How to Handle High-Stakes Moments Like a World-Class Poker Player | Jorryt Van Hoof & Jared Tendler

In poker, success isn’t just about the cards—it’s about mastering the mind.

Jorryt Van Hoof, a world-class poker pro with over $5 million in winnings, has battled on the biggest stages in poker while perfecting his ability to stay calm under pressure.

And Jared Tendler built his reputation coaching poker's top players and financial traders on mental toughness, helping them navigate high-stakes situations with precision.

In this episode, they share what separates elite competitors from the rest. You’ll learn how to regulate emotions, control impulses, and make the right moves even when the pressure is suffocating.

 

Connect with Jorryt:
📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jorrytvanhoof/ 

💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorryt-van-hoof-63078471 

🌐 Website: http://www.jorrytvanhoof.com 

✖️X (Twitter): https://x.com/Jorryt_van_Hoof 

Connect with Jared:
📸YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jaredtendler 

💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-mental-game-system/ 

🌐 Website: https://jaredtendler.com 

✖️X (Twitter): https://x.com/jaredtendler 
Follow me for more:
🌐 Website: www.toughness.com
📸 Instagram: @paddysgram
💼 LinkedIn: Paddy Steinfort
✖️ X (Twitter): @paddysx

 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jorryt Van Hoof: Moving into professional poker was the safest of all those bets. You have to be able to distance yourself from your emotions or to use your emotions 

[00:00:09] Jared Tendler: in a way that serves you in the game. I like the word toughness because it implies some action, some growth that's involved. Keep focusing on the things that are within your control and do it with a poker face as well.

You got to do that self reflection and then have that honesty and that, you know, humility to say, here's where I suck. How can I suck less?

[00:00:34] Paddy Steinfort: Welcome to the toughness podcast. My name is Paddy Steinfitz, your host, and today we have two really cool, unique individuals who have their own backstories that ended up having their paths cross in the game of high stakes poker. First up, we have Jorrit van Hoof, who is a professional poker player originally from the Netherlands.

And, uh, he rose to stardom finishing third in the world series of poker main event for over 3 million total career winnings over, over five mil, I think so far. I'm not sure if I'm keeping up to date with that, but he's good. Let's just put it that way. Welcome to the show. 

[00:01:08] Jorryt Van Hoof: Oh, thank you for having me, Paddy.

Thank you. 

[00:01:10] Paddy Steinfort: And, uh, and also joining us is, is Jared Tendler. He's a leading expert in the mental game of performance, just professional athletes, but specifically of interest on this show is he coaches world champion poker players and financial traders, the author of The Mental Game of Poker, also The Mental Game of Trading.

Welcome to the show, Jared Tendler. 

[00:01:28] Jared Tendler: Thanks, Fatty. Great to be here. 

[00:01:29] Paddy Steinfort: Great. Uh, it's great to have you both. I read, I read both of those background like intro notes and I'm like, holy shit, we've got some real bad ass dudes on the show right now because you guys deal with some pressures. It's a little different.

Some of the other guests that we have on the show are from a military background. They deal with life and death situations, which hopefully none of the three of us have to deal with in our day to day work. They've been surgeons, they're professional athletes, coaches. But this is a really interesting, uh, world because there is a level of pressure of millions of dollars that are literally sitting on the table in front of you that I suggest creates some, uh, internal states.

And external actions that are pretty, how people react when they're under fire and bullets firing. So I'm really keen to dig in and out. Jorrit, Jorrit, we'll start with you. I'm really curious. I've been to your hometown. You're calling in from Eindhoven in the Netherlands right now. I've been there once for a PSV, the Eindhoven game.

I had a blast. It's like a fun town, right? And I can, and I also had a. Like the Netherlands is just a beautiful country. And I'm looking at that and I'm like, how does a guy who, a kid who grows up in Eindhoven in the Netherlands end up on the final table at the World Series of Poker? Or even like even more strange for me, in the town of Melbourne, Australia, where you recently just dominated the Aussie Millions tournament, you won the whole thing.

Where did that journey start from you, for a kid from Eindhoven to end up dominating in the world of poker around the globe? Tell us how you got into that. 

[00:02:55] Jorryt Van Hoof: Well, let me start off by saying that I love being in, uh, Melbourne as well. That was a great experience. Like a lot of Australia. I wasn't only the actual work, but also to enjoy some leisure time.

Paddy Steinfort: Awesome. So I'm glad, I'm sure I hope we looked after you. Yeah, I had a great time. Definitely looking forward to returning to Australia at some point. So how did I get into poker? As a kid, I was playing a different card game, Magic the Gathering. I don't know if you heard of that. Yeah, I've heard the title.

But it's not really like your card game, you play at a casino though, right? 

[00:03:33] Jorryt Van Hoof: No, I wasn't  allowed in the casino back then. Yeah, it started when I was like 12 or something. Uh, but I was always like playing. I have always been playing with cards even before poker. And out of that card game, it was a collectible card game.

And so you could trade the cards. And that was what I was mainly interested in. And out of that trading those cards, I grew like a shop, a gaming shop. And in that gaming shop, we had room to play for our customers. And some customers started playing poker in the shop. And then I just decided to jump in a game at one point.

And how old are you when you do that? When you just 18. Okay. So, and from that moment on, like immediately I loved the game. I probably got lucky at the start and, uh, I got some talent for it. I noticed, and I saw like potential in it and I loved it immediately. Uh, so that's when I basically. Decided to play more and more.

And after like three or six months, I stepped out of the gaming store. I sold my share to my ex business partners and I dropped out of university. Um, and I basically just went 

[00:04:45] Paddy Steinfort: all in on poker. Excuse the pun. Wow, that really is going all in. Uh, so you quit your job, you sold your business, you dropped out of school, and you're like, I'm gonna do this thing that I've only been doing for a year or two.

