Who are you ?

I mean who are you as a poker player?

It probably has a lot to do with who you are as a person as well.

In poker as in life, it is easy to lose our objectivity and be out of touch with how things are.

This can happen as a result of habit, fear, age, lack of imagination, getting set in our ways, misjudging what happened in the past etc.

Often we mistake feeling things should be a certain way with how they actually are.

We even want things to be a certain way and con ourselves into thinking that is what is actually happening.

All of these things are understandable but we must work to avoid them if we wish our poker game to improve.

So where to start ?

This is where most make either a really bad decision or at best a partially bad decision.

I will use an old Irish sort of joke to explain.

Question: How do you get to Cork? I asked the farmer.

Answer: “Well you take a left and a right then 20 miles on that road south and then 100 miles on the Motorway”

“Thanks”, I said and headed off.

After I walked a few steps the farmer laughs and stops me and says: “But that’s only the way if you are starting from a different place than here”

Before we head off to transform our poker game we must establish exactly where we are starting from.

What exactly is the detailed nature of our own game and how are we going to find out what that is ?

Are we the best person to make that assessment ?

When I coach people I find that this is at the heart of them finding their best game more often than not.

What is even more interesting is that just being very clear about what your own best game is and connecting it to a particular expression of your own unique self without even making any improvements is enough to perform really well.

So the last sentence is a bit dense maybe even confusing, if so try and penetrate its meaning for yourself, maybe even discuss it with a poker friend.

Is it really that important?

The nature of you and the true nature of poker is more joined at the hip than we often realise.