For some of us poker is work. And it needs to be treated that way. If you depend on poker for income, you shouldnt ever expect to have fun doing it, or attempt to use it as a source of entertainment or recreation. For instance u should not complete your normal workload of 3-4k hands for the day, than say to yourself, "I think I'll have a glass of wine and play a tourney to unwind". You should do something non poker related to unwind. Poker cannot be something u do for work AND for r&r, and if u use it for both what ends up happening is the lines get blurred and u end up a) not getting enough quality work done AND b) not having any fun at all.

I've broken that rule this past week. But I hadn't been getting much quality work done regarding poker lately anyway. I'm currently in one of those semi-funks where Its hard to play much poker at all.

I try to get the juices flowing. I'll browse 2p2 a bit and it all just seems silly. I'll open CR and it just seems small and irrelevant and a waste of time. So I guess this post is an attempt to explain to myself why I'm thinking/feeling this way.

1) I'm running very poorly + not playing to my potential. I'm only up ~10BIs over my last 60k hands. Ive had 4 seperate 8-15BI DSs in that period. Inordinate amounts of coolers and bad runoffs. But my play during that span has at times been solidly subpar. I'd probably give myself a general rating of B- for the sample.

2) I awoke one morning last week to find almost 20% of my BR had disappeared. The person I loved most in the world couldnt sleep the night before, so she donked around on my account, ran terrible, and spent the entire night trying to rectify the situation out of fear that I'd be angry at her. As a result, she just ended up losing more and more.
I don't think I've quite recovered from this since, kind of the way an athlete might have a hard time coming back from an injury. It's had that kind of a psychological affect on me.

3) The mixing business w/ pleasure thing I mentioned earlier.

4) Playing your A-game is hard. It requires a sh*tload of time and effort and energy and attention, and is best served with off-the-table-work, which requires more time and and effort and energy and attention.
And I have been preoccupied with other things lately that my heart believes are more worthwhile to devote time and energy and effort and attention to than poker.

Problem: I need $. Can't take any sick days with this job.

I really wish I was better. A better player? Sure. But more a better person with better character. Someone who could roll with the punches better, instead of being so sensitive, fragile. That would be nice.

You're thinking about it the wrong way. I can't focus on the game well enough unless I'm enjoying playing. As soon as you feel yourself getting bored, you need to remind yourself that what you're doing is what you enjoy doing. Convince yourself that you're having fun. If you aren't having any fun, you're gonna get bored, and if you get bored, you can't focus. If you can't focus, you lose money. You're in a competition, you're not at work.

It's against the rules for anyone to play on your account. Explain that to your significant other.

not a real help, but perhaps you like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPT04fvRcuo

why not try to get a real job for some months until you feel the need to play again? You should see poker as what it is to you right at the moment: a waste of pleasure, time, energy and money.

Do something else at least for some months.

I have the same problem right now... I have trouble playing my A-game. The past month I just open up 6 tables and watch TV on MCE. I should be playing 12 tables and no TV like I used to. But I just get bored really easily... I think I need a break from poker and just start reading.

#1 - keep your password secret / lock your computer or get one of those security key fob things that stars have. I'm not being funny but not even my misses has access to my computer (partly cause of the porn ;-) let alone to my stars account!

#2 - she should pay you back. In fact she should offer to pay you back and if she hasn't this would be a major issue for me.

Sorry if this comes accross a bit tough but she has effectively spent your money without asking (ie stolen from you). Even if the money is not within her means she should still pay back what she can.

Bob

This is good. Sometimes when i am having a very bored day i'll allow myself a rare beer pump up the music and let rip. The whole point in being a pro is to have a better life - enjoy it some!

I'm starting to have this bored feeling too, I started 3 months ago with the best motivation. Playing 10 hours a day while still having time to go out with friends.

Now I can barely play 20 hours a week, I feel like I have to play because if I don't I have the feeling that I'm not making any money. So I play less focussed, not the best game.
Burn-out I guess,
yeah, you can take a break.... and then what ??? everybody's at work/school.

Sounds like your still in shock and need to recover from this or at least draw a line under it if you can. You can't worry about running badly it's an invertibility that you can't avoid, probably should just be focusing on getting your game back up to your said usual standard. Best of Luck.

Tributaries flow into rivers........

Tributes to your lack of morale..............

trib·u·tar·y [trib-yuh-ter-ee]
–noun
1. a stream that flows to a larger stream or other body of water.
2. a person or nation that pays tribute in acknowledgment of subjugation or the like.

Word tributaries was meant metaphorically in title. If my lack of moral was a body of water, these are its tributaries...

I guess the metaphor doesnt work very well.

Double Disclaimer:

1)I may have broken the TL;DR-o-meter here.

2)Despite the length I go to here, I am still just expressing a counter opinion, I am well aware I could be totally wrong, and am very interested in knowing where other people disagree with me.

Now the post:

This idea of completely separating poker from fun is an interesting Idea. I am not sure I agree with it though.

If you think about it in terms of normal office work - Forward thinking companies have been moving towards using "Fun" to increase productivity for quite a while now. I've seen "Team Building" activites -stuff like scanevger hunts, company run- reeroll poker tournaments with no cash prizes, and Pot Luck dinners. I've seen company retreats. I currently work at a company that brings rock bands into the office to play a mini concert around twice a month.

The purpose of this? A lot of corporate speak like "team building" keeps getting thrown around, but when you boil it down - they want people in a good mood.

Psychologically, humans are reward seekers - if going to work frequently rewards us with a fun time, or an otherwise pleasant mood creating event - even if it's just 15 minutes here and there, it increases our desire to be there. It increases our motivation to continue seeking the reward.