That's a pretty huge leap. The, and that in itself is a, I mean, you've used the metaphor going all in, right? Let's jump straight to that because I'm sure it was going to come up at some point in the show. As you do that, what happens for you internally or did you just do it with the women bravado of a 19, 20 year old guy just like, yeah, I can do this.

Did you think through that? 

[00:05:21] Jorryt Van Hoof: I guess I saw it as a like roads to independence, which I valued a lot and that I wanted to create for myself. Like it seems very adventurous, which it is like somewhat adventurous. Uh, but mostly like a road to independence, felt the need to create that for myself and my life.

So I think that's what propelled me or gave me like the motivation to, yeah, basically decide, okay, I'm going like all in on this poker career. Yeah. 

[00:05:54] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Sense of adventure to set out on what's been an amazing journey and still going. Um, Jared, I'm going to pivot to you here and ask you the same question, but in a different sense.

You, you weren't in Melbourne recently, at least as far as I know. Yeah. Yeah. The same question, but different. How does a licensed mental health counselor, because that is your background academically and in terms of your study, how do you end up coaching some of the world's best poker players, trading mavericks, e sports athletes to help them bring home the big winners?

So we just mentioned a couple, like how do you end up going from licensed mental health counselor to that? 

[00:06:28] Jared Tendler: Yeah, I'd say maybe the bigger question is how do I even get to that point? Because for me as the kids, I never intended to get there. That was not on my horizon. I was an athlete growing up. I played baseball, played tennis, played, uh, played golf, uh, basketball, really anything I can get my hands on.

I was competitive and all of that. And, you know, really just kind of looked to the professionals and just aspired to be a professional at something I wanted to be great. And at four 11, as a freshman in high school, my options were kind of limited. So. You know, the realist in me says, okay, there's a bunch of short golfers out there.

Um, I think I can kind of make it a go with that. So freshman year, I, I kind of dove into it. I get very good, very quickly. But a little bit too late to get, you know, division one scholarships. I, I go to division three Skidmore college in upstate New York, kind of hedging my bet a little bit that, you know, worst case scenario, I'll get a good education.

Won two tournaments that my freshman year, you know, kind of on track. And, uh, I go to qualify for the U S open play the best golf in my, my life. TD green and basically puke on myself, uh, missing a bunch of three or four foot putts and ultimately miss a playoff by a shot miss, you know, moving on to the second stage of US Open qualifying, which is effectively a PGA Tour event because, you know, only 50 players qualify for the US Open automatically.

So you've got, you know, these regional qualifiers that are mostly filled with, with tour players. Um, so that was a huge opportunity that I've, you know, squandered and, and, you know, first time failure. Okay. Not a big deal. Guy, one of the guys at my club hands me, um, Bob Rotella's book, Golf Sunday, Game of Perfect.

And that starts my foray into sports psychology and I continue to get better as a result of it. You know, it was a three time All American in college, won nine times. But when it came time to play in these big national events, USM qualifying, you know, US Publinks, these, these big events, I just kind of kept joking.

It was significantly underperforming. And I kind of just sort of reasoned, you know, cause I kind of dove into a lot of the sports site that was available. We're talking the late nineties here. It helped me in all situations, except under those key moments. And I just kind of reasoned, I can't be the only one who's failing like this.

And there kind of has to be another way. So. I sort of departed from the traditional sports psych route and went into traditional counseling therapy and got, you know, a master's degree license, two years practiced. And once I got my license, I quit my job at Food Arizona and started blending traditional sports psychology with therapy to create eventually what turned into this program.

And the system that is what I would call based on this like performance flaw level where we're dealing with deeper issues than sports psychologists typically deal with, but not necessarily getting personal. And we kind of find this intersection and, and that's kind of what drove me to do this. And I also kind of had in the back of my head, like, Hey, maybe I could solve my own issues and still be able to play professionally.

And I actually was able to do that a couple of years after getting, um, you know, my practice started. Uh, I shot 63, 65, 69 in a series of. Big money events at a, at a local club that I was playing out of. And, you know, that was the breakthrough for me was yes, it wasn't a big national qualifier, but my mentality in a situation that was pretty pressure packed because these were guys that not only was I competing against, but also trying to gain respect from as a player and as a coach and had access to lots of tour players.

So there was a lot of pressure for me and, you know, I was able to handle it, started playing some. Uh, professional golf, played too many tour events and, and then ironically met a professional poker player, uh, who used to be a professional golfer. And at that point it was, okay, do I bash my head, you know, trying to compete with all the other golf psychologists that are out there and, and create my own practice?

And, uh, or do I, you know, enter this new market where there's infinite runway, there's nobody doing it, or do I continue down my, my path of trying to play professional golf? And ironically, I think moving into. Professional poker was the safest of the, of all those bets. 

[00:10:24] Paddy Steinfort: Well, there you go. If you can, sometimes you've got to take the safe bets, right?

The, uh, you mentioned one word there that I think is going to be a common theme throughout this show, which was pressure. So a lot of the talks on this show will talk about people who are successful in a certain area that specifically has one of two things, or maybe both, stress and pressure. But they're a little bit different and you mentioned the nuance there of the traditional sports psychology versus the, how do you deal with those pressure pack moments, which it's a different mindset.

It's a different approach that I'm sure listeners have heard me mention a couple of times along the way in different episodes. Like I had a similar journey as a professional athlete, found helpful this sports psychology stuff until it wasn't. And, uh, and it's led me down this path. So that's how I met you two.

But can, can the, can the listeners hear a little about either of you can take this one, you're it or Jared, how did you two come to cross paths? So we've heard preamble of. You're getting into poker, Jared ending up as a poker coach, so to speak. How do you two meet? 

