Comments: The Psychology of Losing

[Aceofone]

{RE: http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...pic.php?t=8435 }


Wow, can't believe I read all of that.

Definately one of the best post's I've ever seen, on a topic that's never covered.

Thank you for taking the time to write it.

[a500lbgorilla]

Wow, can't believe I read all of that.

Definately one of the best post's I've ever seen, on a topic that's never covered.

Thank you for taking the time to write it.

It took me a while to figure out exactly how to say "Wow. Nice post."

But you did it nicely.

-'rilla

[Aceofone]

It took me a while to figure out exactly how to say "Wow. Nice post."

But you did it nicely.

-'rilla

Not quite sure on how to take that

[a500lbgorilla]

It took me a while to figure out exactly how to say "Wow. Nice post."

But you did it nicely.

-'rilla

Not quite sure on how to take that

Huh?

I just felt wierd only replying "Nice post." Your reply was nice so I just copied it and said so.

-'rilla

[eeeee]

Yet another thoughtful post from AOK. Very, very nice.

[aokrongly]

Yet another thoughtful post from AOK. Very, very nice.

I like your monkeys... they make me laugh!

[Humphrind]

{You've been stickified}

[Legendash]

Awesome AOK, can't wait til i next go on Tilt so i can put all this stuff into practice!

[michael1123]

Hell of a post!

[aokrongly]

So I just got knocked out 5th, top 3 places paid, in a 20 player SnG. Button min raises, I go AI over the top from the BB for about half his stack. He calls with Kx. I had 9Ts. I knew it was a weak raise on his part, and I had been playing uber-tight. So there's no reason he should have called. I paired my T, but on the river he pairs the K.

I say this to say I want to REDEEM Myself and start another tournament more than anything. After the game I shut down the poker site and came here to check out posts etc. It's been half an hour and I was just about to reopen the site and start another tourney. As I was doing it I thought "I should have taken that last game. There's no reason he should have called. I'll show them this time!"

That's tilt-o-whirl. No financial pressure, except with the BR I have now I like adding $75 - 150 per day and I "came up dry last night". But that's not true either, now that I think about it. In the morning I added about $90 and then last night I had two dry games. I've only played one game today and I'm on tilt for no good reason.

Time to clean the house, especially since I just dropped a piece of cake in my damn lap. lol

[aokrongly]

For the record, I followed my own advice. The house is clean, the bills are paid, I watched some TV with my wife and didn't sit back down until the previous game had no impact on my play.

Results, 1st place for $160.

As a side note, I lost alot of my chips with 2nd 2 pair, but ended up losing when the board paired on of my non-pair cards and made the top pair plus the low board pair beat me. So I took some hands off, resigned that I might blind out. At that point I had 1300 chips with 200/400 blinds and 5 people on the table - top 3 pays. I decided I could lose and that's OK. Low and behold two other players knocked themselves out - they each had 3x my chips. Boom, ITM.

Then I just played smart, yeilded to strength, attacked weakness and built back up. Then I knocked out a player and was even with 10,000 chips with the other player. From there it was a matter of risking some calls preflop to catch something, and grinding him down.

No way I would have had the patience to do that 6 hours ago.

[Aces]

Great post aok. You'll get a lot of people thinking with this one.

[gabe]

awesome post, nice work aokrongly

[Muxy]

I finally read this, this is an awesome post. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

[sykl1]

gald im reading these thing, awsome insight!!

[chris_1069]

I gotta agree. Very good post. Not sure how I missed it before but I can say I will be checking the rest of the forums for any other stickies I might have somehow missed before.

[stunt]

i swear, ftr is the best thing that i have stumbled upon. i have been reading all sorts of posts since 3 am last night, and i think i gained a lot. im lookin forward to reading so much more....thank god i have off from work today.



and thanks to aokrongly, i dont feel so bad about losing in a homegame last night

[stunt]

HEY....MY FIRST AND SECOND POSTS


i almost feel special now

[aokrongly]

It has been a couple months since I wrote this. Since then I've made alot of money and taken some monstrous beats in multi-hundred $ pots and shaken them off. I did go on FULL TILT one weekend, but I knew I was on tilt and fully embraced it. I limited what I would gamble (not play since I was on tilt) and just flew in the face of it. Raised and reraised 36 bet it postflop.... etc. etc. Just had a hairy, scary, fun tiltfest. The funny part is that once the table knew I was insane I got someone to go ai with me for $100 when I had 2 crazy pair and he had an overpair of Jacks. Guess what happened... he hit 2 runners to make a jack high straight. lol. So I got drunk and beat my dog... LOL. I didn't. But, I want to post this to say... after a couple months of additional though on this subject, personal observation and discussions with others... there is nothing that I could possibly add to the orignal post. And there's nothing I would delete. So, if you find it useful, I'm glad.

