This game requires constant concentration, rational thinking, and patience, so you shouldn’t neglect the mental part of poker.

Although mastering the game doesn’t come overnight by any means, there are some things to watch for if you’re in it for long-term success. With that in mind, we want to share with you the top 3 tips to control your mental state when playing poker.

Concentrate on decision making

Most poker players base their decisions on the potential quality of the outcome. If the result is good, the decision was right, and vice versa. This is NOT a good tactic in poker, as sometimes a poor decision can net you a win, while a good one can lead to a loss down the line.

For this reason, you shouldn’t base your decision on the short-term results of each hand. Instead, realize that every decision comes with uncertainty attached to it, and focus on the process. Realizing this and taking control of your emotions will make you a better poker player.

A strong poker player will notice when someone is tilting or overly-emotional and take advantage of it. Such a mindset will enable you to maximize your profits when the hands are in your favor and mitigate losses when having a bad session.

As you play more, you’ll understand the game better, and it’ll be easier for you to concentrate on the decision-making part of the process. During this time, both beginners and advanced players tend to set their brains on autopilot by automating certain moves in each game. This can be detrimental to your poker game, as no two poker hands are the same.

Another big part that plays into your concentration ability is your current mental and physical state. Generally speaking, the better you feel, the better you’ll concentrate. If you’ve had a bad night’s sleep or haven’t been feeling well, you’ll have a hard time focusing on making the right decisions. Sometimes it is better to skip the session than play when you are not feeling great.

Know your schedule

The prospect of winning multimillion-dollar tournament prizes and making a great living solely from playing a game you enjoy is very enticing. But to become a successful player, it’s crucial to create a realistic schedule you can follow long-term.

Having a schedule is a critical aspect of a good mental poker game and will make your life much easier.

Of course, all of us can sometimes sit and play for hours on end. Just remember that such situations should be rare occurrences rather than the norm.

Creating a poker schedule and sticking to it will allow you to establish a stable environment in which you know how to control your emotion and concentrate solely on making the right decisions, as we’ve talked about above. In turn, it’ll also help reduce your stress and anxiety about whether or not you should currently be playing a session.

Detach after your sessions

It’s hard to mentally switch off and entirely detach from your profession or hobby in today’s mobile era. Not only is poker a mentally taxing activity, but most of us also seek post-session relaxation through checking emails or messages, reading articles, or playing video games.

While this seems like an excellent way to unwind, all of these things are very cognitively demanding and take up your active attention.

From my experience, the best way to detach after a long poker session and reset your mind is to do an activity that involves more physical than mental activity or is at least passive. If you’ve been sitting around and playing poker for the best part of the day, the apparent diametric activity would be to engage in some physical exercise.

Of course, running or lifting weights are the best ways to detach and unwind mentally while also keeping your body in shape. That being said, there are many more less-demanding activities that can be equally effective.

Going for a brief walk, or even just listening to music or hanging with your friends or household members can get your mind off of the game and help you recharge. If you prefer more passive activities, even watching an episode of one of your favorite comedy shows or maybe one of the fun gambling movies can get your brain into a more passive mode and help you relax before going to bed or enjoying the rest of your day.

The key takeaway you should keep in mind if you’re looking to detach after your poker sessions is to stray away from any activities that require any active thinking and concentration. Overstraining will make it more difficult to control your mental state and significantly impact your success in poker.

Let’s start with staying mentally tough over a long day of tournament poker. It can be a grind and your stack will almost certainly be up and down. As the blinds and the pressure increase, you get tired and worn out. The chemicals in your brain that are used for processing can reduce in potency and study after study shows that at the end of the day your IQ drops quickly.

If you aren’t getting enough sleep before a tournament, you are already putting yourself at a big disadvantage. Getting five hours of sleep can lower your IQ by more than 10 points right off the bat. Later in the day, when you get really tired, things get even worse. But even if you get enough sleep, by the end of the day you just aren’t as sharp as you were mid-day. Mental toughness can help with this, but don’t use it as a substitute for a good night’s sleep.

READ MORE: 5 Reasons Why Getting More Sleep Will Improve Your Poker Game

Many of my students tell me that the best advice I have given them on this is to keep learning and become absolutely certain of the right plays. The better a player you are, the more times finding the correct decision will be easy and the fewer mistakes you will make when you are tired. This isn’t about figuring out the right play, it’s about certainty. No matter how tired you are, you won’t usually raise J2o under the gun unless you really don’t want to play anymore. But what about folding JJ to a three-bet from a tight player? When you are tired or tilted this can be a tough one, but late in the day in a tournament it is often correct.

