# Episode 473: The Joy of Poker with Jason Su  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Episode 473: The Joy of Poker with Jason Su - Show: Thinking Poker - Owner / Host: Andrew Brokos - Guests: [Jason Su](https://share.snipd.com/person/b56ea8cd-8225-4d05-86fd-cafc5f27090c) - Episode publish date: 2025-05-13 - Episode AI description: Jason Su, an author and coach known for his work on poker performance and emotional presence, returns to discuss the joy of poker. He shares insights from his new book, emphasizing that many players motivate themselves in unsustainable ways. Jason explains the importance of managing emotions at the table and how true success combines achievement with enjoyment. He also delves into the use of intuition versus analytical thinking in gameplay, advocating for emotional mastery to enhance both performance and satisfaction. - Mentioned books: [Play Optimal Poker](https://share.snipd.com/book/3f28a5c4-2ab0-42d8-af7e-f567330170b8) by [Andrew Brokus](https://share.snipd.com/person/93beb00c-9d7f-431b-9eca-2dfa1785d78e), [The Joy of Poker](https://share.snipd.com/book/9b5194fe-2842-4a5d-ac68-4609d2c1a3c8) by [Jason Su](https://share.snipd.com/person/b56ea8cd-8225-4d05-86fd-cafc5f27090c), [Infinite jest](https://share.snipd.com/book/441092c6-7d82-4396-ad99-7439a3db7665) by [Paul Barolsky](https://share.snipd.com/person/4563b22b-6d44-4725-8b28-8cafc884892a), [The Inner Game of Tennis](https://share.snipd.com/book/21256cbd-417f-4fb5-844c-c84722e257c8) by [Timothy Gallwey](https://share.snipd.com/person/0e13f01c-7a8e-408a-8cfc-2678cdc9219a), [Poker with Presence](https://share.snipd.com/book/551d929d-cba4-473b-be2e-7f5465d96438) by [Jason Su](https://share.snipd.com/person/b56ea8cd-8225-4d05-86fd-cafc5f27090c) - Duration: 01:25:25 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/732b7f24-22c0-4661-8818-0d4df1041432) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/c7b81113-1a39-43fc-a5e6-596d7141afc6) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:06:34 ## Snips ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5041d798-b132-4fee-8c7b-77077bdabcd9) 🎧 08:52 - 10:12 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4c846a74-b55e-4ebb-8a75-e5725ae61f4c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript **Andrew Brokus:** is good for both of you to not have a collision. And the way that you avoid collision is by sharing information with your opponent. Something like international trade is, of course, much more complicated than the simple examples that we've talked about so far. And obviously, it's not an area where I have great expertise either. I will say that I think it has both zero sum and positive sum aspects to it. In its very simplest form, trade should be positive sum. If I have too many pencils and you have too many coffee filters, I can give you, I'm just looking at two things that are in my immediate vicinity right now. I can give you some of my pencils and you can give me some of your coffee filters. And that's probably a win-win situation for us. If you didn't have any pencils, I didn't have any coffee filters. I had too many coffee filters, you had too many pencils. Then we can exchange those things. And the coffee filters are more useful to me than they were to you because you had too many and I didn't have enough of them. So there is, I at its core, trade should be positive It kind of like in theory, a trade is positive sum. But there's also a zero sum aspect to it, which is if you think about essentially that like value is created through trade, because --- ### [Dirty Fuel](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e4e2c95b-6be1-4754-9503-3fbd2c132eb8) 🎧 23:05 - 24:43 (01:38) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6bfa5d50-f003-4878-8a9c-e023340fb2c1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Most people motivate themselves using 'dirty fuel' like feeling 'not enough'. - This approach can work, but it's unsustainable and leads to burnout because it requires escalating degrees of dissatisfaction. - Using 'dirty fuel' brings a specific requirement that makes you unhappy, even after achieving your goals. - You never enjoy having what you want because you require not having it to keep working. #### 💬 Quote > If your whole thing is, I want to be the best player in the world, and that's what motivates you to get up every day [...] and then you get up there and you do it and you become the best player in the world. What happens to that person is that you wake up the next day and you're like, wait, I don't feel like myself anymore. > — Jason Su Jason Su on the problem with unsustainable motivation. #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Su:** till you get to chapter eight, my friend. All right. So that's, that's what I call in the book. I call it dirty fuel. It's, it's, you know, it is literally what like 99.9% of people out in the world are using to motivate themselves to get better is this like it's not enough i'm not good enough uh nobody believes in me that's a big one in sports right nobody believed in us and i'm not saying that it doesn't work it definitely can work the problem with that is that it when it burns you out it's not really sustainable you have to keep using more and more of it each time like you build a tolerance to it So you have to