[00:11:24] Jared Tendler: I remember what year it was, I'll let your, because it was a decade ago, so his memory might be a little bit better than mine.

[00:11:31] Jorryt Van Hoof: I don't know the year, so I'm glad that you, uh, you remembered the year. Like for me, the one thing about, like, a key trait of a good poker player is Um, to always focus on the process, um, and not so much the outcome and, um, always try to optimize every decision and your process basically. And I soon realized playing a lot online at the, in the, in the first bunch of years, mostly online, some of the casinos, but like 80 plus percent online.

You're sitting in his room behind this PC, clicking the button all the time, making fast decisions, playing poker, that there was also like a mental aspect to it to be optimized in that process. Uh, so I believe that I basically just, uh, used the internet and came up, uh, to, uh, Jared, uh, pretty quickly. And I, I think I approached him and just, uh, Asked for a first coaching.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm glad you chose for, uh, uh, Jared that you chose for, uh, option, uh, C like going into the poker market and that way I did get to meet you. So, um, I think that's how it went that I just was quite cognizant of, okay, I have this process going on and there's a mental aspect to it and I need to investigate this and the best way to do that is to have a professional look at it.

Um, and give me corrective feedback, basically on where I can improve, like I'm looking in the mirror, you only see so much.

[00:13:05] Jared Tendler: And what I would say about your, in terms of what I've learned about him, I mean, that those principles of precision, optimization, intellectual curiosity, I mean, that, that kind of epitomizes not just his work with me, but just his, his road as a professional.

I had him come in and speak with, uh, some e sports players when we were in the Netherlands and they were. Very quickly impressed by his ability to pick up a game that he had never seen before and be able to speak conceptually about it very rapidly. So, you know, you, you sort of saw how he was able to transition from magic, the gathering to poker.

And so that kind of mind, as it dives into. You know, the mental aspects to me, it's a game. I like the term mental game because we're not talking about mindset. We're not talking about a static entity. I like the word toughness because it implies some action, some growth that's involved. And so your, it has a mind that is, is like weaponized for games and optimization.

And I mean, he's incredibly brilliant at it. And so I think our kind of philosophies aligned very well in that regard. And, you know, so in that regard, we were kind of a great match in terms of a coach student. You know, collaborative relationship, 

[00:14:18] Paddy Steinfort: but I'm going to agree with it to only on a very, very, I've only really just met both of you on screen right now, but in the preamble, as we were setting this up.

You're, you're the only person, only guest ever to request more time so that you can do your due diligence in reading the pre shown notes, spending time to get your thoughts right, like that, that's a level of detail. It takes you the detail and diligence that I probably expect from most performers, but this is the first time it's translated into, Hey, let's take our time getting this set up.

So, uh, therefore we, we might've been edited that bit out. It's probably irrelevant to the listeners, but I, I definitely. Noted that behavior even before we got going here. 

[00:14:57] Jorryt Van Hoof: But part of it was also because I thought like, Oh, I mean, I felt honored that I was asked by Jared's off. And, uh, also, uh, part of toughness, it's a complex word and part of it has to do with recognizing your own flaws and, um, a bit of humility.

And, yeah, I think it made me a little bit like nervous to talk about that. So that's, that's also, I think. Uh, part of the reason why I wanted to take a bit of time. 

[00:15:25] Paddy Steinfort: Well, that's good because you actually, you've, you've, in, in answer there, you've actually led me to the next question, which was about you guys.

Each of your definitions of what toughness is. And you've opened the door a little bit there by saying part of it is humility and recognize being real. I'm not, I'm not an expert in this and I need to know you. You've already mentioned that's how you met Jared because you recognize there was an elemental element to the game that you're not an expert in.

And so you went and found one. That's, that's a part of it, but what does toughness mean to you as a, as a competitor, the world level of poker, like in the top few hundred poker players in the world? 

[00:15:59] Jorryt Van Hoof: Keep focusing on the things that are within your control and change what you can change and what you should change.

And then do that day in, day out with grit, so have grit, and, uh, do it with a poker face as well when you're at the tables, like, you have to keep your emotions in check when playing, so that can be tough, uh, of course, and you have to do it day in, day out to hone your skills and get more experienced, and you have to accept whatever is at the poker table, like, there's a big luck, luck factor, and you have to do it day in, day out to hone your skills and get more experienced, and you have to accept whatever is at the poker table, like, there's a big luck, luck factor, Uh, while playing, so you can't control that.

So you have to keep focusing on the process of things that you can control. 

[00:16:42] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, really, really cool. You mentioned three things there that are, that are central to a lot of the answers people give. One was acceptance almost really, or, or by accepting some of them. Two was distance and consistency required to get really, so you can do that for two days.

It doesn't kind of make you one of the best in the world at what you do. And number three. Which is really interesting, because it kind of ties in on the first one, but is very specific to this game, the term Poker Face. Is the ability to regulate your own emotions. Now, whether it's text only, they might still be raging, but you have the poker face on.

We might circle back to that in a second, but Jared, you got anything different to add there? Or you want to second any of the points you're made? 

[00:17:22] Jared Tendler: On a large level, I certainly agree with all of his points. I, my Style as a coach tends to be very kind of operationally driven and functionally driven. So for me, I look at toughness as simply a measurement of how strong you're, you're connected to an idea or a goal.

And, and so when we think about, you know, the people who are like the toughest or, you know, kind of embody that, we look at You know, elite military like the Navy SEALs and, and their connection to, you know, their creed, right? That they will draw on every, you know, amount of strength to complete the mission and to protect their teammates.

You know, you think about, uh, Tom Brady and his commitment and his, his, his strength and his desire to win. Super bowls. And, you know, so much so we hear about the story of him, you know, back in May before, you know, this like fun golf tournament with tiger woods and Phil Mickelson and how he's working out in the parking lot, right.

