Poker Psychology

This week I'm presenting you with a video from the Poker Roundtable series of Full Tilt Poker. The 5 minute video features Full Tilt's owner Howard Lederer, and fellow poker pros Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson and Layne Flack, who talk about when and how to quit a poker game. If you have issues with losing if you're tired or on tilt, pay attention to the pros, they might give you some good advice.

I don’t know about all you guys, but I think when I say this concerns the general public’s opinion it doesn’t seem to be a far-fetched statement: a poker player’s mood is determined by the present-past experiences, happenings and bad beats.  When you are winning and having a good run, it seems you are the Ace and have an aura that owns this planet called Earth. However, on the flip of the coin, if you’re showing a bad day and a losing streak because of bad luck or bad decisions, this can make you feel like avoiding everyone and everything and hating the world. Even the ones living around you can grab note to this change. To put it in a nutshell, you’re feeling a bit down.

I had some time to reflect on this issue the other day and I started wondering if this could be overcome and controlled. Will this just pass with time; will it only take some months, or maybe even years? Could it happen that I will be able to concentrate on long-term results only and forget to focus just on the day-by-day outcomes? Will I be able to think in ’Sklansky-dollars’ and not pay attention to all misfortunes of buy-ins lost? Do I have the ability and self-control to make myself stand up after the fifteenth losing session and call it a day as if nothing happened? I think all of these are good questions and the truth being I have no idea on the answers, the only thing I know for sure is that I will never be able to completely close the door on past results, but I can still control the outcome of future ones.