I guess I should submit it to a magazine or something.... hmmm that's an idea. Anyone know where to submit it or who to submit it to?

Happy playing!

[WhooFleuryScores]

I really liked your article,I thin after what I've been going through the past few days I might just decide to take some time off as well.

Luckily Intertops takes forever to cash out from grr.....

[cheezyscreenname]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this. Concise, insightful, articulated piece with a common sense, simplified, straight forward approach to dealing with tilt that every poker player can benefit from.

[aokrongly]

happy to help

[EurekaKid]

You should write a book Its an area that is rarely touched upon on poker literature.

[aokrongly]

I approached all the major card magazines - Bluff, Card Player, AllIn, etc. and they all passed. This is an FTR exclusive, BABY!!!

[Eric]

aokrongly,

Thanks for the great post! I've added it to the strategy section on the http://www.flopturnriver.com/Psychology-Of-Losing.html page.

[Dio]

Hi AOK!

I am quite new to online poker and I'm glad I found flopturnriver.com I work as a mental trainer with top athletes, executives and teams. I love your posts here, big congrats! You caught the essence of how to prepare mentally, physically and emotionally for top performances and you put it in easy-to-understand words. I can only underlign what you write about expectations and about the necessity to take breaks when you're tilting. I am sure that the same principles apply in online poker on how to achieve continously excellent performances as in any sports or any other domain where people compete!

So people, make sure you are in a great, positive mental, emotional and physical state when you're starting to play online If anyone would like to discuss this interesting topic in more detail I'll be happy to follow.

Cheers
Dio

[aokrongly]

Dio,
You're my new best friend. Seriously. Performance psychology is #1 on my radar pretty much all the time, but I feel I need it now more than ever.

I'm sure you know this, but for others who read this, here's a quick overview of what I'm talking about:

Anytime you learn a new skill you start as UNconsciously incompetent. That means you suck at it and you don't know it. This is most poker players.

Then you become CONSCOUSLY incompetent. That means NOW YOU KNOW you suck and you're doing to do something about it. Tada, here you are - reading forums, books, etc. And learning stuff until you become.

Conscously Competent. That means you have a good idea what to do but it takes serious concentration and effort to do it right. And as you fatigue or get distracted or whatever - anytime your concentration slips - you make mistakes. This is ALOT of decent players, and most people who don't win consistently and are frustrated because they expect more.

With lots of practice and study and dedication and discipline you eventually become Unconsiously Competent. That means you can do what needs to be done with one hand tied behind your back. You can EXECUTE pretty much flawlessly on demand. Bam!! That's the goal for most poker players - and anyone interested in getting good at anything: sewing, baseball, astrophysics, doesn't matter.

Once you reach Unconscious Competence the one HUGE area of distinction between the good and the great, the short-term heros and the long-term all-stars is 100% mental. You can't "blow out a knee" playing poker, but assuming correct physical condition, it's true of sports too. The mental aspect is crucial to excelling - and that's not "learning", you've already done that. It's literally how you THINK, how you EMOTE and react to emotional input - like disappointment or success - etc.

Primer Over.

DIO, I'M ALL YOUR'S BABY!! What do you want, a photocopy of my diary, a stool sample, my first born? I'll PM you, although I don't mind having the discussion in the open in a thread if you think it would be beneficial to others as well. You Rock!

I'm a big disciple of Tony Robbins, BTW. So I use alot of his Cognitive Nural Association, emotional disection, etc. I understand that everything I do is based on emotional feedback and i try very hard to only reinforce actions I want to repeat and feelings i want to recreate. Discipline is the #1 aspect of my game for that reason. But, I'm currently working on redifining the world and my expections to increase my results exponentially. I expect to go from 3-5k/mo to 20k/mo by this time next year. I know the only way to do that is through mental reprogramming. Bring it on!!

I'll PM you as well. I'm your student!

[Irisheyes]

Conscously Competent. That means you have a good idea what to do but it takes serious concentration and effort to do it right. And as you fatigue or get distracted or whatever - anytime your concentration slips - you make mistakes. This is ALOT of decent players, and most people who don't win consistently and are frustrated because they expect more.

Amazing. You just summed up something that has been haunting me my whole life. It seems that with every endeavor I have ever taken on, I race to this stage with very little effort, just by being naturally intense about every task I take on. I rapidly become decent at something. That however is never good enough for me and frustration begins to set in as I strive to reach my seemingly unattainable goal of being unconsciously competent, of being the best. I always seem to hit a mental brick wall I can't seem to get over. I then begin a downward spiral because, for me, I would rather tell myself that I never really tried then admit that I couldn't be the best.

