[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.