WPT ACADEMY 68 WWW. WPTMAG.COM Who’s Afraid of the Sharks? Running from shadows and jumping at the sound of things that go bump in night might be a staple of a classic horror film, but what could such things have to do with poker? Answer: fear. While these cinematic motifs might seem somewhat fantastical they do in fact point to one underlying premise of fear, namely, the unknown. This month Jared Tendler outlines the nature of fear, how it can hinder your poker game and how you can eliminate its negative effects. n my previous articles I’ve covered the major mental games issues that may be affecting your game, including tilt, confidence and motivation. In this article I’m going to explore the largely overlooked issue of fear. The general definition of tilt assumes that it is anything that causes you to play below your best. If this definition is to be accepted then fear and anxiety don’t exist. However, as you know, I like to be a bit more specific about these issues, which is why I define tilt as anger. By doing this, fear and anxiety suddenly emerge as issues in their own right and relevant contributors to problems you experience at the table. Moreover, it now becomes important to realize that fear requires a different resolution strategy than tilt. Before we go any further it’s important to point out that the fear we are talking about isn’t a fear of actually playing poker. You can still play poker but it’s the fear and anxiety of making decisions in and around the game that need addressing. The Nature of Fear Just as frustration is the small piece of anger which eventually develops into tilt or rage, fear is brought about by a single unit, namely, a question. Another way to see a question such as: “what does he have?” or “what’s the right play?” is that there are unknowns, that there is some uncertainty. These are legitimate questions in poker and people will have varying levels of anxiety, but when you strip them down to the basic layer it becomes clear that each question portrays some level of fear. These questions can be big or small. Indeed, the larger questions such as, “will I ever become a pro?” can weigh on the smallest questions such as, “should I be raising here?” In this scenario a “small” question suddenly becomes a breaking point for the larger question, which subsequently increases the pressure on the situation and produces fear. If this is the case then the way to become fearless is not to imagine being fearless, it’s to resolve these unanswered questions. The antidote to fear is certainty and certainty is born out of an answer. There may be nerves but the anxiety and fear won’t be there. Obviously some questions such as “will I ever be a pro?” don’t have a definitive answer, so for these types of questions you need to solve the reason why you would ask that question in the first place. For most players a major part of why people ask these types of questions is because they want predictability. However, the nature of poker doesn’t allow for predictability and so COMING SOON Jared’s new book is set for general release in April. I Psychology “Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, I have a constant fear that something’s always there.” Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark. Letting your underlying fears rule you will cause you to take unnecessary precautions.