Interesting post. Definitely think it could be useful. What I usually recommend to players going through tilt and poor mental game strategy is to either read The Mental Game Of Poker (both 1 and 2) by Jared Tender or also give Tommy Angelo's book, Elements of Poker, a try. Or if you would rather visit some sort of site, I'm a fan of poker coach Blake Eastman and his site, SchoolOfCards.com You can either visit that or his YouTube channel titled, School Of Cards. He also has a great new program out for reading live poker tells. His new site is, BeyondTells.com and will be starting this upcoming December. 

Hope this is all useful to someone out there. Best of luck on and off the felt. 

Thanks for that, love Tommy Angelo's stuff, will need to have a look at Blake Eastman - sounds good. Thanks for posting - I kind of got waylaid posting my links but will get it done after I've played for a bit.

If you have a kindle, check out those prices because on some of the books you can save a lot. All the links are to Amazon UK, because that's where I live. But you get the description, reviews etc. and I'm sure you guys are clever enough to get the books where you live :)

Books/Audio - About mind management

The Chimp Paradox - Dr Steve Peters This book has some really good ideas but has some issues in how they are expressed (not only are there a chimp a computer and a human, which is fine - but also planets and moons, which seems confusing). The author is a psychiatrist and mind coach to champion athletes. Worth the effort because you do get a simple model and practical tips on how to improve.

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living - Dale Carnegie I have the audio book of this and really like it - but it's really expensive. Haven't read the print version but it's a lot cheaper. A lot of the examples are set a long time ago and there's a bit of religiousness - it's Dale Carnegie after all - but despite all that, it has a certain folksy charm, talks a lot of sense and helped me put things in perspective.

Books/Audio - General (that can shape how you think about things)

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - Nassim Nicholas Taleb and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Two of my favourite books ever, particularly Fooled by Randomness. Fun to read. Lot's of common sense and well explained ideas that can make you reconsider a lot of things and a lot of links to further reading and other authors if you want to take it further. 

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman Brilliant, easy to read book that gave me a lot of insight into why I (and a lot of other people) do a lot of really stupid things. Once you understand them, you can do something about it. Plus you'll have read a book by a Nobel prize winning economist.

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else - Geoff Colvin and/or Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Matthew Syed These two are quite similar and I prefer Talent is Overrated. Bounce gets into some kind of far-out theories later on.

Books - Specifically about Poker and the mental game

The 3 best known, I'm really including these for completeness.  I confess I haven't read them, although I've just decided I'm going to get them for Kindle (the print versions seem like a lot of $$)

Elements of Poker - Tommy Angelo , The Mental Game of Poker - Jared Tendler M.S, Barry Carter, and the second one The Mental Game of Poker 2: Proven Strategies for Improving Poker Skill, Increasing Mental Endurance, and Playing in the Zone Consistently - Jared Tendler (Author), Barry Carter (Contributor) which gets the prize for longest title!

Also I'd agree with TheRaulrus suggestion above that leatherass's Treat Your Poker Like a Business: How to Turn a Hobby Into an Empire - Dusty Schmidt (Author), Scott Brown (Contributor) is worth a read too. Been a while since I read it. Might be time to give it another look.

Video/Audio

I have two suggestions here which are both actually video - but I transcoded the first one to MP3 so I can listen to it anywhere, because I think of it as the definitive starting point for anyone struggling with their mental game:

The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment - Tommy Angelo. Eight episodes, each about 45 minutes. Still on Deuces Cracked - the first Episode is on free view here. If you like it you could get the free trial to get the other episodes. Personally I prefer RIO (a lot) but I really rate this series.

Jason Somerville's free YouTube channel is something else I'd recommend, if only because it's a reminder that playing poker is supposed to be fun. Has some interesting guests (luckychewy today) and makes a good job of explaining his thought processes in actual hands without really trying to teach anything.

I think Jared Tendler does some stuff on one of the other training sites but I don't know where and I haven't watched any.

That's all I've got at the moment. Will try and write up a couple of the tips and tricks tomorrow - didn't realise how long this would take. Hope to see any other suggestions.

2 more good non-poker specific books are:

The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance - Josh Waitzkin

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams

Maybe Rio should hire 1 therapist as a coach lol

Reading Daz's post about having a mental game section, reminded me I said I would post drills and tips in here, and I played a hand badly in an MTT yesterday which cost me $EV, where it shouldn't have. So here's what happened and the kind of practice I use to get out of this bad habit.

Deep in an MTT, 900 runners, 40 remain, lost a big flip when there were 70 players and have been short stack ninja-ing for a while. I have 9BB w antes and look at 77 on BU - "that's going in", I think to myself. UTG limps. He is short as well, has been shoving a lot and maintaining his stack. I've played 100+ hands with him, he never has worse than KK here - so why do I shove 77 and bust with no FE and 19% equity?

Why do I convince myself that he could have enough AQ+, or a baby pair that he could fold when this player here never has? - The answer is I am anchored to my first thought which was "that's going in". My brain has made up a logical reason for carrying out a decision I already made. It hasn't taken the new information into account because I've become attached to a course of action. If you are interested in anchoring and all the other biases that we all have there is a ton of information in "Thinking Fast and Slow" (there's a link in the resources post above).

The drill I use in a practice session, which also helps with other things like thinking about peoples ranges and stacks, but also trains me to not anchor is: Switch on Options > Table Display Options > Hide Hole Cards in Pokerstars, which will hide your cards until you mouse over them. (You can do a similar thing with an opaque HUD panel on other sites.)

Steamer, awesome tip on hiding the cards.
I usually break hands down like one of my friends was siiting next to me, or if I were making a coaching video, explaining every acttion you take.
Auto-piloting is horrible for poker improvement, so double checking every decision and dicussing the logic behind it is super important.

