Bad beats shouldn't bother me

[Robk]

[ QUOTE ]
I've never played real heavy duty before, I was playing 1500 hands a week. Now I'm playing 4000.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is quite likely to be the source of your problem. over time we condition ourslves to deal with a certain threshold of poker pain. based on my experience an increase in the amount of hours youre playing will lead to frustration problems because the sheer number of beats you take exceeds your old threshold. sorry if i sound condescending because its not a problem that i think i know the answer too. if you want my advice though. increase the number of hands you play gradually, in steps. and try to psychologically prepare, by thinking before each session about the number and variety of beats youre expected to take. in a thousand hand session you take the number of beats a live poker player would take in about 25-30 hours of play. thinking ahead of time that im expected to take a dozen ugly beats during the session seemed to help me.

[savman]

[ QUOTE ]
You almost expect to lose, start seeing monsters when you have the best hand, etc.



[/ QUOTE ]

I have been running so bad I always expect to lose. Put another way, when I get all the money in as a four to one favorite I rejoice when I actually hold.

I always hear, "you want people to make that call." No i dont. Fold. I will take what is in the pot instead of losing my whole stack when I am four to one ahead.

Mostly, I cannot reason how a person could run this bad this long. If i cannot come up with a logical explanation for running bad, I cannot come up with a remedy.

[Suntzu00000]

I am the same way. Take a break for at least a couple of hours when you get that itch to reach into the computer, shove your arm down some fishes throat and pull his lungs out. Trust me, it will save you big time dollars.

[SNOWBALL138]

thats a great way to look at it.
However, don't you think that any kind of emotion (euphoria, anger, fear) is going to affect your play to some extent? I find I play best when I have almost no emotional reaction to what is going on. This is a pretty rare occurence, but its nice when I get to that place.

[popniklas]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">Svar till:</font><hr />
The key is not trying to prevent yourself from getting mad, but trying to prevent your being mad from affecting your play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree on this.

Becoming angry is a very natural response to bad beats. Think about it: You have done something good (playing a strong poker hand correctly) and instead of being rewarded (winning money) you are, surprisingly, punished (losing money). Of course you become upset. What happened seemed unfair to you, and when people feel that they are treated unfair, they tend to become upset.

So... how to deal with the anger and frustration? Well, that's a tough question, but I suppose it might help simply trying to keep things in perspective. That last hand was just one of hundreds of thousands of hands you will play in you life. And if you are a winning player, any money you lose when playing poker can and will be won back. It's really no big deal whether you won or lost that particular hand.

Good and bad luck evens out (more or less) on the long run. Good and bad steam control doesn't. Try to stay focused, and make good decisions in situations where your opponents would have made bad decisions. Over your next hundred thousand hands, this is what will get you the money. Not how the cards fell on one or a few particular hands.

[ZenMusician]

Very few avatars make me lol, but....

NH!!

-ZEN

[mindflayer]

SERENITY NOW!

[Cumulonimbus]

[ QUOTE ]
always remember gooosse fffrrraaabbbaaaaa

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL I was telling myself this yesterday.

[adios]

When I annalyzed this I realized I was taking this kind of thing personally. How could this chump think he's better than me? Then I realized that maybe he's not thinking that way and even if he was, it's his way of getting some gambling fun in I started to handle it a lot better. Losing a pot you're favored to win is never pleasant but I find myself now focusing on not going on tilt and keeping my level of play at a high level(at least for me) even when frustration kicks in. I also try and reflect on if and how bad I went on tilt the next day after I played. I refuse to excuse myself for tilting.

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

[ QUOTE ]
I have a thorough mathematical understanding of the game. I understand pot odds, card distributions, have taken university courses in stats that discuss bayes theorem, and I took a whole course last year devoted to game theory.

When the idiot calls a turn cap cold with a gutshot and gets there it doesn't bother me.

When he does it again and again, it's kinda annoying.

By the 4th or 5th time I get beaten bad, I'm ready to throw the computer across the room.

Do other mathematically aware and solid players still get frustrated?

Assuming we all understand that we made all the Sklansky bucks, why?

[/ QUOTE ]

I love earning Sklansky Bux, but long runs of earning hundreds of Slansky Bets while losing can suck.