “but I might lose!”
Now, I have some doubts about how a person can be so deeply convinced that they are winning $100,000 when it is not actually true. However, to the extent that this can be done, the resulting outlook on the game should be at worst neutral and at most beneficial.
Personally, however, I believe that it is almost always a mistake to try to convince yourself of any “fact” that is contrary to reality.
If you want to try an intentional mental approach, let me steer you away from Keith and toward poker player and author Charlie Shoten. He’s been recommending this mantra to poker players for a long time: “I am calm, confident, clear, and waiting for my best option to appear after considering all my choices and the consequences of each. When my best option appears, I act.”
Article translated and adapted from the original: Fooling Yourself: Doyle Brunson on How Some Mind Games Can Wreck You
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