The Confidence Paradox
Much has been written of the nature of confidence in poker. A lot of mental game literature focuses on confidence as a fundamental tool necessary for success in the game in the long term, but Jared Tendler‘s The Mental Game of Poker astutely points out that in a game with so much variance, confidence is theoretically not necessary in order to achieve short-term results – you can get lucky enough to win a tournament even if you believe you’re the worst player alive.

When it comes to the longer term, however, players often encounter somewhat of a paradox with regard to confidence – they feel it’s unjustified to have a great deal of confidence in their game until they have evidence to support the theory that they’re a good player whose decisions are likely to be correct, but they struggle to make good decisions while still paralyzed by a fear that their decisions may be incorrect, or that their thought processes may be sub-optimal.

Let’s unpack the two parts of this paradox, so that we can examine why it occurs, and hopefully you’ll find yourself more easily able to avoid certain pitfalls in future. This will give you the foundation necessary to build strong, stable self-confidence in the long term, without lapsing into results-orientation or illogical thought.

“I shouldn’t have confidence until I have results to prove my ability”

This is a common thought process many players start out with in the game. When they begin their poker career, they recognize their lack of experience – they might not know exactly where their blind spots are, but they approach the game with the understanding that there are plenty of things that they have yet to learn.

The problem comes after this, when their confidence starts to improve – as a result of the natural human tendency towards results-orientation, players tend towards attaching confidence to results, rather than to good performances, because in many cases they lack the ability to identify the occasions where they have performed well.

What this leads to is a mentality whereby players feel that once they get a few good results under their belt, they can be justified in feeling an increased level of confidence, even if they’re not actually playing any better than they were before. This means players who achieve good results early in their careers find confidence easier to come by, which can cause a knock-on effect whereby they find improvement easier over time since they have a higher level of natural poker confidence.

The flip side of this mentality is an inability to feel confident in one’s game until a certain level of results have been achieved, which is equally illogical since a lack of a results doesn’t indicate bad play any more than a good result indicates good play. Players who don’t see good results early on in their careers may struggle with confidence for a long time, even if they’re very good at the game – in fact, many good players have quit poker altogether after being victims of poor variance early in their careers.

“I need to be more confident in my ability if I want to get results”

On the other hand, more experienced players undergoing periods of negative results may find it hard to maintain confidence, if their confidence is similarly linked to results – they’ll agonize over why it is their results aren’t improving, and eventually determine that their lack of confidence is leading them to make mistakes, and that the route to better results lies in being more confident.

They’ll try everything they can to reinforce their confidence – looking at prior results, analyzing performances, using mantras or mental game techniques to influence their thought processes, meditation – some of which are useful, some of which are less so.

The key is that they’re all designed to improve results by improving confidence, when in reality we already know that confidence isn’t a prerequisite for good results, since a weak player can easily get lucky enough to pull a big tournament win out of the bag. Thus, these methods fall short of fixing the problem.

Resolving the paradox

In order to bring ourselves closer towards the right kind of mentality, therefore, we have to find a way to do two things: first, have the confidence to make the decisions we believe are correct even while acknowledging that our current skill level means they may not be, and second, maintain a stable level of confidence in our skill set that means a few bad results don’t divert us from the path of consistently good decision-making.

The answer to part one lies in eliminating the ‘fear factor’ that comes along frequently in the early stages of our poker development – rather than fearing the possibility of making a mistake and experiencing ‘decision paralysis’ as a result, we must embrace the reality that we will make many mistakes over the course of our poker career, and that the ability to make the decision we believe to be correct in any circumstance will eventually prove to be a valuable skill.

For part two, it can be more difficult – it’s a tough problem to reconcile retrospectively after reaching a certain experience level, without having to unravel a lot of learned bad habits. However, we can ensure our existing results focus doesn’t get worse by developing processes for tracking performance in a more specific way – grading ourselves after each session, tracking our EVbb/100 winrate in online games, and rewarding ourselves for playing our A-game.

Generally, however, we must learn to attach our self-confidence to things beyond results, no matter what level we’re at. As tempting as it is to believe that that first big tournament win means we’ve suddenly ‘made it’ as a poker player, that’s almost never the case, and as difficult as it can be to retain mental toughness during hard times as a more experienced grinder, it’s our responsibility to stay strong and keep the faith with what got us to that point. The paradox can be defeated, but the power to do it lies with each individual.