In poker, as I'm sure you know, this reward seeking behaivior causes a short-circuit. We naturally feel rewarded when we win and hurt when we lose. And all the prevailing opinion I've studied to this point seems to agree that the hurt from losing has a greater psychological impact than the reward from winning. So in the long run, if we don't figure out a way to combat this, we are psychologically damaged by playing poker.

So those of us that learn this information then try to find ways to deal with it. We try to find tricks to ignore the winning and losing and just focus on making good decisions, we set stop loss, curfews, and otherwise impose structure on our playing habits to try and keep ourselves on an even keel and off tilt, we practice meditation, and so on and so forth.

When you think about all of that, is the concept of approaching poker as something you never have fun with anymore a good Idea? Would it not be better to find a way to have fun AND play our best?

I think your idea of separating poker from fun has a correct goal - which is to stop that natural reward seeking behavior from killing or game, and decreasing our profits. And thus, I don't think it is a bad idea, I just don't think it is the best one we could come up with. I think instead of trying to completely turn off our human nature, we should try to find a way to use it to our advantage.

For live poker, this might translate into table talk. I remember reading an article by a player whose name escapes me, but this player played limit HE for a living back when that was the only game the pros had to choose from. One statement that he made in the article was that if you want to play poker for a living, you will probably have to find a way to get the same regulars to lose to you over and over, AND make them have fun doing it.

When I play live HE, I mostly play very tight due to LA structures making that the best way to make profit. But I know if I just sit there, shut up, and wait for a good hand I will get bored after about an hour and start playing like butt.

On the other hand, if I try to find ways to make the game more fun - cracking jokes with people, flattering people for good plays, by being a weirdo, and what not, I feel I gain multiple benefits -

1)I stay more engaged and have an easier time staying in my A game or closer to it.

2)When I succeed in making people laugh and have fun they frequently give away extra information to me. They might show a hand they didn't need to because they know I might make some funny or weird statement about it, for example.

3)People at the who are having fun are less likely to go into a rage when they catch a bad beat (myself included). Raging bad beat tirades are bad for the game IMO. They break the fun mood for the bad players and often make everyone tighten up. And even if there is a grumpy player or two at the table, if everyone else is having a good time they will often just stay quiet.

Now for online poker, we are missing the social interaction element the way it is live, so the way we do this, (that is, make playing our best game fun) would have to be different. I haven't been playing seriously online for as long as I have played B+M, so I don't have as many ideas about how to do it.

So there's what I think. If you read this far then I think you have passed your ADHD test. :P

@ PokerDisciple

Just to be clear, Im not saying that poker should be some unenjoyable chore. Im simply saying that if you rely on poker for an income (sole or supplemental) then its work, and you should treat it that way by not doing it on ur downtime/R&R time. You should do yourself a favor and give the game (not to mention yourself) the appropriate degree of respect.

The most likely result of not doing so will probably be that the quality of your poker game will suffer AND the quality of your recreational time will deteriorate as well. Then... burn-out.

As far as having fun WHILE playing, I kinna know what you mean about live poker. I played live for a living for about a year, and it didnt feel like work. I would have a lot of fun shooting the sh*t with other regs, keeping the fish entertained, and even having a cocktail or two from time to time, while still managing to make $. But looking back I definitely could have made more $ if I had a little more respect for my job and cut back on some of the purely for-fun behavior. Keeping the table in a good mood is one thing, using poker to fulfill your social/recreational needs is something else imo.

I enjoy poker and getting better, but at the end of the day it's still just sitting behind a computer trying to make ends meet. I took the year off school last year and right now am in the worst downswing of my life, by far. Bad management has put me in a spot now where I feel like I have to put in major hours to get my br to a more comfortable point. This sucks and I hate it. I really think I enjoy poker more than a lot of other people I've come across, but it would be great to just spend some time relaxing and not worrying about it. But I feel like I don't have any time to waste, so back to the tables. I think I've learned a lot during this downswing about what's important and what's not. I don't want to put in the kind of hours I did in the past, but it costs money to live and I do still want to become sick at this game. I've realized money and happiness aren't necessarily related, yet I spend so much time chasing money.

I definitely agree with what you said about poker being work. You have to treat it like such and you have to be a hard boss on yourself. Not playing enough tables, reviewing enough, etc can really affect your bottom line. Poker is fun, but in it's own way. It's good for what it is, but at the end of the day you're stuck behind a computer and not out doing things.

Reread the OP. I think it makes a very good point. Obviously you can really enjoy poker, but when it's your primary source of income, you need to approach the game a whole lot different.

If you say work at poker 40 hours a week, then to relax you play poker another 10 hours a week, that relax time isn't really relax time. You are still focused on poker.

Every professional needs to have some escape (for lack of a better word) from the game. It's also good if this escape is good for you, like say playing a sport. Something that keeps you from thinking poker completely. Even if you are going over hands just in your head on your time off, it's not time off.

This is a pretty critical problem IMO. It's a tough job that requires a lot more mental and emotional effort than a lot of other jobs, and days off need to be within your budget. I would not be comfortable playing for a living if I couldn't take a month or 2 off if needed at any moment... without feeling pressure when I get back.

I think it's important to enjoy what you're doing for a living; otherwise we may as well work a crap job, and poker is an awesome job.

Live and online are different beasts, though. I derive satisfaction from playing well and winning online, but rarely have fun doing it - I take it pretty seriously, cutting out all the external distractions and focussing on playing lots of hands amd playing them well; live, in many games, I'm having a lot of fun with the people around my table, and can do that in between hands. Outplaying people or getting lucky is a pretty fun thing to do in live poker as well. Of course, when you're getting outplayed or getting unlucky, it's really not. So basically make it so you play with fun people that aren't very good at poker, and then being a live pro is an awesome way to spend your time.