If you play cards as well as I do (extremely poorly) then being able to maintain a poker face won’t really help in the overall scheme of things. The objective of having a poker face is so that you don’t betray a good or poor hand with any response: verbal, non-verbal or even unconscious.

When a person gives away a sign playing poker or chess, the sign is known as a ‘tell’. The telling sign is often unknown to the person giving the signal, until it is drawn to their attention. Similarly in golf, when a golfer hits a good shot, his or her playing partner may say that they knew it was going to be a good shot even before they hit it.

The golfer themselves can’t understand how that could be the case. Just as strangely, the person making the comment can’t seem to justify it other than saying ‘they just knew’. This is because the signs are extremely subtle; however they are picked up by the other observer’s subconscious.

The important thing here is not necessarily to display a poker face (unless you are playing poker), but to begin to unpack what it is that’s going on inside you that leads to these signals being given out.

Your emotional state is indicated by these signals and will have components made up of how you are standing, walking and moving, how you are running your internal dialogue, the pictures you are creating, memories you are associating to your current situation (for golfers this includes favourite holes and nemesis holes).

These internal representations influence performance. This is why the observer can often correctly identify whether you are performing well or not. Most golfers feel that their ‘tells’ are a response to their performance, not a reason for it.

What are the ‘tells’ you display when performing well? What if you adopt them as part of your preparation for training and competing?

Perhaps you will have more control over your internal state and your performance…