NL tournies, all in pulse races...even in freerolls

Ok, this bugs me. When I go all in my pulse races. I have high blood pressure anyway, so I can get a bit light headed when this happens. Aside from being annoyed at myself, it's probably a visible tell in some fashion (though maybe not, it happens whether I'm bluffing or have a lock hand). It's certainly not about money, because it happens in situations where the money is basically meaningless ($5 SNGs for example).

Mostly my question is, any tips for calm thoughts people use in all in situations? I feel so stupid, I'm not normally one to let my emotions get the best of me.

In limit, even at the edges of my bankroll, I only get this feeling a little bit on really big hands. There it makes sense to me, there's a lot of real money on the line.

[The Goober]

ck,

I think that it will go away with experience. Try this - find the cheapest NL ring game or tourney you can find (like the paradise $2 max NL) and go all-in *a lot* (like maybe every other hand). Eventually it just won't seem like a big deal anymore (or you will pass out, one or the other).

This will be especially fun at the paradise games because you will put all of the nits on tilt and they will start berating you for not playing "real poker" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Sounds like a good idea. Sort of put myself on NL tourney tilt for a while [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], until I'm more immune to caring about the results.

[DCWildcat]

Yeah, you'll always have some degree of huge pulse rate skyrocket. They put a heart monitor on D'Agostino when he was hu with Phil Ivey (I forget the tournament), and he was consistently jumping into the 140-150 range, which is moderate cardiovascular exercise range!

However, the suggestion of going into race situations at cheaper stakes is a good one. Your body is exhibiting a conditioned reflex, and if you start putting lots of chips in in a scenario that is very contextually similar to the normal one, but does not elicit strong physiological symptoms, you'll begin to associate those all-in moments with less physiological symptoms. I hope that made sense.

[DCWildcat]

In behaviorist terms, it should look like this, basic classical conditioning:

"Poker context":Sharp money risk-> Increased heart rate
"Poker context" -> Increased heart rate

Where "Poker context" is an neutral stimulus (nothing about an all-in moment intrinsically makes you physiologically distressed), sharp money risk (for lack of a better term) is an unconditioned stimulus (not really, but for our purposes) for an unconditioned response (heart rate). This leads to poker context becomming a conditioned stimulus for the conditioned response of increased heart rate.

You're extinguishing it by playing with money you don't care about, so
"Poker context" -> no response
becomes the norm.

Again, you'll never entirely eliminate it, but you can probably lower it.