Before he goes to play this, you know, televised event because he wants to win a super bowl nine months later. We think about, you know, tiger woods winning the 2008 us open on a broken leg. Why we just saw on. You know, the documentary HBO, right, his caddy after tiger hits the shot off the car path, and he can hear the leg break more says, Hey, tiger, like, Hey, I think maybe, you know, it's time to kind of put this away.

You're gonna do some long term damage. And he says to him, F you, I'm winning this event. Like, When we think about mental mental toughness, to me, it's, it's how strongly are you connected to that idea or that vision or that goal? And we can also look beyond and say, okay, people who are religious, right? How, how strongly are connected to their doctrine?

Parents, how strongly are they connected to their desire to give their kids a better life? And so when we look at the breakdowns, and this is where I'm kind of more interested because typically I'm not. Working with the people that are already master all that. I'm typically working with people who are aspiring to be tougher.

We're really looking at where those breakdowns occur and we can kind of parallel, you know, the physical strength to mental strength, right? And you can evaluate breakdowns and toughness like you would breakdowns muscular, you know, what are the circumstances where that toughness disappears? Does it disappear?

You know, for your example of being very process minded at the poker table, are you able to be very process minded for 90 percent of the tournament until suddenly there's life changing money on the line? Right. For, uh, you know, I've got a guy playing in the corn ferry tour. Who's, you know, basically it's like the triple way of, of professional golf.

You know, he, uh, struggles when the conditions don't give him perfect results, right? A little gust of wind affects his, his ball. He probably misses a couple of putts in a row because. He did everything right. And so there's this illusion that he has full control over his results. And, and so there we find the breakdowns and toughness.

And that to me is where, you know, I think some of the magic lies and being able to elevate and, and build and become tougher, right, that's not tough. It's toughness. It's how do you build more of it? And to me, it's really isolating where those breakdowns occur and figuring out what the flaws are or, or the cause of that, correct it and you get tougher.

You work yourself. Uh, to, to be able to operate in those circumstances with, with more of that. 

[00:20:42] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I mean, really cool. A couple of points there that we will circle back to one of them where you said the breakdowns in toughness and how we actually work on them. There's one, there's one specific one I want to circle back to in a minute, but I want to go back to the idea of poker face that you're raised.

That I was hoping would come up because again, it's a very specific term. That's exactly a flaw, you know, it came out of this game, this, uh, well, not just a game, a career for you. You're normally, I ask people, what is one key mental or emotional trait of Doppler faunus in your area? This is a very important skill to be able to maintain a calm facade, even if you're going all over the place inside, right?

It's. Would it be fair to say that there isn't a successful poker player who can't do that? Or sorry, let me ask it the other way. Is there anyone who is very good that can't do poker face? 

[00:21:30] Jorryt Van Hoof: Well, you could play poker online and you can play poker at the casino. So, um, online the poker face is a little less, uh, important, as you can understand.

There are really good online poker players who Have more difficulty, like maybe maintaining a poker face, but at the same time, like a poker face is sort of a metaphor for like emotional regulation. And yeah, even if you're playing online, you'll have to keep your emotions in check, maybe even more because the decisions are going way faster.

So whenever you lose or win a few book, big thoughts. You'll have to remain focused and else, you know, you'll, uh, self destruct basically. So yeah, it's going to be difficult to not have the ability to have a distance between you and your emotions, basically. Like I wouldn't necessarily think that's even talking from my own experience of emotional regulation is a.

Prerequisite, like I used to just be able to disconnect, I think, from my emotions. So now at almost 40 years of age, I'm still working on becoming more emotionally regulated. It's just that in poker, it helped to be able to disconnect from my emotions. Make the decisions, uh, more like colds or calculated as you could say.

So I think this being able to distance yourself from your emotions, maybe even it's happening, like not so consciously, you know, it's just happened like an automatic process. I'm just like built for that. Some poker players, maybe some other poker players, they worked towards that and it's something they achieved.

Definitely at the highest stakes. You have to be able to distance yourself from your emotions or to use your emotions. In a way that serve you in the game. So you can feel anxiety, but you can reframe it as just being energy, being aware of that, being mindful and using it as adrenaline, because sometimes you have to play for 11 hours straight and adrenaline can be useful if you think of it as anxiety, then, you know, it might wear you out and you might make a wrong decision based on it.

[00:23:44] Paddy Steinfort: Great example. I mean, I was about to say, can you give us an example of when you use an emotion as opposed to ignore it and you answer it at a time. So that's a really good one because this isn't just 2poco. You think about someone who's trying to do a negotiation in business, someone who's trying to present for a promotion, someone who's trying to ask someone out, there is an element of.

There's shit going on inside that I can't let other people see, otherwise it affects the outcomes that we're trying to achieve. Now whether you actually regulate the emotions, you made a good point there, sometime about regulation, some people can just disconnect, but to you June, the licensed mental health counsellor, that that's probably not the most healthy way to handle things.

If there's no managing. Some people's coping strategies to just disconnect, just literally ignore them or just distance and probably over time, that's not healthy, right? But there is what Jorrit has described there is blend of kind of distancing, but more an acceptance and then even a re channeling. Is that a fair statement?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about 

[00:24:49] Jared Tendler: time and place and where each person is in their evolution as a A competitor, an athlete, a poker player, a trader, I don't kind of subscribe to this kind of one fits all philosophy. I think we have to kind of meet the person where they are and what they're capable of, because if you ask too much of them, they're not going to do it.

It's going to cause failure and make things worse. So yeah, I think in the long run, you know, you want to have a kind of a more integrated understanding of your emotions. And I think the, the longterm outcome that we're after really is to have your emotions be pure enough. That you're not kind of imprinting your own biases and illusions into the competition to the action, right?

