I have this weird, hard to define fear, that's keeping me from playing more poker.

I play live 1/1 and 2/2 mostly in extremely soft games.
I've been completely crushing these games over the last 60 hours. (Since I started tracking.)

I'm still building a bankroll, currently have around 4000 and going up.

My profit over the last 60 hours is around 1700.

You'd think everything is great then right? But nope ...

I'm afraid I'm going to run bad or make bad decisions and lose.
That's why I only bring 400 to any game, because I'm not willing to lose more in a single day.

But even then, if I lose 2 days in a row, that's 800 gone.
Bankroll getting smaller, starting to feel a little less comfortable to play with a smaller bankroll, ...

I've played cash online, so I realize how easy it is to lose 5-10 buy-ins.
Going on a 10 BI downswing live would probably destroy my confidence.

Though I realize the chance of this happening in these soft games is much smaller than online, I think it's still a very real possibility.


I currently do not have another source of income.
While I don't depend on poker for a living, I have just enough money to live from, but very very little remains to add to my bankroll.
And honestly, I think my bankroll is more than sufficient for these soft live games.

I am adding all my poker profits to my bankroll, since I don't need them to live from and my main goal atm is to build a huge bankroll so I can go full time pro.


When I think this through, I end up thinking I'm afraid to play because I might not be able to play anymore if I lose too much.
Which completely contradicts itself, because if I end up not playing I'm just realizing my fear without even losing anything.


I've gone through "The mental game of poker" and "How to be a poker player" but couldn't really find anything on this specific subject.


I think I'm just going to have to play and get over it.
But if anyone has some useful advice, that would really help.

IDK, we all hit downswings. In the first week of June, I lost every day, totaling $2,300. Now, two weeks later I'm a small winner for the month. Most of it was from people calling until they hit their second pair on the river ... a lot of losing on the river ... I mean a lot.

Now, my 1/3 game isn't playing like a 2/5, but like a 1/3 ... and the 2/5 is just now starting to spread ... right about when I have to leave. Arggg!

As long as you can honestly tell yourself you're playing winning poker and not spewing very much, just tough it out.

But then, I play for the money first, me time second and the gamble third. It kinda sounds like you play for the gamble first and only play winning poker so you can stay in action. I would start by being 100% truthful to yourself as to why you play. Everything else beyond that should fall into line by itself.

I wonder what makes you think this.

I definitely play for the money, building my bankroll is all that matters to me atm.
I never gamble.

Well, maybe I was projecting a bit, that was why I started to get better a long time ago and I've seen it in others since then. But it was the line:

"I end up thinking I'm afraid to play because I might not be able to play anymore if I lose too much."

Maybe your bankroll just isn't deep enough? But 1/1, 2/2 shouldn't need a bankroll over a few thousand to feel very comfortable.

However, I take exception to your statement: "I never gamble". It's a very dangerous line of thinking. The moment you put that first chip in the pot, you're gambling. I really don't think you should ever forget that.

When you have the stone-cold nuts on the turn and someone over-shoves on you, you're gambling when you call.

When you go allin preflop with AA, you're gambling.

When the Casino opens a Roulette table, they're gambling.

It's the acceptance and deep understanding of this that makes the inevitable beats hurt less and sometimes not hurt at all.

A while back I called a turn shove with the nut straight on a rainbow, unpaired board. The guy showed two-pair and boated up on the river. He was about 8% to win, or 1 in 12. He gambled and won, I gambled and lost. Because I embrace the fact that it's a gamble, the shock of losing was minimal and could honestly say "nice hand" and mean it.

To be fair, the pot being less than 1% of my bankroll helped a lot, but that's why we play the stakes we do (or at least, should be).

When I was close to ruination I noticed myself much less inclined to play even though the answer was to play more. The potential of losing should cause stress unless you're playing so low it just doesn't matter(which is a good idea).

Try to use the stress(if that's the problem) to play more, not less, but we humans find that hard to do. I remember when there were rumors at work we were getting laid off. I thought, ahh, okay, I'll use this time to lose some weight, I'll make the food in my house last a long time. I went home that night and ate everything in the house. Why? Instinct I guess. My income(food source) was threatened so I put on fat to stave off starvation - I guess this is an animal instinct from forever ago.

