Poker Coach Jared Tendler Improves Your Bottom Line by Getting Your Head on Straight

by Barry Carter

The very suggestion that poker was a sport ten years ago would have been laughed at, even by professional poker players. But we have come a long way since the poker boom and there are a lot of convincing arguments for poker as a sport. One of the strongest arguments comes, not from the poker community, but from the outside looking in – the world of sports psychology.

Not only has mental-game coach Jared Tendler managed to transfer his master’s degree in counselling and his work in the golf community over to poker, he has almost completely migrated from the green over to the felt. Tendler is a highly respected coach at Stoxpoker.com, has taught 100 poker students from 17 different countries, has one of the most popular threads on 2+2 and famously helped well-known online pro Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt overcome a long-standing tilt problem, double his hourly rate and become one of the biggest online cash winners around.

Despite not being much of a poker player (by his own admission), he is one of the most respected coaches out there. 

Why Poker? 

So how did he come across poker?“I was a competitive golfer in my teens and right through college. I played in division three and won nine collegiate events, and I played well for the level I was on but I struggled moving up to the bigger national events; that’s where the importance of the mental game came to light. I tried qualifying for the US Open at 18; I played phenomenally, but missed some short puts as a direct result of the overwhelming pressure and missed out on qualifying by just a few shots.“

A friend introduced me to sports psychologist Bob Rotella, who was groundbreaking in golf at the time. What he taught me helped to a point, but my game still deteriorated when I was under extreme pressure. It was my dream to play pro golf but I saw an opportunity in sports psychology. It was clear my situation was not unique, and I set out to find an answer.

Rather than going down the usual sports psychology route, Tendler got a master’s degree in counselling psychology, getting two years of extensive, grounding perspective working with cases of domestic violence and alcoholism to eventually help himself and other golfers learn more about themselves on the golf course.

“I did cure myself of my mental issues, and became a professional golfer around the time when I met Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt,” he says. “I told him what I did and he saw the opportunity to see what I could do for his poker game. He managed to double his hourly rate and eventually brought me in as a Stoxpoker instructor. I realised pretty quickly the opportunity in poker, so I put professional golf aside and now 90 percent of my work is poker related, and I’m writing a book.” 

The Golf-Poker Connection 

Although the worlds of golf and poker have always been closely linked – because of poker players’ fondness of golf and vice versa – they are fundamentally different games, but as Jared explains, perhaps not as much as you think.

“Golfers often underestimate how much variance is in the game, just like in poker,” he notes. “The elements are a big part of variance, but the one that isn’t noticed much is standard error. The standard error for a pro is around 5 percent, and pros are always calculating where to miss it, while the average player with a standard error of 25-30 percent rarely thinks about missing it, aims right for the flag and then wonders why shots turn out so bad.

“So in poker and golf, how you understand variance influences how you think about your game and what decisions you make. The 30-handicap golfer can be like a fish at a poker table, always chasing the lucky shot and betting almost every shot on the chance to score the big one.

“When golfers and poker players interpret variance better, they have much less anger or anxiety and play their best more often.

“People also tend to think of golf and poker as solely thinking games, but I disagree. When the times comes you want to be able to react and pull the trigger without hesitation. Sure there’s is some thinking going on, but in the heat of the moment top players rely more on the skill that’s become habit and thinking only about the important details of the decision in front of them. If you have any sort of frustration or doubt in golf or poker, you will not perform as well, and that’s what I work through with my clients.” 

Online vs. Live Play 

Tendler is a very popular figure in online poker circles. Does he see any major differences between the issues faced by online vs. live players?

“Most of my clients are online players; I don’t have any exclusively live players yet but several play live also. At a basic level the issues are pretty much the same, what differs are the details. There are lots of issues online players face with live poker, the social aspect is one – some people do not like the social interaction of live play and actually sitting with the people they are playing against, while other players love it.

“The pace of live play is another issue, it destroys some online players who are used to high volume. There is a lot of downtime just like in golf, where there can be five minutes between shots on the golf course and 20 minutes or more between hands played in live poker.

Online players can get in trouble because they mentally check out just enough to not pick up on some subtleties, maybe a physical tell or a marginal spot to exploit; they miss out on identifying opportunity.“Online players also have issues with motivation and procrastination. Anyone who has success early might have problems pushing themselves further, learning the skills of mastery. I am good at helping people learn and develop skill, the ability to maximise your ability, maximise your talent. Discipline, goal-setting, structure, focus and concentration; how to prepare yourself to play in the zone.

“People think playing your ‘A’ game or being in the ‘zone’ is random. It isn’t. You can make it happen all the time if you know how to. I also help players increase their capacity, how long they can play without tilting. I help players increase their hours, stakes, tables, number of hands, etc.” 

The Luck Factor 

No matter how good a player is, or how good Jared can help him become, there is the inevitable luck factor that comes into play. Does Jared feel the same frustration at running bad when his clients are going through a period of variance?

“I actually welcome those times – the biggest opportunities for improvement come when people go through the tough times. I don’t want my clients to run bad, but it is sometimes what they need, it helps bring the major issues to light, the things they want to forget and sweep under the carpet.

“I hear of players deleting their databases after a bad run. It is good that they want to move past that time, but unless you learn to do something different they are destined to make the same mistakes over and over, and a period of running bad shows what those mistakes are.”

You only have to see his popular threads on 2+2 and StoxPoker to see the kind of accolades Tendler is getting from poker players whom he has helped transform their games and eliminate major leaks.  

Satisfaction 

So what have been some of his biggest achievements?

“One of the most satisfying things for me in my job is when a player sends me an impressive graph or tells me that he lost $8,000 in a session but walked away knowing he played great, it didn’t bother him and he woke up the next day and won it back and then some,” he says.   

 “I had a client who was stuck more than $20,000 in just a few thousand hands one day, and where he would have normally tilted his face off he actually got back even for the day. I had one client who was a really really bad tilter and he was cured of it in three sessions.

“Dusty certainly has been the most outspoken of my clients – he said he has paid for my services with the savings from PC equipment that he didn’t break.”

So as someone from the sports industry in a unique position to comment, is poker a sport?

“It depends of course on if you define sport as solely athletic, but even then there is a strong physical component to poker. The ability to function mentally is linked to physical fitness, and if you look around a cardroom on a Saturday afternoon you may beg to differ but the really successful guys are in much better shape.

“From a competition point of view, poker is clearly a sport; the excitement and interest it generates is proof of that.”Finally, Tendler is perhaps the only respected poker mentor who isn’t known for his ability to play poker, but what’s he like as a player?

“Some people may think this a fault, but I see it as proof of the quality of my coaching – I don’t play much. I play with my buddies and have played in casinos, but I know enough to know that I am a fish. I’ve learnt a lot about the game in the past two years, mostly from my first clients. Dusty knew he had to teach me about poker when we met, and it worked out great for both of us.

“If I really took the time I have the resources to get good at the game, and I know enough pro players who could help me plug the gaps. I did get a straight flush at Foxwoods once!”  You can find out more about Jared Tendler at http://www.jaredtendlergolf.com/.