<title>Enter text here.</title>I will preface this by saying by no means am I a philosopher, nor is anything I say factually based...just experience-based opinion.

In the game of poker there exists a luck factor that is inevitable and will exist beyond control. Since this factor can't be avoided, in order to succeed we must minimize it. There are a ton of threads out there right now about "running bad" or "negative variance" etc... Listen guys, there is no rule that says things have to get better. There is no rule that says that you will win 50% of your flips over your sample size. And, no sample size large enough to meet the true odds of poker.

The main thing to consider here is that in order to play your best, your mind must not be on how bad your running, or the negative things, but rather the game you are playing. Don't exhibit negative energy, don't consistently complain, and don't talk down to yourself. Keep your head up, keep yourself motivated, and always play your best. Everyone is going to go through swings in which they run bad. Everyone is going to have tough times.

The key here is that in order to succeed, you must first think you will succeed. The first step to winning is having the mentality of a winner. Most of us have short-term memories, we seem to forget the good things and take them for granted. Variance sucks, sure, but if you keep playing your best good things will happen. All you can ask yourself is to play your A game day in and day out and the rest is out of your control.

There exists a huge power in positive thinking. If you think positively, you will keep yourself playing the best you can play. If you think negatively, you are playing worse. I'm sorry, but no individual thinking to themselves "oh god, i have AA let's see how I lose this time" is going to win in the long run. That's just not a winning mindset, and at some point that mindset is going to cause you to play sub-optimally.

Each day, heck each MTT is a new battle. Keeping your mind fresh and positive is of extreme importance. After all, the mind is the leading contributor to your game and how you perceive things. And, the sharper your mind, the better you will be as a play so training your mind to think positively can only help you succeed.

/Rant

Cliffs:

People are going to run bad. Nothing is absolute in poker, and there is no rule that running bad is going to stop. In order to minimize this, stay positive and stay focused. Don't let your emotions get the best of you. Those who get too emotionally invested are not going to succeed.

 

Originally Posted by The mini Jew

I will preface this by saying by no means am I a philosopher, nor is anything I say factually based...just experience-based opinion.

In the game of poker there exists a luck factor that is inevitable and will exist beyond control. Since this factor can't be avoided, in order to succeed we must minimize it. There are a ton of threads out there right now about "running bad" or "negative variance" etc... Listen guys, there is no rule that says things have to get better. There is no rule that says that you will win 50% of your flips over your sample size. And, no sample size large enough to meet the true odds of poker.

The main thing to consider here is that in order to play your best, your mind must not be on how bad your running, or the negative things, but rather the game you are playing. Don't exhibit negative energy, don't consistently complain, and don't talk down to yourself. Keep your head up, keep yourself motivated, and always play your best. Everyone is going to go through swings in which they run bad. Everyone is going to have tough times.

The key here is that in order to succeed, you must first think you will succeed. The first step to winning is having the mentality of a winner. Most of us have short-term memories, we seem to forget the good things and take them for granted. Variance sucks, sure, but if you keep playing your best good things will happen. All you can ask yourself is to play your A game day in and day out and the rest is out of your control.

There exists a huge power in positive thinking. If you think positively, you will keep yourself playing the best you can play. If you think negatively, you are playing worse. I'm sorry, but no individual thinking to themselves "oh god, i have AA let's see how I lose this time" is going to win in the long run. That's just not a winning mindset, and at some point that mindset is going to cause you to play sub-optimally.

Keeping your mind fresh and positive is of extreme importance. After all, the mind is the leading contributor to your game and how you perceive things. And, the sharper your mind, the better you will be as a play so training your mind to think positively can only help you succeed.

/Rant

Cliffs:

People are going to run bad. Nothing is absolute in poker, and there is no rule that running bad is going to stop. In order to minimize this, stay positive and stay focused. Don't let your emotions get the best of you. Those who get too emotionally invested are not going to succeed.

What an excellent post, the best Ive read about luck and staying positive.
I get fed up of reading that luck evens its self out!
It may do, but on the other hand it may not,theres no guarantees.
Nobody, even the grinders play enough games to even luck out. Most of us average players play a pathetically small number, especially if we only play MTT's.

<span>Oh, now he's a philosophizer</span>

<span>http://www.husseh.com/wp/wp-content/...tillershot.jpg
</span>
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Originally Posted by lordxixor101

I will buy into the fact that everyone runs bad, and that the swings are part of the game. I don't buy into that your a long term loser if you think, how will I lose with AA this time.

Poker is about being perceptive about the situation, and making +EV moves. If I get all my money in with AA and called preflop, I won that situation. It doesn't matter what I say. Over time, I'll win.

