Jared Tendler: Author of "The Mental Game of Poker"

Brad: Yo, what is happening my friend? This is your host Brad Wilson, the founder of enhanceyouredge.com. And today’s guest is the author of the most recommended book by guests on the podcast, The Mental Game of Poker, Jared Tendler. It was super exciting catching up with Jared and learning how the master of the mental game is personally coping with the COVID crisis, what his plans for the future are, here’s a hint, there are more mental game of dot, dot, dot things headed your way. And in today’s episode, you’re going to learn how Jared, who’s not a poker professional, found himself mixed up in the world of poker and leaving a legacy that’s more powerful than many poker Hall of Famers. You’ll learn Jared’s wisdom for improving your mental game on a step by step basis, why being able to speak the same language is vital in a student coach relationship, and much, much more. So, without any further ado, I bring to you the OG poker mental game master himself, Jared Tendler.

Brad: Jared, welcome to the show, sir. How are you doing?

 

Jared: I’m doing, I’m doing fine, Brad, you know, obviously, under the circumstances, you know, pretty lucky to be a remote employee and my wife is able to do that same and my daughter’s home and, you know, we’re, we’re juggling it and, you know, getting through. How are you? How are you doing?

Brad: Doing okay, just staying indoors, not venturing outside too much. I wanted to ask you since you know, you’re the mental game guy, right. What, what wisdom would you like to share with folks who might be struggling in this age of Coronavirus?

Jared: Yeah, I mean, I think in general, like when we’re dealing with uncertainty, you know, uncertainty, a lot of people don’t, you know, or they’re feeling a lot of anxiety, or they felt a lot of stress about the situation, because there is so much certainty. And when there are like, kind of firm unknowns, you know, it does become quite a lot like poker in that, in that regard, where, what we are looking to do is, is like, kind of strengthen the things that we do know very well either about ourselves, about our families, about our communities, about our careers, and you just look for things that you can kind of, you know, kind of double down on a sense in terms of what it, what is strong, and what you can kind of be certain about. Because sometimes it’s just so easy to kind of get so caught up in, like the chaos and the stress of what is unknown, and you kind of lose sight of where kind of home bases where, where that, that kind of foundation is. And I do think, you know, in some regards, like us being kind of, like locked down with our families, you know, it does provide that kind of benefit now. For some, obviously, it’s, it adds a lot of stress when their livelihood is in danger, or where, you know, they’re trying to work now when, you know, maybe their spouse or, you know, kids were out of the house, and now they’re trying to play poker online, and it’s like, there’s just no more space for it. So there’s, there’s kind of different stressors that, you know, can kind of still come out, but I think, you know, ultimately, we’re looking for, you know, a home base, a way of kind of settling our minds on something solid, you know, having some belief that, you know, these opportunities, or these situations can be opportunities, you know. I’ve been, you know, I tend to look to be more of an opportunist right now. I’m not necessarily like an optimist, right? Like opportunities, like it just when there’s situations that you just can’t control. And this is, you know, in some respects, can’t get much bigger than that. You know, you just have to find ways to see value in opportunities. Maybe that is, you know, getting to have a little bit extra time to study your game or to study some opponents that you wanted to or to do some projects, or it’s maybe actually just step away from poker and, you know, spend more time with your family or go take on, you know, something else. Do more reading or learn a new craft or watch some more videos or things that you’ve wanted to do for a while. So, yeah, I’d say be an opportunist, is kind of another one.

Brad: Yeah, like that. And like, every day, I’m like, I’ll be off Twitter for maybe three or four hours. And then I’m like, oh, I wonder what’s happening on Twitter and I click it, and then my feed, there’s just an avalanche of just name calling and negativity and blame throwing and just almost immediately well, not immediately. Like immediately I start feeling bad. And then an hour later, I log off. And I’m like, why did I do this to myself? Again, just kind of falling into that trap on a daily basis. It can’t be good for, it can’t be good for the middle game.

Jared: Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s it just it kind of sucks you and you become again, I think, you know, that’s, that is evidence and I’m not going to assume this just for you. But for most people to where, like, you do want to know what’s going on. There is a lot of information out there. It’s a very fluid situation, like how is this affecting me and, you know, for me personally, like that was like, last week was kind of like my chaos week. Like, I, to me I felt like I saw the writing on the wall really, not clearly. But for the, for like Monday, Tuesday, it was like, oh, my God, this is really bad, and trying to like consume all this information so I could make informed decisions for me and my family. And then, you know, I heard an interview on CNBC, this guy, Bill Ackman, his big hedge fund guy that said, like his, he thought that we just needed to shut down the country for a month. And that’s what needed to happen if we do that. Right. And we do it well. And we basically like virus dies, we’ve got tests available, you know, there’s all this kind of logic, and it was like that, that just like, kind of made, made it click for me. And I spent the next you know, like, kind of six hours or so, not sequentially writing, like a change.org petition, right? Petition, you know, Trump in the US government to shut down the country like, this is the way to go. And I was like, firmly believing that was the case. And you’re like, kind of going through that process was actually like, really, really helpful for me, because it, it became a way to kind of like channel, all the kind of chaos and all the thoughts that I had, and in a productive way. For me personally, like I learn a lot, like writing is a really effective tool for me to get my thoughts out to learn to consolidate, you know, what I was thinking. Right or wrong, it just was helpful, you know. So, I think sometimes we have to kind of find ways to kind of channel that energy in, you know, in productive ways. And I think a lot of the times, we are just like looking for some control. We’re looking for something for our minds, to settle on, and, you know, just kind of getting sucked into, you know, the, the Twitter feeds, social media feeds, even the news, like, you know, my wife and I really have kind of backed off a lot on like watching the news now, like, there’s just not a lot of new, like, really consequential things that are happening, you know. Obviously want to stay, you know, keep a pulse on things. But, you know, there’s just so much I can’t control. I, you know, not only did I do that change that everything I call all my congressmen, called my senators, call my state senators call my, you know, the governor and, you know, made my case known, did the best I could, you know, now I’m kind of just put my head down and, and just working, doing what I can and focusing on things that matter to me.

Brad: Yeah, I mean, that, that seems like the most logical approach. We just, when you’re sitting at a poker table, it’s the same, right? You do everything that you can to make the best decision that you possibly can, and then you let the chips fall where they may. You, that’s really all there is to it, like, can I do something more than what I’m doing? Will this benefit me to invest this time? Or will it be negative and then you know, you just kind of, kind of go from there. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to get too bogged down in this situation. Because I definitely want the podcast to be a haven for people to escape the Twitter feed. So, tell me the story of how you got involved in the card playing business.

