Poker’s Culture Problem: Why the Game Doesn’t Feel Fun Anymore

13 May 2025

Beginner

This material is for beginner players

On average, the longer someone plays poker, the more miserable they become. But if you apply the concepts I’m about to share, that doesn’t have to be your story. Today, we’re diving into the real heart of the matter: pain, suffering, self-sabotage. All the good stuff. This is why I get paid the big bucks. We're going to unpack why so many poker players are far more miserable than they need to be — and more importantly, how to escape that cycle.

Here’s the truth: serious poker players are deeply addicted to suffering unnecessarily. You don’t have to look far to see it. Just walk into any poker room in the world.

I remember the first time I brought my wife to one. We were just dating back then. She didn’t know anything about poker, but I had spent months hyping it up. “Poker is incredible,” I told her. “Every hand is exciting. It challenges your mind and curiosity. Anything can happen!”.

Then we walked through the Rio during the World Series of Poker — 500 tables packed with players... and not a single smile in sight. She stopped, looked around, then looked at me and said: “I thought you said poker was fun”. I could feel her starting to lose a little respect for me — like maybe I had been lying the whole time. But this is how the poker world looks from the outside.

When you’ve been immersed in the game long enough, you start to accept it as normal:

• It’s serious.
• It’s hard.
• It’s miserable.
• It’s painful.

But it doesn’t have to be. It wasn’t always this way. So let’s talk about what causes that shift — from falling in love with poker and loving every minute of it, to becoming this emotionless, robotic grinder who doesn’t enjoy the game at all.

In my opinion, it all starts with one core concept that’s done more harm than good: Don’t be results-oriented. Now don’t get me wrong: I get the idea. It’s valuable. It’s profitable. You should play well even when the cards aren’t falling your way. Absolutely.

But somewhere along the line, that idea took on a life of its own. Let me explain. The other day, I sent out a newsletter celebrating a student of mine. He had recently bought one of my training programs, and within a few months, he went on to win three major tournaments — over $500,000 in cashes. Before that? He had never won anything.

I was proud of him. He committed himself to being present, to improving, and it paid off. That’s worth celebrating, right? But then I got an email in response. It said: “Oh, so we’re being results-oriented now?”.

It wasn’t just a comment — it was dripping with shame. Like I should feel guilty for acknowledging success. Like it’s wrong to feel proud that I helped someone reach a breakthrough. This is the culture problem in poker today.

On the flip side, when you’re losing and everything feels awful, the same advice: “Don’t be results-oriented” — it now means, don’t feel bad, you don’t deserve to be losing this much. But here’s the truth: you can’t fake happiness. You can’t just tell yourself to feel better and expect it to work. If we could do that, we’d do it all the time.

What we can do, unfortunately, is the reverse — we can shame ourselves for feeling happy. We can overanalyze every high and talk ourselves out of joy. We can convince ourselves that even when we win, we shouldn’t celebrate. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

So now we’re left with this culture where no matter what happens, you don’t get to feel good. Think about this: If you could go back in time and talk to the version of yourself who just discovered poker — the one who loved it for the fun, the challenge, the joy — and told them:

“You’re going to win big someday. You’ll work hard, you’ll get great… but you’ll never be allowed to feel happy about it”. Would that version of you have been excited? Of course not. You fell in love with poker because it was fun. Because even in the painful moments, you enjoyed the experience.

But this toxic take on “don’t be results-oriented” says you can’t have that. You’re not allowed to enjoy your win. You got more than you deserved, so keep your emotions in check. And now, that mindset has turned into a weird badge of honor.

“Look how emotionally numb I am. I never get excited. I’m never happy. Doesn’t matter how much I win — it’s all the same”. But here’s the kicker: the longer a player stays in the game, the more resistant they become to joy.

They lose the ability to enjoy poker. To laugh. To celebrate. To have fun. And that’s a serious problem — not just emotionally, but practically. Because every piece of research shows we perform better when we’re happy.

We learn faster. We retain more. We play smarter. Why do you think kids score better on tests after recess? And every poker player I’ve ever worked with says the same thing: “When I’m enjoying myself, I play better”.

I win more money. Well, why would that not be the focus of the game, then? If you know that this makes you more money, is there any reason why this wouldn't be the most important thing — to make sure you're having a good time?

But you stick around poker long enough, you get socialized into the culture of: You're just not allowed to be happy. Right? Unless you made a good play and you lost — but you can't manufacture that. So this is a problem.

Now, to understand how bad this gets — almost every poker player has set up this system where, you know, “I'm not willing to enjoy myself, to feel good, to have fun… until I win”. Well, it's a problem because that's the state you need to be in to play your best and win as much as possible. So you're already handicapping yourself with that, saying like: “Okay, I need to win first. Then I'm going to let myself feel good”.

But even if you do that — even if you get to the place where somehow you win: you don't even let yourself feel happy. So you never actually get the experience that you deep down crave the most from winning.

That's why the winning feels empty. The winning feels hollow. The winning does not feel purposeful in any way whatsoever. You start to develop things like imposter syndrome. You say, “I'm a fraud. I don't deserve it”, because you've just been trained over and over and over: don't feel good. Right?

Our minds are endlessly creative at filling in the blanks and finding the things that we're looking for to justify the position that we're taking. And so, if your position is: “Yeah, you know, this is a serious game. I'm not here to have fun. I'm just here to grind and put in my hours. I'm not willing to have a good time unless I win — well, you're just always going to find ways to not have a good time”.

