Who can you open up to about poker?
You put your heart into poker. You work hard at the game. But when you try talk to other people, they make light of it. Alternatively, they judge your passion as something unhealthy, a pathology or moral deficiency. You want support and understanding from others, but it feels like you are speaking a foreign language.
You need patience to translate your experience for them. This can be discouraging. It is also inherently risky: you expose yourself to the possibility of being misunderstood. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t open up to others more about poker. In fact, it might strengthen important relationships and open up paths you never anticipated.
An important step for 2025 could be starting with the question, 'Is there someone in my life with whom I could be more open about all things poker?'
What about professionals? Who can you talk to?
Let’s look at three options: talk therapists, sports psychologists/performance coaches, and poker mental game coaches.
Therapists and personal counsellors
Over the course of my poker journey to date, I have seen a psychologist, a psychotherapist, counselling supervisors (a type of professional mentor for counsellors), and personal counsellors.
My passion for poker has been met with mixed reactions. There have been times I’ve felt disappointed at therapists’ lack of understanding and interest in something close to my heart. I resented that I had to do so much explaining of what poker is for them to actually either a) take it seriously or b) get past their knee-jerk moralizing judgement.
I remember that when I started out in poker, I told my therapist at the time that I’d lost $300 at the casino the night before. Their response, in a concerned tone, was “Oh, wow, that’s a lot of money.” Where do you go from there?
11 years later I was having meaningful and inspiring conversations with my counselling supervisor about the challenges of grinding online full-time. We talked about my identity wrestles, having paused my counselling practice and being fully in the poker space. I felt completely free to share everything I was going through. It was invigorating.
Within the span of that decade, there were conversations with therapists in which I grappled with what poker meant to me and how it fit in my life. Sometimes, I felt they just couldn’t quite place the whole thing in their frame of reference. Noting their response, I would clam up and talk about other things.
Others were able to meet me with authenticity and empathy and wanted to learn about my life and my relationship with poker.
The theme connecting the good therapists I’ve seen is that they had enough openness and curiosity to explore all the landscapes of my life and what the things in it meant to me. They had the chops to invite me to evaluate how it all fit into my values, hopes, relationships, and so on. They had an approach which I would call 'collaborative'. This is what I would look for in a counselor today.
Being open as a client about your love for poker may be challenging at first, but as long as you feel the counselor is genuine, cares about you and knows how to listen well, the work can be very fruitful.
Performance coaches & sports psychologists
I was fortunate to talk with Simon Hartley in November 2024. Simon is used to working with Olympic athletes, Champions League football teams, NFL players, stock traders and all manner of elite performers, so I was curious how he would handle a mid-stakes poker player.
I contacted Simon after reading his book Peak Performance Every Time and asked him if he would talk with me for a Run It Once mindset video. After all, on his own website (linked above) he states, 'I often say that my background is in elite sport psychology. I also explain that sport psychology is a misnomer. It’s really human psychology. What works for athletes works for the rest of us.'
We had a great conversation about poker, one which has deeply enriched my game.
I felt that Simon took my work seriously. I felt he respected the endeavor of playing poker. There are many parallels between poker and other high-performance sports and activities. At the end of the day, we are trying to perform at our best consistently and under pressure.
I was also impressed by how he wasn’t afraid of asking big questions about life, identity, meaning, and so on, knowing that these actually have a direct impact on performance. For example, how much more likely are you to punt under pressure in a major tournament if you feel like you absolutely must make the final table to gain the approval of others?
I would imagine a 5-6 coaching session package with someone like this to be a good mental game foundation.
Poker mindset coaches
The big advantage here is that these people speak your language.
For instance, I had a great time talking with Tommy Angelo back in July for RIO. It was like reconnecting with an old friend and absorbing their hard-earned wisdom. There is something comforting about reaching out to someone from within the world of poker who focuses on the mental game and then having a conversation on solid common ground.
On the other hand, the poker coaching space is a smorgasbord of unregulated offerings. Coaches will be in varying branches of the game tree of their own self-awareness. Some may be good listeners, others not. Some may have an approach that works with your own goals well, others might be caught up in their own framework, packaging and specific methods.
I don’t have much personal experience as a client in this area, so my main advice would be to keep your observer hat on and reflect on what is and isn’t working for you and be bold in voicing this to the person with whom you’re working.
Finding a good coach or therapist is a gamble. There’s uncertainty. You are investing money. But whatever you do, don’t try to just do it all alone in 2025. Take a risk and reach out to others.
Images courtesy of Sam Forde/Simon Hartley/Tommy Angelo/Growtika/Unsplash
