086: Jared Tendler – What Traders Can Learn About Mental Game, From a World Champion Poker Coach

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What's up and welcome to another episode of the Chat With Traders podcast. If this is your first time listening, my name is Aaron Firefield. I am your host and thank you very much for being here. My guest this week is Jared Tendler. Jared is an internationally recognized mental game coach. His clients include world champion poker players, the number one ranked pool player in the world, professional golfers, and more recently, traders too.

If Jared was to summarise exactly what he does and what he specialises in, it would be removing negative and excessive emotion from decision making. So naturally this serves as the underlying theme throughout our conversation, but we also discuss high level topics like variance, the major crossovers between high stakes poker and trading, how psychology has been oversold and when it really matters. plus how to identify various types of tilt.

Now all show notes for this episode can be found at chatwithraders.com forward slash eighty six. And if you enjoy this episode, please write in the comments, which are directly below the show notes, and share it with your friends and followers on Twitter too. That'd be really awesome. Anyway, here we go. This is my interview with Jared Tendler.

Well, let's just get into it. So, I mean, one of the first things I'd like to ask you about is your life prior to poker. I mean, what was that like? What were you doing? So I was Basically I got into into this field because I wanted to play professional golf. Uh, in college, I well even before college, I was always dreaming of playing in the US open, playing in the Masters and obviously winning those events.

Um, wasn't good enough'cause I kinda started tournament golf a bit late to play division one. Um uh so I went to Division Three Skidmore College, figured I'd get a a good uh good education if uh golf didn't pan out. And that the the summer after my freshman year I tried qualifying for the US Open. There are two rounds of qualifying.

And and in that first round of qualifying I shot even Parr played one of the best rounds of golf I've ever played in my life, T to Green and just completely choked on the Greens. Uh missed a bunch of short putts. That was totally because of pressure. Um and ended up missing a playoff by a shot, which was pretty brutal. And and so I was kind of recanting this story to a friend at a club uh that I play at and he showed me a book called Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect.

And it kind of got me into into psychology and I kind of dove into that. I you know, I I was a three time All American in college, you know, won nine events. But by the time I was graduating I was still was having difficulty really performing under like really intense pressure for of like national events like US Open, US Am, big big time stuff. And so I I'm not one to kinda just try something unless I feel like I've got a really good avenue to be successful. And so

I I felt like the psychology that I'd learned had helped me. Um I guess that I I was I did well, did great in college, uh, but it it just didn't help in those major pressure situations. So I Uh, I dove into psychology, got a ended up getting a second uh degree, uh undergrad in in in psychology on top of my business degree and and then went and got a a master's in counseling psychology.

Trying to understand more about how to break down uh mental and emotional problems, which I thought was lacking in the traditional golf psych help. So I I basically spent a f several years doing that, getting educated, getting trained. Uh I'm a licensed technically a licensed therapist, although I never practiced that way.

And and then basically just quit my job, moved to Arizona, uh, where I knew nobody. You know, talk about uh retroactive overconfidence. I had no idea how overconfident I was, but I probably wouldn't have taken such a big leap if I wasn't. Um, started to build the practice there working with golfers. Uh joined a golf course where I was kind of working alongside of uh a a teaching instructor there, which was kind of a vision that I had that, you know, if golf is such a mental game then

There should be mental game coaches or sports psychologists at every golf course. It's kind of what I reason, but As it turns out, golfers, uh, really are not ones to put their money where their mouth is. Uh, you know, the everyday player wants kind of the easy fix. They want to buy a set of clubs.

Uh they want to watch a half hour, you know, video on T V or uh, you know, kind of get the the quick tip kind of stuff. They didn't want to do real hardcore work. And as it turns out, um uh I I did have a chance to solve my mental game issues. and started playing some professional golf. Um I had a weekend where I I shot sixty three, sixty-five, sixty-nine that really kind of opened my eyes to just how far I had come with my mental game. And and yeah, like I said, played some professional golf.

Didn't make any money, so I'm not really sure how how professionally I'd call myself, but

Uh it was right at that time that I met um uh a poker player uh on the golf course and that's kind of what jumped me into uh got me into poker. Awesome story. Well tell us a little bit about how that person you met who was a poker player themselves, how that kind of uh changed the game for you, like what happened from that point? I mean, what were some of the things that you picked up from this person? Like how did that sort of change your path?

Yeah, it's interesting'cause i I mean I I'm not sure and in fact I actually had worked with one poker player before that. It was who was a friend, but you know, he wasn't necessarily that serious. But I I say that because This particular guy, his name is Dusty Schmidt. Um he

was kind of like the perfect person, you know, you talk about good luck, perfect person for me to, you know, make make an entry into poker uh for several reasons. Number one, he actually was a former profession professional golfer. Uh, he was leading the the money list on a on a mini tour in California called the Golden State Tour.

Uh, he actually is a junior golfer at thirteen years old, uh, broke Tiger Woods' record in California for the most junior tournaments won in one summer. I think he won like thirty-five events. Um so the guy was was really talented and kind of working his way up.

Um and ended up having a heart attack uh at at twenty one or twenty two years old. Uh not from cocaine. I'm sure many people think are hearing that are gonna think that. But he had some kind of like um like aortic spasms or something. It wasn't sort of the traditional

um uh heart attack and and it basically just kinda derailed his career. His doctor said he couldn't do anything physical or anything, you know, really straining physically. So his golf career was over and he just uh happened to be friends with Casey Martin, who was a golfer and then kind of met another friend and who got him kinda into online poker and

That was uh I think back in 2005, 2006. And he uh when he and I met in 2007 was making uh between twenty and thirty thousand dollars a month was was an insane had an insane work ethic. And and so when I met him through through mutual friends on the golf course, um, he was having just massive, massive anger issues to the point where he was literally just like ripping his desktop computer out of the wall. He was you know, smashing his monitor, he was breaking mice. Uh I kinda joked because

Uh he basically paid for my sessions through the savings of his computer equipment. Uh not to mention how much money he made on top of it, but but he was perfect because he really understood golf. So he kind of knew how to speak to me, but then obviously understood poker at a high level and was able to share poker related concepts.

you know, in a golfing kind of way. And so he was able to kind of show me the ropes, help me to understand, you know, what the online poker world was really all about. And and so, you know, he and I got got started like in in uh October of two thousand seven.

Uh and it wasn't like I just jumped right into poker at that point. I mean, I really had no proof of concept. I had no way of promoting myself. Um so it was it was really at that point where I was I was kinda actually starting to play professional golf. And it was an interesting choice point because in February of that that next spring

Uh Dusty happened to be part owners in an online poker training site uh called Stocks Poker, who incidentally was was co-founded um by a guy who was formerly in the stock market.

where you get the name Stocks Poker. Uh he had the moniker of of Stocks Trader was his uh his online uh uh you know uh name. And and so this online training website was w the these training websites were just kinda popping up and and there was really nobody d and d d discussing the the psychology of the game and so Dusty, you know, gave me an offer to uh to participate in it'cause he was

you know, a big part of that website. So uh part of what what made my story with him so saleable was that like I said, he was making between twenty and thirty thousand dollars a month before he and I got it start got started.

And obviously there's a little bit of luck involved in poker, or I should say a lot of luck involved, but you know, when you play as much poker as he does, um, you know, around a thousand hands an hour, uh, you take luck out pretty quickly. Uh over the four months after he and I started, he made six hundred grand.

Uh so it was a pretty remarkable transition and and obviously he was pretty thankful of it. And, you know, as a thank you, I basically, you know, got a you know, this uh this opportunity to start participating

uh on this training site and so I made some videos and was interacting with people on the forums, answering questions and really trying to understand the kinds of issues that poker players had to deal with. And, you know, it wasn't very long before I had a roster full of of uh of poker players as clients and and kind of realizing that that continuing to play professional golf was actually the risky thing and and jumping into poker was was sort of the safe bet.

So I just want to jump back a little bit to something you said earlier in your response. And you said how this uh this dusty guy who you were working with was just super angry and, you know, ripping computers out of the wall, etcetera. Why was he so angry? Was it uh was it because of, you know, having that heart attack and having to uh leave his golfing career behind or what was the cause of of such Great anger issues.

A lot of it for him was was variance and and basically losing to what he saw were mediocre players. Um, you know, when you're competing uh against You know, one of the good things about trading is you don't always get to see your competitor. I realize that's not the case for everybody, especially big big options traders, but

You know, in many instances you're playing against the market. You're not playing against individual people. And so you can see how bad these people are. And and so that was that was very difficult for him to deal with uh something I call um entitlement tilt.

