E50: How to use RNGs (the right way)

Beyond Poker - A podcast by Nick Howard

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This clip was taken from inside the 30-Day Training Camp. At the time, the players were asking me to go into more depth on how to effectively use an RNG during a poker session. The tips I give here are taken from various levels of my own experience working with players from small stakes up to nosebleeds. The players at nosebleeds present with the most similar cases of RNG paralysis, I would call it. You would think that once a guy gets nosebleeds he's not dealing with that anymore. But it is the only thing these guys want to talk about in consults, believe it or not. So what does that look like for a Nosebleed player? Just to give you some context, they will get to a point in a hand where they roll an aggression number and it's authorizing them to make an aggressive action. They need to invest in the pot. They need to put a lot of money into the pot. And in the 2 seconds that their eyes scan from the RNG on one side of the screen back to the board that they need to make the play on, they have a risk-averse narrative start to creep in and they rationalize against the role number. This is what we work on at the highest level of mindset. I call it an immobilization response, which is a term that comes from a more trauma-informed framework. It basically paralyzes you from being able to take the action that you know you should take. So I do not take this subject lightly. And the reason is because I see it presenting at every single next level that a player climbs stakes until they resolve it completely and who knows if it ever gets totally resolved. I think we're always going to have to deal with the stress response. But understanding what's happening I think is really the first level of getting beyond it. So in this episode, I will try to break it down for you. The different levels of dealing with RNG paralysis and how to overcome it.