I think we fear it can all go away...
 

SomethingClever's post about being a losing player has gotten me thinking. I have noticed that whenever I move into a downswing, I find myself questioning my entire poker existence. Somehow, being a victim of variance makes me think that all the work, reading, and discovery I have done has been for naught. I know that I'm not alone on this one, so I wonder: why is it we think that way? What causes us to doubt everything we do simply because of the runs of cards?

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

Hopefully you have read Dr. Al's "Psychology of Poker" - if you have, read it again, if you haven't, do so. There is specific advice against what you are thinking ... but the general principles will be of much help as well.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

It's on my list already...just don't have a whole lot of money at this point in time(payday on Friday) [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

We all look a little bit harder at our games, and recognize the mistakes a bit easier, when we're running poorly. No one ever attributes luck to the positive sessions, or counts hands won despite mistakes as leaky play when they run hot.

If you feel brilliant when you're winning (pretty hard to avoid), how are you supposed to feel when losing?

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

[ QUOTE ]
why is it we think that way? What causes us to doubt everything we do simply because of the runs of cards?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's easy, at least for me. I know variance can work both ways, so I wonder... am I a lousy player who's just been lucky, or a good player who's currently running unlucky?

I'd imagine it's kind of like what a career .300 hitter must feel like when he's mired in a 2-for-41 batting slump. The longer the slump drags on, the easier it is to think that it's not just a slump, but you've just forgotten how to hit.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

That's a really great question.

I believe it has something to do with the psychological attachment from our self and the cards because poker players spend so much time, effort, and money invested in a deck of cards some may feel as though their self-worth is directly related to the fall of those cards. Gambling can create a dependence on unknown variables, when those variables are positive one's self-image is high because of a sense of accomplisment and success, but when variance swings toward negative the dependence on uncontrollable events is often internalized through pain, which in turn often manifests itself into external reactions such as anger and frustration or blaiming the cards. This is just an outpouring of the internal pain that a bad run of cards can generate because of high expectation and dependence on success to fulfill their needs of self-worth. To be able to distance oneself from bad luck or negative variance is, to paraphrase Aristotle, the actualization of one's self (as a gambler).

Variance happens at all levels of play and to all players. It is the nature of the beast, the part of the game that keeps live ones continuing to play with the odds stacked against them. To seperate one's self, selfworth, and one's being, from a silly (albeit the greatest) game of cards, is the highest accomplisment a card player can hope to achieve, aside from winning the Main Event of the World Series of Poker that is.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

Great post! This is an interesting topic, and I was discussing it with my therapist this morning.

I got hit by the wrath of god lastnight at limit hold em. 2 pair vs. set. Set vs. straight, straight vs flush, everyone folds to my aces, my kings run into aces, my aces get beaten by kings, and after that beaten by queens etc, etc, etc, etc yada yada yada nothing you haven't seen before.

Even though I took an unholy, evil loss lastnight, my therapist thinks that what really bugs me is the idea of not playing well. I think he's totally correct. The reality is that even with that loss, I am still well in the black just counting the 3 days b4 it.

All those beats in a row, or failed high % moves we make going bad in a row make us wonder how we ever won in the first place. Lastnight, I got my flopped set beaten one time by a runner runner gutshot 1 card str8. My very next set also lost to a 1 card straight.
When things like this are all happening at once we feel like it could go on forever.

Anyway, no one should care about my 1 bad night, and I don't want or deserve anyone's sympathy for losing (I am in the black, and well B-Rolled). If you guys shouldn't care about my bad night, then why should I?

I just wanted to say that its hard to not lose your confidence when you identify winning with your ego.
This is a problem a lot of people have.
Sorry if this came off like a bad beat post.

Anyway, best of luck keeping your chin-up in the downtimes.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

Good post Tao.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

[ QUOTE ]
... its hard to not lose your confidence when you identify winning with your ego.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for putting that in words. I feel that could be my biggest problem in poker at the moment. However, "ego" could perhaps be expanded into "self worth," although that is a bit of an exaggeration.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

aye, i ran into the variance monster last week. without exagerration i lost to set vs set, AA vs 89o, KK vs JJ (nice turn sir! =p), nut flush to full house, etc etc etc. hands that i could not get away from, and i would not call them "bad beats" because the hands my opponents had were strong and maybe caught a little luck but that is part of the game.

took a week off due to a move, gonna get back on the horse sometime this week and give it another go. during those few sessions i suffered a 90ish BB hit to my online bankroll..i'm told 100 BB downswings are common so i'll keep that in mind as i play.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

ty I was hoping to get feedback as to whether some people feel this way about the game, given that this is the psychology forum. Poker has so much to do with emotion and control. I play regularly with a friend who would be a great player if he could just remove his ego from the game. I also realize that if I could distance myself from the game that I would be a better player.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

I have had sessions like this. It feels as if (1) you're being persecuted (2) someone "up there" has a sick sense of humor, and then eventually (3) you're not as good as you thought you were.

