Online Poker Forum - 8001 - some thoughts on psychology

Flying_Kiwi

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Fear
One key aspect of poker is overcoming fear while maintaining calm in your decision making process. You can't see it as money while you play. You just have chips & there's a game going on. Fear causes poor decisions, pain & guilt. Manage your risk. Define what you're prepared to lose. It's all about confidence. When you have decided how much you're prepared to lose and realized that potential, it means you can focus on playing your best & doing something else. You are aware that you're playing a game with risks attached. Like business decisions or investments, sometimes there's going to be swings & recessions. If you manage your roll you should survive. I'm not going to throw around BRM figures. Of course, this all hinges on actually playing well.

Don't leak
Most people focus on getting better when what they should focus on is sucking less. Many of the spots players agonize over are often the situations where it doesn't really matter. It's marginal, all the money's probably going in anyway. Meanwhile they're auto-piloting away buckets of blinds in what they perceive to be automatic spots.

Good Decisions
It's such a cliché, because it's true: always focus on making the best decision regardless of the results. To make the best decision you have to be aware. Focus on what's happening and take in all the information that's available to you. Observe the flow of opportunities. It can be difficult to force your will on a poker table, but if you are alert & mindful you can pick up on the opportunities where money is going to be sliding your way. If it clearly isn't, then it comes back to what you defined as your risk and your goal: are you trying to make the best poker decision (including bankroll preservation) or are you just entertaining yourself? This should impact on your table & game selection.

Risk
I can keep talking about accepting the risk but it's entirely up to the individual whether they ever truly do. To accept it is to sometimes lose to horrible beats and have bad swings. That's part of what we've accepted. If you go on tilt and focus on it, it means you haven't really accepted the risk. You're going through the fear, pain, guilt phase. This includes the winnings. You shouldn't feel like you're entitled to your winnings or that you were owed them. You don't beat or grind money out of poker, you wait for opportunities & pick up the rewards. You're quietly thankful & satisfied with your decisions.

Random Rewards
There was a study done once, some of you may know of this, where they got monkeys to do a task they didn't enjoy, but gave them rewards everytime they did. The monkeys kept going until one day the rewards stopped, then not long after when they realized the rewards weren't coming anymore, they stopped. The second group they gave random rewards. When the rewards stopped, the monkeys kept perfoming the task for much longer than the group who got consistent rewards. Think about how this applies to poker, a game where there is an element of luck and often what seems to be random rewards. Are you a random reward sucker, or making consistently good decisions?

Wrong:
-bad decision, bad result
-bad decision, good result

Right:
-good decision, good result
-good decision, bad result

Focus on improving more than on making money, while still preserving your BR as best you can. Always preserve equity. Naturally, if you're devoted to improving you should be able to first trim your losses, then improve & move on up. Be honest with yourself. When you lose money, make an accurate and blatantly honest analysis of whether it was through luck or through poor decision making. If you think your decision was possibly incorrect, explore alternatives.

On Bankroll Management
I said I wasn't going bother with BRM figures, but there's one thing I want to discuss. Not stakes & moving, but goals. So many people set unrealistic goals when it comes to growing their bankroll, often to the point of focusing on it over improving. Don't underestimate the power of slowly compounding money. Take your current BR, use the forumla to compound it by 1, 3 or 5% a week for one year and see what you get. Obviously you can't just go and automatically compound it because of needing to move up stakes, but think of how that ties into focussing on improving over making money. If you have a BR and manage to grow it by 1-5% a week (depending on BR/stakes and how much time you can devote), you'll be beating money in the bank. Keep records, even if it just means keeping a monthly tally or your cashier. Concentrate on the longer intervals of your BR, like monthly or weekly rather than daily or hourly. If you can build up a history of growing it almost every month, or even more months than not with an avgerage +%, think of the confidence this gives you. You are free from fear.

Manipulators and Speculators
“There is little question that a manipulator necessarily seeks his buyers among speculators. He turns to men who are looking for big returns on their capital and are therefore willing to run a greater than normal business risk. I can't have much sympathy for the man who, knowing this, neverless blames others for his own failure to make easy money. He is a devil of a clever fellow when he wins. But when he loses money the other fellow was a crook; a manipulator! In such moments and from such lips the word connotes the use of marked cars. But this is not so.”
-Reminescences of a Stock Operator

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Pokergal812 · Full House Joined: 07 Mar 2008 Posts: 153 Location: Jersey

Good post. Thank you.

aarosakura · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:11 pm Post subject:

This is great,one of the best posts out there that i have seen. If people started to take note of posts like this,we wouldn't get the people who come on here saying FT is rigged and they lost their first deposit on a 1$/2$ table.

lurgertor · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:20 pm Post subject:

You know I don't usually come by here, but if posts like this keep on poping up I think I better introduce a new habit into my lifestyle.

adam27x · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:19 pm Post subject:

Kiwi I know nothing of your education or anything about the education system where you live, but by chance have you studied a fair amount of philosophy? It's just a hunch that I have...

Flying_Kiwi · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 4:57 pm Post subject:

Not studied academically, but read quite a lot just for interest sake. I've also been reading several investment/trading books lately that deal with winning attitudes/beliefs etc.

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