Positive thinking only changes your perceptions. It doesn't change whether your cards will hold or not.

Making consistent good moves win. Being positive may make the whole experience more enjoyable, but I don't think it's particularly neccessary to win

(I'm a winning player at micro stakes, and I've won several hands thinking I'll be crushed or expecting to lose. My feelings positive or negative don't have the ability to change what cards are coming).

I can't fathom a more muddled and superfluous response than this. The sentence in bold is just icing on the cake.

Good post, OP.

 

Originally Posted by ArgentinaBoy

<SPAN class=indquote_link>Oh, now he's a philosophizer</SPAN>

wrong---philsophizers don't postulate flimsymalogical arguments like the OP

PS--

The human brain works most efficiently when it is 100% fully focused on the task at hand.

If you take beats and do anything more than pound your fist, grumble for 30 seconds, then move on and forget it happened (most of the time)......then you are making less money as a result.

If you don't think so, find me someone who can run the 40 with 5 pound ankleweights faster than they can without the ankleweights.

Good post Miniature Joo

I think the OP and rock's post itt are both excellent.

alot of rly good posts in this thread

i was a pro sng player be4 a mtt pro and i think it rly helped me alot in dealing with negative variance and when things dont go ur way. my brain for years processed each flip having the same magnititude to my overall $ affect that i simply do not live and die with each mtt. a flip with 100 left in the 55 cubed on a thursday processes the same in my brain as a flip with 15 left in the wednesday quarter million. there r hundreds of players who are better then me at the in hand "mtt theory" part of tourneys but i dont think id take many over myself when it comes to the mental aspect and staying composed day in and day out. In poker i get way more upset with playing bad then something that i cant control. its not that bad beats dont affect me its that "what choice do i rly have but to deal with it attitude".

anybody can win 1 tourney but very few can come back day after day with an A + effort and a hunger to win that wont be stopped till u win again. with all the variance in poker its so easy to blame it on something else but its almost always important to put all the blame on urself and to constantly improve from it.

There is a GREAT video that kind of talks on this over at Duecescracked.com

http://www.deucescracked.com/videos/...90-Episode_One

check it out

great post, the power of positive thinking.

 

Originally Posted by shanetrain22

I can't fathom a more muddled and superfluous response than this. The sentence in bold is just icing on the cake.

Good post, OP.

Do you care to elaborate why you believe this way?

I know I stand out from the crowd here, but I don't buy into the 'being positive' movement. This is one of those things that is said, and everyone believes, but I think is just wrong.

Will being positive make you a happier person - yes. No argument
Will being positive make you more fun to be around - yes.

Will being positive make you a better poker player - prove it. I don't see how it will. There are lots of positive skills for a poker player to have, one is not to tilt. But, not tilting really means not making bad moves.

You can be happy and tilt, do something stupid. You can be bitchy, pissing and moaning, and make the right move.

The last time someone had this argument, I posted something similar. The best response I got was something to the effect of 'but, who wants to live life being miserable' (sorry, don't remember who posted it).

I 100% agree. I just don't think it has anything to do with being successful at the tables (virtual or otherwise).

great post, and much needed for me atm, bc i have been running bad and letting it affect me too much.

i am a huge believer that you need to expect results for them to happen. i have a ton of experiences of just believing something is going to happen and then it happens, both in poker and outside of it.

i read a book about intention and how important your thoughts are and decided my intention was to win at poker, the next day i shipped a tourny (which was my biggest win at the time)

another time i said i am going to win the ftp 3r, i had been deep in it a ton, and just said ok i am going to win it now, i actually was so confident that before i won it, i told myself i dont want to just win it, i want to win 3 of them in a row. i ended up winning that one, waking up the next day winning the one in the day and i must have realized i was being greedy bc i went deep,but didnt win the 3rd :-(

i think that Gandhi quote is spot on, and that there is a lot of power in our thoughts, intentions and what we believe to be true.

thanks for the post OP, comes at a perfect time for me, and i now intend to change the rut of negative intention i have had recently.

i really like that discussion.

i have been thinging a lot of the power of positive thinkng, i´m reading the "POPT from Dr. Murphy" which is really great.

i truly believe that the more u think positiv the more positiv things will happen to u.

i had a really bad run recently and i always was thinking in a showdown "not the A on the river" "just need to dodge 3 out" and here we go the A came on the river so damn often it was undiscribable.

i thing your thoughts gonna be relized in some way, it doesnt matter if u want the A or doesnt want the A on ther river, if u think about the A it will come, doesn´t matter if u want to see it or not.