Jared: Yeah, so fairly random, I’d say. You know, got it’s called a stroke of good variance. So, back in 2005, I had finished my master’s degree, finished getting 3200 hours to get supervised to become a licensed therapist. Never intended to practice therapy, but wanted to learn those skills, so that I could take that and bring it to golf. Because in the golf world at the time, sports psychology to me was just super, super basic, you know. You’re not confident, we’re going to teach you to be confident. You know, you’re feeling too much pressure, we’re going to teach you to relax. To me, it was kind of just like, you know, on and off switches just not really that that comprehensive and didn’t work for me, you know, as a, as a collegiate golfer, and, you know, one that was aspiring to play professional golf. So I once I do that, if I’ve got all that I literally quit my job and moved to Arizona and started my golf practice working with you know, some good junior golfers, one of which is actually on the, the now kind of like PGA Tour, triple A like it’s called the Korn ferry tour now, used to be called the web.com, you know, kind of crazy 13 years later, he’s there but. So some Junior golfers, you know, some, you know, semi pros and kind of a bunch of avid amateurs and it was funny because you know out if you play golf but golf for, for decades have had said, you know, it’s a mental game, you know, Bobby Jones back in like 1930 said, you know, that the five and a half inches between your ears is like the most important thing. And yet, like nobody wants to put their money where their mouth is. Like they don’t actually want to do the work. Most people don’t, it’s changed a little bit more with, with Tiger but they just didn’t want to put the work. But the work and they’d rather spend hours in the driving range, they’d rather buy new clubs, they’d rather get swing lessons that they’re going to kind of half ass. So, you know, I really thought the golf industry was like, kind of ripe for this. And it turns out it wasn’t. But ironically, you know, in poker yeah, okay, you can. And this was in 2007, when I met Dusty Schmidt. The

Brad: Leather asked

Jared: Yes, exactly. Thank you, yeah, exactly the online name, Leather Asked was a part owner in stocks poker, and was producing content for them back in the day, and, you know, so that, like you could, as a poker player, you can go and learn, you know, from great players now, you know, think like 12 years later. It’s, it’s, it’s insane how much poker content is out there now. It’s, it’s, it’s amazing, it’s awesome. But if you’re, like, you can’t like buy, like a new set of clubs. You know, as a poker player, like, it’s still just you making decisions. And if you know, that consistently, you know what to do, but you’re not actually executing on it, you can only look at yourself in the mirror and say, all right, something’s got to change. And, and I think that motivation has really, really made it easy for me. In 2008, after I worked with Dusty to, you know, have him you know, kind of want to bring me on and produce surprising content for stocks poker. And that really gave me a chance to build an audience and have a lot of interactions with people that were like way more committed to learning and developing their mental game than, than my experience was with golfers. So, I was learning a ton both about, you know, the industry and also like, really refining my program. And, you know, did that for about, you know, two and a half years before started writing The Mental Game of Poker. And then once, like, ironically, like I said earlier, like writing for me is a really useful tool, the actual writing of that book made me a significantly better coach, because it just took all the stuff that was kind of in my head, that I was able to do naturally, kind of on the fly with a client, and standardized it. And once I standardized it, then my mind just was like, like, completely opened to being able to see this, like whole new set of material that I could be, could be focused on and, you know, kind of understanding things in a more, more nuanced way. And I’m sure a lot of the audience has felt this too, when you learn some poker concepts, you know, like something like really clicks, it’s like, all of a sudden now, like, the game just like looks differently. And, you know, learning, you know, becomes a whole lot easier, at least for that next phase.

Brad: Why do you think poker players were more receptive to mental game training than golfers?

Jared: I think the feedback in poker is so immediate. And, and the tilt is so high. Golfers are really unaware of how much luck there isn’t. You know, and poker players understand? Yeah, at least, you know, most of like, how much variance is involved, how much there is beyond their control, and how much they have to be able to control their emotions through that chaos. You know, golfers don’t face what poker players do in terms of the amount of luck. Their amount of luck is much, much smaller. And so, they can kind of like convince themselves that they don’t have to get better at it, because it doesn’t happen that often. You know,

Brad: It’s like a rep, rep issue. Poker players just face so many more reps of where they have to have awareness of their emotions on a daily basis than golfers.

Jared: Exactly, yeah, if a golfer if it was, if it was like a standard part of the game where, like, you were going to get like 10 really bad breaks per round. And you just had to eat it. Or ten like amazing breaks, almost like a video game. Like, you know, you’re going to like sprinkle, right, you know, get hit, hit a drive, you know, one day, it’s going to hit a sprinkler head and go out of bounds. Another day, it’s going to hit a sprinkler head and go in the hole for like a hole in one and apart for like, insane amounts of air. And so, if they had to do that on a regular basis, 100% they would have been as motivated to work with me. Because the degree to which those situations would have caused them to either become overconfident and just, you know, kind of wind tilt as a lot of people say, or the opposite. And, you know, just drive themselves insane.

Brad: It’s interesting, having coached a lot of guys playing poker, you know, more on the, you know, the playing aspect, the tactical, fundamental aspect of the game. The one thing that I find that’s just common among all poker players, regardless of level of success is the mental game is there, and the mental game is an issue and every single person deals with it. Just you know, I’ve mentioned a few times. In my interviews, Phil Galfond gets crushed in the Galfond challenge. He’s stuck 900k and he’s got to take time off, right? Because, because he feels emotionally compromised. The same now for Venividi, who has gotten crushed the other direction, and now he’s taking time off because he realizes that he’s emotionally compromised. So, like, if it’s happening at these levels, with guys who have you know, I know Phil. I don’t know, if you’ve worked with Phil. I’m pretty sure Phil’s worked extensively with Elliott Roe. But like these guys who are seeking out folks like yourself, like Elliott, and are still struggling, you know, it happens at the smaller levels, and it’s just completely pervasive, right?

Jared: 100%. I mean, it’s it like, to me, it’s impossible to not have weakness as a poker player just tactically, which means that it’s impossible not to have weakness mentally. Now, question is like, how strong are your weaknesses? That that is, what is oftentimes the separator between the best in the world and even those that are close to it? Because at, at their very best, you know, you know, we take Phil, and maybe, you know, somebody else, kind of just a step below that below him. At their very best, they might actually be the same film, it can be a slight dog. But the question is, like, at their worst, how strong are they, or in their B game, how strong are they when things are slightly off? How strong are they? You know, the example I use is, is Tiger Woods. During his heyday, he made something like, like, he didn’t miss a cut for like seven years. Which, if you know golf, it’s insane. Because invariably, in a couple of times during the year, you’re going to get on like what’s called, like the bad wave. So, what happens is Thursday morning, guys tee off, and then there’s a morning wave, and then they will tee off Friday afternoon. And then if you tee off Thursday afternoon, you’re going to tee off Friday morning. So invariably, like the morning or afternoon wave, somebody’s going to get fucked, somebody’s going to screwed. And so,

Brad: It might be like a conditions will change.

