Unpopular Opinion: Mental Game in Poker Isn’t Really That Important

Mental Game is a Shiny Object

On February 20th, 2026, Marc shared his thoughts on mental game in poker on X (Twitter), starting with the phrase we used for the subtitle of this section:

“Feels good to work on. is probably the 9th most important thing. 

Dialing in a repeatable thought process, getting fast at ranging, thinking 3 steps ahead…that’s what actually moves the needle. not journaling about how your last bad session made you feel.

Look, not saying mental game isn’t important in other aspects of life. I went to therapy for years and it completely changed the trajectory of my life.

When it comes to poker, though? Feels great. Doesn’t address the real issue.”

Another professional poker player and coach Uri Peleg partially agreed with Marc:

“I’ve found there to be huge variability in mental game. 

For some it’s the biggest thing holding them back and for some it’s a non-issue.

I do agree that as you gain confidence in how you play and what you’re doing, join a community etc, this kind of thing naturally improves.

These days mental game coaches often help you a lot with aligning motivation, nutrition, sleep, priorities etc to optimize what you get out of poker. 

When to study, when to play, how to take breaks. All the “off-table” stuff gets lumped together under “mental game”.”

Ultimately, other players with a similar mindset shared that Marc’s thoughts may be interpreted as quite wise — they are just poorly phrased. As Chris P. perceived it:

The Problem of Working on Your Mindset

Improving a mindset seems unimportant to some players, in part because a person’s subjective psychological state is much more ephemeral and unattainable to manage than technical skills.

The poker community has solvers, calculators, and other software to identify and eliminate weak spots but nothing comparable exists for developing mental toughness in the game. We have the GTO Wizard to solve the game itself but there is no Mind Wizard yet to help us achieve measurable results in improving our mindset.

Moreover, since our minds are not accessible to objective assessment from the outside, working with therapists and mental coaches does not guarantee a positive result or a real improvement in your mindset. It can even make things worse if you end up with a bad specialist.

Finally, the mindset tends to revert to familiar patterns under stress or just because, despite any work done — this also happens with technical skills, of course, but thanks to the ability to objectively measure them, returning to your previous level is much easier in this case than when you’ve fallen into a psychological pit.

When Mental Game is Really Unimportant

If you don’t understand the rules and math of the game, working on your mindset won’t actually help you become a better player. Furthermore, focusing on the mental game can divert your attention and energy from more important aspects of learning as a player to things that simply don’t matter at this level of your poker development.

And even if you already have the basic knowledge, spending time on the mental game instead of improving technical skills will not affect your results greatly. However, the more skilled you become at poker, the more important your emotional control and stress tolerance become, especially as the stakes increase.

Therefore, working on your mindset only makes sense when you have reached a certain level of knowledge and ability, when your mind prevents you from correctly applying the acquired knowledge and coping with the difficulties of a downswing.

What do you think about this subject? Share your thoughts in the comments below — let’s discuss!