Therefor i´m trying to change my whole thinking atitude, not just to run better in poker, also to run better in life and be happier about all the good things that are gonna happen to me.

So staying positiv is so huge in the game and life.

i´m really glad someone thinks like me and wrote it down.i was think about posting a thread about this topic, my english isn´t perfect though so i just canceld the thread since i almost needed 5min to write this one down.

Goood post

In reference to Rock's post...

I've heard from several players about the effect Rusostreet's positive demeanor has on people.

I've had similar experiences with a few players [brag disclaimer]:

Ryanwelch and I have been good friends for a long time, and I lived with him for two years. The way I remember it, at the beginning of that first year we were both kinda meh just breakeven maybe a little bit above average players. Obviously, the more hands you play the more you will improve, as we both did. But as the months went by, it became evident that Ryan was zipping along the learning curve waaaaaay faster than I was.

He started shipping shit left and right until he had his breakthrough score and shipped the Brawl for 68k or so, then shipped the Warmup for 90k, and a bunch of other tournies I don't even remember. At first I just sat on the sidelines wondering how the hell he could run so good when I didn't. On more than one occasion, I walked into the bathroom and Ryan had left a shit that was totally in the shape of a four leaf clover....I'd post pictures but Ryan asked me to never show them to anyone else cuz he says the corn kernel sheaths are embaressing. Talk about exuding rungood tho.

Eventually, I had to bite my lip and accept the fact that Ryan was a better player than me, and undeniably had a much more solid understanding and approach to the game than I did; the evidence was too overwhelming. If we were talking poker and had a disagreement about something, no matter how strongly I felt, in my mind I had to concede that Ryan was probably right.

In the short run I'm sure this kinda hurt my game; the more we would talk about hands and the more spots we talked about, the more I realized my approach to poker, and understanding of the many nuances of the game, was fairly backwards and misguided. I just didn't see the big picture and I knew it; I would second-guess myself often. I played OK, but I got destroyed by and played very passively against regs. It was almost like I had just accepted my own inferiority; if I had to play a hand with a reg, I always started the hand with the mindset that I was up against a better player that was probably going to outplay me.

Fortunately, I knew I had a lot of room for improvement, and I lived with an all-star poker player---a pretty sweet resource considering I could find out how an elite poker player plays just about any spot you can come across, and get an in-depth explanation of why they do or don't play the hand this way or that.

Once I got to a point where I understood the game fundamentally, I was able to start noticing other differences in our games. Firstly, I realized some things really did come more naturally to Ryan than they did for me. He made more precise reads; he saw spots and situations I couldn't see; he was more cognizant of his opponents' tendencies; he had a preternatural awareness of gameflow and when it was or wasn't the right time for whatever play. However, one of the biggest differences I noticed in our games was his self-control. We don't grind sessions as often as we did when we lived together, so he might be kinda sucky now, I dunno. But that 2nd year we lived together I realized that Ryan DID NOT TILT. Sure, he got angry about bad beats for a minute or two. He would pout like a whiny sissy-mangirl at the end of a bad session, as if anyone gives a shit about your runbad stint when you've shipped two or three majors. But if the tournament(s) was/were still going...Ryan was in the zone and playing A+ poker.

He didn't play shitty cards out of position because the guy that sucked out on him was in the pot. He didn't raise QJos utg at a full table because he just lost 60% of his huge stack AK < AQ and he had some catching up to do. He didn't raise KQ and call big shoves out of frustration at a tough table.

Ryan and I both played baseball in high school. He was a standout pitcher, and he got a full ride to pitch at Southern Illinois, a big D-1 school. This might sound pretty queer, but Ryan is a winner; he has a burning desire to crush his opponents and win. I don't know if you guys are aware, but white people who get athletic scholarships to D-1 schools and aren't swimmers aren't good athletes...they just work harder.

OK maybe that last statement isn't accurate. My point is, Ryan's the kind of guy that sets his eye on the prize and does whatever work or effort it takes to get there. Way back when the notion of he or I being ranked was laughable (at least to me), Ryan told me that it was his goal not only to be ranked within one year, but also to crack the top 10 in that same timespan. To my surprise, he made it happen. He isn't in the top ten anymore tho, so obviously he has lost a big chunk of the edge he had when was at the top of his game.

At any rate, analogous to this discussion, the prize is the money for 1st place, and what common sense dictates is that all you can do is play as perfectly as possible to get to the prize. Punting tournaments is not in line with playing perfectly, and Ryan learned to purge himself of the negative compulsions and thoughts that lead people to NOT play perfectly every single hand. Like I said tho, that was before he sunk into mediocrity.

