Developing a great poker mindset is the single most important factor in determining your long-term success as a poker player. This is unlike any single strategy topic or theory, as a solid mindset requires an exuberant amount of time to develop and an infinite time to master. Playing winning poker in the long run generally requires a few essential personality traits, including but not limited to things like discipline, emotional stability, focus and having big balls (or courage for you ladies).
In this article, we’ll look at focus and why it’s important. If you’re not completely focused while playing poker, you will surely miss out on key information about your opponents that you can use to your advantage. At lower stakes, you’ll often find others at the table distracted by the cocktail waitress or the game on TV. Don’t be that guy! If you can remain more focused on than your opponents, you can effectively exploit their weaknesses and ultimately make less mistakes.
Players that aren’t completely focused on the game will find themselves at a significant disadvantage when it comes time to play a hand with you. They simply won’t have the information about you that you have about them, all because we paid attention when their attention was elsewhere.
When playing online, you’ll find players single-tabling while multi-tasking and others that are playing entirely too many tables. Only the best can multi-table with complete focus, however most players use HUDs to counter this to help track opponent’s tendencies across multiple tables. The stats in our HUD can help us determine the most appropriate action in specific situations. Just make sure to use the HUD as an ancillary tool, and not an excuse to direct your attention elsewhere.
Check out the video below from mindset master, Sam Chauhan, where he talks about limiting beliefs how they are detrimental to our success, not only poker, but in everything we do. In part 2 of this series, we’ll continue on this subject and take a deeper look into emotional stability and what it means for us in regards to our poker career.