And then the other side of it was Injustice Tilt, where he just couldn't deal with the variants. I mean, you know, in in golf You know, i yes, there's there's definitely a lot of variants and and and you know, good luck or bad luck, you know, m much more so than golfers realize. You know, you get the occasional bad bounces, you get the gust of wind, you know, your ball plugs in the bunker.

Uh you hit a perfect drive, it ends up uh in a in a divot, you hit a perfect, you know, shot and all of a sudden it hits a car path and, you know, goes out of bounds. So there's the there's some crap that can happen. But in poker, it is so built into the fabric of the game that it was very difficult for him to, to make that mental transition. So we had to work really hard.

Um and and the thing is, like he's he's a very logical person or at least desires to be. So it was it was it was very easy for me to work with him. the instruction that I give very logical and and, you know, sometimes it seems very simple, but getting there is is not always obvious. So for him in particular, there was one one story where, you know, I was again I this is me kind of like really trying to understand poker.

And and at some point I said, like, listen, so like you're basically telling me that like you know that variance happens all the time, um, and yet it still pisses you off. So I was like, it's kind of like You know, watching a weather forecast.

And the weather forecast says, you know, today there's an eighty percent chance of rain and you go outside without an umbrella and then you get pissed off when it rains. It was kind of like what he was going through. And I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but it for him, it really just kind of made something click.

that he's like, yeah, like I'm getting pissed off about something that number one I have no control of. Number two, exists all the time. And so it's it really just becomes like a business expense. that that losing in these particular spots is is necessary, uh especially in poker where you're dealing with a lot of perception. You know, poker players make a lot of money, and not not all their money, but they make a lot of money because bad players think that they're good.

And so you're you're you're basically battling up against the perception of skill, not just somebody's actual skill. Cause if it's just about actual skill, then then poker would become a lot like chess where you have

this worldwide ranking system and for all intents and purposes, if you're within two hundred points of each other, uh, within a ranking, you know, you could be beaten by somebody with a lower ranking. But if I'm ranked, you know, if I have a rating of two thousand, you know, in chess, and and you have a rating of a hundred or or five hundred, there's never a scenario where where you're beating me. But in poker, you could get like literally the somebody who has no idea how to play poker.

Uh and and they can they can beat Phil Ivey. They could beat some of the best players in the world over a a small sample. Hm. Okay. So I mean how do you how do you move on past that? Is it just a matter of s kind of accepting the the reality of, you know, kind of what like what you just spilled out there or is there sort of something more Yeah, I mean it it differs for everybody. That's why I say it was in particular for him. But but what what has made me successful working with

golfers again, I still kind of still have some book some golfers, poker players and and traders, has been being able to understand a couple things. Number one, what is the faulty logic? that is blocking you from being able to internalize or accept uh a message like that.

Uh and then two, uh how are we gonna train it if it doesn't just sort of magically click in place like it it really only does for about you know five or ten percent of my clients? Um So basically that first part is is by far the most complex. Right. But it's important for everybody listening. to number one

get an idea of what the major, you know, kind of mental issues are that you're dealing with. You know, are you dealing with with anger? Are you dealing with anxiety or fear? Are you not trusting your gut? Do you lack discipline? Are you losing confidence? Or are you overconfident? Just a kind of a handful of the issues.

Um and then start to try to drill down and understand exactly what those issues are about. And and and there you you have an opportunity to start to figure out what the flaws are and then devise corrections to them.

And and the key in terms of the integration of those corrections is that they have to be applied in moments of high stress and pressure or or basically like like when you're trading or when you're playing poker or when you're actually competing on the golf course, right? You can't just Study your mental game off of the table or away from the action, uh, away from the trading day, and expect those uh corrections to be uh integrated.

Uh you have to have what I call an injecting logic statement. And you don't have to have it, it's just kind of a technical term that I use. Uh but basically the injecting logic statement is is. uh the correction to that underlying flaw. Right. So let's say for example, you know, you are struggling with a series of losses and all of a sudden now you start

uh locking up some profit, you know, prematurely in a trade. Uh you know, there's obvious r uh obviously good reason for it, right? You're trying to, you know, regain a little bit of confidence, regain some momentum in your way, but you you almost get pissed off at how much How much advantage or how much money you're giving up. So, what you'd want to try to do is figure out what the underlying cause is there. Is it some loss of confidence?

Right. And if it's some loss of confidence, then you'd come up with an injecting logic statement that would actually correct that confidence weak that that weakness in confidence. And then during the trading day, when you sense that your confidence is weakening or when you're when you're in a trade where you have an opportunity to lock some profit in, then you you take a couple deep breaths.

And the deep breaths are not a kumbaya meditative kind of thing. They are simply an opportunity for you to take a mental step backwards. to get your mind a little bit stabilized so then you can inject logic and have that logic actually impact your actions or your decision making. It's a bit like if you have a heated argument with a friend or a family member and it's just gotten so

you know, emotional that that it's just not productive anymore. So you literally step away, you go to another room, you go outside. And you cool off. So the deep breath or the t the couple deep breaths is is is just an example of that, right? It's not it doesn't have to be this meditative thing. Sometimes people get a little bit, you know, glazed over when they hear breathing or meditation. It's simply about

readying your mind to be able to to accept that logic and have that logic actually affect your decisions. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Now that was a really awesome answer, Jared.

Um, we're gonna go much deeper into this. I think before we do so though, it's probably a good idea um if I can just ask you to give just a general gist of poker, like what's the objective of poker? Because, you know, like myself I've never played poker, I've never sat down at a poker table, and I'm sure many listening to this are in a similar situation. So just so we don't get lost as we go a bit deeper into this, could you just give us a general gist of of what poker is as a game?

Yeah, sure. Um I mean poker is a game that is generally played for money. So, you know, many of you traders will will will appreciate that. And and like trading, it's a game that has many different uh variants to it. So you could play uh five card draw, which is a game where you're dealt five cards, uh, and then the draw part is uh there there may be a a round of betting.

Uh number one and then um you get to decide how many cards in your hand you want to keep. You like all five cards? Uh then you can keep all five if you if you want to get rid of two, then you can uh draw two more and get two new cards. Uh but you're basically trying to make uh a hand, right? And a hand could be uh you know, a a pair, uh three of a kind. Uh they could be a straight so, you know, four, five, six, seven Uh typically five cards in a row. So uh eight

Um uh a a flush would be all of the same suit. So there in poker uh or really in cards, you know, there's four suits, uh hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Uh so a flush would be five cards all of the same suit. Uh and then a full house would be uh having two of a kind and three of a kind in your hand. Uh then you've got a str uh four of a kind.

uh a straight flush, meaning that the cars are not only uh in the same order, you know, four, five, six, seven, eight, but they're also all of the same suit. Uh and that a royal flush is doing all that with um ten uh jack queen king and ace. And the way that I I um listed those are in order of strength. So the the hands that you make that are higher up on that list will beat the hands that are lower on that list.

So three of a kind uh beats uh two pair or or even a pair. So basically in poker, whether you're playing, you know, a five card draw or there's a there's one of the more popular versions is is no limit Texas Holdem. Uh that in that game you're dealt two cards and then there are five what are called community cards. uh that are that are uh laid out as the hand goes on. So in that in that game, uh and let's say it's a uh it's it's a table full of nine people, all nine people are dealt two cards.

Uh and then there's a round of betting. Uh and that betting in no limit hold'em can be any amount that you've brought to the table. So let's say the buy-in was a thousand bucks, the very first hand you play, you're dealt pocket aces, which is the best hand that you can have. And so you bet.

And somebody else raises you because they think they have a strong hand as well. Well now you have an opportunity to re-raise them and bet even more money. So let's say your initial bet was fifty bucks. They say, nope, I make it 150. And then you say, okay, nope, you know what? I'm gonna bet five hundred dollars.

uh or even go all in and say, you know, you're betting the remainder of your chips in front of you. Uh so the nine fifty that you had left. Uh and then that person has the opportunity to to either call you, call your bet, uh, or to uh to to fold. Now let's say they call and they had uh a pair of queens. Right. So now you're going now you're you're playing your your pair of aces

uh versus your queens, the the probability in that hand is obviously in your favor'cause aces are the most profitable hand. So y there's there are some charts that that people can look on online for this particular variant of poker. uh noem at hul Texas hold'em. And what you'll see are are basically hand strings.

And and so uh I don't know the exact probability, but um I think it's something like uh either three to one or four to one uh is the advantage for um aces versus queens in that scenario. Uh so I say that in part because Poker is a lot like uh it's a it's very it's a very mathematical mathematically driven game. There are statistics, there are odds, there's probabilities, and and it's your job as the poker player to understand those probabilities

and and understand how those probabilities are gonna change uh as the betting goes on. Uh and and and so just to finish up the description of this game. So my aces versus their queens, now what's gonna happen is the flop will come out.