Jared: Just the conditions will change like that, like, you know, Thursday morning, just perfect weather. And then Friday afternoon, just perfect again. No wind, no rain, you know, whereas like, you know, Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, it just like this, like steady rain, where they’re not going to cancel it every place through the courses just in, you know, different condition. It could be like a three or four shot difference between those two waves. And if you’re in the bad wave, you’re just missing cuts. And so, the number of times were like, that just didn’t matter to Tiger, it didn’t matter. He was essentially spotting the field four, five shots. And still, you know, finishing the top five by the end of the week. Now, Tiger at his very best at that time, was maybe like a 10th of a shot or a quarter of a shot better than like the other top 20 players in the world when everybody was playing. They’re playing at their best. But he was easily, easily two shots better than all of them when they were at their worst. And that, that’s the difference. So yeah, everybody has mental game weakness, not because they’re flawed in like a negative way. But in just a very practical way, in that we are human. It means we’re constantly learning. So, if you’re constantly learning, it means that there’s relative weakness that has to be there.

Brad: Absolutely. And I think Chip Reese, there’s a Chip Reese quote that that said that, you know, he said that there are players that have better A games than him and the differences like his A game and D games not that much different. But they’re A game and D game is like a monumental difference, right, which allowed him to perform consistently at the highest stakes over a long period of time. I have a, have a thing. So, I’d like to run this past year because I’ve noticed a pattern in my own poker playing, my own awareness. So, when I’m playing cards, I am typically a high intensity player, right? I can go for two to three hours and then I feel kind of worn down. I need rejuvenation, need to get away and then I need to come back. However, when I’m stuck, say I lose four buy ins. I can go longer. And I don’t say that in like, tilt playing bad longer. It’s almost worth energy or adrenaline and focus. And I’m just wondering, like physiologically, what’s happening there? What happens when, you know, you start out and things just auto go bad?

Jared: Well, okay, is the question at the beginning or at the end, like what allows you to play for, let’s say, five hours, like still at a high level versus only being able to play for three?

Brad: It’s kind of both. It’s kind of like what switches being flipped there when, you know, because I see it happen in poker, other poker players as well, right? Like, you know, the conventional wisdom is quit when you’re stuck or reduce hours when you’re stuck because you’re emotionally compromised, and you’re maybe not playing at your worst. Yet as human beings, this is like the opposite of all the high-level poker players that I know. Like the practice is complete opposite from the conventional wisdom, which to me means, you know, maybe there’s some sort of disconnect, like logically, it makes sense. But then biologically something else is happening and I just would like to know your thoughts.

Jared: Yeah. So, I would say it’s, it’s less of a biological thing. At a baseline meaning like the bio, the biology is not what’s creating it entirely like on its own. I would say it’s more of a motivational thing where you, like many other people are more motivated to avoid losing than you are to win. And, you know, that can be for a lot of reasons. One is something called Prospect Theory, where this came from, if you know the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, written by Daniel Kahneman. He did research back in 1979, something like that, called Prospect Theory. And it actually won the Nobel Prize, because it completely changed the way that economists thought about markets and market efficiency. And so essentially, what prospect theory says is that people experience losing exponentially greater than they experienced winning. So, you know, it’s the losing feels worse than winning feels good ratio. So like the reward of winning, which is partially for some players, why they’re not motivated to put in long hours, because the, the, the added benefit of winning a couple more binds to push you to play another couple hours, when, when you’re actually playing well, when the tables are good, you know, is actually quite a lot lower than the added benefit of reducing the loss would come on those days when, when you’re stuck.

Brad: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, just from a ratio perspective, I can say, 100% of my career, the days where I’m stuck, and make my way back to even are way greater than days where I’m crushing, and then work my way back down to 11. Right?

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. So, if you or others wanted to change this, you know, you are starting to change, like the feedback mechanism, in terms of like, like, what losing and winning feels like, right. And so yes, there is a bit of a motivational thing to it. But it’s also just the way that you have coded, losing, right? At this point, your career, and likely for others too, right, losing, does not have to take on the same kind of pain and anguish that it used too, right? Experienced, capable, like, it’s not going to damage confidence quite as much as it used to. But sometimes, like, the recurring momentum of that old pattern makes it feel like losing it was just as bad as it would have been early on in your career. Or for some, if these are reverberations of how they handle losing as a kid, you know. And so, to really understand that, no, I’m a different person today. Losing means something different to me now. And no, actually, like winning more money is really what I want. So, you attach it more to your goals, if you want to set financial goals, you attach it more just to the challenge of yourself to wanting to be able to put in a five-hour session where we’re winning, like and so not saying you go from, you know, three hours to five hours in one go. But no, no, like, you’re going to steadily push yourself, you know, to go from, you know, three hours to 3:15 to 3:30 to 3:45. No different than you would if you were in the gym and trying to bench press more weight. You know, it’s not a light switch here, you’re trying to almost like, like redirect the, the energy and the intensity, both by reducing the pain of losing. And by increasing the value that comes from, from winning.

Brad: Yeah, I mean, this makes sense. It’s just, it’s a feedback mechanism based on previous experiences.

Jared: Yeah.

Brad: So, let’s, let’s segue, segue to back to your experience, coaching folks play cards.

Jared: Yeah.

Brad: What do you say is the most unexpected thing that’s come from your journey?

Jared: Good question. I mean, just the fact that I’m even working with, with, with poker players, you know, it’s certainly been unexpected in its own regard.

Brad: Is that the primary bulk of your audience, or?

Jared: So, I made a decision a couple years after Black Friday, that I just, I couldn’t afford another version of that, you know, the 2013. I just released my second book. And I was like overleveraged, in a sense, you know, 95% of my, my client base was, was poker players. So, I decided at that point to start looking to diversify and have now a lot of trading clients, just business people. I do have a bigger roster of golfers now who were, like, actually want to work on it, which is cool.

Brad: Seeing the light.

Jared: Seeing the light. Exactly, yeah. And then eSports has been, you know, kind of a big, kind of new avenue. If you are familiar with that organization name Team Liquid, the largest East were in the world in terms of number of players. And so, I’m kind of their mental game coach. I have been for almost about three and a half years now. So, I’ve got like a really good kind of diversity of client base, which is also you know, kind of keeps things interesting to me. So yeah, I get, I get a little bit bored was one of the reasons I haven’t really done my podcast for a number of years now. It’s just like, I felt like I was having the same conversations a lot. You know, I needed a break from it. But yeah, in terms of like, what’s surprising, I just think the fact that I’m, I’m actually just still doing this, it’s just, you know, I’ve been doing it now for 15 years, still feels fresh. I’m still motivated to, you know, do new things and, you know, work with new people. So, yeah.