But it's just variance. Could you have amassed the bank roll you have on just luck and now it's all going to go away? Highly unlikely.

And variance works both ways. My last session was something out of a hollywood movie. I still have lumps on my head due to how hard the deck hit me over the head. I was looking down at aces, kings, and queens (which all held up in giant fields of opponents) more than I could imagine. I was hitting all my draws. I flopped a set that turned quads and got into an all out war with a poor guy who flopped a higher set and made top full house. Overall it was like a 50 BB upswing in under an hour.

So when I'm getting my ass kicked in again next time, I will just force myself to remember this particular session.

We just need to focus on making the correct the decisions and leave the rest up to the cards ...

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

The next time you have a really good run over a few thousand hands. Go back and look at some of your winners. count the times, you turned a set, had a pair and a gutshot and hit the gutshot on the river, trapped somebody set over set, made a fullhouse out of two pair on the river against a straight or a flush, had AA when someone else had KK-TT, flopped a set against AA or KK. You will see that even with good tight players, "bad beats" (or what you might percieve as a bad beat if you were on the recieving end) can have a strong positive influence on your short-term WR.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

Interesting post. My question is, is your therapist totally open minded about your poker play? B/C I think most therapists would be like, "you have a gambling problem" no matter what you explain to them about it. It would be interesting to have a one-on-one with a shrink about psychological flaws that affect poker play without it becoming a "you have a problem, we have groups for this" kinda discussion.

Jeff

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

My therapist thinks that poker is healthy for me, so yeah, I think he's pretty open minded. I think you're right about most therapists having a negative reaction. My psychiatrist told me that she hopes I don't have a gambling problem when I mentioned that I play poker.
You wouldn't really tell someone that you hope that they aren't an alcoholic if they told you about going to a bar, would you?
So yeah, poker has an undeniably negative stigma attached to it, and people working in the mental health profession are not without their prejudices. When I have my better judgment working for me, I totally avoid discussing poker in mixed company. I just can't stand knowing that I am being judged.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

This is what they call learning, it's part of your evolutionaty instinct, a built in mechanism for improvement. I know it seems like a curse, but is really a blessing. When you lose, you reflect on the situations and you think about how you could have played differently and then you figure out how to get better.

If you lose and you just feel sorry for yourself and consider yourself (in your words) "a victim of variance" then you probably think that you are better than you really are, so just get over yourself already.

Blazman

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

I totally agree. My KK just lost to KJ all in before the flop, and instead of whining about it, I'm going to spend the rest of the day reflecting on how I should have seen this coming.

Seriously though, there is no analogy between learning poker and learning pool, golf, basketball, bowling, or anything else I can think of.
People play correctly and lose. People play incorrectly and win. The relationship between correct play and positive results occurs in ways that are not immediately noticable.
This is why people suck at the game and it is also why some people play for a whole lifetime and never become winning players.

[ QUOTE ]
This is what they call learning, it's part of your evolutionaty instinct, a built in mechanism for improvement.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is totally accurate. This is how humans learned that fire burns flesh, how ingesting too much ice cream gives you an ice cream headache, how ketsup tastes good with french fries, how Bush is a bad president, etc.

However, this is NOT how people learn to play winning poker. This is how people become supersitious about poker. "I always lose with AQ." "I never make two flushes in a row." "I should always quit when I am $200 ahead"

These are not useful ways to think.

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

there is no such thing as a bad beat, only bad plays and bad reactions. The lesson in your KJ scenario is how to learn how to react to loosing the hand. To learn that ANYTHING can happen, and does. I learned this from a hand where I held JJ the flop came JJA, then A-Q goes all in, I call, turn A river A. Did I do the right thing? of course. But I learned that I can do everything correctly, I can play perfectly and lose. I am not supersitious about playing JJ. I concentrate on making the correct decision at every opportunity. If that is your goal instead of winning, the winning will come.

-Blazman

Re: I think we fear it can all go away...
 

I think another part of the problem is that when variance leads to a big downswing in our BR, we get frustrated. As winning players we get used to winning our fair share over the short term. Unless variance is really running against us, that's just how it works for winning players. So we get used to slowly building our BR and imagining how it will be and planning for our next move up in level. Then a downswing hits us and the wheels fall off the dream. Not only that but if we've been there and done that enough, we actually are force to move down in level to protect our BR untill the downswing is over. The carniage seems to last for ever. Poker is a time consumming passtime and losing adds insult to injury. Add to all of that that at times you are bound to tilt a little bit while running bad (it's human nature; we all get frustrated from time to time) and we start to feel like losers.