The Poker Zoo Podcast

PZ102: Jason Su Wants to Unmisreg You


Listen Later

Jason Su, mental game and performance coach for an increasing number of poker players, returns to the Zoo. While poker is a game (not “just” a game), there is something a touch more serious in this visit. Why is this? Perhaps because the money involved in poker is increasingly scarce and so every edge has become important.

Actually, it’s worse than that. People are leaving the online scene and rolling the dice in live MTTs or private cash games at a new clip. Nick Howard has gone AWOL and become a concierge for desperate poker nerds. Scamming and scammers have never had it better.

So, do you need a mental game upgrade to deal with it all? Maybe.

My first impression of The Joy of Poker is that this is a book about the ego, not in the pop psychology sense, but in the Freudian sense. The ego mitigates the unconscious and reality. The ego is, as Jason would say, present. This mental awareness of ourselves is not only what makes us conscious but helps us deal with all the pressures of our irrational desires and what society tells us. Freudian or not, Jason puts great stock in being in touch with reality and ordering our response to it. Credit to him, you can hear his measuredness, his lack of hysteria, on our podcasts. Ok, so what?

One big assertion he makes is that mental game has made no progress since some undefined point. This seems doubtful to me, but in conversation, Jason seems convinced enough. Still, everyone now has a little meditation app or something now. Everyone knows to breathe. Go crazy, you oxygen addicts.

While I don’t get into on the podcast, as I expect the reader and other pods to handle certain details, Jason provides a methodology to handle the stress of the game. Read the chapter Clear the Path to get down to business.

Instead, I focus in the interview on an introduction to his ideas and on the culminating chapter, Master of Luck which he referred to in an oblique tweet several months ago. Can you make your own luck, really? At first, he seems to mean something else, and that the argument is more semantic in nature: you don’t make luck, but you can experience it. Fair. Then, I stumble onto something more important: a human approach to embracing variance, which has always been the key to the seemingly impossible goal of playing with a sense of peace.

After reading the book I realized the answer to Jason’s supposition that no progress has been made in the mental game department. It’s a slippery area of the game which has been promulgated through so many empty words, true, but progress has indeed been made and Jason is making some of it. Jason means that the way out of pain is not around but through, both in poker and in life. Words are not enough for the human emotional experience; they are signifiers but not actions. Jason wants you to take a sequence of action steps, which you can read about in the book. So, while the field’s methodologies have been dodgy overall, Jason has refined the answers, both in print and in practice.

Processes that allow us a modicum of acceptance are the progress we’ve made, however imperfect they are. We must fully embrace the swings of the game and thus the feelings associated with them, just as we already know we must max out the corresponding and primary challenge of the game, the challenge of poker strategy.

In other words, to interpret Jason correctly is not to merely hear him say, “you must be willing to win big.” No, you also have to be willing to lose. Perhaps he doesn’t say this enough, given that “willingness to win” always sounds paradoxical. And so this is where emotional availability – presence – meets up with Mason’s critique through knowledge alone – and explains Chewy’s curious quote, for that matter. We thus demonstrate a human way forward and it is for those primarily with the proper skills already. Mental game is for those who need it, and those who need it already know how to win.

How to do it is the problem. Tendler’s “inchworm” is here, Mason’s focus on the strategy as answer is here, and the contributions of many other thinkers are in here as well, however hidden. The Joy of Poker presents a strong case for, and argument about, mental game.

Have a listen and find out. You can find Jason on Twitter or here at his webpage.

The post PZ102: Jason Su Wants to Unmisreg You appeared first on Out of Position.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Poker Zoo PodcastBy Chris M. aka Persuadeo & Dean Martin

  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9

4.9

30 ratings


More shows like The Poker Zoo Podcast

View all
Thinking Poker by Andrew Brokos

Thinking Poker

325 Listeners

The Bill Simmons Podcast by The Ringer

The Bill Simmons Podcast

30,084 Listeners

This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von by Theo Von

This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

27,214 Listeners

Poker Stories by Card Player Media

Poker Stories

186 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

111,562 Listeners

The Ryen Russillo Podcast by The Ringer

The Ryen Russillo Podcast

14,272 Listeners

Establish The Run Fantasy Football by Fantasy Football

Establish The Run Fantasy Football

1,470 Listeners

Third Man Walking by Charlie Wilmoth

Third Man Walking

97 Listeners

Circles Off - Sports Betting Podcasts by The Hammer Betting Network

Circles Off - Sports Betting Podcasts

498 Listeners

Free Crush Live Poker Podcast by Bart Hanson

Free Crush Live Poker Podcast

64 Listeners

Upswing Poker Level-Up by Upswing Poker

Upswing Poker Level-Up

101 Listeners

Table 1 Podcast by Table 1 Podcast

Table 1 Podcast

24 Listeners

Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova by Pushkin Industries

Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova

253 Listeners