Beating Self-Doubt: How to Trust Your Poker Decisions (Even After a Mistake)
Making Better Poker Decisions: What You’ll Learn
- Building Resilience After Mistakes: Learn techniques to remain calm and collected after a poker mistake, preventing one bad hand from negatively impacting future poker decisions.
- Adopting a Scientific Mindset: Discover the value of reviewing hands objectively and replace judgmental self-talk with analytical questions to improve your decision-making skills.
- Effective Self-Coaching Strategies: Understand how to apply the same supportive, constructive feedback you’d offer a study partner to your own gameplay.
- Developing Consistent Focus: Gain insights into maintaining clarity and presence at the table, aiming for consistent improvement rather than unattainable perfection.
- Transforming Doubt into Growth: Embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth and learn how to channel self-doubt into a positive force that enhances your overall poker strategy.
You just made a call on the river and instantly regretted it.
Your opponent turns over the nuts, and the chips slide their way.
Your stomach sinks. Your mind races.
“What was I thinking?”
“I knew I should’ve folded.”
“I’m such an idiot.”
Sound familiar?
If you’ve ever sat there feeling embarrassed, angry, or disappointed in yourself after a mistake, you’re not alone. The poker journey is filled with uncertainty, and the moment things go wrong, it’s easy for a poker player’s inner critic to kick into overdrive.
What starts as a single mistake quickly turns into something deeper:
● You start to second-guess your reads.
● You hesitate in spots you’d usually play with confidence.
● You start thinking that you’re just not good enough.
The truth is quite different, though, because self-doubt is not necessarily bad. It’s a good indicator that you care deeply about your game, which can motivate you to improve. But if you don’t know how to work through it properly, it can sabotage your decision-making and erode your mental game faster than any downswing. Let me give you a good example that illustrates this point perfectly.
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The Overcorrection Spiral
Jake is a poker player who had been playing well for weeks. He was studying consistently, reviewing hands, and making confident in-game poker decisions.
Then, he made a mistake during a deep run in a big online poker tournament.
He misread a board texture and called a river shove where he was clearly beat. He knew it the second he clicked the button. His opponent showed the nuts, and just like that, his chips were gone.
No big deal, right? Everyone makes mistakes.
But in the next session, it was clear that something had shifted for Jake.
He started second-guessing everything. He passed on good bluff spots, played his best poker hands too passively, and timed out on poker decisions he usually snapped off with clarity.
The problem wasn’t that he needed a new poker strategy. Instead, he needed to rebuild trust in his own thinking.
And that’s the real danger of self-doubt. It makes you question the very skills you’ve worked hard to build.
Why Poker Triggers Self-Doubt
Poker is one of the few competitive games where you can do everything right and get a bad beat. You can also do everything wrong and still win.
That mix of skill and luck makes poker so fantastic, also makes it mentally brutal.
Mistakes are inevitable and uncertainty is constant. To add insult to injury, your results don’t always tell you whether your decision was good or bad. Which makes it the perfect environment for self-doubt to creep in.
Here are a few of the big reasons self-doubt shows up, especially after a mistake:
Poker Punishes Imperfection Unfairly
You make a small poker mistake and sometimes you lose half your stack. But other times you make a colossal mistake, and get rewarded. That randomness messes with your ability to objectively evaluate your own play.
The Human Brain Hates Uncertainty
It’s human nature to crave closure. We want to know if we were right. But in poker, you rarely get that satisfaction. Folding means never seeing your opponent’s cards. Losing a hand means questioning your process. Over time, your brain can start interpreting mistakes as personal failures instead of just part of the game.
Your Ego Gets Involved
Self-doubt often disguises itself as self-improvement. You think: “I just want to play better.” But underneath that, there’s a fear that maybe you’re not good enough. And it’s easy for that fear to override everything else.
If you’ve ever said something like:
● “I should’ve known better…”
● “Why do I keep messing up?”
● “Other skilled players don’t seem to struggle like this…”
That might not be reality talking. It’s very likely that your inner critic has been activated by uncertainty, emotional triggers, and the pressure to perform.
The good news?
You can quiet that voice. You can reset after a mistake, and you can rebuild trust in your poker decisions by starting with how you think about those mistakes in the first place.
“The Solver Says I’m Bad”: When Study Sparks Self-Doubt
Another player came to me recently, frustrated and discouraged.
He had just reviewed a hand he played with Q♠️J♠️ on a semi-connected board. After running it through a solver, he realized he had c-bet too frequently in a spot that actually favored a more balanced or checking-heavy approach.
“I thought I understood this,” he said. “If I can’t even get a basic c-bet spot right, how can I ever beat the game?”
But the thing is, I know he’s a strong player who is smart, disciplined, and committed to studying.
The issue wasn’t his technical knowledge but how he interpreted the mistake. He didn’t just see an error in execution; he saw it as evidence he wasn’t good enough.
Instead of thinking, “Interesting, I missed something here, and I need to improve my understanding,” he thought, “I’m clearly not cut out for poker.”
And that’s the hidden trap for many players, especially the ones who care the most.
The more you study poker, the more you’ll see how often you’re off. And if you’re not careful, you might mistake that awareness for failure.
Seeing mistakes clearly doesn’t mean you’re falling behind. It simply means you’re leveling up.
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Gut Feeling vs. Results: When Trusting Yourself Still Hurts
One of my clients shared a hand with me during a coaching session, and the frustration was all over his face. He had called a big river bet and gotten shown the nuts. He then said, “I knew he had it, but I called anyway just to be sure.”
