2k post!

how do you improve detaching yourself emotionally from your results?

I havn't checked my results in the last week, but even so I have a fair idea of whether I'm up or down for a sesh, and I hate the way this pervades my thought process and influences my decision making.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

do you detach yourself emotionally from your results?

I havn't checked my results in the last week, but even so I have a fair idea of whether I'm up or down for a sesh, and I hate the way this pervades my thought process and influences my decision making.

This is one of the hardest things to do as a poker player. Humans are hardwired to be results-oriented. To revel in our victories and suffer from our failures. These mechanisms are there much like pain receptors, to reinforce awesomeness and discourage the suck.

Poker fucks with all that because in the short term you can play like shit and win tons or play awesome and lose tons. Inexperienced poker players are notoriously bad at self-examination and routinely feel like they've played great after a winning session. Through experience, you can become more accurate at evaluating your quality of play, as long as you remain objective in your analysis.

I was eventually able to achieve this emotional detachment fairly well over the short term, though I never was able to be emotionally detached from sustained periods of downswongs. The longer a downswing lasted, the more emotionally fragile I became, and little things, like starting out a session down a few BI, would tilt me 100x more than normal, and then play would suffer and the downswing would extend itself.

The best state I could muster up is a state of objective presence. The only thing you're thinking about is the best play in a current situation. Emotionless analysis. You're not pissed off at some reg for 3betting you constantly, you're not thinking about some fish hitting a 2outer on the river, you're not thinking about getting even (or how much you're up), how the session is going, how the month is going, how your 120k hand path to 10NL is going -- you're just present, in the moment, analyzing the current hand with all the information you have at your disposal.

If I could have played like this twice as much as I actually managed to do, I'd have twice as much lifetime profits easily.