Demons

[guesswest]

I've been meaning to write a post about this for a while now, but the bad beat thread that's been going on the last day or so is what inspired me to finally get around to it. I've been thinking that most discussion in forums as to improving play tends to focus around decisions, pot odds, value, equity etc. Certainly all of these are huge factors in poker, but I suspect an even bigger factor than all of them combined is psychology, and is largely overlooked. I have a pretty good maths brain, I can calculate odds and value more or less on the spot in most situations, and I've been playing long enough that calculations like this are more or less second nature. Nevertheless I feel my game is hugely flawed, and whilst I certainly don't think I've mastered the mechanical/mathematical aspects of the game, I'd say 90% of what screws me up is psychology. So I've been trying to be honest with myself, and attempting to identify those areas of my game in which my thinking is doing me in, I've come up with a few: The first, which came up in the bad beat thread I mentioned, is my tendency to bitch and whine about bad beats when they happen. I'm much better on this front than I was when I started playing and I do it less, but I still do it. I'd say the main reason this is counter productive is just that it takes time away, when I could be focusing on hands I misplayed etc. Obviously it makes more sense to try and identify mistakes, so they don't happen again, rather than focus on something I couldn't control. And not just that, it's pretty irritating for anyone that has to listen (so apologies to anyone I've complained about my luck to!). The second thing I thought of is tilt. Very obvious but can't be overlooked. I don't know that this a thing that anybody ever completely masters, even seasoned pros seem to get this, but I could certainly do better than I am doing right now. I also don't really understand how it works - sometimes I can sit at a table all night with suckout after suckout and it doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes one tiny beat can trigger horrible tilt. I guess it's not so much a case of mastering tilt as mastering the discipline involved in not playing when it happens - that's definitely something I need to work on. And the third thing I thought of. And this is probably the biggest problem in the case of my game. My ability/curse to rationalise bad play. I can always come up with some spiel about implied odds/position/yadeyah to justify bad play, so probably the whole 'keep it simple, stupid' thing applies here. I think this tendency to rationalise is probably a human thing generally, but I think it's a particularly big flaw in my game. And I say this is my biggest psychological flaw with regards to poker, because I have no idea how to fix it. I like to think one of my poker strengths is my ability to think a hand all the way through to the river and in so doing produce fairly complex plays, and I wouldn't want to lose that, but it's also my downfall, because I do it retroactively to justify shite play. Anyhows, apologies for a fairly long email, would be very interested to here any input anyone else has on any of that, or to hear about anyone else's poker demons.

[Mr Bubbles]

Re: Demons Interesting thread, On a personal note my biggest flaw although i have & still do suffer the above is lack of patience, If i am in a tournament and there is say 8000 entrants at the starts I do seem to hit the all in button on cards that you shouldn't instead of waiting for the right cards to play & giving myself a even chance after a short while, which when you think about it just another form of tilting i suppose.