THE 3 REAL REASONS YOU’RE LOSING CONFIDENCE AT THE TABLES
CONFIDENCEMENTAL FOUNDATIONS
When we talk about peak performance in sports or poker, two related but distinct mental attributes often come into play: self-confidence and self-efficacy. While self-efficacy focuses on your belief in your ability to execute specific tasks or skills (“Can I make this play?”), Self-confidence represents a broader, more stable belief in your overall capabilities as a player (“I am a strong player”). Today, we’ll focus on self-confidence and its crucial role in poker performance.
Self-confidence acts as a foundational pillar in both traditional sports and poker, influencing how we approach challenges, handle pressure, and maintain resilience through the inevitable ups and downs of competition. Just as a tennis player needs broad confidence in their game to perform at their peak, a poker player requires deep-seated belief in their overall abilities to navigate the complex decisions and emotional challenges that come with the game.
The Building Blocks of Self-Confidence
Unlike task-specific beliefs, self-confidence is built through a combination of experiences and factors that shape our overall sense of capability. Understanding these sources helps us develop a more robust and reliable foundation for our game.
Primary Sources
Performance Accomplishments
Past successes and experiences
History of good decision-making
Demonstrated resilience during downswings
Track record of handling difficult situations
Imagine your poker career as a book, with each session adding a new page to your story. When you consistently make good decisions over time, each successful hand and well-played session becomes part of your narrative. It’s not just about winning a big pot or having a successful tournament run — it’s about building a history of solid play that you can look back on during challenging times. Think of the last time you navigated a tough spot well, or maintained your composure during a downswing. These moments aren’t just memories; they’re concrete evidence of your capabilities that you can draw upon when doubt creeps in.
Vicarious Learning
Observing successful players’ approaches
Understanding how others handle adversity
Learning from others’ career patterns
Expanding possibilities through observation
Watching how successful players navigate their poker journey isn’t about finding plays to copy — it’s about expanding your vision of what’s possible. When you see how a respected player maintains composure after a bad beat, or how they approach a long downswing with patience and perspective, you’re not just watching poker — you’re witnessing a blueprint for professional resilience. These observations help you understand that the challenges you face aren’t unique to you, and that there are proven paths through the difficulties that every poker player encounters.
Physical and Physiological Foundation
Quality sleep patterns
Optimal energy levels
Physical comfort during sessions
Exercise and nutrition
Mental clarity
Your body is the vehicle that carries your poker skills to the table. When you’re well-rested and physically prepared, you bring your capabilities to every decision. Think about those sessions where you felt physically at your best — how much clearer were your thoughts? How much easier was it to maintain focus? This isn’t just about feeling good; it’s about creating the optimal conditions for your skills to shine through. Whether you’re facing a twelve-hour final table or a week-long series, your physical foundation determines how well you can access your abilities when they matter most.
Emotional Intelligence & Regulation
Stress management
Emotional regulation
Composure under pressure
Resilience during adversity
Poker is an emotional game, and your ability to maintain balance through its turbulence is crucial. This isn’t about suppressing emotions — it’s about developing a relationship with them that serves your game. When you’re emotionally balanced, you can view your decisions more objectively, trust your judgment more fully, and maintain belief in your abilities even when facing adversity. Think of emotional intelligence as your poker compass, helping you navigate through storms while keeping your direction true.
Secondary Sources
Mental Preparation Tools
Visualization practices
Pre-session preparation routines
These tools are like fine-tuning instruments for your confidence engine. Visualizing successful plays or mentally rehearsing tough situations can sharpen your confidence, but only when built upon a foundation of real experience. Think of a musician practicing in their mind before a performance — it enhances their preparedness but doesn’t replace the countless hours of actual practice. Similarly, these mental tools work best when they’re grounding you in skills you’ve already developed, rather than trying to create confidence out of thin air.
Social Support and Validation
Encouragement from respected peers
Feedback from trusted coaches
Think of these sources like reinforcing beams in a building — they strengthen your existing confidence structure but aren’t the main pillars. When a respected player acknowledges your good play or a trusted coach validates your progress, it adds another layer to your confidence. However, this only truly resonates when it matches your own experiences and achievements. It’s not about seeking approval; it’s about having your internal beliefs confirmed by credible voices in your poker journey.
When Confidence Cracks: Understanding Performance Holdbacks
When we ignore the psychological foundations of our poker game, Performance Holdbacks begin to surface in subtle yet significant ways. These aren’t dramatic breakdowns that announce themselves clearly — they’re quiet erosions of our mental game that often go unnoticed until their impact becomes impossible to ignore.
These patterns typically start small. Maybe you’re playing well, making good decisions, and feeling confident in your game. But beneath the surface, small cracks are forming. You might notice yourself becoming slightly more hesitant in marginal spots, or find your decision-making process becoming cloudier in high-pressure moments. These aren’t just temporary dips in performance — they’re early warning signs of deeper patterns taking root.
Through years of working with poker players, I’ve observed that confidence doesn’t suddenly vanish. Instead, it gradually weakens through these Performance Holdbacks, creating patterns that can undermine even the strongest players when left unaddressed.
The Mental Game Spiral
First, when we adopt a results-oriented mindset, our confidence becomes directly tied to whether we’re winning or losing, regardless of how well we’re actually playing. We start judging our abilities based on the outcome of individual hands rather than the quality of our decisions. This makes our confidence particularly vulnerable during downswings, when good play can still lead to losing results.
