I’m very excited to be making videos for Red Chip Poker, and I’d like to take a minute to tell you about my background. I am the author of Positive Poker (with Jonathan Little), a sport psychology and peak performance consultant, former psychology professor, and an avid poker player.
I took up the game the way most of you probably did – by playing with a small group of friends from the 319th Missile Squadron in Cheyenne, WY. My husband was stationed there in 2006, and what can I say – there isn’t much to do there. We played very small stakes no limit hold’em, in a cold basement no less, and I was immediately intrigued. I decided to put as much effort into learning the game as I could. In my mind, poker presented the perfect mental challenge!
As my game progressed, I became increasingly aware of the importance of psychology to poker. In order to combine my knowledge and experience in sport psychology, positive psychology, and poker, I conducted a qualitative doctoral dissertation study (called Peak Poker Performance: A Qualitative Case Study) on the psychological traits and abilities that separate successful players from the not-so-successful. I asked players via interviews about how they set and achieved goals, avoided tilt, built confidence and motivation, as well as a myriad of other topics. The results did not disappoint! It is well documented across a variety of sporting domains that elite performers possess better psychological skills than lesser opponents, and this seems to hold true for elite poker players, too.
I ended up developing and offering a college course called the Psychology of Poker that, as you can imagine, was immensely popular. To reach even more players, Jonathan Little and I decided to release a book based off the course. Positive Poker is an introduction to the psychological skills that poker players need to start developing if they want to improve their chances of success.
I decided to leave my faculty position to pursue poker psychology full-time. I want to teach as many poker players as possible about how you can make your mind work for you and not against you! While there are many psychological skills, traits, and abilities that relate to poker success, they are learnable if you are willing to put in the effort. I’m going to use my new poker videos to give you all of the tips, tricks, and information that I’ve learned over my years of coaching, teaching, and playing.
I’m looking forward to making videos and to getting to know you through the Red Chip Poker forums and social media. You can follow me on twitter @drtriciacardner and you can contact me for coaching or questions/comments at drcardner@gmail.com
