Fixing a Poker Leak Part 2: The Mental Game

One of the foundational concepts in the article and book is the “Adult Learning Model,” which outlines the four stages of mastering a skill:

One of the keys to learning anything is knowing which stage you are at.

For example, going back to my overbetting leak in shallow-stacked spots, this is what the four stages will look like for me:

The 4 Stages of Fixing My Example Leak

To paraphrase Tendler on this, you know you have mastered this skill when it’s performed automatically, even under pressure. In my case, I will know this leak has been fixed when I am reflexively betting small in the right spots, in challenging environments (like in a bigger game or if I am distracted).

The adult learning model informs a lot of the rest of this article.

How To Spot a Leak From a Mental Game Perspective

There are a number of ways to spot a leak from the mindset perspective. The first thing Jared always told me in this regard was to make a note of the spots where you simply had to pause. Most of our poker decisions are automatic, which is one of the reasons we are able to play lots of tables at once. It’s those three or four hands in a session where you suddenly pause and have to think about it that reveal the areas where you have a poor understanding of something.

Sometimes however, that is because it’s a rare outlier spot, and as we mentioned in the last article, it’s more important to concentrate on the spots that come up frequently.

Tendler also advocates keeping and updating what he calls an A-C game analysis. This is a living document where you break down and track your current skill set into atomized parts and place them in either your A-game (how you play at your very best), C-game (how you play at your worst, for example, if you are on tilt) and B-game (somewhere in-between). He advocates this in the context of your overall skill set, but in the context of my own leak, it might look like this:

A skill is mastered when it shows up in your C-game. It would be nice to always play your A-game, but your C-game is the persistent version to show up.

Tendler is a big proponent of prioritizing your C-game during study, arguing if you can play profitably at your worst, i.e., if your C-game is strong, it’s only upside from there. You also know what your C-game looks like because it hurts when you make mistakes, so you always know what to work on. When you work on your C-game as a priority, your A-game becomes your B-game, and your B-game becomes your C-game. It might even forge a new A-game for you. For example, with work, my new A-C game might look like this:

This is all a long-winded way of saying that:

Keeping a living journal of your game and the working points is a great way to identify and track leaks.

The Emotional Side of Poker Leaks

Jared is a counseling psychologist by trade, and one of the ways in which he revolutionized mental game theory in poker was by applying this lens to poker mistakes. He argues that behind every technical leak is an emotional flaw that created it. If it were just a technical leak, it would be easily corrected by learning the right way to play. A leak may persist because you need to fix the underlying mental game issue associated with it.

Applied To My Personal Example Leak

Having been literally on the shrink’s couch with Jared, I have a feeling what he might suggest about my own leak. I am trying to ‘get the hand over with quickly’ by overbetting in shallow-stacked spots because, deep down, I am not confident in my postflop game. He might go one step further and suggest that I am adding more variance to the pots because, deep down, I believe I am unluckier than most players and want to prove it when I get sucked out on. I can (ab)use this as an excuse in the future not to work on my postflop shallow-stacked game.

Did that go deeper than you expected? Believe it or not, Jared and I had a conversation many years ago where we arrived at a similar conclusion for a different issue.

You don’t need a mental game coach nor go anywhere nearly as deep with a leak of your own, but:

It is worth pondering what underlying mental game causes could be informing the leak.

It will make it easier to spot at the tables when you are about to make the same mistake again.

Below is my literal strategic reminder at the time of writing on my PC desktop:

As you can see, we have my main focus leak in this article on there. The second reminder is more of a mindset thing. I keep auto-checking quickly as the BB and missing flops where I should lead. Finally, the third one is to stop hero-calling rivers in the particular games and stakes I play, because the population is weighted towards never bluffing when they show sudden, unexpected aggression.

The strategic reminder is a literal reminder to you of how to play correctly. It fulfills two purposes:

It’s also a good early indicator that a leak is almost fixed; when you find yourself not having to consult it, it’s a sign you have almost fully transitioned the skill into the stage of unconscious competence.

Repair Tool 2) Spaced Repetition

Going back to part 1 of this article series where we discussed the value of doing drills on GTO Wizard. The instinct for most poker players would be to hammer the drills, day in and day out, until the problem is solved.

A more efficient way to do specific drills to fix a leak would be to space them out. This would harness something we touched on in our learning science article: Spaced Repetition.

The theory goes that when learning something, we want to strengthen our ability to recall that thing. We can improve that ability by first allowing ourselves to forget it … a little.

If we want to be able to recall something we have learned at the tables, we need to improve our ‘remembering muscle’ by putting in reps, and the way to do that is to space out our drills. Instead of drilling the same spot every day, mix them up. In the case of my specific leak, I should probably drill once a week, so that on the seventh day, I need to dig deep to remember the correct strategy.

Conclusion

As we mentioned in the other article on fixing leaks, it’s largely a matter of getting a lot of reps in to correct the faulty logic. Some reps are better than others, however. Playing a hand in a GTO Wizard drill might be worth one rep, using the range builder tool might be worth two reps, and applying the correct strategy in real-time at the tables with a strategic reminder might be worth five reps.

Beyond that, the science of learning has shown us lots of ways by which we can support this process.

In particular, I think using the four-stage Adult Learning Model as a map to pinpoint where you are on your learning curve is very helpful. It’s one of the most useful guides I can think of for going from knowing you are making an error and never making it again. When the error doesn’t happen, even at your worst, even when you are on full-blown monkey tilt, you can confidently (and proudly) say that you have fixed a leak!