A few days ago I posted a story about boxing in BBV4L and one person made a comment that poker players couldn't relate to sports. I think this was a bit tongue in cheek but might write a few words in the psychology section anyway.

Poker and boxing are both games of incomplete information and it’s very easy to let your emotions take over when competing, of course the moment you do this you play into your opponent’s hands. Making and calling big bets with a marginal hand is the boxing equivalent of throwing wild punches that miss your opponent by a wide margin. In boxing there is an urge to attack by punching, in poker there is an urge to attack by betting. When you attack from a bad position you leave yourself exposed to your opponent, due to this hazard you need to always attack in a structured, disciplined way. When you do make a mistake you need to be able to take that hard blow to the face, acknowledge that it was your fault and then make a plan to fix it. If you do this then eventually you won’t get hit as much.

I'm a retired professional boxer and beginning poker player. I deposited ten dollars on stars three months ago and have built it up to fifty dollars over 14k hands playing 2NL. Really enjoying it but have to say I am shocked at how easy it is to let your impulses and emotions take over. In this sense it really reminds of my early days in boxing when you would just lose your rag and start swinging after taking a shot.

Any comments on how hard other readers have found this element of the game welcome.

This was my main struggle and I'm pretty sure that's true.

I did some martial arts competitions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vovinam) some years ago. I remembered thanks to your post that because I felt so weak compared to the others, I was in extreme focus and it allowed me to win my matches.

Both need discipline to better yourself :

• You have to review your hands the way you would review your fights
• Even if a friend offers you a beer when you scheduled a training session, you have to go to your training
• You have to train often to get better, the more, the better
• You have to listen to yourself when your brains or body need rest
• You will look back in some months and see how incredible your journey is

It was really hard for me not to bet almost every turn, but it's the same in martial arts. You learned deadly moves and you learned that you should use them scarcely. To win matches, you need to mix-up your ways of attacking, defending, and the best fighters are always thinking out of the box.
Although, to think out of the box, you need to master the basics and to master your body first.
It's the same in Poker for me, you need to master the basic skills first (pot odds, reading hands, getting to know your table, playing in position...) then, you would master your aggressivity, would progressively try new moves, be imaginative in your defending and attacking patterns, etc.

I think you need first to master the basics, if you don't already, to finally be able to play with the flow, to understand it and put yourself into it. Then, there is no aggression, you are just an integral part of the game, you become an element of it. It's the same for me when I was in a competition, I got a grip of what the flow was, slipped into it and took advantage of it.

This is a concept called "Hyoho", invented by Miyamoto Musashi, the first japanese sword fighter to use two swords. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi
You can find more about it in the book he wrote in his late days called : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings

I'm sure you can compare Poker to pretty much every sport where there is two spirits fighting against each other.

I do BJJ / Kyokushin. I wouldn't be a winning player without it. But the difference is, I play poker for money and I do these things for fun. At the poker table, I don't have the luxury of shrugging my shoulders and walking away when I lose a fight because I need to eat. That is what makes poker hard. It needs to work. Failure in the cage is a lot easier. However, there is something about smashing up against someone in the cage that makes it easier emotionally when you have to do it at the table. I don't know how other players get by without things like this. I have this and bass guitar, chess and Diablo III. Those four together wires my brain for poker. Although, I never play poker straight after physically wrestling because my adrenalin is too high.

Thanks for the replies, both good reads.