keep escalating the degrees to which people don't believe in you or the degrees to which you don't feel satisfied. And eventually what happens is you realize that if you use that as fuel, you're bringing along with it a very specific requirement that makes you very unhappy. So if your whole thing is, I want to be the best player in the world, and that's what motivates you to get up every day and you're looking up at the people who are better than you and like, okay, grind, grind, let's work, let's work. And then you get up there and you do it and you become the best player in the world. What happens to that person is that you wake up the next day and you're like, wait, I don't feel like myself anymore. Something's missing, something's off because you no longer have the thing that you require in order to fuel yourself into action to keep doing stuff. And so you never get to actually enjoy having the thing that you want because you require not having it in order to keep working, if that makes sense. --- ### [Emotions Create Alternate Decision-Makers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3d9cd9b8-7bfe-479d-b461-9f13f0520931) 🎧 41:21 - 42:12 (00:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4f90b4bd-810a-4492-9ae8-40c3f2b459f2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Emotional states create alternate versions of yourself that make extreme mistakes at big pots. - Managing emotions preserves your intended strategy instead of letting a reactive 'demon' run decisions. #### 💬 Quote > It wasn't you. It was a different version of you that was having an emotional experience that you weren't able to accept. > — Jason Su Jason Su explaining how strong emotions lead to uncharacteristic poker mistakes. #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Su:** Absolutely. Right. Like you, you, you can always find a reason to call. I've learned that one. You can always find a reason to call. And also people go the other way too. There's some people who always find a reason to fold. And, and that's the result of people not having a healthy relationship with the emotions that they're experiencing in that moment. Usually pretty big emotions. That's why so many people play worse in big pots or so many people play worse. You know, the later you go into the tournament, they start to do things and they look at the hands afterwards and they're like, I cannot believe I did that. Well, that's because it wasn't you. It was a different version of you that was having an emotional experience that you weren't able to accept was happening that you weren't able to keep rolling with. And then so you default to kind of whatever it is that your, you know, demon is, whether it's getting too tight or too, it's usually an extreme in one direction or the other pretty consistently. --- ### [Child Shows How To Process Sadness](https://share.snipd.com/snip/801ecfcf-4789-44a2-af5d-4c8a942419bb) 🎧 45:19 - 46:56 (01:37) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a42ee6d2-8865-41d2-b6c7-ffe7a4fa236c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Andrew observed a seven-year-old who openly cried while listening to Hey Jude and handled sadness directly. - Jason says adults can relearn that openness because emotional feeling is an innate skill. #### 💬 Quote > That seven-year has much better emotional maturity than I do. > — Andrew Brokus Andrew recounting a child openly naming and feeling sadness; Jason reflects on relearning the skill. #### 📚 Transcript **Andrew Brokus:** like not in touch with emotions I've been. I had this realization. I a cousin who's, she has a degree in early childhood education and I've spent a decent amount of time with her and her daughter. And her daughter, when she was maybe like six or seven years old, they had recently moved and she was missing her friends. And, you know, we're all just kind of hanging out. And the daughter, all of a sudden, she just declared like, I'm feeling sad. And she went and she put on Hey Jude. And she sat down and she cried. And I was just like, whoa, this like seven-year has much better emotional maturity than I do. Or like much better sort of like awareness of emotions and just an ability to say like i'm gonna feel this emotion now and just like sit down and do it and you know have a little like have some sense of like how to induce the uh yeah how to induce the like crying that she needed to do and that was a big eye-opener for me of like well this is like a big uh this is a skill i do not have yeah **Jason Su:** that's a beautiful story and kudos to your cousin for instilling good music taste in the child. Yeah, you know, what I'll say about that is that you do have that in you. Because I think that we're all like this. I have a young child myself now. And so I'm out there always seeing little kids everywhere we go these days. And I think that we're all born with this complete openness to whatever emotional experience we're having. It's not a big deal. It's just what we're feeling. So feeling sad, like you saw, it's like not a big deal. I'm going to feel sad. Feeling oh, yeah, I'm going to wail. And then I'm going to feel, okay, I'm feeling happy. --- ### [Feel Emotions Now, Don't Analyze Them](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6660575-4a2b-4dc6-afc4-f60844399563) 🎧 01:02:05 - 01:03:55 (01:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/99ba891f-4cc0-466b-8dc0-271d2863d4b5" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Don't chase root-cause narratives during acute emotion; feel the emotion instead to release it. - Build the skill to accept feelings now so you can make clear decisions immediately. #### 💬 Quote > You can either talk about it, you can talk about the feelings or you can feel the feelings. And if you're talking about them, you're not feeling them. > — Jason Su Jason Su on why focusing on feeling beats overanalyzing emotions in the moment. #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Su:** Hmm. Poker specific element. I don't know. You could leave that up to interpretation. I will say that I've, I've, I did lots of therapy. I know lots of people who've done therapy. A lot of my clients, you know, started doing therapy and universally, what I will say is that I have a much different approach, which I think just gets far better results in everything, whether poker or, or life, which is that I don't care at all why you feel how you feel. I could care less. I have zero interest in exploring with you what the root cause of your issue is or where it came from or who said what when you were how big, because all of that is just speculation that you're going to do from your current emotional state. And the answers that you come up with, the ideas that you come up with will be different on a different day, depending on how you feel. And my only interest is getting you to accept and feel how you feel right now, and to build that skill in you so that whatever is happening, you feel okay, that you feel okay to move forward with a clear mind, able to do whatever you want to do, and make decisions that you're not going to regret. And I found that very consistently working with people in this way, people are not actually that interested in finding the root cause of their problem or learning like, where did start? They really just want to feel better. And when they feel better, they don't really care. They're just excited to go live their life and go after their goals and go chasing their dreams and go making it happen. All of that kind of obsession with where did this come from? Why do I feel how I feel is really just a massive distraction from feeling how you feel because you can either talk about it, you can talk about the feelings or you can feel the feelings. And if you're talking about them, you're not feeling them. --- ### [Prioritize Emotional Health For Peak Results](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f0baa5ac-00a9-4f31-b6a9-bd69d0a7fcfb) 🎧 01:21:20 - 01:23:28 (02:08) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/bcdcd070-d9eb-4d68-80b8-6b6d817bb9ac" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Decide you want both joy and top performance and prioritize emotional health to get both faster. - Develop the skill to stay in the chair and play consistently; that converts knowledge into money. #### 💬 Quote > If you want to really have as much fun as possible and win as much as possible, you can. > — Jason Su Jason Su urging players to choose both joy and high performance by building emotional skills. #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Su:** I think so many people think it's like one or the other. Like I can either have a good time or I can dedicate myself and do what's needed to get the money. And what the book is all about, what I'm all about, what I'm always all for is these are not mutually exclusive you can can have you can have both and it works faster this way too i had a client ask me this this like bizarre hypothetical question if like the chinese communist government stuck a gun to my head and was like you have to get this kid to world number one no matter what uh and he's like would you do anything differently than you do now because it seems like what you do now focuses heavily on happiness and i told him honestly i said if if there was if there was another way that got to higher performance that i believe was true i wouldn't be i wouldn't be wanting to do it this way i 1000 believe that having the healthiest relationship possible with your emotions is what the most fun is what creates the highest performance is what gets you the money. And fixating on the money and the performance and the process above your own emotional health is what eventually takes you out of the game or saps your love for it. And you don't get to feel how you want to feel. so i would say you can have all of it all you have to do is decide that that's how you want to do it and prioritize the parts that you've been missing which for most people is emotional intelligence the ability to feel your feelings at a at a high level and I think that every poker player pool always has people where they're like, that guy is not that good. Why does he win more than me? This is why. Because he can stay in the chair when you can't. And so this is a skill like any other. And it bugs me that when people talk about who's good and who's not good, it's strictly based on technical strategy. It nothing involved around analyzing how able somebody is to stay in the chair and play at a high level day after day, which allows your knowledge to become money. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts