In chapter 23 of The Mental Game of Poker, Jared Tendler explains how to build stable confidence by strengthening a few underdeveloped poker “recognition” skills and by removing mental traps that create false confidence during heaters and false doubt during downswings.
What Stable Confidence Really Is
Stable confidence isn’t permanent certainty or always feeling great. It means your confidence is built on something stronger than short-term results, so variance causes smaller emotional swings. You can still feel unsure sometimes, but you don’t get yanked into extremes.
The Three “Recognition” Skills That Stabilize Confidence
Tendler argues many confidence problems come from weak skill in accurately judging what’s happening in the short run. Improving these three abilities can dramatically steady confidence:
Recognizing Variance
Being good at spotting variance in real time helps you avoid misreading results as proof of skill (yours or theirs). Most players only recognize obvious bad beats, which leaves them vulnerable to confidence distortions.
Ways to improve include:
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Mark hands where variance likely mattered.
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Before checking results, estimate whether you ran good/bad/neutral and justify it with specific hands.
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Compare that estimate with how well you played and with the final result.
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Discuss tricky spots with other players to refine your “variance radar,” including when you ran well.
Recognizing Your Skill
This is the ability to know how you’re playing without using results as the scoreboard. Stronger self-evaluation = fewer confidence crashes after a losing session and fewer confidence spikes after a hot run.
How to build it:
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Identify your “always there” strengths (skills that show up even under pressure).
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List your biggest weaknesses—especially what appears in your worst game—so you can recognize and correct them mid-session.
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Map your current range (worst → B-game → A-game) so you can accurately locate where you are today.
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Review sessions regularly, set goals for the next one, and track improvements beyond money.
Recognizing Opponents’ Skill
This strengthens your ability to estimate your edge, which makes short-term results less emotionally convincing.
Practices include:
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Note when opponents played well vs poorly, with specific behaviors you can exploit or learn from.
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Keep opinions flexible so you notice adjustments.
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Review key hands from their perspective.
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Take small notes even when nothing obvious stands out.
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Ask stronger players how they evaluate skill and edge.
The Three Illusions That Destabilize Confidence
Even with good recognition skills, confidence can still be hijacked by “trap door” beliefs that feel true in the moment. Tendler highlights three common illusions:
Illusion of Control
You feel like you can control outcomes more than you can—over cards, opponents, or your emotional stability. It shows up as trying to win every hand, feeling entitled to beat weaker players, or believing you can dominate opponents in a way that’s closer to “control” than “understanding.”
Core correction: separate what you control (decisions, focus, preparation) from what you don’t (cards, opponents’ behavior, short-term outcomes).
Illusion of Permanence
You assume what’s happening now will keep happening:
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On a downswing: “this won’t end.”
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On a heater: “I’m unstoppable; the next level is inevitable.”
It also includes assuming opponents won’t improve or adjust. This illusion fuels extreme highs and lows because the brain extends today’s story into the future as if it’s guaranteed.
Illusion of Learning
You misread the learning process:
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Expecting perfection and treating mistakes as proof you’re broken.
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Mistaking a short streak of good execution as proof you’ve mastered something permanently.
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Then, when pressure hits and execution slips, confidence collapses because you can’t explain why.
Tendler’s standard is basically: a skill is truly “owned” only when it shows up reliably under pressure.
Wishing: The Hidden Blocker
A major obstacle is secretly wishing for impossible conditions (no variance, always running good, never making mistakes, always playing your best). If you’re emotionally invested in those wishes, you’ll resist the real work required to build stable confidence—because part of you is still hoping poker will become effortless.
The fix is to:
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logically dismantle why those wishes wouldn’t actually be good for you,
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notice the damage those wishes cause in your decisions,
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and replace the wish with a real-world strategy that aims at what you actually want (profit, improvement, consistency).
The Big Takeaway
Stable confidence is built by:
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improving how accurately you recognize variance, your play, and opponents, and
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removing the mental illusions that make you treat short-term outcomes like permanent proof.
That combination reduces confidence swings and keeps you focused on what you can control—so you play closer to your real ability more often.