How do I push past the Consciously Competent stage? I sometimes wonder if it simply takes stobborn determination and infallible will which I just don't possess. Am I just doomed to a life of being good at everything but brilliant at nothing?

I think DavSimon also inadvertently referred to this topic when he said 'I have seen so many people in a perpetual state of low-grade tilt', and an inability to break out of this state of 'perma-tilt'.

Please not that I'm not complaining, I'm quite happy with who I am, I'm just psychologically dissecting my self because quite frankly Aok hit the nail on the head for me there.

I'm not asking for any sort of online therapy or anything here but can either you or dio recommend anything I should read or look up to help me out here? Did you hit a block like this on your road to becoming a professional poker player Aok?

[Dio]

How do I push past the Consciously Competent stage? I sometimes wonder if it simply takes stobborn determination and infallible will which I just don't possess. Am I just doomed to a life of being good at everything but brilliant at nothing?

Yes it takes determination and discipline, but not the stubborn way And you don't really need an infallible will, if such a thing exists at all.

One of the keys is repetition, repetition, repetition. Focussed repetition. You can compare it to when you learned driving. The continuous repetition of many different situations on the streets have finally got you to the Unconsciously Competent stage or at least close to it. Focus is key too - if you want to excel at something you need to be very focussed. Let's not forget by the way that everything we do has some conscious and some unconscious elements. So Unconsciously Competent means something like 80-90% of your poker play happening unconsciously so you can focus on the key things and be very aware of everything around you. In the Consciously Competent stage the unconscious part is maybe 30-50%. Moving from one stage to the other is a gradual process.

The other key is a matter of attitude. You don't reach that stage if you "try very hard". Nor if you worry too much about it or dissect yourself psychologically. Stop blaming yourself, you are doing just fine! First, try to accept everything the way it is, you, your situation and your poker stills. Be grateful about what you have already achieved! Hey, I wish I were already at that stage in my poker skills

Second, JUST LET IT HAPPEN. You don't need to read any books or study anything for this. The Consciously Competent stage can be reached by effort, but ironically too much effort is hindering the next step. Or have you really tried hard when you learned driving to become Unconsciously Competent? I guess it just happened at some point and probably you can't even say when exactly it happened. So just have patience and give your Unconscious all the time it needs to learn. In the meantime, continue to play competitively and have fun with it. What you can do in support is use your imagination. Imagine how you get into that magic flow while playing poker and how you keep winning more and more over time Make this your little movie and play around with it.

No way you are doomed to be brilliant at nothing. We tend to run into mental brick walls again and again - but then suddenly we find out that there has never really been a brick wall, it was only our mind who made it up.

[Irisheyes]

Thanks Dio. That comparison to driving is very interesting, you make a really good point. I guess I'l just playing my game and continue to improve.

[aokrongly]

I would only add something that Anthony Robbins says - i'm paraphrasing - "people drastically overestimate what they can achieve in a year and drastically underestimate what they can achieve in a Decade." In the end it takes patience. I bet there's something in your life that you either are excellent at or got excellent at at one time. My bet is that that thing - whatever it was - came after alot of time and repetition. You didn't see it as work because it came naturally or you enjoyed it. But it came. when you put artificial timelines on incredibly difficult tasks - like achieving unconscious competence in a complex undertaking like poker - then I can see how it can get frustrating.

As an aside, this lack of patience - the ability to wait for something that will happen naturally if you let it - also affects your poker play and will get you to try to force things to happen instead of letting them happen naturally. So keep an eye on that as well.

The more hours of poker you play a day, the faster you'll become great at it.

[MannerBoy]

DIO, I'M ALL YOUR'S BABY!! What do you want, a photocopy of my diary, a stool sample, my first born? I'll PM you, although I don't mind having the discussion in the open in a thread if you think it would be beneficial to others as well. You Rock!
I'll PM you as well. I'm your student!

I thought Aok was married.
Poker ruin peoples life ...
Do u see why ?

[jmontis]

Even after playing poker well over 2 years, this kind of thing can be refreshing to read from time to time.

Everyones game can drift off course, and it's not always easy to admit you're playing like shit, especially after a horrible streak.

When the losses start to stack up, losing 4:1 or bigger favorites repeatedly, it's even more important to sharpen up your play.

[Cotton88]

I am new here but have been reading FTR posts for a couple months now and this topic has intrigued me a lot since I stumbled upon it. In fact this is my first post at this forum. I want to start by saying that I fully concur with what Aok has written up here and would like to add a little splash of my own that I use to minimize the loss/tilt factor. The reason I think this is so important is because this is a psychological issue as it reflects upon the intangible side of poker that can’t be mulled over with statistical analysis.

