Losing your love

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 19 October 2010 / Leave a Comment

Perhaps the best example of this is when players start losing their love and interest in the game and it starts to just resemble a grinding job for a player.

I'm a big proponent of how powerful the forms of tilt that can largely go ignored by even quite skilled players can be. Everyone understands and reacts to the huge swings of a player recklessly raising every hand, but many people completely miss forms of tilt that are less obvious, and due to them being ignored, these subtle forms can actually last tens of thousands of hands and end up costing far more than one spewy session.

Perhaps the best example of this is when players start losing their love and interest in the game and it starts to just resemble a grinding job for a player. Regardless of what stake of poker you play, some kind of interest and thought is required to avoid becoming hugely predictable and to be able to pick up on certain things in certain spots. There is no one single right play in any situation in poker, and whether you adjusting from your poker tracker stats as you twenty table micro stakes, or are working on a huge psychological meta game in a high stakes heads up match, keeping observant and in tune is fundamental to all of poker.

All to often I have chatted to regulars in the games around me who seem to be falling into this trap - moaning about how bad they have been running and how long it has been since they caught a break, when in reality they are obviously not enjoying playing, their game has become stale and predictable as a result, and their 'running bad' is much more to do with them playing horribly than it is lady luck.

Anything in life becomes stale and boring if you do it too much, and poker is no exception. Even the very best players need to regularly take decent breaks away from the game, and one of the fastest ways to lose a huge sum of money is to start thinking that you just need to grind along when you are not feeling in the mood to play. You don't ever have to play if you are not feeling in the mood - go and watch a film, go out to eat, read a book, anything that keeps you away from the game and gives you sometime to get back in the mood and regain your passion.

Very few players provide easier pickings than dull and predictable players, and staying fresh is as big a part of winning in poker, something crucial to think about next time you are deciding whether to your are in the right frame of mind to put in a long session or not.

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