Interesting article: Losing feels 2.5 times worse than winning

[UATrewqaz]

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_maga...amp;m_id=65574

The cliff notes for the lazy...

The "bad" people feel when losing 1 BB is greater than the "good" they feel when winning that same 1 BB.

[bottomset]

what about suckers like me that breakeven, thats like 5times worse than losing

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
what about suckers like me that breakeven, thats like 5times worse than losing

[/ QUOTE ]

Only if you have a particularly unpleasant sister.





(Not a shot at set's sister...what's a tie like? Just trying to head off the inevitable suggestions to take it to OOT.)

[bozlax]

The article is interesting in terms of analyzing you own motivations for playing weakly/passively. In terms of analysis of your opponent, however, this seems to me like the way DavidC might say to himself, "The player across the table is weak-tight." It doesn't really matter to me whether my opponent is risk-averse or just doesn't know how to play, the result is much the same.

[_Kevin_]

[ QUOTE ]
The article is interesting in terms of analyzing you own motivations for playing weakly/passively. In terms of analysis of your opponent, however, this seems to me like the way DavidC might say to himself, "The player across the table is weak-tight." It doesn't really matter to me whether my opponent is risk-averse or just doesn't know how to play, the result is much the same.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree completely. For me, it points out things to watch out for in my own game, especially when I'm on a downswing and don't want to continue losing.

[Wally Weeks]

Interesting article. This is good stuff to know.

I'm well aware that losing affects me more than winning. If I win say some unexpected large amount, I'll think, "That's cool, but it's just luck. I got more that my fair share of good cards out of X amount of hands." Consequently, I'll just forget about and scratch it up to another day at the poker office (which I should). I have little pleasure winning although I do like extended upswings like winning for 12 days in row. This is probably for the novelty of it since I've only been playing since March.

But if I lose more than I expect, especially on a longer than expected downswing, I'll think, "Holy [censored]. I'm the worst player in the universe. Playing X tables only makes me lose X times faster!" In order to reassure myself, I'll watch a few sessions in PT and see what happened. I know that I make errors and have leaks but not winning a single hand on a table after playing a bunch of hands definitely means bad short-term luck, too. In other words, losing makes me feel pain esp. extended losing days. This is irrational.

I know that I have to work on my own kind of tilt after extended losing. I think that loss aversion plays a role in this. For me, I think this is a part of the normal learning curve. I just have to go through it in order to plug leak, just like any other. Since it's emotional, it might be harder to fix than a strategic one.

[Greg J]

Nice read. I liked it. As a behavioral scientist I disagree with it on the theoretical basis (I perfer more psychologically grounded theory, whereas this is more economic in nature), but descriptively it does a good job.