This is going to sound counterintuitive, a little crazy even. To be a winning player, you have to learn to lose. What, has he lost his mind? Well yes and no.
If you mean lost it by going crazy for poker then yes. If you mean lost it by making the former statement about losing then no.
Let’s face the demons here, no one likes to lose. And Investing a lot of time and hours into a poker game , only to run badly, have some coolers thrown your way, and have to rebuy three or four times because you went bust, well no, of course that’s not your goal.
But it does teach you something very valuable about the game, that if you never learn, you’ll never elevate to a higher level of play. Think of it like this: say you’re suffering a downswing, you’re getting dealt garbage, and you’ve been called down two times already, stacked off and lost. What do you do?
You could sit at the table and continue to play the way you’ve been playing with the “I’ll get it back” syndrome, which has an even more negative affect on your play as you’ll start getting into riskier situation and likely lose more. Or…
You could get up from the poker online table, take a break, a nap, a walk, a trip to the gym, whatever it takes to get your mind off of what you lost, and then when you’re mentality has changed, you can review your mistakes in your head and improve by not doing them again. And now that you’ve calmed down about what you lost, you’ll feel comfortable again sitting down at a table and playing again, with a clear head, and a new strategy for winning (You did learn something from your last session, didn’t you?).
