How To Deal With Poker Losses

How To Deal With Poker Losses Money

Alec Torelli

For his latest blog, poker pro Alec Torelli discusses how to get over massive losses.

This is a two-part series on recovering from downswings, shifting perspective, maintaining a positive outlook and general happiness. It is in response to “Saxophone,” on TwoPlusTwo, who is struggling to recover from losing a $500,000 bankroll.

Jan 03, 2020 How to deal with the “agony of defeat” All of these aspects are essential for handling substantial poker loses, which is why we’ll discuss each and every one of them in detail. Once you have understood poker losses why not try your hand on any of our poker sites, always bet what you can afford!! Change in Mindset. How to Deal With Poker Losses Now with that said, poker losses are going to happen no matter how good you are. Even the very best players in the world have losing days. Lot's of them in fact. There is simply no way to get around this in poker. There is a short term luck aspect to. Apr 24, 2017 How to Deal With Lengthy Winning and Losing Streaks at the Micro Stakes. How to Deal With Heaters in Poker. From getting too high during your big wins and too low during your big losses.

Preface: A Personal Story

Walking through the Bellagio, I see a large crowd gathering around a bunch of screaming people. I stop to see the cause of the commotion. “What’s going on?” I ask a man huddled at the back.

“Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce are playing blackjack.” I nudge my way to the front. The group erupts, hands flailing into the air. In the process, a drunk man nearly spills his beer on my head. They must have won a fortune.

When their hands came into view the first thing I noticed wasn’t their bets, but Kevin’s watch. Massive, embedded with diamonds, it shined, even on the dimly lit casino floor. My eyes followed his wrist down his hand and then his fingers. It can’t be. I squinted to make sure, but the two neatly stacked red chips were unmistakable. They were betting $10 per hand.

The Reason: Stimulation

Even though they were barely playing, the excitement created a lot of fuss. On the other hand, a high stakes poker player with a fraction of the net worth can win three zeros more then them without flinching. How is this possible? When we gamble our minds develop a tolerance to the stimulation, no different than the alcoholic who can put back 10 shots. Excessive becomes normal.

There’s only so much fluctuation we can handle before the money becomes real. Once we pass this threshold, emotions return.

When we win, joy and euphoria. When we lose, pain and panic. The losses are always worse than the wins. They are so detrimental to our state of being that I refer to the tipping point for pain as the pain threshold (PT). PTs vary depending on frequency of play. For two athletes who rarely risk money, the least amount of volatility is exciting.

The Problem: Compulsion

If one chooses to gamble, crossing the PT is unavoidable. It can be avoided by implementing stop losses before they are reached or taking breaks after significant losing streaks. Nevertheless, while these tips are good in practice, they don’t always work.

First we have to cross them to know where they are. And also a big game with a lucrative spot is often too irresistible for even the most conservative poker player to turn down. Let’s face it, we like to gamble. The real problem, then, is how do we recover when the inevitable happens?

The Physical Solution: Taking Action

The life of a poker player desensitizes one to money. Personally, this is a constant battle because I'm nowhere near rich enough to justify such an indifferent mindset. The biggest hand I’ve lost is $475,000. The biggest downswing I’ve had is $1,000,000. Following both, I experienced a sense of loss, despair and a void, similar to the pain of a bittersweet breakup. In my experience the best way to recover from such a traumatic experience is to compartmentalize the two distant realities: poker and life.

I know that my PT is the most I can lose without losing perspective. Win cap (WC), is the opposite. When either of these lines are crossed, I take a day off to do something explorative, creative, and new. Something as simple as trying a different restaurant, walking through a unseen part of town, or exercising can make the difference between a successful reset or a stressful morning.

For further therapy, I make a small reward or recovery purchase. This reinforces the truth that the money I make in the poker world has value in the real world and motivates me to play better.

Sometimes I don’t have the liberty of a day off. A lucrative cash game compels me to grind, or even more imminent, I cross my PT during a session and want to continue playing. The quickest way to refocus is a bit disturbing, even blasphemous, but it works. I rip up money.

That’s right. I walk away from the table, take out a $1 bill, tear it to pieces and throw it away. If you just cringed, that’s good. It’s intended to be painful and remind us that our distress is not because of the money, but that the brain is addicted to the stimulation.

In order to recreate this spark, we need more fuel and higher levels of fluctuation. This petty $1 sacrifice saves thousands at the table.

Lastly, we must remember the thing that trumps all — happiness. When debating whether or not to play poker, we shouldn’t make our decisions based on EV (expected value) in dollars, but on how it will affect us mentally, hEV (happiness expected value).

