Poker Strategies Poker Psychology

Calm Down and Hear Yourself: The Most Common Poker Mindset Leaks

Vasilisa Zyryanova Blog Content Editor

Fact Checked by: PokerListings
Last updated on: February 1, 2025 · 6 minutes to read

A lot of content about poker psychology, having the right poker mindset and mental preparation for poker sessions teaches players how to turn into cold-blooded versions of themselves all for the sake of becoming top-notch poker professionals. But what if we tell you that this approach doesn’t work at all? What if distancing yourself from your emotions is not just helpless but even dangerous long term?

Some known poker beasts are confident that you can’t build a sustainable and successful career in this game — but more importantly, have a good and healthy mental state — if you deny and refuse to analyze your emotions.

So, in this article PokerListings shares with you a wisdom related to mindset leaks and emotional suppression from different renown poker players and coaches.

Leak #1: Emotionlessness

On paper, becoming skillful enough to “kill” your emotional responses seems like a great idea in terms of resisting tilt, Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger thinks that this approach can be helpful only for a while:

Learning to suppress emotions only seems appealing in the short term. Ultimately it’s ineffective relative to resolving the underlying mechanisms which create negative responses to loss 🙂
— Andrew Lichtenberger (@luckychewy) September 22, 2024

The thing is — your body doesn’t have an unlimited capacity to store rejected emotions. Every time you bottle them up and lock them somewhere inside, your body spends resources to do so and keep them suppressed.

At the same time, you disconnect from your feelings and emotions, good and bad, for longer and longer periods. So, sooner or later these resources run out and all your suppressed emotions, that you already can’t properly identify and manage, overflow you and lead to burn out, depression, developing anger issues or anything similar.

As Chance Kornuth describes this problem:

“The issue with becoming good at poker is that it makes you numb to stress and it also buries your emotions.

You become really good at pushing things down and moving on. Which is good when you’re deep in a tournament and you’ve just lost a massive pot for the chip lead…

But it’s terrible because it lowers the volume of positive emotions you’re able to feel. You literally need to re-teach yourself to feel good emotions again. Like love, trust, connection and peace.

If you’ve been in the game long enough, you know exactly what I mean.”

As a cherry on top, becoming emotionally numb is absolutely bad for relationships because in this state you can properly empathise, sympathise and share your feelings with others.

How to Fix Emotional Numbness?

Practice mindfulness. Take time everyday to slow down and feel your body. Try to catch your emotions and feelings, describe and label them. If you find it difficult — reach out to a mental professional who is qualified to practice emotion-focused therapy.
Use your imagination. Try to feel the emotions of other people, taking their place in your imagination and answering emotional questions such as: “How would I feel in their boots?”, “Why would I feel like that?”, “Which situations make me feel this way too?”, etc. If you can’t imagine — try to watch some touching movies and replace heroes there with yourself for questioning.
Talk to trusted people. Share your feelings with people, who are ready to listen and support you, even if for now you are feeling nothing. You also should ask them about their feelings and emotions because it can help you to find words for your own descriptions and feel empathy.

Leak #2: Caring About Uncontrollable Things

Poker isn’t the most stable career choice since a lot of its elements can be unpredictable and hard to control — especially when the variance in question has to do with “luck”. In theory, most players understand it. But in practice, when they take a ride on the variance rollercoaster or see cooler after cooler, they instantly become emotionally involved and try to find a way to change their luck or appease variance.

This reaction inevitably leads to mistakes that bring three major mindset leaks, described by Jonathan Little:

Caring about bad beats
Caring about being card dead
Caring about short-term results

With these leaks, you can’t keep your head clear and objective but instead you let it become clouded by tilt, uncertainty and feeling of hopelessness:

“You are human, not a robot.

Emotions can influence your decisions and lead to mistakes at the table.

It’s not just negative emotions that can impact your play—positive emotions can too.

Feeling overly happy or confident can lead to suboptimal decisions, often driven by overconfidence rather than clear, logical thinking.”

Jonathan is sure that striking a balance is key to consistent, high-level performance. But you can’t just balance yourself — first of all you need to fix your “caring” leaks.

How to FIx Caring About Uncontrollable Poker Aspects?

Remind yourself: you always have a chance to lose a spot, no matter how good your cards are at the start of the hand. As Jonathan says, that’s just how poker works: “If you’re all-in with A-A against J-10, you’re going to lose 12.46% of the time. You won’t win every hand, even when you’re ahead. In fact, you should lose 12.46% of the time in this scenario”.
Accept variance as a natural part of the game. Meditate thinking about the unpredictable nature of variance, its ups and downs, with the central thought of the normality of your inability to control it. Or, in Jonathan’s words: “If you consistently get your money in with the best hand, bad beats are inevitable. Sometimes, the cards just won’t come your way. Accept it, embrace it, and focus on the long-term results!”.
Shift focus to things you can control. As a poker player, you have a lot of tools to polish your skills, develop healthy habits, and become better. You can also control how often you play and how many games or tables at the same time. So, spend more time and energy on these aspects of the game and remember Jonathan’s words: “You have very little control over the result of 1 tournament or 1 cash game session. Focus on playing each spot as well as possible and being properly bankrolled for the game“.

Leak #3: Focus on Negativity

If you tend to have a negative bias and can’t stop thinking about the negative aspects of the game, you run the risk of become a little insane because your perception of your whole life gradually and inevitably changes.

In his book “Play Poker Like the Pros”, Phil Hellmuth warns players that being focused on negativity is bad for them because it interferes with their ability to see opportunities and use them to succeed. Negative people can’t think straight because they can’t see good things as they are — instead they look for something bad in everything, only becoming more miserable, unhappy and unproductive.

How to Change Negative Focus?

Find time to appreciate good in your life. Not every hand, spot, situation in your life is bad. You have a lot of good and nice moments and things that you just can’t see without targeted search. So, make them targets and spend some time celebrating their existence. Of course, for the first few times it will be hard, but don’t give up: regular practice helps you to do it easier.
Remind yourself: this bad day or moment is just a singular spot on your blanket. Even if sometimes it seems like a black stripe, in closer look almost every bad situation isn’t a prolonged thing but just a moment of unpleasantness. You just forgot about it. So, it is time to practice reminding yourself about it.
Help other people altruistically. It is easier to feel negative, if your life isn’t great and people around you can’t help you to make it better. But you can always support others by volunteering to some charity initiatives or just responding to someone’s call for help. Science shows that supporting and helping others help people to be happier and see life in more humane and positive ways.