Hat's off to you, sir...

Excellent post and well articulated. Copied and pasted to my "Poker - Words of Wisdom" file to revisit many times in the future.

TY TY

Been reading the forums for a while but never actually posted till now. Been on a pretty bad downswing myself where ill have 1 session with profit and then 4 more losing sessions. My bankroll is dwindling down faster than the stock-market last week, but I guess everything bounces back after a while.

Great Post sir

fyp4m

great post Scansion, ty

op's post is now my homepage

Nice post.. and thanks for pointing out the other posts as I have not seen those neither. I think this will help tremendously.

this needs to be locked but srsly insta classic.

Great post, made me think of part of a scene from "The Hustler"


Bert Gordon: Eddie, is it alright if I get personal?
Fast Eddie: Whaddaya been so far?
Bert Gordon: Eddie, you're a born loser.
Fast Eddie: What's that supposed to mean?
Bert Gordon: First time in ten years I ever saw Minnesota Fats hooked... really hooked. But you let him off.
Fast Eddie: I told you I got drunk.
Bert Gordon: Sure you got drunk. You have the best excuse in the world for losing; no trouble losing when you got a good excuse. Winning... that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You'll drop that load too when you got an excuse. All you gotta do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. One of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry for yourself. A sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers.
Fast Eddie: Thanks for the drink

Least we can do for people who take the time to write out such quality material is the leave the thread open for the "great post, thanks" props they deserve.

Great post.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this post.

Variance and poker's nature as a game will inevitably bring out the worst in every player against himself if he cannot take responsibility for his emotions and the mastery he could thus develop over them.

Even though variance is not something humans have been accustomed to, or even properly evolved for as the author seems to suggest, it will bring forward personal issues that every individual will benefit greatly from dealing with. In that light, I thank variance for allowing me to highlight my own emotional troubles and giving me the opportunity to take responsibility and work on those weaknesses.

Money is certainly not all that can be lost or gained from an adventure in poker land. It is up to each person to decide whether they'll come out of it better off, or otherwise.

i got linked to this by a friend 2 weeks ago and didnt read it fully till just now, and wow, i feel tingly and enlightened , so so so so so pleased to have read it , tyvm scansion

really good. but i still get upset with downsizing and run to tell my poker friend im an idiot or im unlucky etc. but i think there is always hope and ill try to get better.

ty for the amazing read.

excellent post, thank you.

Very nice post.Now I am proud of my 10BI downswongs

what?

You have made me proud to lose 10 buy-in's too. The more I lose the better I feel.

Jk.

I have read Gigabet's stuff since he first posted it. I have been playing for a living, every day, since I was 16 years old, 22 now. That one post probably saved me from quitting poker at such an early age and made me mature way beyond my years.

I think of winning and losing as exactly the same thing pretty much because of Gigabet's post. I had to read it probably three times for it to really hit me. But basically, just disconnect yourself from the idea that success and failure have anything to do with the amount of money won or lost. This is absolutely ludicrous to believe as a poker player. You related it well with the analogy to a tennis match, and how the losing player can respect the winning player based on the short term skill involved. Success and failure are just relative terms since they mean such different things to each person, as Gigabet pointed out.

When I first read the post, I was thinking you were just copying Gigabet and was going to say something but then saw you quoted him. I think you did a really great job of discerning each quote.

I can safely say that I have never tilted within the past three years, playing pretty much every day all day at ssnl and msnl, mostly 6 max but learning HU.

It's good to know all of this, but honestly, the one thing that has helped me the most is goal setting. The most powerful tool you have as a poker player is mental strength, and goal setting for mental strength really makes a difference.

So, what is your goal when you sit down at the table. Is it making 5 buy-in's? Is it to out-play the other player? Is it to get in your raked hands for the day? Or do you not even sit down at the table with a goal in mind (the worst)? Some players don't do this and can still be successful, but they are few and far in between. For the rest of us mortals, we have to focus on the things we can control (our mental state) and forget about the things in which we cant control (bad streaks or as Gigabet says "...the cards falling randomly over time.")

These are all questions you should ask yourself right now if you want to get to the root of the problem, because I bet 95% (not literally, just guessing here) of poker players do not sit down at the table with this goal in mind. To play my absolute best game of poker for X amount of time, or until I feel like quitting the table.

So to disconnect yourself from money, just think of success as playing your best game of poker. Think of failure as not playing your best game of poker. It's really that simple, but most players are just too lazy to do it.

I can say that throughout my years setting a goal before I sit down at the table has eliminated this "tilt" issue during downswings. I no longer have to even cope with downswings.
I firmly believe not having a goal when you sit down and being oblivious to how the terms success and failure really relate to you as a poker player....

will "cause the worst tilt imaginable."

Sonny

p.s. - I loved the post

e: lol wrong thread

great insight

awful post imo

jk, i wanted to be different , I agree with ure post specially the last part

Jsnipes,

The "in the moment" your talking about isnt really in the moment. If you got sucked out 10 hands ago thats the past. If you got sucked out 1 hand ago, thats the past. Thats not the NOW. Something that i started doing that really improved my tilt control is to take a few deep breaths, clear my mind from how my session is going, and focus on centering myself. I actually tell myself to keep moving forward, and accepting the past is the past, not thinking about the future, and just living in the present because now is all that truely matters.

What you need to do as a poker player to survive the variance is to treat it as a challenge to yourself. Where you can’t physically push yourself as in other sports, you need to mentally push yourself to not be bothered by the variance. When you don’t care whether variance is being equally fair to you and everyone else, losing in poker is just a competition of how strong you are mentally. When you don’t need others’ sympathy and confirmation of your misfortune (rather than your own lack of abilities) your confidence has finally reached its prime. Personally, I enjoy proving that after I hurricane off ten buyins, I can talk to a friend as if I just won the lottery. I take pride in having physical endurance, and I have developed the same ecstasy for my strong mental endurance.

best part
nh

This were truly some of the best, most moving and deepest effecting words I have ever read. This attitude is something I want to reach in the future, taking poker 100% away from the side of variance and just seeing the long run.

TY OP

This was brilliant, ty OP.

Thanks OP. A friend sent this to me b/c he knows the run I'm on. I was crushing the game a couple months ago, up around 850K in a couple months. This last two months, however, have been the worst that I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure I got rivered about 7 times today, no joke. And I really needed to read the OP because I was just mesmerized. I think I'm stuck around 400K in the last two months and I honestly feel like I'm playing my A game.

Idk. Thanks for the uplifting the post, and I think I'm just gonna go relax on a beach somewhere for a week or so and let it just roll off. I've played pro for about 3 years now and this is the hardest stretch I've dealt with (or even imagined) by far. I compltely understand the whole varince deal; but it's still pretty damn hard to to just keep getting punched in the chin and smiling afterwards. Your post helped a lot tho.

I also would just like to note that it's threads like these that make me happy/proud to be a poker player. I was a lawyer for a year and quit to play poker and, despite my success, there's still the stigma of being a poker player over an attorney that has always lingered with me (by others, not by me). I like to see a discussion like this to remind me of quality of people that also call themselves poker players.