And that means the first three cards of the community cards out of those five. And so now if if we weren't both all in and I didn't know what that person's cards were, let's say, um, you know, I I I called his ra re raise of a hundred and fifty dollars, uh, by t for example. Um and so now I would be I would have the opportunity to bet again.

And and so there's another round of betting after the flop. Then the turn comes out, which is the fourth card. There's another round of betting. And then the uh uh the river is the last card, and then there's another round of betting there. So that's that's one of I mean, uh maybe forty or fifty different variants of poker, or uh two including uh uh five card draw. Uh and and really, as I said, it it's a lot of statistically

statistically driven. Uh but there's obviously a lot of uh you know uh live interaction that goes on when you're playing live poker where you're trying to understand uh the psychology of somebody. Obviously there's a lot of bluffing involved. You know, as I think a lot of people tend to think of in poker, but uh but bluffing tends to be overestimated as being a big thing in poker.

by non-poker players. Bluffing by the professionals is something that they do, uh, but they don't tend to think about it as bluffing. They sense profitable opportunities by which to represent something uh that would appear to be a bluff, but is really something that they have determined is is, you know, positive EV that has a positive expected value uh over the long term making a tr making a play like that.

Uh and in particular, they're gonna look for uh weaknesses that a particular opponent is gonna have, and they're gonna work to exploit those weaknesses uh as best that they can. Um one sort of note i in my view I look at at poker uh kind of like Or I should say professional poker players. I look at professional poker players

uh kind of like the house, uh, you know, i in in a ca in any casino game. So you take uh blackjack for example, and let's say you're playing, you know, the house is playing blackjack against somebody that has never played before. They don't have you know, the chart that says kind of what the the statistics are to minimize the uh the edge that the house has. Um and so let's say the house in that interaction has a six percent edge.

you know, they will take that forever and that's why, you know, Vegas is such a uh uh why there are massive casinos built in the middle middle of a desert is because the house is always going to win in that transaction uh over the long term. And the same is true with poker players. Poker players are the house. they have an edge that is going to vary based on the the skill level of their opponents. And where I come in, it gonna it's gonna vary based on their skill level as it varies

you know, as I mentioned with Dusty or with other players, based on how well they're able to control their emotions uh and their mentality. So hopefully that was a good answer. Yeah, yeah. So just to summarize that.

Obviously this is a this is a card game. Um there's a lot of variants like you've already mentioned. Where do poker players actually get an advantage. You know, is it in the bet size? Is it in reading other players and and their ability to do so? Or is it their actual strategy or is it, you know, kind of a mix of both, like, you know, it is in trading.

Yeah, it's it's all of the above. Uh they will get it in every way they can. They'll get it in how long that they can play. So their their ability to to maintain kind of mental endurance. So, you know, you take a a recreational poker player and and they may be actually pretty decent. You know, but as the night goes on, they're gonna get tired and they're g their their decision making is gonna start to wane. And so

s you know, really good poker players are gonna be able to play at their best for longer. So not only are they better from the start, but then they're even even more even their their edge gets even greater. uh a as as the other player weakens. Uh they're better in in their understanding of the odds. They're better in understanding, you know, how other weak players think. And so, you know, poker players will kind of categorize weak players. You know, they call them fish.

You know, the the the whales are obviously the the big ones, you know, card sharks are trying to attack the fish. That's sort of the the the uh the common terms there. Um The the fish will have sort of different um they're different types of weak players. Sometimes players are weak passive, which is like the worst that you could be, meaning that you're gonna very often give up. two sh two signs of strength. So if I'm aggressive and and constantly re raising your bets.

then you might fold and we might not even get to the fifth card and I'm already winning. Cause as soon as you fold, you give up whatever's in the pot. Uh and so uh in those instances you know, me as the strong player, I'm just gonna keep re raising you until you show signs of strength. And when you do, then I'm gonna fold because you probably have a hand. And so poker player you know, really skilled poker players are gonna know kind of what general type of player you are.

And then once they zero in on what type of player you are, uh, they're gonna start to really under really know the nuances so that in certain situations. So as as the poker hand is being played, uh, you know, there are dynamics that that that you've gotta take into account. Like where are you sitting at the table? Right. So when you when you are raising early on in the betting process, right, you're one of the first people to act. Um that that's a sh that's generally a sign of strength.

Uh but let's say let's say of those nine people, you know, you're the seventh person to act and no one has acted before you. Now all of a sudden the hands that you can play, you know, are gonna go way down on that hand strength and you can raise into a pot trying to win some money without any without anybody um actually challenging you.

Uh so there are opportunities where where players can can take advantage of of weaker players in in pretty much every avenue you can look at. And and where I have really kind of come in and uh i is that there's h become less and less weak players. You know, the education has gotten stronger. Uh online poker to a degree is has dried up a little bit. Um, you know, in live poker it's still very, very profitable.

Uh but but really good poker players need to look for every edge they can. And so when their decision making is dropping, you know, they look to me to to help to maintain that. All right. Now I'm in really interested to know. Do the professional poker players that you coach think of poker as gambling as anyone else would? You know, it's it's a betting game, it's held in a casino. Most people are immediately gonna think of gambling. Do the professionals view it in this way still?

No, I don't I mean I d I don't know that they they they may have back in the seventies or in the eighties, um but I think in general if they think about it as as gambling um they're not really that good. Um I mean, to me and and the ways that I've discussed it with them, uh you know, gambling is is something that you're betting on where you actually don't have a skill advantage. or there isn't one that's known. Um

And and in some cases or more cases, it's it's where the skill edge is actually against you uh and you're gambling because there's the opportunity to make a lot of money, you know, with small amounts of bats. So why roulette is so popular. Uh So so no, they don't think about it that way. I think the the the stigma in general has decreased a lot.

um societally. Uh it still has a long way to go. Um, but yeah, I don't think they they view it um, you know, as gambling and I think they're Unfortunately, you know, having to work hard to convince, you know, family and friends that it's uh it's not something that they should be concerned about, especially when they're making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or uh or sometimes millions.

Right, right. Okay. So I mean it's fair to say that they look at poker as a business and they treat it like a business, yeah? They do, uh, for the most part. I mean, I think one of the things that I end up having to have a lot of discussions with, uh, certainly some of the younger players, is treating it more professionally. I mean, you know, you can think about some of them uh, you know, coming out of college playing poker. They've never had a real job. Um, they're super talented.

they they work their ass off for several years, grind their way up and and suddenly now have lots of money. And and so then their your work ethic starts to to decline. Uh, they start to party more, they start to travel more, they start to burn money, um, you know, and they kind of take it for granted. And so, you know, it's like like an athlete who you know, had never really had to work hard and and then suddenly is faced with a declining skill set.

And they've gotta now work their ass off again to regain some professionalism. and and not lose their their opportunity to to to continue to do great and and and win a lot of money or make a lot of money. Right, right. Okay. You know, really good answer again.

I I'm really interested to know like what is it about poker? Like why are you attracted to poker and why are so many others attracted to poker over other card games? I mean, is there an edge in poker which you can't find in um other card games or not to the same extent at least. And and by other card games you mean like other casino games or card games like Bridge or uh Jinn? Other casino games, yeah.

Yeah, so so the the what's nice about poker, right uh in a casino, uh the house is basically uh charging you rake. You know, it's like uh you know, some of the fees that you have to maintain your account. Uh, you know, there's

somebody charging you juice to operate your business. You know, you're not gonna get you're not getting a free ride. So the casino is there taking, you know, money out of every pot, every hand that's played, they take a couple they take some percentage. And that percentage Uh you know, varies based on how much money is on the line.

Uh so the casino is there making money that way, but they're just providing the opportunity for you to go play. Whereas with a casino game like uh uh you know uh uh Pie Gao or

uh or blackjack, the casino is there to to really profit from that game in particular and and the way the cards are played. And so, you know, to create an advantage in blackjack, y you have to be able to count cards and you have to have the the casino, you know, structure the game in such a way that allows you to take advantage of that that card counting ability, which is why people who do that really well get kicked out because that's how the casino makes money.

And if you're not uh if you're getting in the way of their ability to do that, then then you're gonna get kicked out, you know, as, you know, morally or ethically wrong as, you know, I or we may think that is. You know, the casino is is a is a private business and they do get to make rules as long as they're not breaking, you know, state laws or or or um governmental laws.

