The GTO Mindset of High-Stakes: Samuel Mullur Looks Ahead to 2026
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Most poker players find it tough to put together enough results in a short space of time to have a breakout year.
For Samuel Mullur, his personal conundrum for 2025 was how to follow up a meteoric rise through the high-stakes. Now, the GTO Wizard Ambassador tells PokerNews how he's spent the last twelve months proving that his presence at the top of the game is no fluke.
2025's Wild Ride
"For me, 2024 was already an incredible year," said Mullur. "It was the year where I started playing very high stakes, and I didn’t think that it could get way better than what happened then.
"But 2025 was even more of a success for me personally. It's been a crazy year on a lot of fronts; I've had some wins and I met a lot of great people. Everything has been going upwards, and I’m very grateful. It's been a wild ride."
The life of a professional on the circuit often means choosing between the comfort of home and the grind of the road. While Mullur was once content with the isolation of an Austrian winter, his perspective shifted as the 2025 tour progressed.
"This last year, I started appreciating the sun a little bit more," he admits. "I used to be a big winter guy. I still like the winter; being cozy and not having to justify just being in front of my computer all day. But I like the sunny places more and more recently. Something like Barcelona, which I visited for the first time, was an amazing stop. Luckily, I won a tournament there, but the sunny places generally felt the best last year."
Presence Over Productivity
Despite his rapid ascent, Mullur remains remarkably grounded, and says he tends to avoid the rigid financial targeting that many of his peers obsess over. For him, the "goal" for 2026 is less about a number on a spreadsheet and more about the quality of his life.
"I just try to enjoy what I’m doing, and right now, it’s poker"
"I’m not a big goal setter, to be honest," Mullur says. "I try to be as present as I can and focus more on the moment. I don’t have financial goals. Now, for the first time ever in my career, I’m at a point where I have to potentially think about what to do outside of poker with the money I made. That’s something new to me because I only put all my energy into poker until now.
"I just try to enjoy what I’m doing, and right now, it’s poker, and it’s been working out pretty well."
The Mental Architecture of a Pro
As an ambassador for GTO Wizard, one might expect Mullur to enter a tournament with a head full of charts, sims and calculations. Instead, his preparation is deeply internal. While the technical study is done at home, the tournament floor is reserved for mental performance.
"Unless you play a very special tournament, like the Triton Invitational, usually, I don’t have a specific game plan," Mullur explains.
"My game plan is to prepare myself mentally and emotionally, and I do a lot of things to be in a really good mental state. For me, meditation and guided hypnosis work pretty well. It really gets me into the mood of playing and into the moment. Obviously, all the work I do at home, like preparing and studying the game, is the foundation of me being able to be confident in my decisions. But shortly before a tournament, it’s just about trying to get into the moment and be able to access the information that I have stored in my brain."
Exploits and Evolution
Mullur’s journey is a testament to the bridge between old-school feel and new-school theory. Having started in the local live games of Austria, he recognizes that while game theory is the modern requirement, his roots were elsewhere.
"I really came from an exploitative standpoint," he says. "I played a lot of small live games in Austria with friends. But the more you start getting better, the more you realize how little you know and how important the game theory is. At this level, when you compete at the highest stakes, it's just everything. Being really sharp in all these situations, especially in the late game, is super important. It shaped me a lot; I just spend a lot of time trying to improve technically."
Looking ahead to 2026, Mullur plans to stay agile, ready to pivot as the game changes.
"I will just try to do my best to gain as much knowledge as I can"
"I try to evolve with whatever direction the game takes. I try to be on top of it and be aware of what your competition is doing, especially if you play the same guys all the time on high stakes. In a year from now, I think I’m going to be playing slightly less online and focusing on live poker.
"I will just try to do my best to gain as much knowledge as I can, and whatever direction the game goes, I will try to be in the first row."
