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I’m embarrassed to say that I suffer from acute results orientation. It’s a heinous infliction that scuttles my tournament life and has evolved into a psychological instability tax. I’m sure I’m not the only one who suffers from this. You know that feeling when you fall in love with two pair, flood the synapses with visions of raking a bloated pot, only to be knocked into oblivion at the demise of an ‘unconsidered’ flush. How do you recondition your mindset to focus on the immediate hand-to-hand combat? Is it a case of developing a new thought process that forces you to step back and calmly assess the situation? And if so, what should be the logical sequence? Should the check-list be… Position, effective stack sizes, relative opening/calling ranges, previous history, table dynamics etc…??
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks and I’m keen to hear from those who have learnt, or developed particular strategies to tame the ‘beast’. My aim is to somehow coat my psyche with Teflon where all the extracurricular bullshit slips off and my focus can remain steadfast.
I’ve been reading “Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time” and am gaining considerable insight into what my thought processes should be, but its converting this level of understanding into action on the felt that remains a challenge.
I’m hoping that this post will develop some constructive discussion, or at least act as ‘rehab’ for those closet sufferers!
Very deep insight sir 
! I wish I had a good response but dont feel I do. I run into the same thing myself at times. I feel it is so important to only play when you are really in the mood and before each session telling yourself that you are gonna play your best, not get married to hands, and go with your reads.
July 3, 2010
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Always be thinking about your opponent's hand and range more than your own cards – it's a stepping stone toward not falling in love with your own hand too much and too often.
And once you get really good at hand range assigning you can then use Pokerstove to have empirical data to back up decisions you've made.
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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some good advice here. I think to some degree this mentallity is something that can only come with time. When you have suffered the worst of the worst beats and enough suck outs that they all start to fade together 🙂
Reviewing your hands will help as well because at least after the fact you can hopeully make a determination if you played hands correctly…and at the end of the day that is what it is about.
I will reply to this in the next few days and sorry for any inconvenience not being on here to reply.
JG
cousteer,
One of the key ingrediants to playing good quality poker from the start to the end of the tournament is having a great awareness of what it is you need to focus on to play well.
Now sounds like you have done some research and are on the right track, what I would say is what are the aspects in the past where you feel you have under performed or let yourself down?
Once you have come up with the components that caused you to play less than your best, reframe that information into exactly what it is YOU want to do next time you are in that same situation.
we as Humans, have a great skill in unconsciously programming our negative behavours deep in our sub-conscious without us knowing it, which in the future competitive situations those negative behavours come up automatically.
Focus on what it is you WANT to do next time and the more you can compete against yourself, instead of the cards, varience or other players decisions, the more control you have over your goals. Goals should be predominantly process based and very little on results.
If you are to eliminate the result goals, you will find that your emotional swings will decrease quite substantially as most of your emotions will be more focused on making the correct play or the things that are on your list of things to focus on to help you beat the most important game in poker- THE GAME AGAINST YOURSELF!!!
The use of Post It Notes with key words or Triggers to help you stay in an empowering state of mind would also be very useful here.
Good Luck!
November 12, 2012
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What you're talking about here doesn't sound like being results oriented. It sounds like emotional decision making. Avoiding emotional decision making can be pretty tough in some situations… poker is a true test of so many mental skills all at the same time which is why it can be really tiring/taxing/stressful to play regularly. I recently read something recently saying that when you become emotional, the analytical side of your brain almost shuts down and prevents you from even having those thoughts. If you can re-enable the analytical side of your brain while that's happening, you can make better decisions. People always say “count to 10” which I assumed meant “calm down” but I think the actual act of COUNTING makes the logical portion of your brain snap back to life. Or at least that's what was suggested.
So dont make any snap decisions (except for super easy calls) and force yourself to always think about your opponents ranges at all points. Remind yourself that you should be making a decision based on relative hand strength (relative to the action and board), not absolute strength (i.e. I HAZ AA I CALL).
Aliases: drx975 (Stars/FTP), donkrx (Merge)
October 6, 2010
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sick bump 😀
i agree with the above posts, i used to be the same as you mike, very angry when i ran into the top of someone's range.
it changed for me when i went on a long downswing and then came out the other side with my bankroll intact. i realised that it is really only volume holding me back from realising my edge in the game – sure, there will be short term pain but if you know you are an favourite in the game, it is only volume that is holding you back from that success
July 7, 2012
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When you (one) get mentally tired is when you start to make more 'hopeful' decisions rather than analytical ones, or if you do manage an analytical thought process you dont want to believe your conclusions because you will have to give up a big pot and start playing a short stack again and so make the call and get busted.
I totally agree with the 'count to 10' approach – and at the same time, take your hand off the mouse – counting to 10 gives you a little time to get past your first 'emotional repsonse' and start to be logical again. Taking your hand off the mouse stops you from unwittingly 'clicking' in reaction to your first emotional response, you then have to consciously move your hand back to act, this also gives you the chance to think twice before acting.
If your multi tabling more than 4 tables these approaches my be a little difficult to incorporate but worht trying, or cut back on a few tables. Cutting back on tables will enable you to focus on quality of play and decisions over quantity. When I was playing single table SNGs a lot, I cut back from 8 to 4 tables and my ROI rocketed and the hourly also went up slightly as well. Just a thought.
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