Alan Longo is a High Performance Psychologist with five years of experience coaching high-stakes poker players. Passionate about sports, he educates and empowers players with the tools to build their mental foundations, professional routines and competitive planning for consistent, high-level performance. Find out more at his website.
We’ve all seen it happen. A player, who is technically sound and knows the theoretically correct play, suddenly makes a critical error.
They didn’t forget their strategy or lack a technical skill; their attention lapsed for just a moment. They weren't leaking chips because of poor knowledge, but because of poor focus.
This gap between what you know and what you execute under pressure is where many poker careers stall. As we've discussed in our article on building mental foundations, if your mindset is the architect of your mental game, then your attention is the spotlight it controls. A solid mindset helps direct that spotlight, but that light can still flicker, wander, or be pulled away by the wrong things.
This article moves beyond simply defining attention. Instead, it serves as a practical guide to help you diagnose the three most common 'attentional leaks' that drain your mental energy, sabotage your decision-making, and lead to costly mistakes at the table.
The first leak: Emotional hijacking
Strong emotions are the most powerful internal distractors. They don't just feel bad; they hijack your attentional spotlight.
In our article on basic emotional regulation, we established that emotions are automatic signals. When a spike of frustration from a bad beat or anxiety about a big decision goes unregulated, it seizes your cognitive resources. This triggers a psychological mechanism known as 'attentional narrowing.'
Your focus involuntarily tightens around the source of the feeling — the opponent who hit their two-outer, the size of the pot, the mistake you just made. In that moment, you become functionally blind to other critical information, whether it's shifting betting patterns on your other online tables or the subtle physical tell from an opponent sitting across from you.
Your A-game requires a broad, flexible spotlight. Emotional hijacking locks it into a narrow, useless beam.
Diagnostic question: The next time you take a bad beat, where does your attention go for the next three hands? Is it on the new information in front of you, or are you still mentally replaying the last hand?
The second leak: The myth of multitasking
The modern poker environment, particularly online, is designed to deceive you into believing you can effectively multitask. From a cognitive perspective, this is a myth that carries an incredibly high cost.
Your brain doesn’t actually multitask. Instead, it engages in rapid 'task-switching.' Every time you toggle away from your tables, your brain is forced to unload the entire context of the poker game and load the context of the new task. When you switch back, it must reload the game state.
Each of these switches consumes finite mental energy. Online, these 'micro-distractions' could be checking social media, replying to a text, or watching a video. In a live setting, it might be constantly checking your phone under the table, watching the sports game on a nearby TV, or getting lost in a conversation unrelated to the game.
These actions pull you out of the game's flow, increase the likelihood of missing crucial details, and slowly drain the cognitive battery you need for deep, focused thinking.
Diagnostic question: The goal here is to become aware of distractions that often occur automatically. It may seem counterintuitive, as actively tracking your distractions at the table is a distraction in itself. However, consider this a brief, one-time diagnostic exercise: For a small part of your next session, simply try to notice your non-poker-related actions.
The objective isn't to keep a perfect score, but to bring unconscious habits into your conscious awareness. Once you are truly aware of a pattern, it becomes much harder to ignore. How many times are you forcing your brain to pay this switching cost without even realizing it?
The third leak: An undefined 'ready state'
Many players sit down to play without a clear, deliberate routine to switch their brains into a 'performance mode.' They bring the distractions and mental clutter from the rest of their day to the tables. This 'attentional residue' — left over from arguments, work stress, or a nagging to-do list — competes for the same limited focus you need to play well.
The solution is a pre-session 'focus routine.' This is a short, consistent series of actions performed immediately before you play to signal to your brain that it's time to perform.
For an online player, this might be closing all other applications and taking three deep breaths. For a live player, it could involve arriving 15 minutes early, putting their phone on silent and away in their bag, and observing the table dynamics before posting their first blind.
This ritual creates a clean mental slate and erects a barrier between your life and your work at the table.
Diagnostic question: What is the very last thing you do before your first hand is dealt? Is that action intentional and designed to focus your mind, or is it completely random?
From awareness to action: A systematic approach
Recognizing these leaks — whether they stem from emotional responses, environmental habits, or a lack of preparation — is the essential first step. This self-awareness is the foundation of all improvement.
However, awareness alone doesn’t build an elite cognitive skill. Knowing your car has an oil leak doesn't teach you how to fix the engine. Similarly, identifying an attentional problem is fundamentally different from building a systematic, pressure-tested method to resolve it.
Developing robust attentional control is a specific psychological skill. For any serious player, treating its development as a priority is a direct investment in their bottom line. The most effective approach involves building a structured process with personalized tools, creating the resilient mental habits necessary for maintaining focus under the most demanding conditions.
Trying vs. training
Your attention is one of your most valuable and limited assets at the poker table. It is constantly under assault from internal emotions, external distractions, and poor preparation.
Improving your focus means shifting from simply trying to pay attention to deliberately training your ability to do so. Protecting your focus isn’t a passive wish; it’s an active, game-changing strategy.
What is the one leak costing you the most right now, and what small, deliberate step will you take to patch it in your next session?