That said, I do have a psychology degree and have been playing poker for a couple years now. The first thing that I want to stress here is when a situation occurs when a player takes a bad beat the emotional response IS indeed physical. What is happening is that neuro-pathways are being formed in the brain that are reinforced over time when one loses. This is true when a player wins as well, but since this post is about the psychology of losing/tilt I’ll assume people are better able to handle reverse tilt as it is enjoyable (ahh….nice rush ).

So let’s get to the heart of the matter and what can be done to minimize the risk of tilting full force after that murderous beat. I agree that since your emotional response is physical, removing oneself from the stimuli (table/computer) is important. Detachment is necessary. So after doing something physical as Aok says, taking the dog for a walk, cleaning, bike ride, whatever, there is one thing I strongly suggest before curling back up with the laptop for another session. What I do is a brief centering exorcise. I will take about 10 minutes and do some Transcendental Meditation . What I’m seeking here is to build in the mind the ability to let go of the thoughts that got me all worked up to begin with. i.e. “How could he call my KK AI with J8s, and then proceed to suckout with the river straight… what an idiot!! etc. etc.” Harboring these thoughts even in the subconscious will creep into your play unless you’ve built in the tools to release them. So when you begin you meditation, take a few deep breaths and simply release any thoughts that come into your mind. Your bad beat will inevitably creep in and you have to make the effort to quiet your mind of it. Breathing, breathing….ommm.. op there it is “how could he call…ok just release it and let it go… …….” After a few minutes the thoughts will have left and your mind will be clear and centered for you to go back and play at your best!

So what does this achieve? What you are doing through this process is rewiring your brain pathways in a way that gives you a tool to call upon in a time of stress. It will take time and practice but what doesn’t? Next time you’re in a heated battle at the end of a big SNG and take that bad beat but can’t get up and leave, you can simply deal yourself out for a hand… close your eyes, feel your emotions and know that you have the mental tools and focus to simply let the negative thoughts leave your mind so you can finish strong. Tell yourself “remember to just let go” and really, really consciously LET IT GO. The mind is incredibly powerful and if you are stronger mentally than your opponent you already have an edge that can you take you over the top.

Well, I hope this helps someone next time they are tilting and are willing to try something a bit out on a limb. A very successful and wise person in life once told me people used to ask him “why are you always out on a limb?” To this he always replied, “Because that is where the fruit is.”

So roll with it or not I just wanted to share something that has been working for me to diminish the length of tilt I feel when I’m playing. I hope to see more responses on this topic in the future and big props to Aok for bringing the intangible aspects of this great game to a forum where we all can learn.

Be well and cheers to minimized tilt!!

[aokrongly]

Cotton,

Excellent. And expert has added some real experience. lol. When i make this stuff up I never know.

Thanks! Welcome to FTR and keep posting.

[jukejointroach]

how bout a chapter or section in yer book on the mental stuff of poker, with info and charts and shit from professionals?

seriously.

there are psychology books for golf. golf's not a sport.

[aokrongly]

Juke,

I believe consistent poker success is about half your game and at least half, if not more, mental and emotional. I'm not sure what charts there might be on that. But I guarantee anything i write will take mental and emotional aspects of the game into consideration. You may win money with a good game, but most of the money I see people lose is from emotion and mental mistakes, not necessarily game mistakes (assuming the person has a good game - which is fairly rare). And I also think there are some significant issues with alot of the traditional wisdom that alot of people play by. Don't worry. This won't be like any other poker book. I'm not sure what shit from professionals might be. But this is going to be very much aokrongly poker. Alot of people are going to love it, alot are going to hate it. There are 52 cards in a poker deck. There's room for at least 52 ways to play them.

But, yea, the mental stuff will be there, along with emotion management and a host of other topics that never made it in Any poker book.

[aokrongly]

Look for this article in the November or December issue of Online Gambler, a UK magazine. You can also download a pdf version of the magazine at http://www.onlinegamblermag.co.uk/

[Fade]

just started playing for a few months. wow this site is great, poker seem A WHOLE LOT deeper now.

[wellrounded08]

I doubt this post will ever be read, but THANK YOU. That was an excellent insight. Invaluable to my long term goals. Again thank you.

[POKEROG1775]

yep! put alot of things in perspective.[psychology or losing]
good medicine.too read its like a baseball pitcher when he give up a
home run, he has to shake-it off and continue to picth.
'

[venichhe]

Thanks for this post, it sure did get me to believe in my self more.