I woke up to this message during last year’s World Series of Poker:
“I got two hours of sleep.”
This written to me by my client Ryan Hoenig, who would soon be due at the table to finish the $10K Dealer’s Choice event at the World Series.
They were down to the final three. They’d played late the night before.
And the night before, and the night before that too.
Fortunately for Ryan, he and I had long been working on what I consider to be one of the most profitable skills a poker player can own — the ability to play your best, literally no matter what state you are in.
Even if you got no sleep. Even if you feel awful.
Even if you’re pissed off, frustrated, anxious, or terrified.
It literally does not matter.
Because in my world, we follow and train under one principle: The state that you’re in cannot and does not cause your performance to drop — it’s your inability to be present in that state and accept how you feel that causes the drop.
This one idea is the game-changer.
Infinite flexibility
It is the main reason why my people significantly outperform those who work with the other coaches — because if you rely on stuff like sleep, habits, routine, and needing to feel a certain way in order to be your best, you will always run into the brick wall on that day where everything is on the line, and for whatever reason you weren’t able to get all your stuff done or sleep well or feel how you want to feel.
There is no other system that matches this skill.
Because to have this ability is to be infinitely flexible, and able to adapt to literally every situation you could ever come across in the shortest amount of time.
Since he’s one of the few poker players who lives by this and practices it all the time, Ryan had no problem continuing to play awesome poker and finished off the tournament pretty easily, beating a field containing all of poker's best all-around players for the prestigious bracelet and winning over $350K in the process.
At this point, it’s blatantly clear: Over the next stretch of time, people who don’t practice and live by the principles I teach are going to get left in the dust by the people who do.
It’s still early.
There’s still time to be one of the people who masters this before it becomes a staple for all serious players, and I highly suggest you do so if you want to be a force at the World Series for years to come.
Jason Su is the author of The Joy of Poker and coaches many of the world’s top poker players on how to perform their best when it matters most.
Learn more with Jason on YouTube and through what many of poker’s top players say is 'the best newsletter in poker,' which you can access for free at pokerwithpresence.com.
