Leon Sturm wins a hand, and someone says something nice about it. His immediate response is to find the flaw. “The only way I know to respond is to talk myself down and name a negative perk of myself in order to balance it out.”
He’s 23 years old. He’s won a WSOP bracelet and plays Triton events against the best field in the world. His default when someone acknowledges any of that is to explain why it doesn’t really count.
If your first instinct after a good session is to focus on the hands you butchered rather than the adjustments you made, you know this voice. You just might not realise how much it’s costing you.
What does the inner critic look like at the highest level?
Anxiety at the poker table isn’t a beginner’s problem. You move up, gain experience, develop confidence, and the fear fades. That’s the story we tell ourselves about how improvement works.
Leon plays the biggest live tournaments on the circuit and describes his experience at the table as “a fight or flight type mentality.” He has what he calls an alter ego, a voice that “keeps saying I need to be perfect.”
The anxiety lives in the gap between knowing what to do and judging yourself while you do it. When Leon talks about poker, he’s sharing expertise. When he plays, he’s performing under the scrutiny of his own impossible standard. Same brain, the same knowledge, and a completely different experience depending on which voice is running.
Leon described his relationship with poker as something that strains him. A career he’s excelled at, built a reputation in, and won major titles through. And yet the mindset it puts him in is one he’s had to step back from to evaluate. He went back to school partly because he realised he wasn’t happy with how he felt while playing. The self-criticism was shaping how he felt about the entire game.
Your version is quieter and just as expensive
You probably don’t have an alter ego demanding perfection at a Triton final table. But you have a version of this running in the background every session.
The self-critical player often works harder than the player who lets things roll off. You’re the one reviewing hands afterwards, pulling up solver sims at midnight, caring enough to be angry at yourself for not being better. Because of that effort, the self-criticism feels earned. Like the price you pay for taking the game seriously.
But effort doesn’t validate the approach. That post-session spiral where you mentally dismantle every marginal decision feels like analysis. You’re reviewing, right? Being honest about your leaks.
Except there’s a difference between reviewing a spot with curiosity and reviewing it with contempt. One teaches you something. The other reinforces the idea that you’re not good enough.
The player who finishes a session, identifies two mistakes, writes them down, and moves on is doing the work. The player who mentally prosecutes himself for every imperfect decision until he feels like garbage is calling it discipline. It’s self-punishment wearing a study mask.
The line between self-assessment and self-destruction
Leon talked about the optimisation culture in high-stakes poker. He gave a small example: walking from his desk to the kitchen, trying to carry everything in one trip. Stacking things up, over-engineering the solution, and ending up making two trips anyway. He called it a metaphor for how this plays out in poker. “If you over-optimise, then you kind of missed the point.”
Self-assessment says: I made a mistake in that river spot, here’s what I’ll do differently. Self-criticism says: I made a mistake at that river spot, therefore I’m a bad player who doesn’t deserve to be at this stake. One is a correction. The other is an identity statement. And identity statements follow you into the next session. You sit down already believing you need to prove something. Every hand becomes evidence for or against your worth as a player.
The confidence cycles in poker learning make this worse. You start confident because you don’t know what you don’t know. Then you study more, watch breakdowns, see solver output, and start realising how incomplete your understanding really is. That’s genuine growth. But for the self-critical player, that phase doesn’t feel like growth. It feels like proof of inadequacy.
Leon described players who chase perfection in every spot, knowing it’s unreachable, draining themselves in the process. “You need to be at ease with yourself, that making mistakes is fine.” Simple sentence. Brutally hard to internalise when your default is to use every mistake as ammunition against yourself.
What if self-acceptance is your missing performance variable?
When Leon was asked what he needed to play his A-game, his answer was about “comfort level with myself and self-acceptance.”
A 23-year-old high-stakes pro is naming self-acceptance as his primary performance variable. That should rearrange some priorities.
Most players chase an A-game through technical preparation. Study more spots, run more sims, watch more content, and don’t get me wrong… All of that matters, nobody plays well without understanding the game. But if you sit down with perfect theoretical preparation and zero self-acceptance, you’re playing with one hand tied behind your back. Every marginal spot becomes a referendum on whether you belong, and every tough decision carries twice the emotional weight it should because you’re trying to prove you’re not the fraud your inner voice says you are.
I’ve seen this in my own game. The sessions where I played best were rarely the ones where I’d studied the hardest. They were the ones where I sat down without an agenda to prove something to myself. Calm and present, not carrying the weight of yesterday’s mistakes into today’s decisions. The technical work matters, but it only translates when you’re not at war with yourself while trying to apply it.
Leon gets into the zone most easily when he’s had a deep run without what he considers a blunder. When the inner critic has nothing to grab onto, the performance flows. The skill was always there. What changes is the interference.
The gap between your study knowledge and your in-game execution might not be a technical gap at all. It might be the noise your self-criticism generates. The bandwidth it eats. The way it turns every session into a pass/fail exam instead of a game you’re learning while you earn.
Leon’s last recommendation in the interview was simple: treat yourself with respect. He said it like it was obvious. Then admitted he’d struggled with it that same day. Next time you sit down, pay attention to the voice. The one deciding whether you deserve to be there.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does self-criticism affect poker performance?
Self-criticism eats bandwidth at the table. When your inner voice demands perfection, every marginal decision carries extra emotional weight. Leon Sturm, a WSOP bracelet winner, says self-acceptance is his primary performance variable. The technical knowledge is there; what changes between good and bad sessions is how much interference the inner critic generates.
Why do I play worse than my study level suggests?
The gap between study knowledge and in-game execution is often caused by self-criticism rather than technical deficiency. When you’re busy judging yourself during a session, you can’t access the calm, clear thinking that decisions require. Leon describes this as the difference between sharing expertise in commentary and performing under his own impossible standard.
Is being hard on yourself good for improving at poker?
In small doses, honest self-evaluation separates you from casual players. The problem is the dose. When self-criticism runs during sessions, study, the drive home, and the next morning, it stops being a tool and becomes the environment you live in. Leon says players who chase perfection, knowing it’s unreachable, drain themselves in the process.
How do I deal with anxiety at the poker table?
Anxiety lives in the gap between knowing what to do and judging yourself while you do it. Leon experiences “fight or flight” at Triton events despite strong technical knowledge. His recommendation: treat self-respect as a skill you practice. Catch the critical voice mid-sentence. Review sessions for information, not ammunition.
What is the difference between self-assessment and self-destruction in poker?
Self-assessment says: I made a mistake, here’s what I’ll do differently. Self-destruction says: I made a mistake, therefore I’m a bad player. The first is a correction. The second is an identity statement that follows you into the next session, turning every hand into evidence for or against your worth as a player.
