Most poker players have the wrong attitude, and much of this self-sabotaging attitude stems from overestimating their own skills. In other words, you probably think you are a better poker player than you actually are.

This causes you to play in games where the stakes are too high. You probably play against opponents who are better than you. And you’re probably too loose with your starting hand requirements because you think you’ll beat other players with your sophisticated moves in later rounds.

Here are seven ways to develop a new mindset in which you become a true student of the game, instead of thinking you are some kind of expert, which leads to losses.

Engage with reality

This will seem off-topic, but it’s not. In my personal life, I came to a situation where I was losing all the time. When I realized I had a gambling addiction and got into rehab for that addiction, I learned that the inability to distinguish between what was real and what was fake was a symptom.

In other words, to recover, I had to accept the reality about my disease and the world around me. I had to swallow some hard truths about myself and the people around me. The opposite of this acceptance of reality is called “denial,” and it’s not just a river in Egypt!

Make a decision, here and now, that you will be brutally honest and realistic about your skills and talents at the poker table and elsewhere. This is the “reality mindset.”

Start keeping detailed records

Every action junkie I know has the same answer when I ask them how they did at the casino or card table: “I’m about even.”

If that were true every time I hear it, casinos would have gone out of business long ago. And there would be no professional poker players, because no one ever loses. They just “achieve equalization.”

And when you have the numbers in front of you in black and white (or red), it’s impossible to live in denial about how good or bad you are. The long-term trends in your records will quickly answer that question for you.

But don’t fall into the trap of confusing short-term results with long-term expectations. Any sucker can get lucky in the short term. This is the “measurement mentality.”

Keep your expectations low
Poker players are the worst in the world at having unrealistic expectations. Most of these expectations have to do with thinking you play better than you do. Some also have to do with your expectations of how easy it will be to beat certain games.

The problem with unrealistic expectations is that they inevitably lead to disappointment. Poker is not a lottery and this is both a good and bad thing. A good thing because the odds of winning poker are both within your control and better than the odds of winning the lottery.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions

You don’t have to rely on your own estimates of how well you play. Nor do you have to rely on it in conjunction with your detailed records. You have more options than that.

One of those options is to get specific feedback from poker players you know can give you some realistic feedback. It is much easier for someone who has no stake in your failure or success at the table to provide you with objective feedback on what you are doing well and what you are doing poorly.

You have many channels at your disposal for this. You can spend money on it, but you don’t have to. The cheapest and easiest way to get objective feedback is to run a few hand histories and post them on a poker forum for feedback.

Not everyone who gives you feedback on a poker forum will be right. Many will, in fact, be wrong.

But you will be actively involved in thinking about your hands and the decisions you have made. This is where the real magic in poker happens. This is the “feedback mindset”.

Be logical

Winning poker players think and act logically. If you want to win at poker more often, you must also act and think logically.

I have a friend who considers himself a psychic – he really is. He claims that his intuitive understanding of the game and other players gives him an advantage. The thing is, he’s a lousy poker player. I’ve never seen him come home with a profit. And I’ve been paying attention.

I suppose some poker players succeed through intuition, but I’m convinced that real success at the poker table belongs to the most logical players.

You should read books about poker. By the way, you will never run out of them. Some of them are better than others, for sure, so start with the poker books from Two Plus Two. They are the most logical approach to poker strategy that I have seen.

And you can easily become a better poker player than many poker greats of the past simply because you don’t have to rely on intuition. You can study more data than they ever dreamed of having access to.

Conclusion

Winning more often in poker starts with the right attitude. If you approach the game the wrong way, you will fail before you even start.

This means learning to think realistically and logically early in your poker career. It means making decisions based on what really happens, not on your fantasies. We hope you found this helpful.