Brad: It’s like the more people understand about performance, the more they learn, the more the more value they see, in the mental aspect of things. It’s like a completely different realm. It’s like, like in poker, obviously, there’s the fundamentals, there’s the strategic aspect of it. But then, to say that there’s no emotional aspect is kind of silly, right? Like, it’s as big of a piece of the puzzle as anything else, and effects win rate, effects ability to be successful over the long term. I mean, I have friends who, at points were more talented than me, but completely flamed out and weren’t able to make it in poker, just because of, you know, they couldn’t maintain their emotions. They have, they become emotionally compromised. And for folks like that, all it took was one time. Like, they could be crushing, win 100k in two months, and then have one bad day where they go completely broke. And then that’s that, right. So, like, obviously, these are things that need to get under control. And I would think that young kids playing video games, competing at high levels of video games are going to be super stressed. And it’s going to be a massive, massive part of their ability to maintain success, right.

Jared: 100%. Yeah. And frankly, the, the sophistication level of the eSport audience, I think was actually lower than the poker audience when I started. And, you know, like, Tommy Angelo was around before I came around, you know, Schoonmaker had written a couple books. You know, Poker Mindset was out, like, there were some books, so people that were already kind of, you know, tuned in, eSports, like, there’s a couple guys, but it’s, it’s now kind of just beginning to creep up in level of importance. So yeah, there’s a huge opportunity. The other thing I want to say, too, is, you know, you’re talking about, like the need to understand emotions. But there’s actually kind of a second part of, you know, the mindset, mental game aspect, which is that, as a poker player, your muscle is your mind. Like, and so thinking about, like, the conditioning of your mind, needs to be taken with the same kind of seriousness that an athlete would be conditioning their body, because if a golfer or frankly, any, you know, athlete, just is not in proper condition, you know, their, their ability to do their job is just not going to be able to sustain themselves. And I know a lot of poker players have really, you know, kind of gone on fitness crazes, and, you know, really kind of taking care of their body and their nutrition, which is awesome. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your mind is automatically in, like, kind of tip top shape. Those two, those are two different things. You can actually be out of shape, and be unhealthy, and have like higher, higher levels of like mental proficiency. Now you take two people, one who’s out of shape, one who’s in perfect condition, and they both done, you know, the, the kind of the mental conditioning. Then the guy who’s in physical shape, you know, should on average be better off because their bodies in kind of in a better position. But, you know, those two are not always not always kind of mutually exclusive. And it’s sometimes easy to think that, you know, just focusing on your body is enough to get yourself in a good mental shape.

Brad: And so, I’ll take the bait. I’ll take the bait. What’s it? What’s the granular process of improving your mental conditioning for folks? Like, what would it look like, on sort of a step by step level on a regular basis?

Jared: I mean, you, the most basic thing is to look at your decision-making process, like it is your technique, right? Like it’s a pitcher in the way that they hold the ball and their arm rotates, and they push off the mound or batter and their swing or golf or in their swing. A swimmer and their strokes. Like every, every athlete has technique. Every, every poker player or any like mental athlete, whether you’re a trader or you’re an eSport athlete, there is a mental process that your brain goes through to make decisions. And, and if you don’t understand firmly how your, your mind actually makes decisions, then you don’t have the ability to actually do it reliably, or improve upon it. Now, you don’t have to do this in order to get better as a poker player, right. Your knowledge base keeps widening and getting better. And invariably your decision-making process is going to you know change along with it. But there are instances where decision making processes break down because of fatigue, because of small changes in the action, because players come in and out of tables, whether you’re online or live and your mind just can get a little bit kind of weak and in those weaknesses, that’s where emotion can come in and become a more consequential factor. But if you are, like, let’s say, cleanly understanding what your decision-making process is, you’re actively working on training it, improving upon it, making it stronger, you actually can stop a lot of those mental game issues from showing up. Because, as we said earlier, nobody’s perfect. So, you know, tilt or frustration, or fear or confidence issues, whatever may pop up, that may cause problems for you. You don’t have to always go directly to that stuff to make progress, right. Obviously, I would advocate for that to occur, you know, as a secondary thing, but, or for some as a primary thing, but just improving your decision-making process is the easiest way to begin getting better at now. How do you actually do that? In my experience, there are kind of two main ways that players make decisions. One is that they have a very structured, linear kind of step by step process, where there, you know, let’s say, thinking about seven or eight different factors in every hand. Some of which, you know, those factors they may consider very, very quickly, or some of those steps may go through very, very quickly, because it’s, it’s quite obvious, but it is going, they are going through in a fairly standardized way. The other kind of predominant one is one that you’d kind of more typically associated with, with like field players, where it’s a much more kind of tailored to the hand kind of decision-making process where they think about, you know, these eight factors. They go through those eight steps, but they’re going to happen in a fairly, you know, specific way to that hand or to that spot in that situation. And so, what you want to do is, is, you know, decide what camp you’re in. And, and then make sure that you are firmly aware of all of either the steps or the factors that you’re considering, when you were making optimal decisions right now. And that might take a little bit of study, you might have to actually pay attention to your decision-making process over the next, you know, week or so. You might have to, you know, for some part of the session, you know, like, take a table off, or do like a half hour warm up, where you’re actually just like thinking about how you, how you make decisions, maybe you should talk your decisions out loud. I know, you know, guys making videos, oftentimes say that they learn a lot when they’re doing that, because it forces them to really, really be able to see exactly kind of how they’re thinking. So, once you have a good map of your decision-making process, then you want to start to understand, where are the weaknesses? Where is it going to start to break down, right, because it’s either going to be, I guess, approaches to this before. So you have on the one hand decision making process, which is happening in either of these two predominant ways. Obviously, there can be some people that are a bit of a hybrid. Then you have your knowledge base, okay, your decision-making process is like a bucket, you know, connected to a water well, okay. The water beneath the surface is your knowledge base. Bucket drops down, pulls up water, right. That’s what your decision-making process is doing. Okay? And so, if you are able to drop that bucket down, and when it comes back up, there’s a couple of holes in it, right? There’s the leaks, then you’re not able to access the knowledge that would have would have allowed you to make a better decision. So, we have to figure out what are the patterns, one of the ways in which your decision-making process breaks down. And, and, you know, again, study that, isolate it. And then right, find ways to actually practice making decisions. Again, you could do the one table kind of warm up, you know, especially if your cash game player. Play sit and go, if you’re a tournament player, do a hand replay or session where you load up a bunch of hands that were challenging for the previous week. And you just go through and talk out your decisions, or make sure that you’re thinking through your decisions for 10, 15, 20 minutes, as a warm up to your day. And then throughout the session, right, you’re, you’re aware of when it is that that decision-making process is breaking down, if you know, right. So, this is actually probably perfect for you. You’re going to push yourself to play high level poker beyond three hours. Your capacity right now, when you’re winning money is to play three hours. It means beyond that your decision-making process is going to start to break down. So, in that 15 minutes, where you’re going to push yourself, you’ve got next to you your, your reminders for what it looks like. And you are working hard to maintain that technique in that space where it gets more difficult, or when you can feel yourself getting more frustrated or bored. Whatever the situation is where those weaknesses, those leaks are going to start to come out, you are pushing yourself hard to maintain that strength in that, in that process.

