For a while now I've had a mental game issue where I never feel like playing when i'm winning. I start playing, win between half a buyin to 2 buyins and have strong urges that i have not yet resisted, to quit my session. I might be 5 minutes in, it doesn't matter. I'm also quite reluctant to play in general when I've been winning/running good. I think it's because emotionally I'm very tied to my results, so I feel better when I know poker is going well and worse if it isn't. I also know that run bad in poker can happen any time, and I kind of dread it.

I know one of the reasons and something that could help fix it is if I stop looking at my graph, because I'm quite obsessive about looking at it at times lol... So i plan to attempt to only look at it once a week, or if i can manage it longer, like once a month.

I was wondering if anyone else has had similar issues and if they have gotten past it, how?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, and you fix it with scheduling.

Schedule your sessions (as best you can) at the start of the week or day. I am going to play for EXACTLY one hour. That is my only mission. Nothing else matters. Set a timer, use a clock. I only have to leave that hour knowing I played the best I could with the knowledge I had available. If I made a mistake, GOOD, I will replay it in my tracker until I play it different. Failiure is progess, as long as it is harvested for improvement EV. And winning feels naturally OK so takes care of itself. But you should still imo feel a little bit bad if you mess hands up during a winning sesh.

I tend to only look at my graph when it's going up (just set to 0 thickeness during downswing - over time i don't even remember to care tbh). When it's going down and I do need a dopamine hit I zoom out. This can't fail. Back to work/next session.

I think there is chapter in mental game of poker about this. You want to book a win.

Thanks for commenting. Yeah I have tried doing this and I can stick to it sometimes but then I seem to keep falling back into a pattern of never wanting to play and quitting early when I'm on an upswing. I can stick with the scheduling when I'm breakeven or going down though obviously lol. I think this might be one of the best approaches though you're right, I just need to be more strict with it and use it in conjunction with not looking at my graph, so I'm not thinking about the results of the session at all if possible.


Yeah I remember reading that. But I believe there it was spoken of positively. I think somewhere deep down I internalized it and now am stuck in a kind of black hole of 'booking a win'.

You probably miss remember, re-read it

Yeah you're right, it was something else or maybe a video series i watched(8th fold path to poker enlightenment maybe) that i remember it being spoken of positively. For me it's been a millstone lol Need to cure my results/graph addiction.

I miss the days when I didn't know what a downswing really was.

Thanks for reminding me about that book though, still worth a re-read to brush up

Think about the reasons why you even care about your graph


Do i expect to be successful at poker?

Am I so uncertain of my ability/strategy I can't tell if this is a genuine downswing?

Have I yet to beat this stake enough to feel confident I can even make that call?



None of it matters if you can beat micros and follow bankroll. It's your job to do whatever it takes to block all that ego crap out. Whaever that ends up looking like. (hint: rhymes with jeditation)

That's the funny thing. I've never really 'lost' at poker. Even when I was a fish I had a positive winrate(at 2nl until I had enough roll to move up). But I have had points where I was 50BI below EV. I just got back into poker and I've been running well for the most part. Too well. I just dread the doom switch. I guess you can say i've been scarred mentally lol. I'm going to start scheduling strictly from today :thumbsup:

omg why have i never used this before :O

Unless you are playing for a living you are playing at least in part because you enjoy it. You do not need to "fix" this because nothing is broken. You know what gives you pleasure so take advantage of that knowledge and enjoy yourself. You should only play when you want to play if this is recreation.

I have this same mental issue. For me it works that I decide before the session that how long I am playing. Usually 1-2 hours. I am allowed to quit early tho if I lose 2 buy ins.

It feels like a survival pc game when you have big stacks and 30 minutes left to play in the timer and villains keep bombing from left and right trying to rob your big stacks LOL. Zombie survival apocalypse BABYYYH

That's true but I plan to build my roll until I can play stakes where it'll be a nice side income. I've gotten from 2nl to 50nl before but stopped playing regularly around 2016 partly because of this very issue. 50nl made me nervous because it seemed like so much money(it really isn't) and I'd feel anxiety when i played. But I was winning nicely there for the 10-20k hands i played before i quit. I'm getting to the age(41) where you start realizing for real that life is short, so none of this **** really means anything anyway. It'll all be gone in the end. (don't mean to be a downer lolz)

Yeah that's the worst lol.. when you're watching the clock trying to hang on to your win

I don't know if you've read the classic book "Elements of Poker" by Tommy Angelo.