The second example is regarding bad beats and dealing with poker frustration with your friends. Everyone sends the occasional bad beat on AIM or whatever. Some people do it more than others though, and it almost becomes a knee-jerk reaction to just snap send bad beat HH's to a bunch of people on their buddy list (I guess) just to elicit sympathy. I used to be the worst about it. It was "how I let off steam."

That's just not true though. I got a new perspective on this when I started talking to Icudonk and Bodogbanshee. When we first started talking and I got to know each of them better, I promptly added them to my list of suitable people to which I could freely send bad beats, so we could both mutually lament my misfortunes. Misery loves company, yaknow?

I quickly realized that neither of them ever really sent me any of their bad beats. If they're playing a session and you're talking to them, they never really gush over a bad beat, they usually don't even say anything more than "I just busted this" or "I just got coolered in that." (That's probably just because most of Banshee's HH's would subject him to ridicule though). They casually expressed disdain to me when people would constantly send them bad beats. At first, I tried explaining how it actually helps when you are tilted because it ALLEVIATES the frustration of taking a bad beat, but it became pretty obvious that when it comes to sending bad beats to Icudonk and Bodogbanshee...GTFO with that shit ya baby. If your only contribution to improving them as poker players is to send them bad beats, then no hard feelings...but they don't have time for you, and they're not gonna read your bad beats, the exact same ones they take day in and day out.

I had a change of heart and came to view this "practice" in a really negative light after meeting these guys. The only thing you can do to make money in poker and/or to improve your game is to focus your mind on making rational, logical, winning decisions by garnering as much information on the table as you can. Sending bad beats does not contribute to your ability to make winning plays or garner information on your opponents. In fact, anything but forgetting a bad beat only detracts from that because you actually have to stop watching your tables to send or read a bad beat HH.

Like I said in my previous post, the human brain works most efficiently when you devote all of your mental energy into completing the task at hand. Reading or sending a bad beat has no value, but only ensures that you utilize less information available to you than you would have if you didn't read or send the HH. But it's a compound problem---it has a much larger effect than just missing a tidbit of info here or there. The human brain does not operate in a linear fashion, but is fluid. When a thought enters your mind, it touches base with a whole complex network of similar thoughts that are interwoven together. If those thoughts are positive, then the brain is most likely going to move forward with positive-oriented momentum, and vice versa for negative thoughts. Even if your friend catches the wave of negativity you just shipped them and recognizes it...it takes a few minutes before you can get back on track and in the zone where you were.

Let's say your buddy's playing a bunch of tournaments and like a good poker player he's trying to figure out whose skull he's gonna bust wide open and how he's going to do it...and then you send him a bad beat. You just completely diverted his attention away from poker so you could get a warm fuzzy to make your feelings feel better...at your friend's expense.

To make things worse, now your friend has a few more things on their mental plate. Hands are being dealt at all of his tables; now he has to decide if your bad beat merits a sympathy response. A lotta times it doesn't. It sucks when it does though, cuz now he has to type some shit into a chat box with a bunch of tables going....because you're friends, and you're clearly looking for a tender, gentle remark that says "Hey, you just got pooed on buddy, and you deserve better!" Once he types in his tender, loving remark...then it reminds him of taking that same beat just a few minutes ago......when that imbecile from the Netherlands called his all in with a pair of threes.....what a fkn donk that guy was, if he had won that pot he'd have 100k chips right now and be in 4th place. man fk the netherlands. looks like both of us are just gonna get pounded by eurotards all day. fk poker jasgiojneriohnerlhjaelthkjthljath

oh sorry ive gotten sidetracked. what was i saying?

ah fk cant really remember, w/e i guess.

Just do your friends and yourself a favor and don't be that guy only sending empty HH's and starting a chain reaction of negativity. We all make more money that way.

GL,

Blue

PS--Doubt Ryan won't be a good sport if u PM him asking to see a picture of his clover-shaped cornturd.

PPS--Sorry for length, bananas------

i so agree with op,

a friend of mine kept askin me why this donk kept winning at our local game ,

and all i can come up with was this guy "wills" his way to the win!!

he'd be sooo behind on some all in flops , but his attitude was like he only has aces

and i have queen -ten, and ive already hit my ten , the aces guy is screwed"!!

and on the other hand id be the guy sayin oh f%$@# how are my aces gonna be cracked now!!

and lately with me not bein so negative i have seen a great diff not only in my game but in the stress of it!

but im sure it can be tough to be positive after continious suckouts and bad beats!

agree with you blue. I've recently found myself sending more and more bad beats to fellow players and I caught myself doing it and was like "this is just not constructive". I now try to send won coin flips and suckouts whenever possible to keep good vibes flowing.