Brad: So, it’s creating an awareness, of an awareness of the leak. I love the visual there by the way of the bucket. That’s I’m sure you just came up with that on the spot.

Jared: No, no. It’s, it’s, yeah.

Brad: No, I’m joking.

Jared: In the second book.

Brad: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a great visual and it makes sense. Just in, in a lot of ways and there. I think there are a lot of people out there who can you know they can relate to the bucket going down in the water. And it not just being two holes, it being like, you know, just a shot gun shot through the bottom there and everything’s falling out.

Jared: Yep.

Brad: So, I had a conversation with Matt Hunt who is a coach with Solve for Why and Poker Detox, and he was talking, he’s a language guy. He’s like a linguistic and he was talking about this link between language and learning in poker, and how poker is a math-based game. But then when you’re teaching people, you’re teaching people verbally, so it’s very important to get the language correct and efficient, so that people can, can understand. What language would you suggest for folks to use when they’re granularly writing down, like their thought process, right? Like, how do you how you construct this on like a step by step basis?

Jared: Yeah. So I think it’s it, you said first, it’s like, it’s building awareness is always the first step. You got to use your own language, in order for it to really have potency, to have strength behind it. You know, if you’re using what you think you should be saying, or what you should be doing at that time, like, there’s a mismatch. So, you know, some people have their decision-making process formed as questions. You know, what is, what is his range here? How does it interact with this range?

Brad: This is me. Yeah, this is me. It’s all it’s all question based.

Jared: Okay. Yeah. So, so there you go. So, so question was others, it’s, you know, it’s much more factor based. Others, it’s more kind of mistake based on. You know, in this situation, you know, this guy tends to do X, in this situation, I tend to do X. How am I going to, you know, how does this board texture, you know, interact with my, you know, my combos, which I guess, is still framed as a question, but, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, the factor would be, you know, just the interaction with my hand range and board texture, you know, and so you’re just kind of thinking about that, not necessarily, you know, question based way, but more than, like a factual base way. So, the cool thing about poker is that it does attract a wide variety of people, and, and those who are not very good at math. And so, everybody does have their own ways of speaking and thinking and reacting and learning and understanding. So, yeah, it’s being aware of how it is that you make decisions. And then once you, once you have that awareness, then it comes down to training and improving where those weeks or shotgun holes are.

Brad: Right. It’s, and there’s also a priority too, like in, in my mind, the priority as to the process, which step in the process is more relevant at any given time. And a lot of times when I’m coaching students, this is one of the things that one of the pitfalls they fall into is they give a higher priority on some decision points to information that’s not exactly pivotal, like it’s lower on the hierarchy. So just being able to really unravel, figure out what’s at the top of the hierarchy in given moments is just a major part of the decision-making process.

Jared: And I would add a major part of what coaches offer. I think, you know, not necessarily a plug for you, per se, but like the coaching industry as a whole. Sometimes people don’t always understand the value of coaching, but very often, it is simply getting somebody to focus on what is of highest priority, period, right? Clients come to me and they, and they just like, you know, dump a bunch of stuff in their questionnaire. And, you know, they’re doing that because they can’t see the forest for the trees, they don’t know what actually matters, when you know what, what good coaches really do is get people to stop paying attention to a lot of stuff and get them to zero in on what does matter. And sometimes you add no value other than that, and you’ve done all that you need to do for that particular person. You know, being able to focus on what matters is an art and a skill in its own right.

Brad: Yes, it’s interesting, because so I did a session a few days ago with a guy who, you know, he’s a great guy. I like him a lot. And he records a video and then we go through his video, right? And he’s like, well, the first important hand comes up at the four-minute timestamp. And I’m like, no, let’s start at the beginning. Right? Like, I know that, you know, this is expensive. And you may think it’s a waste of your time. But like, let’s, let’s start at the information gathering process at the beginning. And so, we start at the beginning and quickly, I realized that, oh, there’s a player who’s very passive and they’re limping in, right. This is typically recreational player, not prone to aggression. And he’s playing on a site that allows no HUD or something like that. So, you need notes. You need to take good notes about the information, the data, and then I noticed that bring it to his attention and then maybe 10 minutes in there’s a hand where you get stacked, where that same player opens under the gun with king, queen off to like 4X and somebody calls on the button, and then he decides to squeeze with king, queen off. And I’m like, okay, so like, if we wouldn’t have watched that first three minutes, I would never have known this player super passive. Now I see like you’re attacking somebody who’s just got you crushed. And this is a spot where you’re just going to get killed. Like you’re just lighting money on fire. Right. So, like, some of the issues that folks have, are outside of their awareness, and they want to come to you and like the big spots, and they’re like, how do I improve this? I’m like, well, it’s all cumulative. Like, we have to start at the beginning, in order to resolve these other issues. So, like, just finding out the leaks, the holes that people are unaware of, is a major, major part of coaching.

Jared: Yeah, they assume that their, that their analysis of the problem is, is correct. Right. And so yeah, there’s a big difference between symptom, identifying symptoms, and really understanding kind of the causality or what the real problems are. And people, by and large, are not very good at doing that for themselves, myself included. I mean, it’s like any for anybody, it’s hard to have that third person perspective on yourself, when it’s your own knowledge that’s creating that that perspective. It’s like, I can’t even do that, like,

Brad: Yeah, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? Like, that’s the problem that, the problem is you don’t know what you don’t know. And like any, anybody, you’ve been in poker long enough, and somebody will come to you for feedback, and they’ll describe a hand history and like, the coach will say, well, it depends, right? And like, exactly in that gap of it depends, like, what does it depend on? These are the factors that we need to be taking into consideration to make these decisions. And well, if they knew what it depended on, they wouldn’t be asking the question. So really, that’s the root of the problem is, what does it depend on? How do you gain awareness of taking all these things into consideration before you make your decision?