Kind of tired today - thought about firing up a couple of tables and then realised it would be setting money on fire, so I'll use the spare time to share a tip I've found useful, instead. It's probably a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy technique if you wanted to stick a fancy label on it. Here goes.

I keep a hand written selection of "scripts" on index cards that I review from time to time and sometimes I'll put specific ones where I can see them while I play, if I've identified something I should be working on or have a problem with. The typical format is:

Steamer, you get curious when a random player shoves all in in a strange spot and tend to call too much. Now calling might be the right option and he might be full of shit, but let's consider this exact position carefully and make the right decision. Why not just fold if it's close. You need the practice.

Steamer, you sometimes play when you aren't prepared, don't have enough time or shouldn't be playing for other reasons. It's usually because you have time to spare and you like playing poker. The thing is we have an agreement to only play when you are ready to play your best. Are you really prepared to commit the time and effort right now? You enjoy playing well, much more than mindlessly losing buy ins and you could review hands or watch a video instead. That will help you have fun in future. 

Do I actually address myself by my screen name? No, I'm not 100% mental. But I do use my real name :) So that's the technique and it works for me. I was interested to see Phil Galfond referencing something very similar in his AMA (I'd link to it, but I don't really want to reread 100's of posts on reddit, sorry.) Also Nick Rampone replied in another thread that he does something similar with notes he has written up in Notepad.

The underlying theory is well explained in the book, The Chimp Paradox and a good script should allow you to exercise the chimp (that is acknowledge your underlying reason for doing the bad behaviour), suggest a better course of action and reinforce why it is a better course of action. If I catch myself doing something stupid during a session I'll make a note and if it seems worthwhile I make up a script card for it.

I could go on (a lot) but that's probably enough. Peace.

I am not by any means a mental game expert, but I have spent a lot of time energy learning about mental game, how to improve it, and also working on my own mental game. It seems to me that while some resources out there can be informative and helpful (I've used some of the ones that were listed here in the past), I think that most people don't appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes into improving their mental game. I feel like a lot of people have this mentality like: "Mental Game of Poker? Jared Tendler's supposed to be awesome - all my mental problems are going to be fixed when I read this book!!"

And then they go off and play hard, maybe things go well for a while, and then they tilt hard and realize that not much has changed. Mental game is all about how we feel and react to poker situations. So much of that is rooted in habits - to change our mental game we must change our habits. And that's rough. Speaking as someone who read Mental Game twice and listened to Tommy Angelo's Eightfold Path about 8 times, it's not just about understanding the problems. It's abut taking steps, baby ones  if necessary, toward creating new habits that encourage us to understand variance, realize fish sometimes win, have realistic expectations, and the list goes on.

That being said, I think this thread is a solid place for anyone to start, and I look forward to seeing what else comes to be in here.

I think like most things you need to find out what works for you. I agree that the mental game is huge and is possibly the most common cause of people remaining at low stakes for years. I've come up with the following routine which I try and go through. Happy to receive any feedback or suggestions on improvement. I created this after reading about the inchworm concept in the mental game of poker and felt like I wasn't doing enough to correct leaks so I have huge variations in my game, from playing amazing to playing like the worst fishy player ever.

The other thing I know about myself is that at this stage I can't play more than 4 tables of PLO, I just can't think through the decisions or take in the necessary information fast enough.

Preparation
– Pre session

Review short-term and long-term goals.

Remind yourself why you are playing and what your successes will look
like

When
preparing for my actual poker session, I create a list of achievable goals
which I want to achieve for this session. I create these goals to help try to
combat my greatest weaknesses and use previous evaluations or analysis to see
where these areas are.

List
goals for session – only 1 or 2.

Examples
- folding when very likely beat, finishing session after an hour, common leaks,
folding flops (when T bet is likely which I would have to fold to), not feeling
tilted.



Performance – during play

Use a
notepad to write any in game errors or observations

Mark hands with PT – e.g. where unsure of equity/decision

Gauge
feelings as playing, write down what I find titling and quit if too tilted.

Any other
observations



Evaluation – post play

Score scale of 1-5, 1 = excellent, 2 = good, 3 = average, 4 = poor, 5 =
very poor

Not playing too many tables

Focus on the session

Though Processes

Concentration - not just clicking buttons

Tilt-control – not feeling tilted

Range reading skills

Decision making

Not looking at results

Quitting early (if appropriate).



Analysis



Review any marked hands – post in forum if appropriate

Note down
any future goals or weaknesses to be addressed

Possibly the best thread I've ever found...  More than I'll get through in the forseeable future.  Thanks.

I posted above, but I think I should make a double post, since IMO it's really important.

Check this resource

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/87809?hl=en

Google Forms is just a more efficient way to track down your mental game, for me it was groundbreaking

Hi,

i have also big tilt issues. Me for my part i have decided to play just 1 Table Rush for a full Month. The Plan behind is, to concentrate on every Hand, to observe the hole table, and decide my actions on the infos i get. The other thing is, when i dont have 2-3 tough desicions, or suck outs at the same time, it tilts me less. I am Playing NL10, but after 3 Days my winrate took a turnaround from -0,60 to +15bb/100 in 4000 Hands. I Know, the Sample is small, but the direction is clear. Try it, it is very helpfull for the mindset in my opinion!!

I personally use http://pokerwarmup.com to prepare myself before almost every session and sometimes during the breaks (I play HU, upto nl1k). It's done very much like Jared Tendler recommends in his book, but have some additional kewl features like Brain games and Session Timer. It's still in Beta, but they promised to change to a nice design and add new features like cool down and Dumping the Downswing very soon.