Alan Longo is a performance psychologist who works with professional poker players on the mental systems behind consistent, high-level play.
Every Monday, he sends a practical training protocol to players who want to perform at a high level week after week.
Same player. Same poker knowledge. Two very different sessions.
In the first, he's fresh, rested and ready to make good decisions. In the second, he's 10 hours into a Sunday grind, running on too little sleep, with two bullets already gone.
Your 'A-game' is when your skills actually reach the table. You make good decisions, and you keep making them, hand after hand.
Your 'C-game' feels different. You're distracted, you can't hold your focus, and you make decisions without being sure why. You feel disconnected from the game, and you start making basic mistakes.
On many C-game days, other problems accompany the bad decisions. You doubt your own game, or you can't remember how you used to play a spot because you haven't been studying. You get irritable, and bad beats hit harder. Impulses are harder to regulate. You get bored and look for something else: your phone, another tab, more tables.
All of this ends affects your decisions, and a good run of cards doesn't change that.
Neither game is fixed. You can start a session in your C-game and improve it with what you do next. You can't switch your A-game on when you want it, but you can build it, with things you do before, during and after a session. You can also induce your C-game without noticing.
Why the same player plays two different games
Your knowledge doesn't change much from day to day. What changes is how much of it you can use.
The first thing to drop is the ability to stop, check and choose the harder line. Short sleep, long hours awake, late hours, long sessions and strong frustration all affect that same ability. You still know the right play. You just stop doing the work to find it.
Part of this is how fatigue works. When you're tired, thinking feels more expensive, so you look for the cheaper option: the default line, the standard sizing, the call you don't need to think about. From the inside, it just feels like 'autopilot'.
That's also why C-game is hard to see. Most of your decisions are still fine, with a few big mistakes between them — and those are the ones that cost you the most.
By the time you feel distracted and disconnected, your decisions have often been slipping for a while. How you feel is a late signal. Caffeine or a good run can hide how tired you are.
That's why the pairs below are about what you do, not how you feel.
What builds your A-game and what induces your C-game?
Before the session
Sleep and hours awake
- Builds your A-game: you slept well, and you start without too many hours awake behind you.
- Induces your C-game: you sit down after a short night, or with 16 hours or more awake.
Decisions made in advance
- Builds your A-game: you decide your table count, your stop time and your stop-loss before you start.
- Induces your C-game: you decide them during the session. When you feel great, you open more tables. When you're losing, you keep registering. In both cases, your state makes the decision for you.
Performance goals
- Builds your A-game: you define your performance goals for the session. At the simplest level, it's how you want to make the most basic and frequent decisions. It sounds obvious, but it gives your session something concrete to be measured against.
- Induces your C-game: you sit down without deciding what playing well means today, so the only feedback you'll get is the result.
How you start
- Builds your A-game: a short warm-up. You read your plan for the session and review a couple of spots.
- Induces your C-game: you go straight from your phone, or from another task, to the lobby. Your first hour gets attention that's still elsewhere.
During the session
Breaks
- Builds your A-game: you stand up, look out the window, walk, drink some water. Before you sit down, you check how your performance goals are going.
- Induces your C-game: you spend the break on your phone. It feels like rest, but your attention keeps working, and you come back as tired as you left.
The first sign
- Builds your A-game: you notice the first sign that something is slipping — acting before you finish thinking, or replaying a hand in your head — and you apply what you decided before the session.
- Induces your C-game: you keep playing and tell yourself it will pass in a couple of hands. The longer you wait, the harder it is to stop.
After a big swing
Same structure, win or lose
- Builds your A-game: after a big loss or a big win, you keep your routine and the table count you planned.
- Induces your C-game: after a loss, you add tables or late regs to get back to even. After a win, you skip the review or move up in stakes because you're running hot. Either way, the result starts making your decisions.
After the session
Review
- Builds your A-game: the same day or the next, you review your performance goals. Which ones did you execute, and where didn't you?
- Induces your C-game: you judge the session by the result. A winning day says you played well, a losing day says you didn't. Neither is reliable.
Fewer C-game days, not zero
In the two opening sessions, the player knew the same poker. What separated them was a set of small decisions before, during and after each one.
You'll still have C-game days, and some of their causes are outside poker. What you can work on is how often you induce one yourself, and how quickly you notice it and start building your A-game again.
These pairs don't weigh the same for every player. For some, it's sleep. For others, it's breaks. The work is finding the two or three that move your game the most.
Feature image created with AI.