So you can actually use anxiety or frustration or perhaps overconfidence or lack of confidence as signals of what's kind of going on within the game so that you can kind of modulate and make adjustments technically and tactically, not anything kind of mental, you know, but kind of short of that, you know, yeah, in the heat of battle.

You do need to have some ability to either disconnect or to counteract or correct your emotions in real time. Otherwise, they are going to compromise you. Now, in the long run, right, so let's say after a 12 hour poker session, what are we going to do with the information that we found, right? What are the, what are the triggers?

What were the things that caused the emotional volatility within a poker session, within a trading session, within a round of golf? Then we need to analyze that and break it down and isolate the flaws that then can be worked on because that's where the growth comes from. So, you know, in the short term, in the heat of battle, yeah, you need to do everything you can to perform at your highest level and that sometimes will mean disconnection.

Sometimes it will mean no, I'm actually going to be more acknowledging of my emotions because as you become more integrated. You can simultaneously be aware of what's going on, correct them, and be able to adjust to that kind of internal process very quickly and still perform very well. To me, that's how the transformation begins to happen, right?

You can't really correct mental game flaws, you know, kind of in the practice environment. It has to occur in the training environment. And I think this is perhaps what, what you may have experienced as well as a competitor for me was okay. Here are these points of failure. How can I get over the hurdle? I have to be able to take what I'm learning in training and apply it.

You know, in those, those critical moments and, and that is often what that process looks like. It's, it's just kind of ugly and messy where you're making these kind of incremental improvements. I like to say you're just sucking less and then over time you keep sucking less enough. You're going to be pretty great.

[00:27:18] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, that process of sucking less as you put it is key and I, I have found that as well and we'll talk to coaches or GMs in particular. CEOs, people who own the performance company, but aren't actually performers themselves in this acute, um, high stakes environment is that they look at it like, Oh, you can do in the two month off season, you can do a program and we'll get better and like, Hmm, you kind of have to be exposed to the fire a little bit to get better at this internal stuff, because it's very hard to replicate.

Those responses, one of which this leads me to the question I'm going to talk about as a, as a breakdown in mental game, that is, it's not necessarily specific to poker, but the term tilt originated out of the poker playing community and I came across it. Well, as a kid when I was playing pinball, but it really refers to when players lose control due to anger or what's going on inside them.

And for those listeners who aren't familiar, it did originate in pinball. If you ever have played pinball and you can see the ball going down the middle and it's going to go between the flippers and you're like, ah, and you get really upset with it or angry or nervous and you, you literally move the machine, nudge it a little bit so that it goes back towards when your flippers.

And then the machine shuts down and you can't use your flippers at all because it says you tilt it. That's the origin of the term, but it now applies not only in poker, but e sports, chess, a lot of these strategy based, but high pressure games where the players themselves will talk about tilting. And, and there's, so Justin Oliver, who is a world series of poker bracelet winner says about you, Jared, when he's talking about his mental game, he says he doesn't tilt anymore thanks to your work.

And so what is that work? Like, how do you actually take someone from. Someone who is tilting or does tilt in those key moments and then X number of months later, they don't tilt anymore. 

[00:29:07] Jared Tendler: First of all, I'll say I think tilt should be mainstream. Um, you know, a lot of problems that we experience mentally and emotionally typically can be just described in a very kind of heavy, serious tone.

And I think when you admit that you have a tilt problem, it's a lot more fun than saying you have an anger management. You know, you got to go to anger management. It's like, no, it's let's talk about tilt. So, you know, if you're gonna have a, if you're gonna have an anger problem, let's have a little fun with it.

So, yeah, I think this should be ubiquitous everywhere because effectively tilt is basically the anger rises to a point and it shuts down higher brain function. The part of the brain responsible for emotional control is compromised. So you make poor decisions because you don't have the cortical space.

That you used to, to make decisions as you would normally. So how do you actually solve your anger issues? Well, you know, I've kind of alluded to it before. We've got to look at sort of the signals or the symptoms that exist on the surface. So we analyze your thoughts that arise, you know, in key moments.

We analyze your emotional reactions. We analyze the ways in which your decision making process breaks down in very specific explicit terms. So, you know, as a poker player, you might. You know, forget one of the steps that are critical to making a decision, which, you know, for a lot of good poker players would include analyzing your opponent's hand strength.

Right. So if you forget to do that and you're only focused on your own hand, you're going to make a poor decision because now you're not kind of interacting with your competitor. You're basically just kind of playing a default style that based on your hand and your hand alone. And that's not really great ways of competing, whether you're a football team or a golfer, ignoring the data that's coming from the golf course.

So, so that breakdown in decision making has to be isolated. And as we kind of look at all of those signals and symptoms, we begin to understand what the underlying flaws may be. So are we dealing with, uh, what I call injustice tilt? Are we dealing with hate losing, you know, are you too competitive, right?

Do you have, uh, some, uh, entitlement tilt, right? Which, uh, if those of, you know, Phil Helmuth is kind of the epitome of this, right? Where he, he believes because he is such a great poker player and because he has such this great track record that he deserves to win. And there's an element of kind of confidence kind of mixed into the.

The anger there, uh, revenge tilts is my favorite, right? This is where, you know, players are very kind of aggressively re raising you. And, uh, you know, it feels like you're, you're kind of having to defend your own self respect and, and all the rest of it, uh, running bad tilts is, uh, you know, happens where, where you're on, you know, this bad run where circumstances just kind of continue to go against you.

Right. So we, we kind of look at again, the signals on the surface, we start to categorize it. And then we look for the underlying flaws, right? Do you have an illusion of control? Do you have a hatred of mistakes? Uh, do you have some confirmation bias? 

[00:31:44] Paddy Steinfort: I love it. I love the fact that there's different flavors and you can have a favorite.

And then we say, well, why, where's that coming from? But once you discover that, what's the, what do you do? 