Um, so so in poker, right, the reason that there's so much money for you as the professional is because uh the same reason that there's so much money you know, as the casino operator is in in having uh you know, slot machines or or poker uh or or or you know any of the other um you know table games, which might even sometimes include you know, like Caribbean stud poker as a as a card game that they offer.

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So just sort of tying this back into trading now. You know, what are some of the most obvious crossovers that you see between poker and trading? Like I I know you obviously work with a lot of poker professionals. And you're also starting to work with uh some in the in the trading field as well. What are some of the the major overlaps that you've noticed? Yeah, I'd say...

And and to clarify too, I mean I I I I feel like I'm in kind of like the, you know, year two or three of of where I was with poker. So I do, you know, understand trading and kind of like I was in poker, I played poker as a kid, you know, understood the game a little bit.

But really understanding the high level nuances of of what traders go through on a on a day to day basis is something I'm still learning. So I I do profess some ignorance there, uh although I've been steadily, as you said, uh increasing the the number of traders that I'm working with. Um so th th the big crossover is just is dealing with variants, right? And and I think a lot of uh traders have difficulty dealing with that as well. In particular because

What makes trading, I think, far more complicated than poker is the fact that the game continually changes. You know, at least the rules of poker are fixed, you know, and and aside from any, you know, changes that might be made, you know, by a tournament director or by a c particular casino and how certain things are handled, you know, by and large the rules of the game are aren't aren't gonna change. But in trading,

you know, it becomes very, very difficult to know, you know, was this the right decision? Uh did I actually have uh some uh you know good risk reward here or probability of uh that that made the trade worthwhile or uh was that not the case? uh and and I was misreading the market because you know the game can t can can continually trade, uh continually change. Uh you know, the a lot of the traders that I work with um they are dealing with

uh or they're they're profiting in in very high volatile uh environments. And so, you know, for them, the last six months to a year has been somewhat challenging. Uh That being said, right, that that the adjustments that need to be made, you know, doesn't mean that their entire trading strategy goes out the window.

Uh but the ability to continually evolve uh is something that poker players need to need to deal with, something traders need to deal with, and and that challenges people's confidence. It creates frustration in that process.

Uh frustration when you're losing money uh is a is a big thing. Uh it it sometimes can create fear. Uh it sometimes can create overconfidence when you feel like you fit when you've kind of found something and and you get a little bit overconfident thinking that it's just gonna continue to work without

without adjustment. Um poker players and traders both deal with with losing stretches and down stretches. Uh they make tons of mistakes uh and and some people you know deal with those mistakes better than others.

They've got to deal with focus issues, boredom, you know, you're dealing with a a market that uh, you know, not a whole lot's going on and you end up start you end up starting to trade just because you're bored. You're looking for some action. In essence, at that point you're kinda gambling. Poker players do the same thing. Uh it's it's something called being card dead.

So you're just getting weak hand after weak hand and you just have to keep folding and folding and folding and you know, especially in live poker it can be brutal. Uh you know, in live poker you might play oh sorry, you might be dealt. you know, an average of about twenty five hands an hour and it's not uncommon for you to have to fold uh all twenty five.

Or if you do end up having a hand that you could play, have somebody instantly re raise you, but you're not you know, your cards are not strong enough where you can continue and have to fold, you know, soon after uh putting money in. So, you know, th those sorts of things can be problematic. Uh sometimes well not sometimes, but traders sometimes have difficulty transitioning their strategy.

from uh, you know, different markets. You know, if they they move from from one segment or one industry to another, uh, you know, that that difficulty sometimes is a a bit of of entitlement or overconfidence, thinking that they're The fact that they're profitable in one sector or one uh one variant uh means that they're automatically gonna be that way in others.

Uh poker players do that all the time. You know, they're doing great and no no limit hold'em. They start playing pot limit Omanhaw or they start playing uh, you know, uh PLO uh uh Deuce the Seven, uh another variant, and and and they think they're gonna be great at it. Um And they may well be against other players who know nothing. Uh, but uh that that sort of overconfidence can happen, um

uh sometimes uh uh poker players get get so angry when they're losing money uh that they'll jump up in stakes. Uh they'll start doing things that they know are not profitable, uh in essence trying to make their money back as quickly as they can. And and traders obviously do the same thing as well. Uh and in trading it can get uh, you know, really bad really quickly. Um, you know

I I think those are I'd say probably the biggest ones. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's really funny how much of an overlap there really is. I mean, Saturday night I caught up with a a few friends and one of them actually plays online poker. Uh takes it pretty seriously. and, you know, we were just having a conversation and just the amount of things that were just so similar between the two uh disciplines was was really crazy. I mean, it was almost as though

Um he was a trader, you know, it was we could just sort of keep that conversation going. It was um it was quite bizarre.

Uh yeah, so a lot of really great points there. And you know, we're starting to get into the emotional aspect of it. So, you know, this is one of the things you're an expert in is removing emotion from decision making. Um Talk to us a little bit about that. Like why would you want to remove the emotion and what's the benefits of doing so? I guess I should qualify it and say negative emotion. Um, you know

Or I s in in a sense, uh excessive emotion. You know, because you can be excessively positive as well, you know, uh almost too happy. uh too overconfident, too excited, uh can be problematic. Uh and the reason is because uh it's gonna impair your decision making. Uh that is not just a

a an opinion of mine. It's it's sort of a neurological reality. Uh and this comes from something some from a uh uh uh some research on on the brain and also a pattern that's been uh was was realized about a hundred years ago. uh in something called the performance stress curve. Uh and so putting those two uh concepts together, uh you have uh a process in the brain that many people many people think of as the fight or flight mechanism. Um but that really only really only kind of like

Uh oversimplifies what this reaction is doing. But the basic idea is that when your emotions will rise too high, They actually have the power to shut down higher brain functions. So people often think about their decision-making, right? The the thoughts that go on in their head. They think about that space in their mind in a way that is inaccurate.

Uh that that when your emotions rise, it actually starts to eat away at the number of things that you can think about and the strength of those thoughts to turn into action. So if you've ever if you've ever had a situation where like you know that you shouldn't not be exiting this trader, you should you know that you should not

be forcing, you know, a mediocre trade uh and and yet your hand still moves over and clicks uh you know exit or enter. And and and you're wondering like how the heck that can happen? Well it's happening because

the emotional system has become overactive and it's decreased the strength of your mind to take that thought and turn it into action. And and so that is the main sort of reason why we want to remove the emotion, uh, is is to be able to retain sort of full conscious control, uh, clarity of mind, uh, and then obviously, you know, precision in terms of execution.

Uh so this performance stress curve basically shows the relationship between it kind of looks like an upside-down U, right? If you s if you kind of think in that bottom left-hand corner of this of this graph. Uh in that scenario you have uh very little emotion um and your performance is also very low.

Right. So you could think about that as a scenario where you're super bored or you're just really tired. Right. Your performance is gonna be poor. Well, your performance is gonna be equally poor on the other side where your emotions are super high and your performance is also gonna be really bad. There you're you're very excited, right? You've made a ton of money and now you're gonna keep trading, right? Or you're you're super angry, uh, really fearful or or you know, greed has taken over.

Uh so in that scenario you're you're sort of equally as bad because the emotional system has done roughly the equal thing to your decision making process. Now as you kind of climb the hill in a sense to the peak in the middle, that's where your emotions are most balanced. And that's what we're after. That's the point where you're in the zone, where you're in that flow state or in peak performance.

That is where there's almost no friction from you being able to access the technical expertise that you have acquired over the years. matching it with your senses of the market and being able to create those intuitive reactions where you you kind of just know what's going on and you're able to make lightning fast decisions without any hesitation and as I said, without any friction. And so really what my job is about is

uh in essence removing those points of friction I kind of liken the mental game or what I'm doing in in my job to like the oil in an engine. Right? The engine is really what makes

uh, you know, you profit. That's your skill. And and and if you don't have enough oil, right, too little or too much emotion, then then the engine's either gonna overheat or it's gonna seize and uh and and obviously not perform well. But but when you have uh things just kind of humming, uh that that's where you're making the most money because your decision making process is at its peak.

Very good. You know, how do we get into a state where we're, as you called it, humming? Like what are some of the some of the exercises that you run through with the the players and the traders that you work with to kind of help them keep their emotions balanced? Yeah. So U i i to be fair to like like what I'm trying to accomplish with players, i it's not a simple thing, but it's also not overly complex.

