Improve Your Game In Poker By Strengthening Your Mentality

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Vasilisa Zyryanova Blog Content Editor
  • Fact Checked by: PokerListings
  • Last updated on: July 25, 2025 · 2 minutes to read

We as poker players can develop skills and improve abilities quite easily but when it comes to mindset changes we all struggle to decipher our own thinking and impulses.

In this article, PokerListings uses comments to Jonathan Little’s tweet and other players’ social media posts to inspire you to look deep into your own mind.

Note: Since Jonathan asked players to share “what mindset shift helped you break through to the next level in poker or life”, we decided to split players’ answers into two categories and started each of them with one-liners that don’t require extra explanations.

Jonathan Little Flickr
Jonathan Little

Mindset Shifts to Become Better in Poker

  • Andrew DiFeo: Having a performance mindset versus results mindset.
  • Table Talk Trader: Optimize decisions for long term success, not single hand wins.
  • Telge: Playing every hand like I got the nuts.
  • ChristianSerino: Quitting. Can’t get fucked by the deck if you don’t sit down to play.
  • Kanguruguay: If you need to make money — you are doomed to lose.
  • MEISHAY WEATHERSBY: Focusing on the current hand, forget about past hands.

Josh SaBerre explained the last thought in more details:

Josh SaBerre

What’s the point of dwelling on that bad beat or suck out a few hands ago. Yes, it hurt and it stinks, but you have to move on because another hand is coming. Don’t let what happened previously beat you in the future.

The Home Games shared that realization of impotence of being physically active during the session gave him unimaginable results:

The Home Games

Walking around the poker room floor as a physical warm up to get the blood flowing and the oxygen in the brain, helped me towards my best ever EPT series results and it’s now part of my routine. My mindset in comps is naturally strong.

Toro Digital Assets posted that the realization of being able to make the correct decision under tilt rocketed their winrate, despite taking more energy and control to play correctly through negative emotions.

Drok added their conclusion about emotional aspects of poker, precisely — revelation that our emotional reactions to some players can affect their decision to return to the game:

Drok

Understanding that the people who make you the most angry are the ones who make playing profitably possible. And those moments they make you angry are the same moments that keep them coming back.

Mindset Shifts to Have Better Life

  • LegendarySuperNit: It’s okay to be wrong.
  • Criswithak: Even if you have nothing left on your plan to improve for the day, just do it!
  • Blangs: I no longer seek approval from grown men in sweatpants.
  • Anthony Serino: Don’t need to be a bully’s bully.
  • Dennis n donkey: People’s perceptions are their own reality regardless of truth, don’t fight it, you can’t win.

Dan Wilson shared realization of how important is to reflect on your actions when you don’t reach desirable results:

Dan Wilson

If things aren’t going your way, look inwards and work with the assumption that you’re doing something that is contributing to the negative result.

Scott Elliott confessed that his biggest mind-shift happened when he realised and accepted that he is not as smart as he ever thought:

Scott Elliott

Once I came to terms with [the fact that I am stupid and make bad decisions], I started playing low stakes only once a month. I have saved thousands.

John McIntyre found out that limitations to thinking is just an illusion that humanity has set for itself:

John McIntyre

I thought so long outside the box that I realized there is no box, only the limitations we place on our own imagination. Call that intuition if you want to put a name on it.

Interestingly, a lot of players also agreed that changing perception of bad habits, such as smoking or drinking, and quitting them are among the best things they have done in their life and career.

Having a bad habit is similar to being in abusive relationships: you are so used to being here in the same dynamic that you often can’t realize that it is actually very bad for you until you quit. But the sooner you do it — the better outcome will be in your future.

Stephen Chidwich
Stephen Chidwich

Photo Credit: Rachel Kay Winter

By the way, one of the most sincere and detailed examples of a personal mindset shift that can greatly change poker players was presented by Stephen Chidwick in his first post on X.

There are a lot of intimate revelations from Stephen that we recommend you to read directly on X and in its entirety:

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