Confidence

I got some interesting insights from Jerrod Tendler’s book about poker psychology on confidence.  I’ve often suffered from lack of confidence at the tables.  I get intimidated by other players, I begin to doubt my decision making and make mistakes.  When my confidence is threatened the adrenalin rush blocks out my ability to think and I get kicked into fight or flight. I see threats that may or may not be there but clearly don’t pose the danger I think they do.  I over play hands feeling like I have to defend myself.  I play timidly and fail to bet in raise in spots I need to.  The biggest problems with this short circuit in my thinking is that I start to focus on the wrong things.  I start to worry about a meta game that probably doesn’t exist and even if it did, shouldn’t result in making too many changes in my play.  I fail to put players on a range of hands and make proper betting decisions based on that range, the strength of my hand and the size of the pot.

Jerrod points out that all humans in general and poker players in particular, are terrible psychics.  We make errors all the time in estimating our abilities.  Poker players love to envision themselves as dangerous players who can take on all comers.  We also frequently miss the mark in evaluating the strength of other players as well and envisioning them as clueless fish, waiting for us to come and take their money.  Evaluating my strength as a player and the strength of my opponents is very important to playing winning poker, but it’s not that easy to do, especially in live play.  Learning to accurately evaluate my play and the play of opponents is a skill that has to be learned and practiced.  It’s not just a feeling you get when you sit down at the table or a judgment you can make by watching one or two hands.

These errors in judgment, particularly in evaluating the strength of my own play is at the root of confidence issues.   I had a pretty good run earlier in the year.  I played fairly well but there’s no doubt I was touched by positive variance.  In the midst of it I erroneously assigned too much of my success to skillful play and also began to underestimate the skill of my opponents.  The truth is I’m a decent player but still very inexperienced and prone to making a lot of mistakes better players avoid.  I’m still a novice and it’s going to take a lot more work, study and experience to be an advanced player.  I’ve begun to grasp a lot of the fundamentals and this does give me an edge over a lot of my opponents but I’ve got a long way to go. 

Subconsciously, I knew that my confident stand was a sham.  I was overconfident.  When poker eventually slapped me down my confidence level collapsed like the house of cards it was.  The trouble is that my level then dropped below any semblance of reality.  I began to underestimate my ability “I suck, I’ll never be a decent player” and over estimate my opponents “That’s the second beat that guy gave me.  He’s targeting me!”

Cultivating certainty is the solution to confidence issues.  Learning and putting in the work to accurately assess my skill, to be able to consistently spot variance and learn to correctly evaluate my opponents abilities will enable me to put confidence issues behind me.