Jared: That’s right. Yeah. And so, for me, I think a lot of like, the early stages of my coaching process is kind of creating that alignment on how to get people to gather up the right information. So that when they come back, they’re in a, in a better spot to, you know, interact, and you talk about language, like, yeah. And we also need to kind of speak the same language in terms of like, theory and concepts. And so, you know, I think what’s been nice is that most of the clients that have come to me in the last five, six years minus the eSports guys, have all read at least one of the books. And so, there’s already, you know, some, you know, kind of awareness. I actually had one client start with a few months ago, I had gotten a referral from a friend, and he literally didn’t even know my name until that point. And so, it was like, I actually was like, going through and like teaching him some of the basic concepts again, which I hadn’t done a long time. I actually felt like I’ve, you know, learned a little bit just from having to do that again. But yeah, I, that shared language, I think is so important. Because, you know, if you’re seeing, like the information gathering, in the same way that you know, the coach needs it to be, then you guys can have a really good working relationship.

Brad: So, this begs the question, when it, where’s the, the mental game of Esports? This is like the next project, right? It’s

Jared: So, funny, I’m, I’m working on the mental game of trading right now. And I’m probably 60% away through that, which I actually, I should say, is gotten it’s, it’s been pretty crazy to like how much new material there is, that I know will apply to poker players. So, I think what I’ll end up doing is like, there’s not going to be a mental game of poker, three for poker, but what there will be is like, you know, the mental game of trading translation back to poker players, you know.

Brad: Right.

Jared: To kind of use them, use that book again. So

Brad: Are you still working with Barry? Barry Carter?

Jared: Not at this one. Because he doesn’t know you know very much about trading.

Brad: Well, one could make the argument that he didn’t know a ton about poker either.

Jared: I think he would make that argument as well.

Brad: Yeah, he could make that argument himself. If somebody goes back

Jared: He has. He tried, he tried many times to convince me not to hire him. And I was dumb enough to.

Brad: Yeah. And the Mental Game of Poker was released on Black Friday, right? Like, that was

Jared: The day before. It was released on the Thursday. I can, I can still picture. You know, like, the excitement of seeing, you know, we really, I forget exactly what time it was. But it was on my website, you know, so I just like open up my email and just see like, PayPal, or PayPal or PayPal, or just like coming in, probably had sold like 120 copies, like in the first, you know, 12 hours or something. And then I had a client session. And I looked in my email, and they were just like, dry for like, an hour and a half. I was like, wow, that’s weird. And then I went on Skype. Then I went like, back on Skype and went on Twitter somewhere. I was like, you know, it just ended like, uh-oh.

Brad: Yeah, I was at a, I was at a flag football tournament, and I had my phone in airplane mode, and I turned it on and had like, 10 texts from people that I never talked to, and they’re like, hey, are you okay? I’m like, oh, fuck, like something has happened. I don’t know what it is. Something bad has gone on.

Jared: Right? I’m like, Jared, Jared Leto. Within like some like meditate tree for like 10 days. Like, hey, pandemic.

Brad: Yeah, he came out checked his phone and snap window.

Jared: Yeah. Exactly.

Brad: Like no.

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Brad: What are some of the differences that you’ve seen? And how pros navigate through the mental game versus the recreational type players?

Jared: I’ll answer that slightly differently. Recreational players have way, like their poker issues are personal. Like they’re not good enough poker players to have the stuff that’s showing up at the table. Be like kind of pure, like performance-based issues. Whereas like poker players, you know, sometimes it’s connected, right? Sometimes it’s like, Alright, you know, your way, you know, you’re too perfectionistic you know, you’ve got these fears of failure. And it’s like, no, they started when you were a kid. For, for a lot of people that’s not the case, it’s like, there’s just something about the competition that just like brings out, you know, like different stuff, or they’re just not educated enough, and they have perspectives or beliefs about the game or variance creates so much chaos. And so, there’s just that thing that they have to be able to like, really understand how to train and correct, you know, these more like performance flaws. Recreational players, they haven’t gone through that. Now, if I were to talk to them about their, about their job, or about their work, then we could sort of make that case and, and have it be segmented that way. But

Brad: It was not even on the radar.

Jared: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think well, they think, they think their issues are poker related. Like ah, you know, I get so pissed off, I get stacked you know. Or, you know, I you know, crapped my pants every time I make a final table. And yeah, okay, so sure. Like, yeah, you could say that that’s, you know, some inexperience and you’re playing up against good players. Yeah. Okay. But, you know, it turns out that a vast majority of them, you know, have issues that would make them not just like view a final table, even if it was, you know, online or live as just the total free roll. It’s like, I know, I’m not great at this game. I know about class, like, who cares? Like let it fly. You know, you know, John has to just like have fun and just make the most of the opportunity and, like so, so if that’s not the case, then you know, it’s usually something personal that you know, is not allowing them to like kind of see the opportunity that way. So, I’d say that’s kind of the biggest difference. In terms of the seriousness it varies, man. I get it’s like I’ve, I’ve some recreation players I’m working with right now who are more serious and some of the pros that I work with. nd you know, pros are more talented, they’ve got more time to actually work at it. But you know, desire is not a not always a given with the guys who are making a living from it.

Brad: For sure. I mean, this is, I’ve spoken about these many times on the show like the, the irony. 

When I’m playing it at a, I lived at the commerce casino for a while playing 60 hours a week and you have this hilarious thing if you’re paying attention. You have the record players who were all successful in business and have tons of disposable income to play high stakes poker on a daily basis and they all, in their free time, come and play poker. And then the pros at the same table in their free time, like all they want to do is start their own business or get away from poker in some way. Right? Like, so, it’s just like two people who just, it’s just a hilarious image in my mind of one, the pro wants to get out and start a business, the businessman wants to sit down and play poker for the rest of their life.

Jared: Right? Sounds like some, some, you know, like, B rated movie in the making and like, some guys like cross streams, and all of a sudden, they’re, you know, implanted into each other’s bodies.

Brad: Right? Yeah. And then at the end, they realize like, oh, it’s, it’s an issue with myself. The, the Parent Trap for poker players.

Jared: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we call it the poker trap.

Brad: You know, poker trap? Actually. No, it’s, it’s Freaky Friday. That’s the one. Freaky Friday is

Jared: There’s been so many of them are like, what was it? I guess? I guess big wasn’t, wasn’t that but it was sort of was. Yeah, Freaky Friday, there was one with my wife. And I just watched

Brad: Jennifer Garner? Was she in one that?

Jared: I think that was, this is embarrassing. I know it. I have a wife. So that’s the only 13 going on 30. Then, damn, it was just one with Jason Bateman and Ryan Gosling at, not Ryan Gosling. Ryan, one of those Ryan’s. Yeah, that was a, anyway. Yeah. Players move that way.

Brad: So, when you think about joy, in your career, helping poker players, what’s the first memory that comes to mind?

