STATE OF MIND
One of the most important characteristics a poker pro needs is a winning state of mind. You need to be mentally prepared to win.
You’d be surprised how many people just aren’t ready to allow themselves to win.
One of the things that makes up the will to win is willingness to lose.
If you’re afraid to lose, then you’re putting yourself at a huge psychological disadvantage.
A big part of winning is a willingness to lose.
PUTTING ON AN ACT
There is a view among poker pros that poker is some sort of scam to run on unsuspecting dupes.
Those pros look at the people they play with every day with disdain-sheep to be fleered or fish to be hooked. The primary result of that kind of attitude is unhappiness.
Most poker pros really aren’t very happy people. There seems to be a lot of different reasons for this.
One of them is the cut-throat nature of the game.
The profiting from the self-destructive behaviors of compulsive gamblers can sometimes harm the self-esteem of poker pros.
Most poker players are not compulsive gamblers. Most recreational players lose, but they don’t lose much, at least not more than they get back in the form of entertainment value-but some players are really self-destructive.
When you’re playing for a living, those players sometimes seem to stick in your mind.
It’s harmful to your self-image to realize that you’re making a living by encouraging those people to just destroy themselves. Some prose are able to rationalize it, but some aren’t.
I never wanted to see my opponents just lose all their money quickly.
If you have a table where most of your opponents just lose money slowly, they’ll keep coming forever, and eventually you’ll just get it all, but when you play in cardrooms, you don’t have much control over who sits down in the game.
I know one pro who limits most of his play to private home games for just this reason he would much rather make a long-term profit by winning small amounts, on a regular basis, from people who can afford it.
In a private game, you can just not invite those self-destructive players, but if you play in cardrooms, you just have to get used to it.
