Spend any time consuming poker content on the internet, and you’re bound to hear endless tips for calculating pot odds, playing Game Theory Optimal (GTO), and balancing your ranges. But the reality that very few players talk about is what separates the lifers from the tourists is a skill most people never think to develop consciously: resilience.
The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity. – Seneca
Although it can seem like just another buzzword, resilience is the mechanism that keeps your decisions rational when life, and the deck, turn cold.
Take Texas Mike for example, one of the most exciting and fearless players to have made his mark on the poker world over the last few years. In just a few short years, Texas Mike has found himself featured in some of the biggest cash games streamed online, where he’s shown incredible gumption to make the big bluffs and go for it all.
To get there, Mike had to overcome things that would have understandably capitulated many others. Already under existential threat from a medical condition that sees his heart be 4 times too big, Mike lost his beloved father to a heart attack while chip-leading a tournament with just 21 players left. Although nobody would have blamed him for walking away from the game after facing such tragedy, Texas Mike instead chose to be inspired by his circumstances and dedicate himself even more deeply to the game he loves, a choice that has led him to more than $5 Million in tournament cashes in just a few short years.
There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. – Seneca
Or look at Jennifer Harman, one of the most decorated high-stakes cash game players of all time. No stranger to struggle, Harman, who lost her mother to a kidney illness at just 17 years old, has had to get not one, but two kidney transplants of her own. Harman’s ability to compartmentalize her daily struggles while maintaining the mental clarity needed for high-stakes decision-making showcases the level of resilience that separates true professionals from recreational players.
But it’s not just the life and death type of resilience that’s required to sustain a poker career. Equally as important is the ability to withstand the day-to-day damage inflicted by the poker variance gods. The bad beats, the vicious coolers, the weeks, months, and sometimes even years of nothing going your way. Without the ability to separate action from results, without the mental fortitude required to keep swinging when each swing comes up empty, there is simply no hope of surviving long enough to see variance turn.
Unfortunately, the mindset of resilience doesn’t take root overnight. It requires consciously cultivating emotional discipline. It requires repeated practice, often through gritted teeth and forced positive self-talk, in choosing long-term thinking over short-term emotionality. The most successful players develop rituals and frameworks for processing losses—be it meditation, journaling, or my personal favorite: reading about personal stories of resilience and the philosophies embodied by the people who overcome.
By listening to tales of tragedy turned into glory, by studying how those who dedicated themselves to fortitude and self-improvement persevered, by consistently reflecting on how we could be as resilient as those who suffered before us, we move further and further away from what Shakespeare called the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And, if nothing more, we give ourselves the chance of one day being spoken about with the type of admiration we give to our own heroes of resilience.
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. – Seneca