Jared: You know, I, I have, you know, I’d say like, kind of, you know, a few moments with clients have said, like, you know, wouldn’t be here without you, learn so much. You know, I, I’d say I’d say most of that is like, on the personal side. You know, like, having people have a lot of success when bracelets, you know, when major titles, make a lot of money. Obviously, is, is life changing, for some. But when you know, can help somebody in their marriage, or just become better people and stop smoking or lose weight, or, you know, some of the stuff that that really like, not saying the money doesn’t change your life, doesn’t say the accomplishments don’t change their life. But you know, the personal stuff, I think is, is kind of more of the toxic tugs at your heart a lot more. The money in the titles is the excitement, like that’s the fun that’s like the competitor in me. That likes to be kind of on a winning team. But yeah, like the joy and the, the stuff that keeps me motivated is, is more on the personal side, which is ironic, because I end up not necessarily working the majority of the time on that personal stuff. But it just, it just always kind of bleeds. I really think that, like there is a model for like therapy in the future, to work with men, predominantly, like in this exact same way. Because like, it just, it just like, even though I said before that like the, there are these performance issues that, you know, can be like completely isolated, you know, kind of within, within poker, you’re generally getting more aware of yourself. You’re studying yourself, and that action, then oftentimes leads you to then be kind of curious on a personal side, to then kind of be woken up to some issues that you might want to work on there, too. Or, what has happened with, with a lot of players that I’ve worked with for a long time, you know, like 5, 6, 8 years, where, you know, I’m not saying we working like weakly, but like, they’ll come back and all of a sudden, you know, some of their poker issues at that point now become personal, right? They’ve worked through all the poker stuff. Now the personal stuff is kind of bubbling to the surface, and it’s affecting them because they’ve been so successful. And now they’ve kind of lost their way a little bit. And it’s like, okay. So my point is that having a very kind of contained environment, with which you, you are driven for success, you’re driven to achieve goals, and, and driven to, like, correct, anything that kind of stands in your way, forces you to look at the ways in which you’re standing in your own way. And if you do that, then invariably, it’s going to have some ripple effect into your personal life. And, yeah, I just think it’s, it’s like a no brainer. And my prediction is in the next 15, 20 years, like businesses are going to have mental game coaches, not on staff per se, but like, it will be a thing where, like, just the operational effect, effectiveness of a business will be so much greater, greater. There’s going to put so much greater importance on kind of the psychological development of their employees. And then, yeah, it’s just going to, like kind of gamify business in a sense, more category is.

Brad: Yeah. I mean, it stands to reason that the happier folks are in their personal life, the more productive they’re going to be in their professional lives, right? Like and also stands for isn’t that the more awareness people gain of their emotions? The more awareness they have of, you know, the mental game of whatever it is they’re doing that they’ll say, hey, how does this affect my marriage? How are, how is my mental game affecting my marriage? How is it affecting my relationship with my kids, with my friends? All of these things. So, yeah, it makes sense. That their tools that are multipurpose that they’re learning in all avenues of life.

Jared: Exactly. Yep.

Brad: When you think about had the opposite question now. When you think about pain, in your career helping poker players, what’s the first memory that comes to mind?

Jared: Probably like the one or two, who I just, could tell that there was like, train wrecks coming, but I couldn’t stop or control clients that just were not a good fit. And this was like, early in my career and didn’t have, you know, a great ability at that point to, you know, have a console with the star and like, really be able to identify, you know. People that like firmly had a gambling problem that, you know, was kind of beyond my expertise. I don’t know how all those situations panned out, you know. I wasn’t privy to that. But, you know, certainly didn’t leave a good, good taste in my mouth. Yeah, I

Brad: I have to guess. I guess that they probably didn’t turn out super well.

Jared: I mean, the odds are certainly in that, in that direction.

Brad: Yeah, it’s a, it’s too bad. And it’s, there just, with clients that I’ve had coaching folks, I mean, you can just tell, like, you can tell, or I can, I can tell pretty quickly from like a fundamental poker standpoint that this person’s going to be able to be successful, or if they’re not.

Jared: Right.

Brad: And it’s always a hard conversation telling somebody like, especially if like poker is their dream, or it’s their highest aspiration, that man, you’re going down a path that’s going to lead you to suffering, that’s going to lead you to pain. And I don’t see how you can cross the threshold, right? Like, this is the, you know, it’s probably the hardest thing, as a coach that you have to do. It’s obviously against the best interest of me as far as like, them paying me for more coaching, like, I would accept the money forever. And just, you know, let you live under the pretense that you’re able to make it but some people, they just aren’t able to grasp it and are unable to make it and it’s hard. There’s very few people that are able to be successful at poker, you know, it’s a top 3% of folks just like, you know, in the golfing world, right, like, very few people. Right, very few people are able to make it you know.

Jared: Yeah, yeah.

Brad: All right, let’s do, let’s do lightning round. Lightning, it’s not a hard lightning round. Lightning round ends up being long, long, long form content in and of itself, but if you could gift all poker players one book to read, what would it be and why? And this is, this is the test as far as shameless plugs go to. Before you answer I will say that, obviously I don’t care about if you plug your, your, your books, but many poker players, mental game of poker has been the most cited book with this question over time, by the way.

Jared: That’s awesome. That’s, that’s really cool to hear. So, we’ll just keep, we’ll just stick with the trend that I don’t want to know. I, there’s a book called The Invisible Gorilla. That is all about, like, illusions in life. And it’s really, really well written. It’s, it’s fast paced, punchy, it’s full of research. And yeah, I’d say that would be the one. And the reasoning is mostly it’s because it’s a book that most people probably haven’t heard about that they need to.

Brad: Yeah, I haven’t heard about it. Is like the, the gorilla on your back, is like that the

Jared: No. You received the, the video of these like eight kids playing basketball.

Brad: Yeah, yeah. That where the gorilla is in the background, and you don’t notice it.

Jared: Exactly. Not on the background, he walks through the middle of the circle. And 50% of people don’t even see that he’s there because they’re so focused. And so, if the book was written by the guys that did that, that research. And so, the gorilla it represents the hidden illusions, you know, that we sort of think about in our day to day lives. Illusion of control was certainly one. Illusion of memory is a big one. And I think for poker players, that’s, that’s a really valuable one because we all kind of end up creating these like narratives or stories about a poker player that they don’t like or themselves or situations or casino or an online poker site or whatever. Right. And sometimes it’s based on false pretenses, like our memories, not that good. I mean, unfortunately, my memories was garbage forehand, so I was never under that false pretense. But I’ve learned in the last six years, thanks to my, my sister, my wife, where all my holes are. So, yeah, we’re in this game.