If I have a losing day, the next day, as soon as I'm up some, if it's not way too early, I'll leave and book the win. 2 losing days in a row is debilitating and makes it very hard for me to come back the third day.

I do not agree. At least, I might not. You see, it depends on why you lost. If you played well and just got unlucky, which happens all the time, then so what?

However, if you spewed chips and put yourself into bad situations through bad play, then the psychological effect of booking a win might help.

I say "might" because booking a small win is a little like a "participation trophy". Everyone knows it's BS, including the person that received it. Also, booking a small win and running probably means you left money on the table by not pushing your edge when you had it.

There's how things should be and there's how things are. Adjust to how things are.

Well, yes. But how things are, is driven by your personal decisions.

For example, what is your routine before you go to play? Do you make sure you're calm, focused, fed? Do you do something you enjoy beforehand? Personally, I love to take my dog to the park and let her sniff around at her leisure. It brings me joy.

If I'm stressed, I simply don't go.

These things and more are my personal decisions not directly related to playing hands.

In short, I work at making things the way they are, match the way things should be.

FWIW I don't consider poker to be gambling, imo it's a game of skill.
Is it gambling in the sense that you're risking money you can lose? Yes.

Gambling, imo, is playing (casino) games that are impossible to win, roulette, blackjack (mostly), slots, ...

The voice of doubt may never leave your head, u just have to let the voice of reason be loud, and take control.

Yeah you’re scared u might go busto. So am I.

But still, just post your BB.

Yeah that's what I figured.
My bankroll is plenty high, I'm running great, but the fear is still there.
Not while actually playing so much, but when deciding if I will play or not.

Sat down for 200 yesterday, busted, re-bought for 200, went to 800 in about 5 hours, didn't really want to play anymore then :P
But it was a home game, so I hung around, trying to see some cheap flops and stuff.

If my bankroll was 8000+, I wouldn't care about the 800 at all, but now I do.
Probably because I know I don't have enough money (yet) to live of off poker.

I would advise against living off poker. As a second source of income and a place to get away, yea, absolutely. Once you're solidly in the life, it is extremely difficult to get out.

Also, I would be very surprised if anything less than a deep-stacked 1/3 game could be beaten for enough money to live on. Even that is marginal.

Was up 38 buyins for the first three weeks this month (winning consistent small wins). Then lost 13 buyins in the last two days like a maniac and dumb fool because I couldn't stand the breakeven streak anymore. Risk of going broke is definitely real and you have every right to be afraid.

To be blunt, this is a poker player fallacy. Yes, more skill is involved than simply pushing the button on a slot but the reality is, poker is gambling as luck plays a crucial role.

The VAST majority of “pros” go broke. There are plenty of formerly popular “elite pros” that are busto. If it truly was skill based, this wouldn’t happen. Most of the well-known pros who have been famous for years from poker have much of their past and current success attributed to sponsorships. It’s easy to enter a billion tournaments and try to win dozens of bracelets and trophies when the buyins are free.

The whole poker scene is a sham. It’s designed to trick you into thinking if you just put in more work or “paid your dues” more by losing, you’ll eventually have success.

Then people go on massive “downswings” that get attributed to “variance” and are told it’s a statistical issue and they just need to keep playing to “grind it back up.”

The whole industry is a sham to sell books and give the false notion that anyone can be a successful professional if they just keep playing, keep gambling, and keep buying more books/training materials.

Get a regular stable job and play poker for fun and, if you’re LUCKY, supplemental income. Don’t fall for the charade. The reason you’re afraid you might go broke is because everyone does eventually.

No not everyone goes broke eventually. You don't understand statistics. Many go broke because they aren't prepared, either with enough skill or enough discipline, to make it. If you play with a significant edge, are properly rolled and get sufficient volume the chance of going busto over infinite time is mathematically close to zero. This is fact, not opinion.

Most "pros" do go broke. It's easy for poker to fool you into thinking you're better than you are when you're on a heater when you're really not ready to quit your day job. Poker also attracts many people who want the freedom of being their own boss but don't have the discipline to manage their time properly or the mental toughness to play their best game and not miss volume when they're running poorly. This is not the fault of poker.

I taught a Masters level class on advanced statistics but I guess I don’t understand it Clearly, there was hyperbole in what I said.

Your second paragraph is accurate but your first is filled with gambler fallacies. Convince yourself you have a “significant edge”, convince yourself you just haven’t “put in enough volume” (i.e. just need to keep gambling), and/or you just need to increase your skill level. That’s the trap.

The ONLY possible way of sustaining a lifestyle as a professional poker player is to play a strictly mathematical based game, don’t gamble on anything else, never deviate from your math based game, find other players who are able to play somewhat competently but not perfectly AND who are willing to play with you regularly even though they have a track record of losing to you, and to have a substantial bankroll that you manage like your life depends on it.

Those rules basically exclude 99.99% of all potential “professional” poker players. It’s a pipe dream marketed by the WSOP, WPT, 2+2, other publishing companies, online poker sites, and training sites.

It’s a money making machine for them and they need to sell the dream to keep the cash flowing. That’s why they all loved the “Moneymaker Effect” and encourage people to do what he did. It’s a sham.

So basically we all agree poker is a game of skill, but it's very, very hard.
Not sure why we're even talking about this.

Because you suggested that, for you, it isn't gambling. That's basically what everyone is disagreeing with.

Just because someone gambles, doesn't mean they won't win over time if they have an edge - they will. However, the short-term swings can be a real B-*.

Hi Yeodan:

You're suffering from "pseudo tilt" as it's defined in my book Real Poker Psychology and have become a "pseudo steamer." What has happened is that leaving a session a winner has become more important to you than maximizing your expectation, and this will cost you profit in the long run.

If you go to the "expectation bias" section in the following link and read it you should get a good understanding of what I'm talking about.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...38&postcount=1

And the key thing to learn is that by becoming a pseudo steamer you might make it more likely due to either making the large short-term luck bigger if you're behind or smaller if you're ahead but your long-term results won't be as good.

Best wishes,
Mason

PS: Until my book was published, almost all of these poker coaches, and Tendler is probably a good example, wouldn't have had any conception as to this important poker psychology idea.

Hi Yeodan:

Poker is a game that has a large short-term luck factor or variance. If you're in a bankroll building phase, you may want to do some things that will reduce the variance a lot but your win rate a little. AN obvious example is to play a little tighter than what you think is correct or to perhaps call instead of raising when it is a close decision but you think that raising is the slightly better play.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Jay:

The definition of gambling is actually well defined in our history book which I wrote with Antonnio Carrasco. If you can not predict the outcome with much certainty, such as when you move all-in before the flop with aces, you're gambling. Another example would be you're an excellent player and are going to your favorite poker room for a four hour session. Again, you won't know if you'll be a winner or loser for the session, so again you're gambling.

However, if you're an excellent player and put a lot of time in over the next few months, it's almost a certainty that you'll be nicely ahead, so you're not gambling. (Notice that you can gamble every night and eventually you won't be gambling any more.)

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi zica:

I don't agree. If you've played a fair amount and are a significant loser, the luck factor relative to your expectation should now have dissipated and you're probably a losing player. The best predictor of your future results are your long-term past results.

So, this means that instead of playing more, you probably need to study more and to try to improve your understanding of all things poker which of course includes strategy.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Jay:

Many people think they're playing well when they're not. So, if you have poor results over a reasonable length of time, and for most live games this would be several hundred hours, you're probably not playing as well as you think.

Also, if you're "spewing chips," as you put it, you might be falling into one of the four losing states of poker. You can rad about them here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...38&postcount=1

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Jay:

Does any of this matter? I agree that for an athletic sport where there is a large execution factor -- speed, timing, and coordination, it's important to be relaxed and concentrating at an extremely high level. But poker is mainly a game of knowledge and your knowledge won't change.

Keep in mind that to play better poker you must now play some of your hands differently and this new way of playing is superior to the way you formerly played your hands. I don't see how "eating your vegetables" will affect this.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Yeodan:

Statistically, if the standard deviation is small relative to your overall expectation, you're not gambling. But if the standard deviation is large relative to your expectation, which will be the case in a four hour live session, then you're gambling.

Just because poker is a game with a large skill element which can give you a positive expectation relative to the other players doesn't mean that you're not gambling.

Best wishes,
Mason