Tough fold but wise

— Joe Eveleigh (@doctorplungrr) May 1, 2017

Question Yourself Routinely

It helps to have a routine for when you aren’t sharp. I hate to play automatically because you miss out on so many good spots, but it’s better than making big mistakes. Start by asking yourself a few questions when you find yourself in a tough spot late in the day or when you are feeling tilted, angry, sad, or when your emotions may be affecting your play:

1. “Am I thinking clearly here? What would I do if I was thinking clearly? What would a good player do here?” Sometimes getting your head out of the action and simply giving yourself advice from a distance can help you think clearly.
2. “Is this the best decision to increase my chances of making the money and possibly winning the tournament?” Sometimes it’s easy to think in terms of chips but thinking in terms of tournament equity is ignored because we are too tired or tilted to take the next step.
3. “Which decision will I regret later?” This is another way to distance yourself and reset your thinking. I almost never make the clearly wrong decision after asking myself this question. It raises the emotional stakes for the hand by making the decision twice as painful if you get it wrong and you know it’s the wrong decision.

You can also force your mind back into the right mode of thinking. Studies many years ago famously showed that counting to 10 when you are angry will help reduce your anger. Further studies over the last 50 years have shown why this works. Various tasks can change the way your brain is working. Drawing brings out the creative side. Listening to sad music brings out more emotional response to all stimuli even if they aren’t negative or sad. And solving logic problems changes your brain waves and puts your brain in “logic mode”. Logic mode is effectively Beast Mode for poker. That’s where you want to be.

Reset Your Brain

After doing some research years ago, I tried a few different logic problems in an attempt to reset my brain. Research shows that the problem should be challenging. But very few things remain challenging once you have solved them enough times. I landed on the Fibonacci sequence starting with the last two cards I was dealt. Doing the Fibonacci sequence until it gets hard to hold the numbers in my head resets my brain quickly and efficiently. And many of my students agree. It works.

Have you heard of the #FibonacciSpiral?

In nature and reality.. the same mathematical patterns repeat. It’s beautiful really, it’s like we live in an encoded dimensional reality.#SacredGeometry #GreatAwakening pic.twitter.com/kISDLrVKyC

— Martha Jones (@RedPebbles4) March 19, 2018

The Fibonacci sequence takes two numbers, adds them up, then adds the second number to the third, then adds the third to the result, adding this to the third, etc. An example will help.

Fibonacci!

1+2=3 // 2+3=5 // 3+5=8 // 5+8=13 // 8+13=21 and repeat until you screw it up or it gets tough to hold the numbers in your head. It won’t take long. The Fibonacci sequence is hard to memorize, especially if you start with two random cards. If you cards were a queen and a seven, then 7+12=19 // 12+19=31 // 19+31=50 etc.

This ought to get your brain back into logic mode. If you are recovering from a beat or a frustrating hand, it may be all you need. If you are tired or otherwise not thinking clearly, you may need to do it many times throughout the night.

The Proper Mindset

Another important point about mental toughness. Your mindset at all times should be that you are here to make the best decisions and that no matter what happens, you will never give up and throw away your chips. Tell yourself that you are damn determined to do it right and play your best game, and do not compromise on it. Never punt. Ever. Do not throw your chips in the pot because you gave up. If your chips go in the pot, it’s because that was the best place for them from a place of logical decision making.

This approach, the “never punt” promise to yourself, is also about certainty. You do not go into a tournament thinking that you will try not to punt or tilt away your chips. You go into that tournament knowing that punting is not an option. It’s not a thing you do anymore. Yoda said it best:

Meet Tilty, Then Ignore Him

The part of your brain that craves short term rewards will lie to you. I call him Tilty. I hate his guts. He’s the reason I don’t go to the gym. He’s the worst. He will give you reasons to do the things that will make him happy. This is why opiate addicts have phantom pain when they need a fix. They aren’t always in real pain, but Tilty creates pain. It’s often the first sign of addiction in pain patients. When they don’t have the drugs, the old injury hurts again and it’s an excuse to continue medication that should have been discontinued weeks ago. Tilty is a crafty sucker.

When Tilty wants to go to sleep, he will convince you that you should get all-in and either double up or go home. Because either one is a short term reward for him. When he wants to quit playing poker for some other reason – maybe to get away from a frustrating opponent or to stop taking bad beats that he thinks will never end – he will try to convince you to do something to end the pain. He will encourage bad decisions. And like that phantom pain, it will feel real.

This is why absolute certainty is the key. Tilty can give you reasons to punt. But you don’t punt. It’s just not an option. And he does learn. If you don’t punt, he will eventually stop bothering you about it so often. It will get easier to not punt and never even consider it. So from now on, punting is not an option for you.

Now you have two approaches. When you are tilted or frustrated or tired and not thinking clearly, you can snap yourself back into logical thinking. And when Tilty doesn’t want you to think logically, or he just wants to go home, it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t get a vote anymore. Because you are different now. Losers punt. Unless you want to be a loser, you don’t punt. Ever.

Do yourself a favor and expand on these two ideas. Think about how you can snap yourself back into logical “Beast Mode”. And think about Tilty and how to ignore him. He doesn’t want what is best for you. Tilty is the enemy of good poker. Beat him or you will end up beating yourself.