Discomonkey WSOP blog - lessons in psychology

Confidence in poker is a very fragile and funny thing. One minute you can feel invincible, and the next you can't win a hand. It can only take a small run of bad beats or missed draws and you can feel like you are 'running bad' or 'getting unlucky'. As I myself have found recently, your decision making capabilities can be adversely affected if you think that by raising on that draw you are going to miss, or that when you 3-bet or raise light you will get re-raised. You can feel like nothing is working and thus can move away from your normal game and revert to something which more closely resembles ABC poker.

For example, some of the time that we've been out in Vegas, some players have been constantly bemoaning their luck. This sort of thing can become a mind set - you can get to the point where you expect to lose, and it can begin to affect your game and the decisions you are making.

Forcing the issue

With me, I want to be able to control my tables when playing, especially live. During the few days last week when things weren't going correctly, I was overplaying things, trying to force the issue unnecessarily instead of letting things happen the easy way. I was trying to win every pot, as subconsciously I thought I needed to, as I wouldn't win the flip or I would get coolered. I didn't notice I was doing it until a few tournaments had passed and I'd realised I could do something about it. Positive mental attitude and all that...

Oddly enough, now that my attitude is better, my results have picked up. I'm no longer in negative profit for the series (or roughly even, maybe slightly down), and yesterday I outlasted more than 15,000 players in online tournaments, cashing (and going deep) in four from eight big-field tournaments. Alas, I lost some important flips at key times and I'm left slightly rueing the possibilities of what might have been yesterday. However it's difficult to be disappointed when you've stopped being hampered by variance and you're going deep in tournaments again. It just makes you think about what could lie ahead for you in the future, especially with the World Series of Poker Main Event approaching rapidly!!

On a side note, I've also found it interesting how the mood of this blog has changed. When I started writing it i hadn't won anything for weeks. Now I've binked $10,000 in the last couple of days, it's in a much more positive vein. It's interesting how your mindset changes with variance....!