In this episode of Chats with Tats, Dr. Tricia Cardner tells CalvinAyre.com’s Tatjana Pasalic how her background in psychology helps her at the poker tables.
Will you play poker against someone with an extensive background in psychology?
For Dr. Tricia Cardner, her background has helped her “immensely” at the tables, especially in terms of boosting her mental toughness and picking up the behavioral patterns of the other players.
“Coming from a psychology background, it’s just, things that have to do with say, mental toughness or even sometimes picking up, like, behavioral tells or something, it’s so much easier when you, you know, have worked with people for as long as I have, and you have a doctor in psychology,” Cardner told CalvinAyre.com.
She admitted that she plays as much as she can, but whenever she’s away from the tables, her time is devoted to helping athletes and poker players.
“I work mostly with poker players and I also work with athletes, so I do one-on-one consulting. I’m pretty much able to work with anybody, anywhere in the world via usually Skype… I also do webinars and things like that,” Cardner said.
She also co-wrote a book on the psychology of poker, Positive Poker, where she discussed how to excel at No Limit Hold’Em with Jonathan Little.
“Positive Poker came out of the fact that I play poker and I’m trained as a psychologist and I was teaching a course, the psychology of poker, and I thought, ‘Gosh, I have to write the book,’” Cardner said. “I was bringing some different things to it, so I was bringing sports psychology, there’s a branch of psychology called positive psychology. I was trying to bring all that, plus some neuropsychological stuff, which is stuff about the brain.”
And if that wasn’t enough, Cardner have regular podcasts and was also tapped to commentate with David Tuchman during the World Series of Poker last summer.
“I commentated on the final table of the Little One for One Drop with David. It was an awesome time… Other than them playing really slowly, it was an awesome time,” she said.