This is what's printed on the back cover of my copy:


If you are winning and you are playing well then it's absurd to end your session early. I mean you sound like you know this already but it's worth hammering home this point. That graph that you're obsessing over doesn't show the sessions. It's just one long continuum. Better to think of your sessions that way too.

By all means quit early if you are playing badly. Sometimes you'll get tilted for whatever reason and you just know that it's a bad idea to continue. That's a great time to step in and finish the session. Don't quit because you're playing well and get the results to match that though. If all you care about is that graph then this is terrible for it in the long run.

I have this anxiety too on NL10-NL25 but like Doyle Brunson said "Poker is war". I like to imagine myself as a trooper who goes to a battle. It is okay to feel nervous and fear but in the end it matters how I act on the battlefield (poker table). I have started to feel pride when I overcome this anxiety and have a winning session!

The daily result should have all the transcience of any game you vaguely care about winning but predominently enjoy playing because you love playing and learning it. Like when you die 6,000 times in Sekiro or whatever. You have a vague sense of how many times you died today but it is, ultimately, inconsequential and very temporary mind crap that is better deployed elsewhere in life.




All stakes are just 'levels' in a giant pyramid game. ^

If you beat a stake over a long sample then that level is techincally marked: complete. You win a key. 🔑 You can either stay on that level (for practice, for experimentation when you know you have EV to spare, for less anxiety - whatever), or you can move up to the next level. Next levels are always intitally tricky and deserve the most attention. That's the only time you can fail. But failure only means going back down to the easier level again, so nothing is actually *at* stake besides yer silly ego. And who cares 'bout dying in a game?

Do you graph your computer game progress? No? Me neither. The game usually does it itself these days anway. Somewhere in the menu or splashcreen:


Main story: 85% complete

Remaining tasks: slay the pigeon outside the mortuary before Arissa discovers the goat of fire


100% completion is finishing all the little side missions and fixing ALL your leaks. Which is never necessary (or actually achievable if you value having any kind of real life) but fun and wholesome to aim for nonetheless. And is our ultimate mindset. We don't look at these screens religiously when we play. They are like 0.01% of the gaming experience. Treat that graph with the ****ing disdain it deserves.

Well said Sir.

As per the advice to boost activity in this thread, I would advise you to play less hours.

Generally as stress levels go up and your body feels the effects of the swings, you tend to just reduce your edge over time.

From data that I've seen, a good min max strategy is to play a maximum of 3 hours a day. If you feel stressed out, do some exercise, eat well or do something that relaxes you.

Make sure that you have blue light filters on all technology that you look at.

Love the feedback guys, really appreciate it, thanks


Tell me about it . It's such an insane game on the mind, the ups, the downs. I think that is a huge part of what keeps us comming back. It's a magical horrible wonderful excruciating game

and just to update: been playing without checking my graph until the session is over and so far that's been working nicely. Sometimes I'm not even sure if i'm winning or losing by the end of the session so that's great, leaves me more free to focus on the hands instead of things that really don't matter. So I really did get something out of this thread, just need to keep up with it and remember this if I ever start falling back into that trap!

Yeah there's some research on how gambling in general affects the body and mind. You're basically triggering a fight or flight response when you play which long term obviously is problematic.

The simplest solution might just be to take extended breaks regularly.

Do you care about the money?

in the sense that I spent a lot of time accruing that money playing and everything I lose I will have to make back, yeah I do in that sense. In the sense that losing it all would affect my life, no not in the slightest. These are just points scored in a game so far.

i think it comes from insecurity /uncertainty of being a winner and what it means. would imagine if you have a 1 million hand sample of you printing and the resulting self confidence, this wouldn't really be much of an issue. i do think its attachment to results, but moreso what the results say about you as opposed to the actual $.

I see what you're saying and I think you're right to an extent, but I'm the kind of person that naturally doubts themself all the time lol. I mean, I grinded up from 2nl up to 25nl, then after my BR was stolen by a dodgy site grinded again almost from scratch, just a few dollars I had in PS all the way back up from 2nl to 50nl, and I was having this issue of quitting early then at 50nl. So, not sure how else I could prove it to myself.

dunno i think the sports psychology and mental aspect of poker is fascinating and also entirely disregarded by most people (similar to how studying theory / math was ~15 yrs ago). it seems like a combination of lack of confidence / self belief to me. Am maybe projecting bc i've struggled with this when changing games / occasionally player pools, but I think most strong winning players are able to see the game in terms of an hourly, and a small edge being executed thousands of times. would think the answer is to build a real foundation of self confidence via studying / winning, and if that still doesn't work would imagine it pervades throughout your life in other areas and would seek therapy lol. but regardless, mastery will build confidence in a particular skill set.