Physical recovery is important in the short term: losing sessions and bad days. But in the long term, for losing months and busted bankrolls, a mental shift is required.

For all my blogs and content, visit www.alectorelli.com. Your feedback is important to me. Feel free to share your thoughts, ask me questions or leave a comment. Follow me on Twitter at @AlecTorelli. For other matters you can email me at [email protected]

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_{*Lead image by Paolo Rivera}

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Nobody likes to lose when playing poker, yet how you react to losing can shape you as poker player.

Losing is an important part of poker. Think about it, if nobody lost a hand then nobody could win. The sooner you start to accept that you are not going to win every hand that you play, the sooner you will find your overall enjoyment of the game increases.

There is no special formula for dealing with losing at poker and do not allow anyone to pretend to you that there is. If it were as simple as applying “Fix A” to your game, then every poker player in the world would be a happy beacon of light regardless of his or her results.

Below are some hints and tips that have helped me cope with losing over the years. Feel free to combine one, two, or all of them into your own coping mechanism.

Practice Good Bankroll Management / Play With a Large Bankroll

I cannot stress enough how important bankroll management is. Time and time again, I have read forum posts and poker players’ blogs where the author has gone broke due to poor bankroll management. There is no excuse for it.

Having a large bankroll — that is money that is 100% set aside with which to play poker — can take away some of the stresses of losing.

Imagine the following scenarios: (1) you are playing in a $0.05/$0.10 no-limit hold’em cash game online and have a bankroll of $50 (or five full buy-ins); (2) you are playing in an identical game and have a bankroll of $300 (30 buy-ins). Should the inevitable happen and you lose a stack, which of the scenarios do you think you would be able to cope with the best?

In both scenarios you have lost $10, but losing $10 when you only had $50 with which to play is a much worse prospect than losing $10 when you have $300 at your disposal. Personally, I feel more comfortable with an even larger bankroll behind me. This means it takes longer to move up levels when I want to, but it also means I have never gone broke in the nine years I have played this crazy game.

Try Not to Think of Your Bankroll as Money

Following on from practicing good bankroll management, try not to think of your bankroll in terms of actual monetary value. This may sound crazy to some of you out there, yet not thinking about the monetary value of your bankroll during your wins and losses will aid your ability to cope with the swings of poker better.

Losing 10 buy-ins is easier to swallow than losing a week’s worth of groceries, for example.

Think of the Game as One Big Session, Not Many Smaller Ones

Whenever you sit down to play poker, be it cash games or tournaments, do not label it as “a session.” Doing so can lead you to thinking negatively about how your last few “sessions” have gone (especially if you have had numerous losing sessions), which can see you enter a downward spiral that is difficult to get out of. Instead, if you think of all of your sessions as part of one long game, you'll be less likely to be overly affected by what happens — good or bad — in a single night of playing.

Resist the Urge to Complain

Perhaps the most solid advice I received came from a British cash game pro a year or so ago and it struck a chord with me from the second I heard it. I had just taken to social media to bemoan my bad luck. I’d gone on a run of games where I lost 80 buy-ins for the turbo 180-man SNGs I was playing at the time. It was starting to have a negative effect on my confidence, causing me both to start questioning my own ability and to go online and whine.

This pro told me that one of my problems was the fact I would also take to social media to celebrate — or, truthfully, to brag — about my wins or a decent run of in-the-money finishes. He said that by getting overly excited about winning, the low caused by losing would feel worse and that I should try to become almost numb to the fact you have won or lost.

Thinking about this, when was the last time you saw a top, established pro bragging about wins? There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time those who are winning consistently are more likely to reference their good fortune or thank people for their support. Indeed, many of the best players never bother to publish their wins or losses — it can’t be a coincidence.

Review Your Play

Instead of trumpeting to the world your results when finished for the day, go through and review your hand history files to see if there were any areas in which you could have improved. Often, you will discover that there were spots you should have folded and saved yourself some chips, and times that you could have played more aggressively and accumulated extra chips. Then the next time you play, you can focus more specifically on improving upon those areas of your game.

By constantly reviewing your play you will improve at poker and make fewer mistakes, which in turn reduces the amount of losing sessions that you will have.

Play More Poker!

Sometimes when things aren’t going your way at the tables, taking a break might be in order. But gathering more experience is also a great way to become better equipped to handle losing. The more hands you play, the more you will experience both winning and losing and the more likely it is that you will be able to shrug off losing more easily.

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