Poker With Presence

You can copy a cool play that you saw someone else make at the table, but you won't get the full impact of the brilliance of it unless you channel the same level of presence they had too.

Raging your way through your emotions and berating others in public to create presence might get the job done, but there's definitely a better, more respectful way.

When your need to be right becomes the most important thing, you start to reach—and you lose the ability to stay centered and unaffected by results.

You can't make fear go away—it's an essential part of the human experience. But, once you accept this and recognize it as soon as it comes, you can use all the energy that comes with it to take your play to higher levels.

No matter how much you study, exercise, and meditate, poker will always bring you into contact with a spot you've never seen  and a feeling you've never felt. Presence is what allows you to navigate the unknown and take you from good to great.

To perform up to your full potential, you'll need to build out your internal and external environments to support you in being completely comfortable being yourself and enjoying success.

It's not enough to build out a process and focus on it—you've got to personalize it to your own tastes, otherwise you're not going to stick to it.

The key to being able to end all self-sabotage in your poker game and life is all about learning how to use presence to catch yourself as it's happening.

Yes, playing poker with presence will get you more success at the tables—but it can't be the only reason why you're doing it.

When you're present and locked in, the whole game opens up. The question then becomes: how can you more consistently recognize you're in this place versus one of disconnection?