Psychology/Mindset

[citanul]

Entering a game, I'm sure many people have different mindsets they like to be in to feel like they are ready to play at the top of their game. Part of that mindset is how you are going to feel about your opponents right from the start of the game. Many of those who have played sports in their lives work from a standpoint that to beat your opponents, you have to Hate Them. Or at least Hate Them while you are involved with your competition with them.

Bigwig says he hates his opponents.

Do you?

Psychologically how do you prep for playing SNGs? What is your emotional frame towards your opponents?

citanul

[Freudian]

My biggest problem when it comes to this is that I get content while running good. So If I am up 7-8 buy-ins in a handful of SnGs, I often call it a day/move down in limit to make sure it will be a good day/play Omaha for the rest of the day.

This behaviour of course leads to me not moving up even if I probably could and should. I have a gazillion buyins for the 33s already.

As for in-game psyche, I am very calm and relaxed by nature so I don't worry about at all. Everyone tilts in some way of course even if they think they don't, but I would guess that I tilt much less than the average player.

[wildzer0]

If I go in angry, I'm going to play badly. The best state of mind I can get in to play is just a confident, relaxed state where I know I have an edge on the competition. If I can mentally prepare myself for the bad beats and all that, I'm much less likely to tilt. It's weird, I try not to even think of my opponents as real people. They're factors in the game I can't control, but I can learn to understand and exploit those factors in my favor. If I start to make it personal, I start to have a problem.

[kamrann]

I guess I tend to kick off each set with the mindset of, "Okay, I'm gonna have all you [censored]!". So yeah, I suppose I hate them in a superficial sense. I don't think it's a good thing though really, because emotion of any kind is liable to affect play in a negative way I would say.

Recently I had the idea of trying to approach it as if there weren't actually real people at the other end of the phone line, making these seemingly random decisions to call allin on the bubble with JT or whatever. Imagining instead that I was just playing a computer game where that sort of thing happened and I just had to keep plugging away with the right strategy. So far though I've found it quite difficult to forget that it was someones decision to do something insanely dumb which just cost me another $100. I'm still searching for a way to fully detach myself from everything but making the right decisions.

[pergesu]

My approach stems from something I learned while making a living at live ring games for about 6 months.

I thought it was the funniest thing in the world that all the people I played with worked hard all week, then dumped their money off to me, a stupid 17 year-old (at the time) who didn't work or go to school. I can be obnoxious, to say the least, and used to love needling them, trying to see if I could put them on tilt.

There was a guy that played a couple times a week, I really respected him. He took me aside one day, to tell me yet another "You remind me of myself as a kid" story, but I actually listened to him. Told me that I shouldn't feel superior to my opponents at all, that I should recognize everyone in the game has different motivations for playing, and the most common one is pure entertainment. He said my profits would shoot through the roof if I were more pleasant in the game, and hell, I might even make a few friends to boot.

So I experimented for about a week doing this. Simple things like never laughing at a bad play, or even check-raising someone because it harbors resentment. And ust all-around being a more polite, pleasant person. Turns out I did make more. People were far more willing to give me action, cause they weren't always trying to nail me anymore. If I would break someone in a hand, they were a lot more likely to buy back in instead of getting pissed off and leaving. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but I'm positive that it all changed as a result of my attitude towards my opponents.

That thinking has carried over into the rest of my life, really. I was a varsity runner/wrestler/soccer player back in HS, and I used to always think whoever I played against was a chump. I'm still competitive in every aspect of my life, but I just have a different outlook now I guess, I give people the respect they deserve.

Not sure how much it applies to online SNGs, but that's my initial mentality regarding my opponents. That's one aspect of live play that I love - figuring out what everyone's motivation is, and how to play to it. Gigabet discusses this a bit in his "Almost there with success and failure" post, and I made an ill-received post on deserving and entitlement, which I think is a leak many players have.

[wulfheir]

My wife tells me I drop a lot of f-bombs when I play, regardless of how well/poorly I'm running. I usually don't remember them.

As for my opponents, I only hate the table coaches, and the racists.

The only sport I've played competitively is curling, which isn't really condusive to hating your opponents. I just concentrate on my game and I really only try to pick up on their tendencies.

[Lady Dont Tekno]

The mental state I want to be in is that of pure concentration with an ambiguous emotional connection to my opponents. I don't want to feel anything about them because that might affect my play. GoT said that he strives to be a "mindless clicking machine" completely unfazed by anything that happens at the table.

You shouldn't be happy when you see AA and you shouldn't be sad when you see 27o. Don't get upset when your Aces get cracked and don't feel satisfied when your favorites hold up. You should understand and accept how the game of poker and variance works.

So the best way I can describe it I guess is a complete trust in my game and my reads with as little emotional attachment as possible.

Maybe one day I'll actually get there. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

LDT

[pergesu]

[ QUOTE ]
The best state of mind I can get in to play is just a confident, relaxed state

[/ QUOTE ]
Crass as it may be, I think the best way to start a session is right after getting head. I bet we could prove that ROI increases a couple points (and it would undoubtedly be a fun study).

[HesseJam]

I see them as real people and try to figure out their playing skills and their motivation. I try hard not to see them as dumbo cash machines.

SnGs are very easy in that respect because the play is more abstract and you cannot directly fight your opponent.

I moved back to .5/1 ring games this month to clear a ton of bonuses and to get a feel at what state the ole beginners game is. I got way more involved there, was very aggressive and had an assassin's mind set. I beat the game steadily for 5BB over 6000 hands and it was the first time that I felt superiority over 80-90% of my opponents. That felt good.

I also made it a sport to open new 1/2 Crypto tables (It's like a reverse tourny, you go from heads up to full ring), sitting there by myself, like a spider, waiting for my victims to kill them off heads up.

[the shadow]

nh

I like CrisBrown's point of view:

[ QUOTE ]
I respect my opponents. I may not always understand why they do the things they do, but I assume they have a reason for it. So after the hand, or after the tourney when I review my hand replays, I take a moment to ask myself: in what circumstances would I have made the same play? In some cases, what I discover is that he made a smart play that I didn't understand. In some cases, I see a trap that I might well have walked into myself. Regardless, I try to always assume that he had a reason for what he did.


. . . So I don't look at my opponents and think "what an idiot." I think ... was *I* the idiot?

[/ QUOTE ]

The Shadow