And I say it's not a simple thing because part of what I've tried to do with my with my work has been not to take the sort of traditional sports psychology stuff and just kind of plug it into poker or trading or even golf. And and the reason I say that is because a lot of sports psychology will say Block out the emotion or try to use previous experiences where you've been humming or been in the zone as a sort of a reference point to try to recreate it today. And I don't think that works.

long term. It might work temporarily in the short term, uh, but something that we might not be able to prove is more than a placebo, right? Like a sugar pill that isn't really producing anything of real effect. It's just a temporary, you know, manipulation of the mind. Um and so so really what I'm after is isolating all of the specific reasons why your emotions are either going to be too high or too low.

Right. And so we look at at anger, for example, as as a cause of too high, or you know, a lack of focus or a lack of motivation as a cause of of it dropping too low. And we actually try to systematically go in and and and and understand why it is that you're getting angry in those spots, why it is that you're losing motivation or focus in other spots and and and put in specific corrections for those things.

And as a byproduct of making those corrections, you are automatically more emotionally balanced. It doesn't make doesn't mean that you're gonna be permanently emotionally balanced and and humming. because there's a constant evolution that e exists within your skill set, within your mental game. And so there's a constant need to be improving all aspects of your trading. Uh but at a at a minimum, right? Anybody that's listening right now, the first thing that you can do.

Uh and I think the most important thing to do is to start to study uh your own uh emotional reactions that you have throughout the day. Right. So often when I start working with new traders, uh not new traders, but new clients, uh their knowledge about their skill set Uh or about their emotional skill set is really poor.

Right. They they they'll come in saying, uh, you know, I I'm losing a bunch of money here. Um, I feel myself, you know, kinda hesitating, you know, I I'm forcing trades here, I'm uh losing focus here. But but when you actually start to break it apart, they don't really understand why. They don't know the specific situations in which it's occurring. They can't recognize the the the thoughts or the reactions that they're having in those spots.

And and I'm not saying that what they're coming to is is not something I can work with, right? It's a start, right? So so the the easiest way you can start doing this is to start by identifying the specific trading errors that you have. Okay. may give you an indication that there's some emotional reaction, whether too high or too low, that's present. And and when I say may, right, it's it's really important to know that sometimes

A trading error is simply a tactical one, right? I'm not gonna over uh uh overprioritize the importance of the mental game. But but here is where I can almost guarantee that a trading error is caused by a mental one. When you have continually made the same trading error year after year after year, and and you keep trying to learn more about the market.

or learn more about the the stocks or the uh the companies that you're following, you you think that the solution to that trading error is more technical knowledge. then you know that it's mental, right? Then you know that there is some anger, some hesitation, some lack of discipline that is present in that spot. So basically

uh y your C game, right? In in poker, uh people uh really just in sports, people think about their A game, right? But they don't often think about their C game, the the the the worst aspects of their decision making. That's a really important thing for people to begin paying more attention about.

What are the what are the situations in which you suck? Right. It's very easy to just say, oh, you know, that was just uh, you know, the market went crazy, you know, yada yada yada, I lost a bunch of money. Or To say, oh, you know, that only happens once a month, not a big deal. Right.

But the problem is that that by not fixing those mistakes, you are limiting your ability to continue to progress as a trader, not to mention the amount of money that's being lost there. So I know I I know I haven't gotten into really specific nuances about how to actually fix this stuff, but

Hopefully this framework is at least helpful to get started. No, I think that's a really good answer. And I mean maybe if you could just expand a little bit on, you know, something you said there about You know, one of the first things you should do is actually study emotional reactions and and really identify your trading errors. What's sort of like

How should someone actually go about that? Like are they supposed to keep a journal each day? Are they supposed to write this down as as things happen? Or like how do they how do they

keep track of this, you know, so if they were to work with someone like you, they can say, Well, these are the things I'm struggling with and kind of have something tangible that they can present. I mean, is there a is there a way that you'd suggest someone actually studies Their emotional reactions, as you called it.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the the key word is study, right? And so that you're not assuming that it's gonna be knowledge that you're gonna produce instantly in one day. Right. I think that's that tends to be the thing that people get a bit frustrated with in this process is they they sort of want to kind of know immediately

And don't realize that that under like the mental game or mental skill is very much like technical skill. Right. And any skilled trader is not going to assume that their technical knowledge is going to appear instantly. So so you do have to kind of work at this day by day. So here are a few suggestions on how you can do that.

Uh number one, yes, you can take uh notes during the trading day. If you're a trader who trades, let's say, less than, you know, 20 to 30 trades a day, then you've got ample opportunity throughout the day to take, you know, 30 seconds. To write down the thoughts, like the specific thoughts that you had in your head around the time that you made that trading mistake, the emotional reactions, if you sense.

You know, something's going on. If you uh sometimes those emotions are felt in your body, you might be, you know, clenching your fist when you're you're angry, your face might get tense, your shoulders might get tense.

you know, you might be kind of leaning into the into the monitor uh or into your desk. You might be leaning back if you're, you know, kind of dismayed. Um so you're kind of looking to try to try to like fully kind of map out the emotional reactions, uh, the behavioral reactions, uh, and and obviously the trading mistake and the thoughts that you had around that trading error.

uh as a way of kind of mapping out each one of those problems. Now if you trade at a at a very high frequency throughout the day. uh then what you're best doing is making sort of just a a very, very quick note, maybe like a timestamp uh where you whereby you can go back at the end of the day uh to to take uh a a greater look at it.

Now, in either scenario, I think you also want to ideally be expanding upon uh those notes that you're taking during the trading day afterwards. So, you know, if you want to think about this as a as a journal, if you want to think about it as a log, uh

Where you're just taking data down. I mean, it could be as simple as just a Word document. You just open up and uh date it uh and keep track of all the mistakes. And then maybe once a week you go back and and review them. And and at that point you're looking for patterns.

You know, my job is not that much different than your job, right? Especially those who are technical traders. You're looking at patterns within the market uh to understand where you have opportunities to exploit and make money. You know, for me, I'm not looking to exploit my clients.

But I'm looking to exploit opportunities whereby their knowledge is lacking and and and be able to to to create some some corrections. So so the first thing you're trying to do is is really create a map because sometimes You know, traders, poker players, golfers, who you know, you name it. Um, even if they do have an idea of what what their mistakes are or even what the emotions are, uh sometimes their their uh priority is is off.

Right. And so they kind of come in saying, Yeah, you know, I've got this this fear issue. Uh, but it turns out that that this this anger issue, you know, it it it happens more frequently. Um and and and when it happens it it tends to be more costly. But the fear to them is just more obvious because it's it's more kind of out of the norm for what they think is appropriate.

anger for them just seemed to be more more normal. So it wasn't as much noticed until we had really got to talking about it. So so by by looking and reviewing at your note taking, you know, once a week or once a month or every several weeks, whatever frequency seems to make sense for you.

you can start to look at the patterns and understand how costly the errors are that you're making. And and look, there's a lot of good advice out there. I mean, people can pick up my book, they can pick up other books. You know, and start to try to find solutions to these mistakes. And and and very peop you know, and and for sure people are going are going to be able to to make those corrections based on some of that advice out there.

you know, where where coaching might come in is is when when you just get stuck and you're unable to fix a problem that, you know, is very costly. But if it's not that costly and it's not happening that often, then, you know, you just keep working on it. But that that awareness is at least going to give you the opportunity

uh to make a correction. Now a lot of these mistakes you've kind of outlined here, or not mistakes, but um challenges, I guess is probably a better word. Do the professionals have these same challenges throughout their their career, you know, once they reach a certain point, like are these ongoing challenges that constantly need attention or is it sort of like

Once you kind of cross over from what might be called an amateur to a pro, do a lot of these challenges become less prominent? Like how does that work?

Yeah, I'd say that they change throughout the course of a career. I mean I think um you know, you may solve an anger issue, uh, that that existed when you were an amateur um uh or, you know, and then when you become a professional then then fear becomes, you know, a bigger issue because now your livelihood is on the line and maybe you have a family and

you know, so beforehand it w there wasn't as much on the line, now there is and so, you know, the nature of the game changes. So the way that I would say it is that that like the mental game is always an important thing to to be aware of, to be thinking about, to be focused on as a point of improvement. uh as an appoint as a as a point to be improving, you know, your decision making. Um but the specific things that you may need to deal with within this sort of framework

you know, may change. So, you know, you it may go from, you know, having to deal with anger issues to then maybe having to deal with motivational issues. Maybe you have so much success because you solve your anger that now you're kind of You know, you're achieving a lot of your goals and and you know, sometimes

People forget to set new goals. You know, and and so they lose motivation for a as simple a reason as that. And and that's happened to certainly poker clients of mine and as well as trading clients. Uh so so you think of it more of as as the evolution, but I I can't say that there's any particular pattern that exists that is sort of purely amateurist type mistakes.

uh and purely professional ones. Uh people are people and and they kinda w come into an endeavor, you know, with a set of issues that they're bringing from other things in in their life. And and those issues tend to play out, you know, in that environment, you know, in poker or trading or golf or et cetera. Um and and you know, where they tend to not get fixed, they tend to kind of remain and and and linger. And then there are sometimes

you know, certain ways of thinking that you bring from everyday life uh into trading that that are kind of antithetical or don't don't match with the realities of it. For example, you know, understanding of variance, right? I I I don't typically think of that as like a mental game issue, you know, per se, as much as it is as a f as a flaw in your technical understanding, because it would be like a business person not understanding, you know, their expenses.