Second, we need to recognize that confidence is something we build over time. It’s a direct result of consistent study, practice, and preparation. When we feel secure and comfortable with our game, it’s because we’ve put in the hours of study, hand review, and tournament preparation. Mental performance holdbacks begin to develop when we start overlooking or undervaluing these fundamental aspects of poker development.
When Routines Unravel
But here’s where the connection between confidence and routines becomes crucial — and where many players miss the relationship. Your confidence isn’t just about what happens at the table. When we begin to neglect our preparation routines or let our study habits become inconsistent, we’re actually undermining our confidence foundation.
These routine holdbacks might seem disconnected from confidence, but they’re fundamentally linked to our performance mindset. The systematic degradation of our professional structure — whether through inconsistent preparation, irregular study habits, or poor sleep patterns — gradually erodes our confidence.
Furthermore, maintaining strong routines isn’t just about building confidence — it’s about creating a framework that helps us manage uncertainty, anxiety, and competitive pressure. Quality sleep, effective warm-up protocols, consistent study habits, and thorough tournament preparation form a professional structure that supports both our confidence and our ability to perform under pressure. When these routines break down, we lose not just the practical benefits of preparation, but also the psychological security they provide.
The Strategic Void
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of confidence erosion comes from strategic holdbacks — those gaps in professional planning and structure that slowly undermine our belief in ourselves. When we lack clear goals or a coherent professional framework, our confidence becomes vulnerable to every swing of variance.
Think about how often players find themselves questioning their decisions not because of their technical abilities, but because they’re unsure if they’re playing the right tournaments, focusing on the right areas of improvement, or making the best use of their time. This strategic uncertainty creates a subtle but persistent drain on confidence.
The absence of clear strategic direction manifests in several ways:
Goal Confusion: Without well-defined, measurable goals, players struggle to evaluate their progress objectively. Are they improving? Moving in the right direction? This uncertainty makes it difficult to maintain confidence during challenging periods because there’s no clear benchmark for success beyond immediate results.
Tournament Selection: Poor tournament planning often leads to playing events where we’re either under-prepared or out of our depth. Each suboptimal performance in these situations chips away at our confidence, not because we’re incapable, but because we’ve put ourselves in situations where success is less likely.
Improvement Framework: Without a structured approach to improvement, players often find themselves studying randomly or focusing on the wrong areas. This scattered approach makes it difficult to build genuine confidence because there’s no systematic way to track progress or demonstrate growth.
Downswing Management: The lack of a strategic framework becomes particularly damaging during downswings. Without clear protocols for handling these periods, players often find themselves making reactive decisions that further erode their confidence rather than following a predetermined plan for managing variance.
These strategic gaps create a cycle where uncertainty leads to decreased confidence, which in turn makes it harder to make clear strategic decisions. Breaking this cycle requires more than just working on mental game techniques or studying harder — it demands the development of a comprehensive strategic framework that can support and sustain confidence through all phases of a poker career.
The Path Forward
Understanding these patterns is the first step toward addressing them effectively. The relationship between mental, routine, and strategic holdbacks creates a complex web that affects each player’s confidence differently. Working on just one area while neglecting others often leads to incomplete solutions that don’t fully resolve confidence issues.
In my work with players, I’ve observed that these holdbacks manifest and interact uniquely for each individual. While some players’ confidence might be primarily affected by emotional challenges, others might struggle more with inconsistent routines or lack of clear strategic direction. The impact and prominence of each type of holdback varies significantly based on individual circumstances and playing styles.
The key to improvement isn’t just working on confidence in isolation — it’s understanding how these different patterns specifically affect your game. This requires honest self-assessment to identify which areas need the most attention and how they interact with other aspects of your performance. By recognizing these patterns, you can develop a more targeted and effective approach to building sustainable confidence in your game.
The Dangerous Allure of False Confidence
The popular advice to “fake it till you make it” requires careful consideration. While projecting confidence at the table has tactical value, relying on false confidence is dangerous. True self-confidence must be built on genuine capability and experience. False confidence might help temporarily, but it often crumbles under real pressure and can lead to costly mistakes.
Finding Your Confidence Sweet Spot
Self-confidence exists on a spectrum, and finding the optimal level is crucial for peak performance. Too much confidence can lead to overplaying hands and ignoring important information, while too little results in missed opportunities and overly cautious play. The goal is to develop balanced, well-founded confidence based on real capabilities and experience.
Conclusion
Understanding self-confidence in poker goes far beyond the common advice of “just believe in yourself” or “fake it till you make it.” As we’ve explored, true confidence is built on multiple foundations, each requiring careful attention and deliberate development.
What makes poker particularly challenging is how these different elements of confidence interact with the game’s inherent variance. Our confidence can be shaken during downswings not because our skills have deteriorated, but because Performance Holdbacks — those subtle patterns in our mental game, daily routines, and strategic approach — have left us vulnerable to variance’s psychological impact.
The key takeaway isn’t that we need perfect confidence — such a thing doesn’t exist. Instead, we need sustainable confidence: the kind that remains stable through variance, allows us to learn from mistakes without spiraling into self-doubt, and helps us make clear decisions under pressure.
Remember, building this kind of confidence isn’t a destination but a journey. The most successful poker players aren’t those who never experience doubts — they’re the ones who understand their confidence patterns, recognize their holdbacks, and continuously work to build stronger frameworks for their game.