[00:31:53] Jared Tendler: Well, then, then you come up with a correction. And, you know, I know there's going to be a yada yada on that. So the in the moment process to me has to include these four steps. So the first thing is the recognition early.

Poker players, traders, e sports. By and large, when I start working with, with people, they're, they're very well aware of when the problems occur in his biggest form, but they're not aware of the signals that indicate a problem is going to happen several steps from now. And if you can identify those signals, because they do exist, you're just not aware of them yet.

You don't have the recognition skill yet. If you can identify it, then you have the brain matter that can actually work to correct a problem before it actually emerges. And that to me is critical because if you start kind of chipping away at it. You're going to have an impact, you're going to delay the onset of tilt, and if it does occur, you already kind of established a foundation of progress that's going to allow you to attack it.

So the four step process is recognize the signals early, disrupt the pattern, right? These patterns have a momentum all to themselves, right? First law of thermodynamics, right? An object in motion stays in motion. You got to be the outside force that changes it. So you can take a deep breath, right? Which has a physiological benefit.

I know you've spoken about that. You can stand up, you can do anything, you know, throw a ball against the wall, anything to disrupt the pattern. Then you got to inject logic, right? Call this a mantra, call this a, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, whatever you want to call it. The technique of injecting logic is training a piece, an idea.

That is correcting the underlying flaw. So for somebody who has injustice tilt, right? The correction might be poker is not fair. You want bad players to get good luck so that they falsely believe that they're good. Okay, so we're gonna train that logic. You're gonna study it regularly so that it gets strong in your mind.

So that in that moment, it has the potency to change your emotional state. And then the last step is to think strategically. What, what do I need to do specifically in these moments to be better tactically, strategically, nothing to do with mental game. So like more about like, okay, we've got ourselves emotionally stabilized.

How am I now going to play a little bit better? How am I going to assert a son to us in that moment? Very, very 

[00:34:10] Paddy Steinfort: cool. And I think if we use that framework using your description of the flipping anxiety a little bit, there's the recognition, like you said, patent interrupt, but then specifically. Reframing that to be like, yeah, that's not anxiety, it's adrenaline and get back to focusing on what the next step is, what am I doing with this hand, what's my next move, really cool, repeatable process.

That's awesome. I'm going to flip to you now, Jura, and picking up that first bit of recognizing the pattern early, where I will often say to performers I work with that our process is about the sucking less in effect is half of it is. Being able to recognize instead of after the event, like I recognize that I tilted the next day or that night when I'm on Twitter and the world is telling me I suck, to I recognize it after the game while we're sharing, to I recognize it at halftime, to I recognize it a minute after the play, to I recognize it as it's happening, to as you mentioned Jared, I start to see it boiling up before it gets there.

And I'm curious for you, Jaret, was there a period in time where these sort of effects or You would notice this after the fact, and the part of your work of getting better, getting to the point where you're now a multi million dollar winner of tournaments, part of that process was earlier recognition?

[00:35:31] Jorryt Van Hoof: Yes, for sure. It took me a long time before really recognizing and taking more serious some of these earlier signals. And, you know, I think like part of it was true, like constant type of counseling sessions with Jared, getting feedback and in dialogue. And part of it was, um, obtained through like meditation, just becoming like more aware of, uh, even like signals in my body.

So before I started playing, Oh, how do I feel? Uh, something, I feel some unease that could be a signal. And then after a while, I started to see like, uh, most of the time when I feel that unease, it has to do with something that happens in my, like, personal relationships. So very often if there's like some friction in any of my important personal relationships, then it can bother me and that's, uh, influences my play, uh, a lot of the tables.

I know now that's, you know, either. Fix or repair, whatever I have going on in the relationship. That's important for me. And obviously not only, uh, at the poker tables, I've learned that as well. The pretty late stage in my life, but not too late. I'm, uh, happily married now. So, Hey, congrats. Yeah, thank you.

But, uh, yeah, so for me, it's, I think that process, um, counseling really helps meditation, really helps being like reflective and have having some tools to be reflective and. Be aware of those early signals. And then, um, yeah, for me, it's like mostly like 90 plus percent of the time. It's something in a relationship.

Sometimes it's like, oh, I didn't eat well, you know, obviously everybody knows if you don't eat well, then you perform, uh, less strong, whatever eating well means for you, you know, you, you have, uh, everybody has their own. Like. No preferences. 

[00:37:27] Paddy Steinfort: Good, good examples. And I, I'm going to sink you in, I'm going to put you in an immersion event.

So in the, in the, um, military communities, particularly that I, that I've been lucky enough to become a part of, they taught some, a mission critical event, which is a, an immersion, what they call an immersion. So once you go in, you can't go back because it makes it worse. Like you've kicked the door of a village down in Afghanistan.

You can't then run away. Like that's bad news. And you've started this thing that has to be finished. It 10 minutes. But there's the points that you had changed. It's an emergent event. So things shift as you're going along and it really does apply. When I first found out about this, um, I was like, Oh, well, that's cool, but it's life and death.

But they said, no, when you're working with professional athletes, eSports, whatever, it's the same kind of thing. Like you, you're sitting at a table. When you decide to put all of your chips in the middle, or someone calls you to do that and you, you're like, okay, I am, the same thing happens once the chips are in, you're not going back, you, the play changes as the cards are turned over.

There are, there are many similarities, and particularly with what happens to us as we try and make effective decisions. Under those constraints. So using that little setup that you beautifully gave me a second ago of becoming aware of what's happening in your body, of your state and of whatever else might be happening for you.