I mean, that's that's like a fundamental component of being a successful business person, right? You've got to understand where your income is coming from and you gotta understand, you know, what your expenses are and where that's coming from. So if you don't understand variance, then you're not really understanding a fundamental business expense. So I tend to think of that a less as a mental game issue but

But my point in general is that that, you know, these issues will tend to just evolve over time. I mean, I had a a conversation with with one of the top poker players in the world recently and and and we were discussing something that was very, very similar. To what uh, you know, weaker poker players deal with, even successful ones, which is, you know, self-criticism over mistakes. You know, this player's mistake.

the the weaker players would love to make mistakes that good. You know, but but the but his di his difficulty dealing with mistakes you know, it was causing a lot of frustration. It was limiting limiting his learning uh and it was affecting his overall mood and mentality and the frequency with which he was gonna play and you know, it wasn't costing him as much when he actually got there, but

you know, it was something that he didn't want to keep around. So so that dealing with mistakes was something that he had to deal with and and something that that, you know, much weaker players have to deal with too. So i it's much more about evolution than it is about

uh uh you know sort of pure you know c kind of categories of where they are. Yeah. And I understand that one issue that affects uh traders or poker players of all levels is is something you refer to as till. Would you mind sort of describing uh what is tilt and how to recognize when you're actually, as you call it, on tilt? Sure. So So tilt, um there's a there's kind of a couple definitions for it. One was the definition that that was there before I came into poker, which was

Uh tilt was pretty much any reason for you to play suboptimally, right? So you're you're making decisions that are less than what we you'd you would consider to be your best. Um and so upon studying, you know, poker players and their descriptions of tilt, you know, for several years, I really realized that. you know, eighty plus percent of their descriptions tended to be about them getting angry and making bad decisions. And so for me, tilt is just another word for saying anger.

For a lot of poker players, they'll say, you know, tilt is anything, as I said, less than playing your best. But what if you're drunk? You know, what if you're tired? Uh what if you're fearful? Uh you know, all of those reasons are gonna be are are gonna need unique solutions to them. So uh, you know, anger i is is really the biggest one. Um in trading, um I would call the equivalent uh greed and fear. uh and s maybe to a lesser degree uh uh uh you know loss of uh of discipline uh

they tend to be the place the the words that traders use most often uh to describe their mental game issues when I don't think that that they're actually experiencing greed nor fear or or or a lack of discipline um that it's something more than that. But Within poker, uh, what I did was break down uh seven different types of of tilt or seven different types of anger uh that would exist. One was running bad tilt.

Uh which meant, you know, players were losing for several days in a row, sometimes weeks or months, and and they were, you know, just getting crazed as a result of it. Uh and and the the solution to running bad tilt um has to do with the understanding that emotion accumulates over time. Okay. The brain has a mechanism by which it can in essence digest emotion, right? So you have

A stressful day, you got angry one day. Uh, and so, you know, you go to bed not in the greatest of moods, but you wake up the next morning and you feel fine, right? Nothing bothering you, you feel it's like a like a normal day. Well where where did the emotion go? Right. In essence, the brain has like a stomach that digests the emotion, much like it would uh the actual stomach digests food.

Uh but what happens is when there's like a really emotional day, you know, or then then, you know, you might go to bed and your sleep might even be disrupted, uh, in part because your brain is digesting all that. And then when you wake up the next morning you know, you don't feel quite right. It's almost like an emotional hangover, so to speak. And so when you start that trading day or the poker player st you know, goes down and sits to play poker again.

You know, they're not starting with like a like an empty cup in a sense, right? They're their tilt threshold, their threshold by which the anger is going to Affect their decision making has been lowered, right? Or their emotional level has already risen, however you want to think about it. And so, in essence, it's going to take less. tilt inducing stuff. to get them pissed off to the point where they're gonna make bad decisions.

So so dealing with that accumulated emotion becomes really, really important. And so for traders who have this particular issue, one of the best ways that you can uh start to uh break apart that accumulated emotion is to do some journaling. Uh is to write.

And and the writing, the purpose of it first and foremost is to get out of your head what those emotions are, right? You go have a couple beers at the end of the day, right? You're gonna feel better, right? But are you gonna actually get rid of the emotion? Probably not.

Right. So venting to other people, you know, has a way of getting the emotion out, but it's also not as productive. So keeping things inside is is not a great thing. When you vent on paper, What you what you do is you give yourself a record of the emotional reactions that are occurring.

And that becomes helpful when you go back and look at it a day or two later and you see like what the hell is going on here? Why am I getting so pissed off? And that's an important question to ask, regardless of the mental game issue that you're dealing with, in particular we're talking about tilt. Why is it that I'm getting so pissed off here? Is it because I just can't deal with losing this many days in a row?

And and so then you're able to start to solve things. But at a minimum, you know, you can start to deal with running bad by by just getting that emotion out and minimize the accumulation day by day so that you can give yourself a chance to kind of reset. Uh the next type of tilt I I talk about is called hate losing tilt. I should have actually called it competitive tilt in retrospect because, you know, look, traders, poker players, you got you're gonna lose a lot.

Right. And and and for people who are competitive, uh, especially those who are athletes or were in any kind of forms of competition earlier in their life. they they have more control in those other avenues. They've been more successful.

And and so they're have more control over winning and losing. So not only do they hate losing, but now they've entered a a profession where losing is built into the fabric of it and it just pisses them off. There's no way around it, right? There there's a lot of competition. Well. What you have to do there is have to really start to understand exactly what it is that you're competing for. You know, and and that's how you can start to correct it and and reframe the nature of the competition.

Right. And and so, you know, you can look at at your goals as being something that you're competing for. Uh sometimes confidence or good feelings, emotions, you know, you're competing for. Uh and when you start to understand exactly what it what the nature of the competition is. You can start to round out some of the edges that will create those problems. Um, injustice tilt, entitlement tilt are two ones that I've mentioned already today. Um mistake tilt. Uh revenge still.

Kind of always a fun one. Uh, you know, in in poker that would be uh a particular player is is just constantly beating you. Uh or they say something or do something that kind of just annoys you and then they and then they beat you. uh or a particular player who has just gotten the best of you, you know, time after time after time and they, you know, n now just hearing their that person's name gets you pissed off.

Uh, you know, as as I mentioned, right, trading is is a little bit less personalized than poker is. Uh, but revenge trading definitely exists, you know, and in a way of trying to get the market back for screwing you, right? So it may be less about a patr a person uh and more about getting the entire market back. Uh and then the last one is called desperation tilt. Uh and this is where uh I I would say there's there's a line drawn between a performance issue

Right. Versus an actual gambling problem. And this is an a a very important distinction to make for some traders and poker players to make. Right. A a performance issue means that that what you're doing uh and actually let me describe first. So desperation t tilt basically means that when when you are so desperate to recapture your lost

uh your losses that you'll pretty much do anything, right? You're gonna increase your bet sizing, you're gonna end enter trades that you have no you're gonna start placing bets in in industries or in uh in names that you don't even know anything about, right? It's it becomes more pure gambling in a sense. Uh that desperation to win

overrides all logic and you do a lot of stupid shit that you're regretful of uh, you know, the next day or even later in that day. Uh when it's a performance issue, you can handle those losses. You can handle all the dumb stuff you've done. When it's a gambling issue, now you're betting with life savings. Now you're betting with with money that you borrowed from friends. Now you're now your your life is becoming impaired.

Uh and that's where you've got to really look in the mirror and say, you know, do I actually have skill in this game or am I just a degenerate gambler? And and Fortunately, most of my my clients uh have been in the in the former category where it's a performance issue and we are able to correct it. But if somebody has, you know, a a a gambling problem, uh like I mentioned, I I refer them to somebody locally'cause that's not something that I I work on.

Yeah, okay. So I mean, you know, a lot of these kind of characteristics or personality traits or issues, whatever you want to call it, how much of this do you think is sort of tied back to or as a result of earlier experiences in life? I I think uh a handful of it is. Um you know, not all of it. I think there are Um there are certain like so I had a a trading client recently who, you know, just had a really chaotic relationship with it with his father and his mother.

