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Since i started posting here i see a lot of players having trouble coping with downswings and tilt and stuff like that. Over the last year i managed to completely shake this off my back, possible because i am a balanced and calm person by nature but I also managed to change the way I look at poker and –most importantly- the way I look at winning and losing.
Many people struggle with the mental state you have when winning or losing. A well know phrase is ‘I can’t win lately’ that is something that just isn’t true. When you understand the game of poker a little you know there is no such thing as winning or losing. It is just a long stretch of individual hands that when put together form one long session of ‘poker’.
When you get to the point of realizing that there is no such thing as a individual hand you can start looking at long term results. Losing or winning a sng or a single hand doesn’t matter anymore. Nor does a winning session or a losing session matter. When analyzing your game you should look at long term results and get your satisfaction from making the right decisions on the long term. Since i let go of these thoughts of wanting to be a winning player and stopped thinking of winning a hand or a tourney or a session as something I wanted to achieve (a goal on it’s own) I started playing better and I started winning more dollars as a result of that. Yesterday I lost AA three times in a row. A year ago I would be frustrated about that, but nowadays I don’t even think about it. I close the table and play on. Not letting these negative thoughts about a single hand will help you focus on positive things like playing your hand right and that is the state of mind you need to be a ‘professional’. The word professional does not mean ‘playing for a living’ imho it means being a balanced player and having the right attitude towards the things you do. Once you have that attitude sorted out results will come by themselves. This counts not only for poker, but for all things in life you want to be good at.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have emotions while playing poker, but you must know how to cope with these emotions. I also found that my emotions about poker affected my personal life. I have never been a losing player, but had hard times, downswings and stuff and it used to affect my family too, when I had a bad temper going to bed late my girlfriend sometimes responded “have you been losing at poker again?” (sounds familiar??) I wanted to turn that around and by changing my mindset. I also achieved this, I don’t care about losing anymore, since it doesn’t matter. It’s just short time results that have no meaning. My girlfriend doesn’t care about poker nor about me winning or losing, she deserves better than a grumpy DQS80 on monkey tilt
For me this mindset helped me a lot, I just wanted to share this with you guys. It is not meant as a bragging post or to ‘teach’ you something. It is just something that worked for me and wanted to share that with you guys.
Good luck at the tables surfers!!!