This is a universal principle across life. Like, everybody has a friend who is lonely and single and can't find love, or can never stay in a relationship. Well, you know those people — it does not matter who shows up in their lives. Even if the perfect person came up to them and said: “Hey, let's do this!”.

They would find a way to screw it up. Right? And everybody has that friend who can’t hold on to money — no matter what. No matter how many plans or rules they make, no matter what — they're just not willing to hold on to money. And so, they’ll always find a way to get rid of it.

This is the same with you and your ability to enjoy yourself. If you haven’t made that decision — this is really important to me, and I’m always down to have a good time and enjoy myself — well, you don’t get to.

So, you know, these are the people who, not only are they miserable, but they complain about it. They complain about it. It’s like: “Oh yeah, poker is so hard. Oh, the game really gets to you. Oh, I just never enjoy myself”. 

Well, have you tried deciding that this is the most important part of it? No. Because it’s always conditional: “I need to run well. I need to win more first”. Right? So, you know, anytime — anytime that I ever wanted to get engagement on Twitter: If I ever wanted to write something that I know people are just going to sink their teeth into and get triggered by, this is all I have to do.

All I ever have to do is go on Twitter and write a tweet that says: “Hey, what if poker isn’t inherently hard and miserable and painful? What if you’re the one contributing to that being your experience?”. That’s all I have to do. And I will get the most famous, the most successful, the richest, the most high-status people just losing their stuff.

Saying stuff like: “You're an idiot. What are you talking about? Obviously, you don’t know what you're doing. You've never played”. Well, I have played. But the thing is, they respond that way because eventually they get to the point where suffering gives you meaning. Right?

After that it becomes a contest: “Look who suffers the most. Look who has the most painful experiences. Look how much I’m hurting — and I’m still here”. It becomes this bragging contest. And now everybody's just looking more and more and more — like, how can I get more suffering, more misery, more pain?

And when you're doing that, you start to sabotage any good possible opportunities that come along to feel good and have a good time. So, the whole time you're doing this, you're not able to play your best. You’re not able to win as much as possible.

So you're not just costing yourself money — you're burning yourself out and making sure your career doesn’t last as long as it could. This is a big deal. Because people want to talk about: “Why do new people not like to play poker?”. Well… maybe it's because when they walk into a poker room, there’s zero people smiling and having a good time.

And as soon as they dare to enjoy themselves, everybody’s like: “Oh, shut up. Stop it”. Maybe that’s why new people don’t want to play so much poker. Right? So you guys have to stop this — for yourself. For the sake of your own performance. For the sake of your own bankroll. For the sake of your own sanity.

Also, so that the game of poker can keep growing — so that you can keep making money. You need more people to keep playing, right? And this addiction to suffering, this addiction to being miserable — this needs to stop.

It really is as simple as remembering and reminding yourself over and over again that you're far more interested in having a good time than not, right? Because when you do that, the gears start to shift everywhere you've been sabotaging yourself, looking for the thing that's going to make sure you don’t have a good time.

Instead, you start doing the opposite — you start finding ways to have a good time. And that really is going to be the greatest skill you can develop: the ability to enjoy yourself, to have a good time, even when everybody else isn’t. Right? To enjoy yourself, to have a good time in situations where nobody else would.

And I’m not saying there’s not going to be pain — there’s always going to be pain. Trust me, I’ve played enough poker. There is pain. But pain and suffering are two different things. Pain hurts. Suffering is when you can’t let go of it in your head and you carry it everywhere with you. You can’t stop thinking about it. You can’t just go and live your life.

That’s suffering. And that does not need to be part of your experience. It’s just become the belief because there’s such a big hold on the culture. And it starts at the very top. The best players, the most successful people — they’re telling you: “Don’t be results-oriented”.

And people take that and run with it — and they find ways to not be happy. They find ways to not have fun. All you’ve got to do is decide you don’t want to play that game. Is that really who you want to be? Is that really what you envisioned for yourself when you started playing poker, when you started taking it seriously? Was it like, “Yeah, I’m going to be miserable all the time?”. Probably not.

So you’ve got to get out of this space where you believe this is the only possibility for you. Because if you don’t, that’s what you’re going to keep creating for yourself. You’ll always find a way to suffer. You’ll always find a way to be miserable. But make this change now.

We don’t have to talk about this anymore. We can talk about more fun stuff than sabotage and misery and suffering. I don’t want to talk about this forever. I want to talk about more fun stuff: creativity, passion, inspiration, reaching your full potential.

But you can’t do any of that if you’re stuck in this place of “poker is hard, and that’s just how it is”. You’ve got to get out of that. If you don’t want to, stop watching my channel — because this is all I’m going to talk about until you change. That’s what I’m here for. We’re going to keep at this — because it’s not about just being a crusher. It’s about being a happy crusher.

If you want that, remember: there’s always the option to decide, in any moment:

• “I’m willing to feel good”.
• “I’m willing to have fun”.
• “I’m willing to experience ease”.

It doesn’t have to be hard. I don’t need to suffer to feel good about myself. I don’t need to win the contest of who can be the most miserable. I don’t need that. I want to win the contest of who can have the most fun — because that’s when the best part of you is going to come out. So do that. Let me know how it goes. We’ll see you next time!