So I asked, “Why didn’t you trust your read?”
His answer was instant: “Because last time I folded in a similar spot, I got bluffed and I felt like an idiot.”
That’s the emotional tug-of-war players get caught in all the time:
● One hand where you fold, and they had it → you feel great.
● One hand where you fold and get bluffed → you feel like a fool.
● One hand where you know you’re beat but call anyway → now you feel stupid and disappointed in yourself.
This back-and-forth between trusting your gut instincts and chasing emotional closure is mentally exhausting.
When you don’t have a solid way to evaluate your poker decisions beyond the result, you start to lose faith in your own judgment. You confuse bad outcomes with bad thinking, and over time, that erodes your confidence. You start to doubt your reads and your ability to play your A-game.
This is why one of the most important mindset shifts you can make as a poker player is learning to separate what you can control (your decision process) from what you can’t (the outcome)
Because the truth is, you can make a great fold and still get bluffed. You can make a bad call and get lucky. But if you build your confidence on results, you’ll never feel solid.
Real confidence comes from clarity about your process, not just the hands you end up being shown.
Reframing Mistakes: From Shame to Strategy
Most players respond to mistakes in one of two ways:
- They beat themselves up.
- They brush it off without learning anything.
Neither of these responses helps you improve or build confidence in your game.
Your goal isn’t to be perfect. Instead, your goal should be to build a repeatable thought process you can rely on. That starts with how you talk to yourself after a mistake.
A common thought trap that I want you to watch out for is telling yourself something like, “If I were a good player, I wouldn’t make mistakes.”
Let’s challenge that: Even elite pros misclick. Misread. Misjudge. At the 2009 WSOP, Phil Ivey famously folded a flush on the river after being shown a one pair hand because he misread his hand!
But elite players like Ivey don’t spiral after something like that because they know mistakes are data points, not identity statements. When you make a poor decision or a mistake, your job isn’t to shame yourself. It’s to learn something valuable from it.
Try This Reframe Instead:
When you catch yourself spiraling, pause and ask:
● “What was my thought process in this hand?”
● “What information was I using at the time?”
● “Would I coach someone else to play this differently?”
These questions shift you out of emotional judgment mode and into curious observer mode, which is where real learning and growth happens.
Building Trust in Your Poker Decisions (Even After a Misstep)
I want to remind you that self-doubt doesn’t vanish with one deep breath or a motivational quote. Confidence is rebuilt slowly over time by showing yourself that you can stay composed, reflective, and focused even when things don’t go your way.
Here are five tools you can use to reset, refocus, and start trusting your poker decisions again (even after a major mistake).
1. Keep a “Good Process” Journal
Most players only track hands when they win or when they’re tilted. But what about the hands where you:
● Thought things through clearly?
● Trusted your range construction?
● Made a solid fold, even if you never saw the cards?
Start logging those.
Every time you make a disciplined, thoughtful, sound decisions, regardless of outcome, write it down. This reinforces the idea that good poker is about making solid, repeatable poker decisions.
Image Credit: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
2. Name the Emotion, Then Ground the Thought
Let’s say you just misplayed a turn barrel and feel the heat rising.
Try saying something like this to yourself:
“That’s frustration. But I’m still here, and I still have the chops to play well.”
Naming the emotion helps give you some emotional distance and then grounding your thinking brings you back to neutral, instead of giving in to tilt.
You’re not trying to feel great about your play in the moment. You’re simply trying to get centered enough to play your next hand well.
3. Use a Reset Cue After a Mistake
Train your brain to respond to mistakes with a reset instead of a spiral.
Try a simple mental cue like:
● “Reset. Refocus. Next hand.”
● Or use the 6-2-7 deep breathing pattern where you inhale for 6, hold for 2, exhale for 7 to calm your nervous system and bring your focus back to the present.
The mistake happened, but there is no need to compound it by losing the next five hands just because you’re tilted.
4. Review Hands Like a Scientist, Not a Judge
When you’re reviewing hands away from the poker table, avoid language like:
● “I’m so dumb.”
● “I was clearly wrong.”
● “Why did I do this again?”
Instead, try to use language like:
● “Let’s look at what I missed.”
● “What assumption led to this line?”
● “Would a solver or coach think this was close or way off?”
Reviewing hands shouldn’t feel like a punishment. It’s where you sharpen your rational decision-making muscles and improve your logic.
5. Coach Yourself Like You’d Coach Someone Else
One of the best mental game tricks I teach my clients is this:
“If your study partner made the same mistake you did, what would you say to them?”
Chances are, you wouldn’t call them an idiot or question their entire poker game. You’d probably say something like: “It happens. Here’s what to try next time.”
Give yourself the same grace, and remind yourself that trust in your game isn’t built on perfection but on consistency, reflection, and resilience.
Final Thought: From Doubt to Direction
Self-doubt is a normal part of playing poker seriously when you care and you want to improve. And when a hand goes off the rails, it’s easy to assume that one mistake says something about your overall skill level or ability.
But the truth is that mistakes aren’t proof that you’re not good at poker. They’re part of how you get better. You’re not trying to achieve perfection. Instead, you’re trying to be present, clear headed, consistent, and focused on increasing your success in poker.
Mistakes happen to professional poker players all the time.
Every time you catch yourself after a misstep, and choose to stay calm instead of being self-critical…
Every time you review a hand without beating yourself up…
Every time you fold a marginal spot because your logic is strong (even if your confidence isn’t)…
That’s a win.
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