The Poker Mindset by Taylor & Hilger
The Poker Mindset by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger built the language of results-oriented vs decision-oriented thinking. Here's its core method.
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The Poker Mindset by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger is the book that gave poker its most useful mental distinction: results-oriented versus decision-oriented thinking. Published in 2007, it predates most modern mental-game literature and reads less like a workbook and more like a philosophy — a set of attitudes you adopt so that variance stops rattling you. If Jared Tendler’s book is the surgery, this is the mindset you’re trying to protect.
The seven attitudes
Taylor and Hilger frame the winning mindset as seven interlocking attitudes. Paraphrased, they are:
- Understand and accept the realities of poker — luck exists, and it dominates the short run.
- Play for the long term — a session is a data point, not a verdict.
- Emphasize decisions, not results — the core idea the whole book orbits.
- Desensitize yourself to money — chips are units, not rent.
- Embrace variance — swings aren’t the game malfunctioning; they are the game.
- Take responsibility — no rigged-site excuses, no blaming the deck.
- Stay in control of your emotions — tilt is a choice you keep re-making.
Read together, these attitudes are a vaccine against the two things that quietly destroy bankrolls: caring about the wrong scoreboard and taking short-term luck personally.
Results-oriented vs decision-oriented
This is the phrase the book is remembered for. A results-oriented player asks “did I win the hand?” A decision-oriented player asks “was my play correct given what I knew?” The two questions frequently disagree.
| Situation | Results view | Decision view |
|---|---|---|
| Got it in as an 80% favorite, lost | ”Disaster, I’m cursed" | "Great spot, run it back forever” |
| Bluffed off a big pot, opponent folded | ”Genius play" | "Wrong sizing, they should’ve called” |
| Folded the winner | ”Terrible fold" | "Correct given the range I faced” |
The decision-oriented column is the only one that predicts long-term profit. Training yourself to feel the decision column instead of the results column is the entire mental battle — a theme we develop further in building a winning poker mindset.
Detaching your ego from the money
The attitudes the book spends the most effort on are the two hardest to fake: desensitizing yourself to money and detaching your ego from short-term results. Taylor and Hilger argue that these aren’t personality traits you’re born with — they’re skills you build through repeated exposure and deliberate reframing.
The money point is practical. If a buy-in represents rent, groceries, or your self-worth, you will play scared, fold winners, and pass up thin value spots. The book’s fix is to think in units and to only play stakes where the money genuinely feels like game currency — which is really an argument for proper bankroll management dressed in psychological language.
The ego point is deeper. Most players secretly keep two scoreboards: the honest one (were my decisions good?) and the ego one (did I look smart and win the pot?). The ego scoreboard is the enemy, because it rewards results-oriented thinking and punishes correct folds. Taylor and Hilger’s whole program is about starving the ego scoreboard until only the decision scoreboard remains.
Where it fits among the classics
The strategy examples are of their era — small-stakes limit and early no-limit — so don’t read it for technical guidance. Its value is durable precisely because psychology doesn’t go out of date the way bet-sizing charts do. If you’re comparing it against the wider shelf, our best mental game books roundup places it alongside Tendler’s system, and the full framework lives at the mental game hub.
Who should read it
Read it if variance still feels like a personal insult, if a losing session ruins your evening, or if you catch yourself replaying only the hands you lost. It’s a gentler on-ramp than Tendler for players who don’t yet want to do written exercises but do need to stop measuring themselves by the last pot.
Frequently asked
Who wrote The Poker Mindset?
Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger. First published in 2007, it's one of the earliest dedicated poker psychology books and predates Jared Tendler's work. Hilger is also known for running the poker publisher Dimat Enterprises.
What is The Poker Mindset about?
It defines seven attitudes a winning player must internalize — chiefly the shift from being results-oriented to decision-oriented, plus detaching your ego from short-term outcomes and fully accepting variance as the price of admission.
Is The Poker Mindset still worth reading?
Yes, as a foundations book. Its strategy examples are dated, but its psychological framework aged well and reads as a gentler, more philosophical companion to Tendler's exercise-heavy system.
How is it different from The Mental Game of Poker?
The Poker Mindset teaches attitudes to adopt; Tendler's book gives you a repair process for when those attitudes break under pressure. Many players read Taylor and Hilger first, then Tendler when they need the fix.