“Put your phone away when you’re playing.” The advice seems so logical that few players would dare to argue it. Fewer distractions mean more attention, more information gathered from opponents, and theoretically, better decisions. Case closed? Not necessarily.
Jason Su
According to Su, the phone is not necessarily the problem, but a symptom. Many players constantly turn to it because they don’t handle well the long periods of inactivity that inevitably exist at a table.
“You might be unable to be with yourself, exist in silence, or simply have nothing to do,” the author suggests when explaining why we automatically turn to a screen.
And here the paradox appears.
If a player used to constant stimulation suddenly puts the phone away, they don’t necessarily become a concentration machine. The exact opposite can happen: boredom, anxiety, mental disconnection, and ultimately a reduced ability to execute decisions correctly.
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For Su, then, the real edge is not simply turning off the screen, but developing the ability to remain present when apparently nothing is happening. And in poker, that matters a lot.
A session can include hours of folding, irrelevant conversations, and hands in which we don’t even participate. However, precisely during those moments a tell, a betting pattern, or some small detail may appear that later ends up being worth a pot.
Su argues that those who learn to stay connected during those periods will have an advantage over those who, even without a phone, have mentally already left the table.
The debate remains open: does the phone really destroy our concentration or does it simply expose that we had already lost the ability to be focused without stimuli? Perhaps putting the phone away is not the final goal. Learning not to need it could be a much more profitable skill.
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Source: Jason Su on poker.org
