Tournament strategy – final table action and deal-making


 

 

Managing Emotion in Poker

When you play poker, emotions can run amok, and when they do, it can make a dent in your bank balance the size of the Mariana Trench. 

Ppoker is a game where you have to get used to the fact that you lose more times than you win. Both winning and losing affects your emotional state, but the losses are much worse than the wins.

So, if poker is going to be your thing, you need to learn about emotions. One of the first things to say off the bat, is that managing your emotions is extremely difficult. 

Unless you are a Buddhist monk, is it more probable that your emotions will manage you, and it is important that you reduce the impact when this happens. We are humans after all.

Poker is an oddity because the more money you win, the happier you generally feel, and yet money is not the measurement for success: mistakes are. 

This means that it is counterproductive to get wrapped up in results. Imagine that you have played a 16-hour session and are down a few grand, and yet you played perfect poker.

In cases like this, you have to become as unemotional as possible. You have done everything right and that’s all that is expected of you.

There is a great golfing analogy that sums up poker and emotion perfectly. You can throw your clubs around all you want after you have hit a bad shot. 

Just make sure that you keep your head down and your eye on the ball when you make your next shot.

 


Last Updated 28 March 2016
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Managing Emotion in Poker