The most important moment of a hand

Funny story from my session the other night – 

Every casino is different, but at my home casino, there’s supposed to be exactly $1,500 in the rack in front of the dealer at all times.

A few seconds after pushing a bigger pot to a guy, the dealer says – 

“Hey, I accidentally pulled a green chip out of the rack while making change, but didn’t replace it, so you owe me $25 from the pot.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m 100% certain.”

“No problem, here it is.”, and he hands the green chip to the dealer.

10 minutes go by, and the dealer perks up.

“So I was wrong. I actually pulled a $25 chip out of the pot, and didn’t replace it. I owed you $25.” The dealer threw him his $25, plus the other $25 he was originally owed.

Another player chimes in, “Didn’t you say you were 100% certain?”

No harm done, and we all had a good laugh about it.

What actually happened in the moment was the dealer felt like something was off, and in a moment of panic, did something about it. If the rack is down more than $25 after their deal, they get written up. 

I’m going to take a wild guess, and say the dealer’s snap reaction was to cover their ass first. It wasn’t until the emotion died down that they thought of the very simple solution to just count the rack and confirm what happened.

In this case, no harm done.

But it only takes one moment of false certainty for a decision to go the complete opposite way.

Do you know how many times over my 10+ year career that I picked call, only to have a sudden realization afterwards that the better option was to pick fold as soon as my chips were in the pot? I’m pretty OK not knowing that number, but I’m guessing it’s very high.

I’m guessing your number is a lot higher than you’d prefer as well.

If your moment of clarity is coming right after the pressure of the moment is relieved, then you don’t have a problem with knowledge. Anytime I’ve called a river bet from a nit, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from a lack on knowledge.

In most of those hands, there’s only 1 thing I wasn’t doing – fully accepting what was happening, both inside and out. 

When you’re completely OK with that experience, regardless of how intense the pressure is, or whether or not you like it, then you’ll have the clarity you’re looking for.

That’s the moment where you get to apply all your knowledge.

There is no greater performance enhancer than that.

If you learn to keep your priorities straight in those moments, your results can turn around real quick. It’s not anymore difficult than the way you’re currently doing it. It just takes a little bit of effort to learn to do it differently.

If that’s something you’re interested in, I have something you may interested in.

Starting June 4th, I’m going to be running a new weekly group training program. If you want to learn to incorporate the greatest performance enhancer as fast as possible, this is the place to do it.

It’s going to be capped at 8 people, and once it’s full, there won’t be a spot open until someone leaves. If that sounds like something you’re interest in, hit me up below, and let’s talk more about it.