What “secret” separates top poker players from poker wannabes? Is it zen-like mind-reading skills, a computer-like brain or thousands of hours of play? No. It is a series of established approaches and behaviors that enables these experts to bring their “A” game to the table session after session, regardless of short-term results. In this groundbreaking book, Taylor and Hilger lay bare the secrets of the Poker Mindset: seven core attitudes and concepts that ensure you have the optimal emotional, psychological, and behavioral framework for playing superior poker. The Poker Mindset deeply explores vital topics that most poker books only touch upon: – Tilt: What it really is, why and when you are mos…
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At first glimpse, this book appears to be not much different from a lot of other ‘poker psychology’ books on the market. However, after delving in and devouring the book, it offered much more than I expected. This is not a book that talks about reading opponents or taking advantage of their weaknesses, rather it takes the opposite approach: It tells you how to read yourself and avoid allowing your opponents to take advantage of you.
There are a number of concepts in this book that every poker player thinks they understand, such as tilt, bad beats, and downswings, but you quickly realize how little understood these concepts are when they are so well articulated as in this book. Everyone who reads this will find at least one chapter where they realize that they have made the exact mistake mentioned in the chapter but have not been able to put their finger on it. I personally have made nearly every mindset mistake mentioned in this book at one point or another, and I recognized each with each successive chapter. It feels all too familiar. We all know the gaps in our game, but this helps us really understand the gaps in our game and offers strategies to eliminate them.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever tilted off money, has ever stayed at a table too long, or has ever gone broke at limits too high for them. This book bears re-reading because these concepts are crucially important to being a winning player.
If you play poker for fun OR if you think you’re good enough to turn pro, this book is a “Must Read!” It’s not another “how-to.” There are plenty of those. And, if you’re like me, you know that poker playing skill is all relative. If you already know about “pot odds”, probablities, “premium hands”, betting after the flop, and all the other technical stuff, then read this book before you play another hand. Sure, you will already know some of this stuff intuitively. But even if you do, this book is good reinforcement!
I knew some of the things that Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger point out. But I’m one of those guys that are so competetive, I let my emotions take over. But the next time I find myself in a “downswing” OR an “upswing”, I will concentrate on what I learned in the Poker Mindset to try and improve my situation. “Just try to take my chips, baby!”
There are quite a few good books out there about the mechanics of poker play (I recommend any of Dan Harrington’s books) — where you can read about pot odds and late-position versus early-position play and all that — and there are also good books out there about the psychology of poker play. I have read only two books devoted to the mental aspect of the game, but “The Poker Mindset” ranks among the best treatises about the psychological mindset poker players need to develop to improve their game.
What makes this book different than other texts written by players or psychologists? This book doesn’t profess to tell you how to win on a regular basis per se. You WILL experience downswings which could last for long stretches, whether you are a solid player or not. Instead, the authors emphasize that how one deals with the invariable ups and downs of the game will determine whether one succeeds over the long haul.
This book takes a detailed, clinical and statistical approach to the realities of the game — how odds figure into results in the near versus long term, how luck gives way to skill over time, how players limit their development by mis-associating certain results with unrelated causes (I lost this hand because I’m just running bad right now) — and how understanding the bigger (mathematical) picture of poker reality is at the heart of anyone developing into a successful player.
The authors don’t deconstruct hands, they deconstruct the mental process as events unfold at tables, and then they provide details about how to avoid common traps poker players fall into. They examine the many forms of tilt (not just players blowing up at the table, which is only one form of tilt) and how players need to confront their own mental and emotional weaknesses to overcome it.
The authors thorough examination of tilt (they define tilt as anything that prevents you from playing your best poker) will help the player focus on the subtle slips that further damage his/her results. This book is full of well-articulated ideas (and not too much mathematics) that help players take a 500-foot view of their game so that they can leave behind their superstitions and woolly misconceptions about suck outs, bad beats and downswings and improve their overall game. I highly recommend it, especially for those of you who have hit a “wall” and can’t figure out why your game seems to be devolving.
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