Imagine playing a poker tournament for 7 days straight for 12+ hours a day. $10,000 of your own money invested, and if you win, you get $10 Million. 10,000+ people started the event, and you get into the final 9. Before the final table, you get asked:
“How are you feeling after such a long grind in person?”
What would your answer be?
I’d imagine myself answering with something like: “Super tired, super nervous, but very happy to have come so far.” Well, not everyone sees it like this. Niklas Astedt, one of the best online poker players of all time, answered this exact question like this:
“Piece of cake… that’s what I say.”
How can someone see this seemingly grueling experience as a piece of cake? The answer is: he’s done way harder things before.
Stress Factors
There are four main stress factors for players in the World Series of Poker Main Event:
- Many consecutive days
- A lot of money on the line
- Long hours every day
- A lot of attention from Poker media
The reason why Niklas Astedt, also known as “Lena900” online, sees the experience as a piece of cake is that he has more extreme experiences in all four categories.
Longer, harder, better
His usual routine when playing online poker from his home sounds absurd to nearly everyone. He specified:
“People say this is a marathon, they should try 20 tables for 40 days during SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker, one of the biggest online poker series).”
Niklas has also amassed an estimated $48 million in online tournament winnings, way more than the top prize of $10 million. And as arguably the most successful online poker player of his generation, he knows what playing under pressure feels like.
Hard is subjective
I love that story because it shows so well that hard is a very subjective word. Playing poker for 7 days, 12 hours is very hard unless you played for 40 days, 12 hours a day, 20 tables at the same time! A marathon is extremely hard for nearly everyone. But for someone doing IronMan (3.9 km swim, 180 km bicycle ride, and then a marathon), a Marathon is pretty “meh.”
Make chess easy again.
This idea can be used to make chess easier. I really only realized how important this was when I visited a quality chess training camp with GMs Aagaard and Ramesh. Ramesh especially loved pushing us beyond our limits in training. Our limits are usually self-created in our own minds. – Ramesh RB I remember sitting in the Hotel lobby for an hour, discussing a super difficult chess position without being able to see it in front of us. My head hurt, and I couldn’t follow half of the lines others suggested, but it was an amazingly useful training.
From then on, whenever I faced a difficult position in a game, I told myself: this is pretty easy compared to training with Ramesh! This was my personal piece-of-cake moment. Doing something hard became part of my routine.
Do hard stuff
I hope it is not rocket science where I try to go with this. To make your chess games feel easier, you should train hard. I suggest that you build an especially hard training session into your chess training plan at least once a week. It will be hard. Your head might hurt. You will see your limits and make a lot of mistakes. That’s the whole point. This way, next time a friend asks you how you manage to play a chess game and stay focused for 4+ hours, you’ll tell them:
“Piece of cake, that’s what I say!”
Keep improving,
Noël
PS: Niklas finished 3rd for $4 Million. He wanted the win and wasn’t fully satisfied. What a legend.
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