Right. And had been in therapy before, thought he had resolved these issues and and uh, you know, comes to me several years later really struggling to be consistent, right? Making money, losing money, knows he's got an edge in the market, but But when the losses start to mount, it's like something just totally hijacks his brain uh and he's uh unable to to maintain control and so the losses mount and kind of override whatever whatever gains have been made.

You know, there's a clear cut case where, you know, prior experience there's there's almost like a larger version of accumulated emotion at play here where emotions from earlier in your life are triggered, you know, during the trading day, right? So you're not really kind of dealing with a fair situation, right? The emotions from years ago kind of live in your mind and they get triggered and quickly flood your ability to think clearly and make make clear decisions.

But then we have another set other other sets of issues like, you know, perfectionism or high expectations or uh you know difficulty handling mistakes or some illusions of control, illusions of of permanence. that, you know, certainly, you know, emerged through our lives or through their lives, um, but never really were were that problematic, right? There there was never something in their life that they took as seriously as trading or as poker or as golf.

And so it's in that stress that these sort of flaws and in in our psyche and in the way that we approach learning, the way that we approach performance, and the way that we even think about trading, you know, start to emerge, right? So, you know, sometimes, especially for those traders that have been around for ten, fifteen years.

You know, sometimes you're making trading mistakes, sometimes you're making psychological mistakes in regards to trading because of something that you learned, you know, ten or fifteen years ago. And it turns out that that knowledge is still kind of lingering in the back of your mind and just pops out. at in inopportune times. Right. So one example would be, you know, thinking that

that emotion is the cause of your problems. And so you've sort of blunted or or like try to deny or avoid, you know, the anger that you've had. So you just kinda keep stuffing it away and and suppressing it, trying to avoid it. And and and so that way of thinking, you know, causes these big blow ups, right? But it's not like you have like major flaws that are causing that anger. It just means that you haven't actually dealt with it all these years and and it just keeps cop popping back out.

you know, and the flaw regarding that anger might be cause might be due to to your your weaknesses in understanding variants or your weaknesses in uh in understanding, you know, what you can truly expect of yourself uh or what you can expect of the market. Uh so sometimes it is early and sometimes it's more of these sort of pure performance issues like I mentioned. Yeah, right. Okay.

Some of the things we've talked about here, I'm thinking, might be a little bit overwhelming to someone who's just come into trading, you know, might have only been trading for let's say six months. At what point in in someone's trading career is psychology really important? Like when should they start to pay attention to it. Like is it is it worthwhile getting stuck into it right at the beginning? Is it best to do it maybe once you have developed a strategy of some type?

Um is it important when you're scaling up? Yeah, yeah. No, I I I it's a really good really good question. And I think um I think psychology in the bigger scale has been oversold to a lot of people. I don't think it will ever be more important than your tactical knowledge.

So the shorter answer is, you know, if you're somebody that doesn't have any major issues, you know, from earlier in your life, then then psychology is not important to you where it is at a very minimal scale, only something maybe in the neighborhood of like, you know, five percent of your time.

You know, ought to be devoted towards it until you've developed a a profitable strategy that you can prove. Because at at that point, If you're if you're getting angry Um you know, it it's it's more likely that your anger is a symptom of maybe high expectations of yourself or something that is going to be related to, you know, earlier in your life, not something that emerged from trading because you're not good enough yet for that to occur.

Um, you know, so y so you're basically looking at the prior issues uh as as occurring there and that's not a trading thing, right? So you may need to deal with some some psychology, but don't do deal with it within the context of trading per se. Right. Wait until you've developed a a winning strategy to do that.

And and so then then the question becomes like once you've established that strategy and you can and you can know that yes, this is a trading error that is not being being made because I actually don't know any better, right? I'm not losing discipline

because I don't know better. I'm not I haven't proven the strategy. Sometimes people, you know, lack discipline because they're not certain of what their strategy is. How how can you be disciplined about something that you're not certain what the rules are? Uh you can't be, right? Discipline is is something that is measured up against your goals, measured up against the points of responsibility that you're taking.

Uh and so without without that being super clear, y it's impossible for you to be perfectly disciplined. So so that's an example where you know, trading knowledge is really important to have. And so then once you start to see that your trading errors, like I mentioned earlier,

are are are just not getting fixed, right? That there are certain things that are recurring. You're recognizing that, yeah, I keep making this same kind of mistake. I'm I'm I'm exiting this trade too early. I'm, you know, in the market more often. You know, I'm just sort of

you know, just uh uh overtrading because I'm bored. Uh and and it's happening too often. That's when you know that the mental game uh or psychology is becoming more important and that can happen at any point. Now you mentioned sizing or or scaling up. Um This is a really important concept.

It's it's kind of like moving up the ranks, you know, in baseball or, you know, the difference between uh, you know, uh uh competitive sports played in the regular season, you know, whether we're talking about uh, you know uh uh football or American football or uh basketball, golf, right r kind of the regular season stuff. versus the playoffs. And then the playoffs versus, you know, the World Cup final, the A you know, the Super Bowl or the Masters, the back nine on Sunday kind of thing.

You know, as you increase those uh or in essence, scale up. You have Greater likelihood for your weaknesses to get exposed, whether they be tactical or mental. And and too often people kind of fail to consider that reality when they are sizing up uh or uh you know, as poker players would do as they jump up in stakes as well. Um and and it's important to have a a good understanding of what those are. Right. And so what I what I I coach my players.

uh or traders to do is to always understand what their C game is, always understand what their bigness biggest weaknesses are. And when they're sizing up, when they're jumping up in stakes, when they go and compete in some bigger events.

that they first and foremost have a really good strategy, one that they know very well for correcting those mistakes, because those are most likely going to be the things that are going to trip you up. And if you can actually make the corrections to those mistakes, In those instances when you're sizing up, then you actually go a long way to really internalizing or mastering the corrections to those mistakes. So that they can actually go away and not become uh problems anymore.

Mm-hmm. Okay. No, that's really well said. And I think that's that's a really honest answer as well, especially coming from, you know, someone like yourself who's working in the field to say that it's maybe not the most important thing. to be focused in on right at the very beginning. So no, I I respect that. I think sorry, I just have to jump in one more point.'Cause I think I think there's a lot of places that uh

that that like psychology is oversold. Like when I got into golf, right, golf was ninety percent mental. Like that was the thing that people said. And so it just made intuitive sense to me. Like, well, why isn't everybody not not focus on the psychology thing. Well it turns out it's not that important, right? How you swing the golf club is the most important thing. How you make decisions at the trading t uh you know, in and trading is the most important thing.'Cause if if

psychology was ninety percent of the game, then the Zen masters, the Buddhist monks, the you know, the meditation teachers, look, they should be the best golfers and the best traders. You know, the Dalai Lama should be a great golfer, but You know, they're not because they don't have the technical skill. Yeah, yeah. That's uh that's really well said.

Uh let's just do a couple questions uh that came in through the Chatwith Traders Facebook group. Uh for anyone listening, if you want to join the Facebook group, it's totally free, of course. Uh chatwithraders.com. Ford slash Facebook and just follow that link and hit the join button and I'll of course uh let you in. But yeah, I posted in the group to say that.

I was having you on and if anyone had any questions for you. So we'll just take just a couple of those. Um one of the one of the first ones here is would playing poker help as a developing trader? So for someone who hasn't played poker, has no poker experience, is it going to be beneficial for them to learn it, learn the game in order to become a better trader?

I I I guess it would depend on how how long they've been trading. It sounds like um Uh they're fairly new to trading, so I would say no because it's just gonna be more of your time divided. Um I mean if you're a seasoned trader uh and and you have an interest in poker, then uh I can't see how it could hurt at that point. You know, uh think of it like cross training, you know, football players playing basketball, basketball players uh

you know, playing soccer, uh or or or whatnot. Um so there you know, there is that that cross training effect that can occur. You can learn things from in different ways but Uh I certainly wouldn't advocate for people to split their time up because you only have so much of it.