If we just assume it's a normal day, you've got decent, you know, your relationships are all steady. You had a good meal. It's only four hours into a session. So you're not like dead tired and it's an all in moment. Can you talk us through what happens to you? What are you normally aware of? That happens as that happens, particularly if we're talking about life changing money on the table, it depends a lot 

[00:39:08] Jorryt Van Hoof: if, if all of your chips already all in, if that's the case and your opponent is still like deciding and he's like looking right at you, then you basically just want to appear as a statue or like a robot, you know, I mean, you, you don't want to give off any poker face comes in.

Handy. So yeah, your internal dialogue should be tuned into helping keep up the facade because you're basically deceptive because you're bluffing if you're all in for, and you don't have anything. In the case that you're not all in for all your chips, but you have like one more street to play. So in poker, you always have like.

Multiple streets to play. So you make a big bet, your opponent calls, and then the next street comes. It could feel, I mean, you, you already kicked in the door. You aren't fully committed yet. And that's, those are like very, um, difficult moments because then you have the next decision to make. And you have to keep an account like, okay, I kicked in the door.

Are we really like entering pool? Guys are raising. Uh, yeah, it's a heart rate is up, 

[00:40:18] Paddy Steinfort: like you're sweating a little bit. Like, tell us what's happening physically. 

[00:40:20] Jorryt Van Hoof: If I'm playing my like a game, if I'm playing my best game, then I'm feeling very calm and confidence. Then there's not a lot of self doubt and I'm like totally open, like feelings of like love towards the game and feeling connected, they're also part of it, part of all that, like conscious experience in that moment, and then if I'm not playing my a game and you cannot always play your a game, then.

Self doubt could creep in and then I could feel my heart beat, for instance. So thoughts might pop up like, Oh, did I make the correct play here? Am I like over committing to money chips or should I not go in? You know, it's doubtful thoughts instead of being able to fully execute the game optimal strategy while being like open and receptive to.

Uh, your opponents, that's more like the first state, like your a game. And then you're more like very confident, aware of everything. Then my body is very calm. And if that's not happening and I feel my heartbeats, then my focus just goes to. Like play more like a basic strategy that I know is like, uh, good enough, basically, instead of like optimal.

Which is strive for, and basically I'm like trying to regulate myself and not give away any tells, uh, trying to regulate my breathing, getting back to the moments, things like that. 

Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, it's a great, you make me think of, I can't even list how many performers, not only on this show, but people I work with, how common it is for people to talk about the knowledge of I had an A game, but I also can't do that all the time.

And part of being really good. Is when I have my B or even my C game is just doing enough, like just being able to shrink, shrinking my thinking to, I'm just going to do these three things. And if I do them, I'm giving myself the best chance I have while I have a C game going on. 

[00:42:19] Jorryt Van Hoof: That's actually one of the main lessons, maybe even like the, like on a technical performance points that I learned from Jared is like return to B game.

And it's like a mantra for me, you know, if I feel I'm, I'm off, off peak. It turns to be game it's, it's so useful to state that to myself. And that's the general takeaway. Yeah, for sure. I think it's applicable in, in many more domains as well. You know, like, 

[00:42:49] Paddy Steinfort: yeah, for sure. And there's a couple, I know we're getting close to the end of the show here, so I don't want to skip out really key points.

So like a lot of this, we've talked about both of you, Jared was. Very open about his failures or some harder times that he went through on the golf course in particular We've only talked about how things have been good for you I'm gonna assume that winning some photos some, you know, getting to the final table in World Series of poker winning the tournament in Australia Highlights, it's nice to walk away with a big check with lots of zeros on it or lots of commas Let's say that if you're talking about a hardship though along the along your path to where you are now What was one of the harder times that you?

Uh, did you need it to bounce back from, I think I, I said it before, 

[00:43:32] Jorryt Van Hoof: but like part of toughness is like humility as well for me and humidity is, and I always had like some difficulty with that. Like in my internal dialogue, I always like felt invulnerable almost at the poker tables. Um, and when you feel invulnerable, it's difficult to.

Admit where your weaknesses are, for instance, and I think that's originated like from some tough times or some hardships in my life, for instance, when I was 16, what came up when I read this question beforehand, like when I was 16, I needed to go to the hospital and I was in a life threatening situation.

I was in the hospital for almost a month and then, um, like three or four months in recovery in my bed at home. After that. I obviously survived, so that's good, but it's It, uh, like kind of like installs, uh, like the belief of, like, I was very out of touch, I think with my anxieties and I was dissociate dissociated from my anxieties of like we're possibly dying in the hospital.

And I think that like installed this, like, believe in me that I'm invulnerable. And somehow like, that was like very useful in, in poker, that hardship, it was very useful in poker because it helped with the poker face, but at the same time, you know, in. My relationships, it didn't always help to like feel invulnerable and not being able to talk about what you might be getting wrong or admitting where somebody can hurt you.

For instance, like when you're playing poker, it's very valuable not to like feel hurt and not to admit that you feel hurt and then feel invulnerable basically, but in real life, of course, you. When you're in a relationship, it helps to be able to open up and say like, Hey, this hurts. Yes. So that hardship and I, I've had a couple of those where it really like helped me in my poker career, but it also came at a cost like in, in real life.

And I ended up a couple of years ago in a like deep depression, I think also followed from like the same, like way that I coped. Uh, with that hospital experience by dissociating from like any bad feelings. And, uh, yeah, I think to me, toughness, like the lesson that I learned, isn't like only going off to that goal and then achieving that goal.

By working day in, day out, but it's also like the humility is very important and acknowledging to yourself, like, uh, more holistically, like, Hey, I'm a human being with like some faults and with, um, vulnerabilities and being able to step out of your comfort zone and then face like those fears or whatever you have.

So, yeah, I'm not sure if I communicated completely, uh, 

[00:46:25] Paddy Steinfort: absolutely right. I think so. Like, I mean, I mean, firstly, I appreciate you sharing that experience because it's a strong reflection of one of the very common refrains on this show and probably one of the reasons why it was started in the first place is the misperception or misconception of toughness as the grit your teeth, grind it like there's to be tough, but actually as we're talking to more and more people who perform at a world level like yourself, there's a discovery along the way that.