Brad: Yeah, it’s, it’s tough navigating the cognitive biases that we all have as human beings. And this is one of the major benefits of online poker, at least, where you have a database. You don’t have to rely on your memory, because you can just dredge it all up in your hand histories and look through it. Live poker, live poker, obviously harder, right? It’s hard to even, even when you have the, the individual hand histories, going back to what I was saying before about collective information, you pull it out without context, and it’s totally different than it was in live action. So, it’s, it’s just really, really hard navigating these biases as a poker player. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about poker, what would it be?

Jared: Highly regulated in a like, proper way worldwide.

Brad: Yeah, hard to argue. Harder, harder, harder argue with that one.

Jared: I’ve never, there’s no other industry that is cried for regulation, more so than the online poker world. It’s, it’s, it’s insane its own right. And, yeah, I mean, if you if you had reputable poker sites operating around the worlds, you know, all with their own different kind of ecosystems and ways that they wanted to create their businesses. I mean, it would be not, I don’t think just great for poker. I mean, I genuinely think that it would be great for like, the economy as a whole, like, just like the tax revenue that is, is just being like kind of wasted in the US is just insane to me, so

Brad: Yeah, because there are, there are platforms that exist that I assume are not paying taxes that are, you know, collecting rake like everybody

Jared: Like PokerStars on the Isle of Man. They, they are beholden to nobody, except they’re sort of, you know, UK overlords. But I can’t imagine they’re paying tax.

Brad: Yeah, it’s, it’s always like from a poker players perspective, it’s silly to like, we have the lottery, right. Like, there are a bunch of states that have legalized sports betting. And like

Jared: I know.

Brad: I, sports betting is like the number one leak of poker players. And there’s one out of 10,000 that are profitable over their lifetime, like it’s almost nonexistent.

Jared: And the ones that are profitable, the edge is so razor thin, it’s insane.

Brad: And like, I have one friend who is profitable, and he did it for seven or eight years. And like, if you, this is the smartest human being that I’ve ever met in my life, if you would see the spreadsheets and the models that he builds to choose like three or four bets a day, like in live, in live betting in real time, like it’s just insane. The lengths he goes to, to find an edge that he can, that he can exploit like, it’s, it’s crazy.

Jared: It is.

Brad: If you could erect a billboard, that every poker player has to drive past on their way to the casino, what’s it say?

Jared: Prepare. It’s, it’s shocking to me. Still. Now, I don’t think poker players aren’t necessarily arguing with me anymore, that they’re, that they should do it. Like, you know, when I first came into poker, people were like, what are you talking about? Prepare, prepare? You just show just turn on print money is a game. So now I think most people understand like, why it’s important that just don’t do it.

Brad: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it goes back to the golfers, right? And they want to go to the range. And because this is more fun, it’s more fun to play, it’s more fun to sit down. And

Jared: Its way more fun to play.

Brad: Put in the volume. It’s not very sexy to prepare and study, and really focus on building your awareness and just focus on, you know, just really fundamentally understanding what is happening in these moments. Because that, like you said, writing down the thought processes, writing down your thoughts, figuring out exactly what’s going on, you can’t fix something that you have no awareness of.

Jared: Exactly. Yeah, it’s funny because that, that is like one example where like, you’re, the ROI on your time is super, super high. Like I actually think so like from a preparation standpoint, those like 5 to 10 minutes that you take to prepare are worth way more than if you extended your session out by 5 or 10 minutes. Because the quality of the whatever that chunk is that you are playing, if it’s raised on average by, you know, some, you know, percentage means that for that entire time, you’re playing better, not just those getting like five or 10 more minutes of mediocre play. And then doing, you know, 5 or 10 minutes of a review, of a cool down, of a data dump, of some writing at the end of the session has like I think like an equivalent level of value to just like kind of keep that cycle of growth improvement, high level play clarity going. So, it’s one of those scenarios where people yes, want to do what comes easily to them. But they’re also actually being very practical in terms of like seeing the monetary return, because yes, it is more fun to play. But it’s also viewed as like, well, I’m not getting paid for this time. Right? And obviously, you know this very well that, like you think about the studying and how valuable studying is and how much that obviously then pays off no different than an athlete going and practicing and working out and improving their conditioning. Five or ten minutes. How, how simple is it to make everything a little bit easier?

Brad: Yeah, these like, intangible things that are just hard to see and hard to quantify. I think people struggle with

Jared: Yeah.

Brad: Just it in a big way. They like you said they miss, they’re too far in the forest to see the trees, to see the gains that would happen. Do you have any projects you’re working on that are near and dear to your heart?

Jared: Yeah, so I mean, Mintaka trading is a, is a big one, I think, you know, I, as I said, before, I learn a lot from going through that process, like to the point where, you know, if I actually didn’t release the book, the time that I spent working on, it would still be valuable.

Brad: Wow.

Jared: Because of how much I’ve learned, obviously, I’m not going to do that. But so that that’s, that’s one. Unfortunately, I, what I’ve realized is that I can’t really multitask big projects, while maintaining my client base, and a family. So that’s like, kind of the big one, I started working on this, like this focus course, which I think is going to be really, really good when it comes out. But it’s, it’s kind of shelf right now. And then I have some mainstream, mainstream kind of non-poker, nonperformance based or nonspecific based, you know, kind of books in mind. So,

Brad: This focus course is, is going to be like a digital linear type of type of deal.

Jared: Yeah, it was intended to be like a video course. With like, a, you know, videos and other, you know, kind of stuff to make it multi-dimensional.

Brad: Nice.

Jared: Well, yeah, I just can’t focus on it.

Brad: Can’t focus on the focus course. Makes sense.

Jared: Yeah. Exactly. By my, buy it right now.

Brad: So, final question. Where can the chasing poker greatness audience find you on the worldwide web?

Jared: Go to my website, jaredtendlerpoker.com. Follow me on Twitter, fairly active, and certainly respond to questions and people pose them to me, @jaredtendler. And yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Brad: Awesome, man. Looking forward to the mental game of trading. It’s been great having you on the show. I’m very grateful for your time. And let’s do this again. You know, let’s do this again a few years down the line whenever, whenever, when the focus course comes out.

Jared: Yeah, sounds great. And when, when we’re not quarantined.

Brad: Yeah, when we’re not quarantined, for sure.

Jared: Yeah. Awesome. And I will say to that, for anybody who hasn’t gotten the mental game of poker yet. It still is available for free on audiobook. If you haven’t, if you don’t have an audio, an audible account or an Amazon account. You just go to jaredtendlerpoker.com/free, and it’s kind of simple, easy way to get it’s kind of a no brainer.

Brad: Wow.

Jared: I still get paid. You get it for free. Everybody wins. So, win-win.

Brad: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of chasing poker greatness. If you have yet to subscribe to the show please take a second to do so on Apple podcasts or wherever your favorite place to listen to podcasts may be. For more content from me, Coach Brad, please visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/enhanceyouredge and I’ll see you next time.