Another one here is uh I guess this is probably more for intraday traders. So guys who might be sitting in front of the screen for maybe eight hours at a time, uh, with pretty hot you know, who need to be alert and aware of what's going on. What tips can you give them for maintaining concentration uh throughout the trading day? Yeah. So I I would start to number one, um, spot the trends in where those dips are occurring'cause it's gonna occur in some pretty predictable patterns.

you know, the dips may occur because the the market just kinda gets flat for half hour, an hour and so after ten minutes your your attention seems to lag. Uh it might occur after a big loss or a big win. Uh it might occur predictably at eleven A. M. you know, every day. Uh so once you have an un understanding of the of that pattern, uh you can start to understand again well what's occurring there, right? If it's the eleven A. M. dip, then maybe it's something physical. Maybe you're

you know, you're hungry. Uh maybe you're not drinking enough water. Uh maybe the caffeine from the morning has worn off and you need to drink more of it, which I'm not something something I'm advocating for. But but you know, you need to do need to do something physical to boost your physical energy. Uh and and so your your solution there again, um

when when we're talking about boosting uh attention and focus, uh, from a psychological standpoint, we are mostly focused on goals. Okay. Goals define the direction of our focus and the intensity of that concentration uh and and and uh uh can be dictated or or corrected when you sort of reconnect

uh to your goals. It's kind of like like an athlete who a commentator might say, you know, is digging deep, right? There's moments where the momentum has kind of shifted against them and they dig deep and pull out you know, uh th their uh uh some strong performance uh thereafter. I w what's happening when they're digging deep? I I think they are reconnecting to why it is that they they care so much.

So as a trader, what what I would suggest doing is writing down your short term goals and and or your long term goals, whichever one you think is gonna give you that little boost of inspiration. And so You know, number one, when you're able to recognize that your focus is is d is dropping. Uh it's important to act at that point, right? So when I was discussing earlier that performance stress curve.

The farther down you fall, whether your anger is is rising too high or in this case, your focus is dropping too far, the farther you fall on either side, the harder it is to climb back up to the top. The quicker you can catch yourself. the easier it is to climb. And it's just it's just pure distance, right? It's it's like if you're climbing up a mountain and you fall, you know, ten feet versus a hundred, right? You're gonna obviously climb up faster. So that's the idea here.

spot the trend quicker and then in those in that moment take a couple deep breaths. And remind yourself of your goals, perhaps even read them out loud. And in that moment, start pushing yourself to maintain focus, much like you would push yourself if you were in the gym trying to lift more weight, right? The gains that exist or that occur when you're in the gym occur when you actually have to force something, right? If you only do what comes easily in the gym, you don't get stronger.

So if in this case you're trying to increase your mental capacity, your your your endurance or your focus. You've got to push yourself. And you've got to push yourself in those moments. Those are your weak spots. Uh and and and that that process is how you can push yourself in a way that's uh gonna get you more focused. Now, one last piece here, which may be maybe really helpful, right? Just forcing yourself to focus more doesn't automatically mean that you're gonna make sound trading decisions.

So what you may want to do is look for the typical mistakes that you would tend to make at that time. Right. If it's purely, yep, I'm just kind of dial-toned and I'm not even really reading the market that well. Well You're not uh you could you could autopilot the market, right, to a certain degree, right? If if there were huge edges to be seen, you're gonna spot them, you know, uh just by sitting there, right? It becomes more of like the nuanced stuff that you miss.

And so you want to come up with a couple of reminders of key things that you ought to be focused in on, you know, at that time. So it's Recognize that your focus has dropped. Take a couple deep breaths. Remind yourself of your goals, push yourself to be more focused, and then remind yourself of a couple technical reminders so that you can actually make some some sound decisions. Really great advice. So that was that was a really phenomenal answer.

Um, just one last question that also came through in the in the Facebook group. What are your thoughts on meditation? I think you're probably the right person to ask about this, seeing as you're in the the psychology realm. What are your thoughts on on meditation? Yeah, it's a it's an important uh question and I'm I'm glad it got brought up because uh meditation is something that's taken off uh recently, mindfulness, uh, and I think for good reason, but like a lot of things, it can be oversold.

So meditation um can be really good to help to build mental strength. uh uh in essence like uh control of your mind. Uh it can be really good for gaining self awareness. So the thing that the task that I was asking people to do earlier You know, it allows you to create greater presence, allows you to sort of like a look inward and understand your thoughts better, understand your emotional reactions better, understand what's triggering your emotional reactions.

Um beyond that, the way it gets oversold is that people use it as a solution to their anger problems, to their fear, to their, you know, lack of discipline. And

In general, it's not, right? If you're using meditation in that way and you're also, you know, doing some direct psychological work on your anger, then then yes, it's it's totally appropriate. But But you don't want to use meditation as a as a covering, as like a a way of avoiding or blocking out your anger, because it's not going to solve it.

uh as deeply as it needs to be to the point where it it it disappears for that particular reason. So you have entitlement tilts, right? Or or you know, you have a difficulty dealing with long stretches of losing. Well, once you understand what that difficulty is. then making that correction is going to fundamentally alter your reaction to those situations in the future. It it's kind of like like taking a bomb and diffusing it. The bomb can still be there, but it's not gonna actually blow up.

Right. Whereas meditation almost like like puts sand over the bomb so now it becomes a lot harder for it to get triggered. Uh but but but ultimately in the long run, that's going to limit your upside mentally because you're not actually really growing. You're just growing mental strength. You're not actually resolving problems that are going to free up mental space. And and just to clarify that last point.

When you have these mental issues kind of running in the background, right, and they are are unresolved, they're not solved, they're just blocked out, protected, avoided, whatever. It's kind of like your computer with programs running in the background, right? So so all of a sudden your memory, you know, your resources are being consumed, but nothing's open on the desktop, right? So your computer is not gonna function quite as crisply, not as sharply.

You know, things might be a little bit slower in spots. That's the consequence when you don't resolve mental game issues. And frankly, it's the same consequence when you don't resolve technical issues, right? Your C game. Right. So that's why it's so important to become aware of them and correct them directly. And and meditation can be a tool in in the process of that, but it is not generally a solution in itself.

Awesome. Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation, Jared. I mean, I've I think a lot of what you've you've you've shared with us is is really good uh insight. You know Uh me personally, I think, you know, s there's a lot of psychology stuff out there I don't really relate to too well. Um, I find it a little bit wishy washy, but I mean that's just me personally. But I think like what you've

spoken about here is um, you know, really uh tangible if that's the right word. You know, I think it's it's really sound advice. So no, I really appreciate you for coming on. Thanks a lot for doing this. Absolutely, Aaron. I I appreciate that feedback'cause that's you know, frankly, I was I was a consumer like that too, so I've kind of made my program the the way that you describe for for, you know, personal and and professional reasons. Yeah, no, that's really cool.

Where's the best place that uh listeners can go to find out more about you? Yeah, they can go to my website, Jared Tendler dot com. Uh they can follow me on Twitter uh at Jared Tendler. If they want to check out my poker website, it's uh Jared Tendler Poker dot com. Uh and I'm also on Facebook, but primarily just for poker. I don't use it a ton. Uh it's uh Jared Tendler Poker.

Okay, and you've also got a couple books out as well, don't you? Do you want to share those? I do, yeah, yeah. So I've got uh uh the the mental game of poker uh one and two. Uh the first book uh covered the main mental game issues, uh tilt or anger. uh fear, uh motivation issues and confidence issues. Uh and then the second book dealt more with with uh peak performance or the zone, uh got into uh really efficient learning. Uh over the years I've had to become an expert in learning uh because

uh to correct your mental game issues is a learning process. So Uh there's a lot of information about there in there to actually improve your your your learning efficiency. Uh it get and then it also gets into decision making, uh, goal setting, uh, focus and and mental endurance. So it's kind of like the

you know, get rid of the crap in your game and then, you know, volume two is well, let's see how good you can become. Uh and and I will say too that the uh the books are available both in soft cover uh ebook and also audiobook. And the audio book you can get for free. Uh and there's information uh about how to do that on uh Jared Tundler Poker dot com uh backslash free. Basically you just sign up for a a free account on Audible.

And and you can get your first book for free and uh make it my book. Awesome. Okay. Well I'll link to that in the show notes. Uh not that, both of those. And um you've also got a podcast as well, don't you? I do, yeah. Yeah. But I kinda got bored of having the same conversations with professional poker players. So in the last uh

you know, eight months, uh eight to ten months I've started expanding it out and, you know, interviewing, you know, kind of mass market authors. Like I had the the author of a book, uh, Deep Work, uh, Cal Newport, who uh wrote a book that I highly recommend about about focus and and depth and and work. uh on the show and there's been authors uh or or you know professionals like that like that in kind of all walks of psychology. So uh yeah, that's on iTunes and and uh on on both websites.

Awesome, very cool. Well I'll of course include uh links to everything we've just mentioned here at chatwithraders dot com so you can find everything there in one place as well. Uh Jared, once again, man, thanks a lot for doing this. I I truly appreciate it. Absolutely, Aaron. It was great uh great to talk with you. Thanks for having me on. You've reached the end of this episode of Chat with Traders, but rest assured there are more Market insight and zero.