There's a, a large component of it is actually flexibility, that what works in some situations doesn't work in others, and that, that approach to dissociation, whilst it might be helpful at a poker table, doesn't necessarily help you in other areas, or even sometimes might hurt you at the poker table if you're not fully in touch with what's going on.

And so, Jared, I'm going to call you back in there because talking particularly as with mental health has been lobbed on the table there, how often you work with performers where flexibility becomes emotional flexibility, cognitive flexibility, psychological flexibility, whatever you want to term it, is one of the key elements that you have to work on because they've become so good at grinding or pushing or enduring or stone facing that they need to actually develop.

Okay. Well, yeah, that's cool for these situations. But that template doesn't always apply. 

[00:47:42] Jared Tendler: Yeah, it's, it's incredibly common. I think if I look at the kind of arc of my career early on, it was, you know, working with athletes, performers, mostly just in that sphere. And then, you know, as they have a lot of success, things outside of the game begin to kind of infiltrate a little bit and, you know, their goals change, their aspirations change.

What do you do with, you know, a 22 year old, um, you know, poker player who's suddenly worth millions of dollars. And I'm not referring to your year, you know, They'd never thought that they would be in that position. How does that You know, affect them elsewhere, how overconfident they become. And what we find is that sometimes these unresolved personal issues from their past now kind of start to pop up, uh, weaknesses there.

So I think the flexibility to, you know, kind of analyze. Those personal things can sometimes affect us while we're performing, but they also can affect us outside of it, which then affects training and preparation and reflection and, you know, kind of the full circle of what you're trying to do. And so I think the flexibility comes in if you're not operating, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally at the level that you want to be, regardless of what environment we're talking about, whether it's a competitive one or personal one that you, you have the humility, the honesty.

the self reflection to ask the right questions. Why am I feeling this way? And if you ask that question, you'll either start to get answers or you'll gather information that you can then bring to an expert who can help you kind of wade through it and be able to solve those problems. I mean, I think my job either as a performance coach, a mental coach, a therapist, whatever you want to say, I'm just a problem solver.

That's it. I have tools for problem solving and they tend to be kind of weaponized for competitive performance. But they can be applied everywhere else and all of the concepts that we're talking about in this podcast today, the concepts that you speak about in the show and regularly, they apply everywhere.

And that, that to me is the coolest thing, because when you learn the concepts and the skills and the processes, you know, you learn how to fish, right? It's not about somebody giving you fish and, and off you go, it's, it's being able to understand You know, how to problem solve for yourself. And and sometimes that means getting personal and diving the things that are more uncomfortable just because they're unfamiliar or you're not really good at problem solving in that way.

You know, or we're talking about performance and you know, you're steps away from, you know, winning the masters and you can't quite get over the hurdle and you don't really know what's blocking you, but you've got to do that self reflection and then have that honesty and that, you know, humility to say, here's where I suck.

How can I suck less? 

[00:50:09] Paddy Steinfort: That's a great, there's a, one of the Navy SEAL trainers who I mentioned in that, uh, who introduced me to that mission critical community said that the old school coaching was you suck, suck less. And it, you just reminded me of it there, but that really is what we're trying to work on here.

And I love the way you put that, this work that you're, it has done that you do on the daily Jared with your other clients is about learning to fish. As opposed to learning how to dominate one specific game. Now it definitely helps you do that second part. But for those of us like me, who their best card game is Go Fish, it still can help me in other areas if I'm, if I manage to master the, the art of, of mental fishing, if you will.

So on that note, I really want to thank you both again for coming on and sharing your journeys, your personal experiences, some great takeaways. For people who want to find you, uh, after the show, Jorrit, I'll ask you, what's the best way people can follow your journey or, uh, get in touch with you or be a supporter?

[00:51:05] Jorryt Van Hoof: I do have a Twitter and a Facebook account. I don't log in very frequently, but, uh, you can shoot me a message there and at some point I will definitely answer you or else, uh, hit me up on LinkedIn. I get those messages straight in my, uh, email. Thanks for having me, uh, Paddy. Was a delightful conversation.

[00:51:23] Paddy Steinfort: Our pleasure, man. Our pleasure. Uh, Jared, what about you for people who like your perhaps are at a point where they're like, Hey, I want to actually do something about this mental game. I needed someone to teach me how to fish. Uh, how did I find you? 

[00:51:34] Jared Tendler: Jared tunler. com is my website. Um, there's a ton of kind of free content there as well.

Downloadable worksheets and blogs, et cetera. And then I'm fairly active on Twitter, uh, at Jared tunler, but they can also find me on LinkedIn as well. 

[00:51:46] Jorryt Van Hoof: Nice. And, and for, sorry, if I can add like one thing, I feel like I really want to still say like. If that's like one takeaway from my experience, if anybody who's listening is considering taking like help counseling, please go.

Like if you're like facial demons and just go and from my experience, it's the best thing you can do. Facial demons. Talk to your little person. 

[00:52:09] Paddy Steinfort: That is the best way to close the show. I normally say, Hey, how do you know? What do you hope with? What do you hope for the future with your work and this conversation?

That's a, that's an awesome note to end on for those who are considering getting a coach, getting a therapist, whatever you want to call it. Like Juret said, go face your demons. Talk to the little man inside your head or little woman, depending on who you are. Thank you very much Juret for ending it like that.

Appreciate you both. Good luck with, uh, upcoming tournaments, Juret and Jared. Good luck with whatever you want to do with your golf from here on out. Appreciate you guys. 

[00:52:41] Jared Tendler: Thanks, guys.