5 Secrets Of The Poker Mental Game

The last card is dealt face up and it gives your opponent the winning hand. He made a runner runner full house beating your flopped straight. That is just crazy you think to yourself. Some heat and anger build up inside of you and you start playing like a reckless maniac, raising and calling off your chips.

The minutes turn to hours and you're still sitting at the poker table. Losing an ever increasing amount of money. But you do not care because it is not fair that he sucked out on you. It is absurd.

You know why you're reading this article. This happens to all of us and you are not an exception. I am glad you're reading this because that makes you one of the few that have the guts to take a hold of this phenomenon. It is not easy to face yourself and improve in this way.

It isn't hard to minimize poker tilt, it is quite simple actually. The catch is that it takes time and persistence.

When I lose control and get hot is when bad things start to happen. I often get tricked by my mind that I have control when I do not.

Here are 5 ways you can start minimizing tilt:

1. Identify Your Fear(s) - What is it that you fear? Why do you get upset when you get bad beat in a poker game? For me it is the fear of losing money. Since I am a professional poker player I want to win money, I need to win money because it is how I make my living! Identifying this and switching from what I don't want to what I want makes all the difference.

2. Goals - Recently I have begun to visualize what my goal is before each session of poker. My first goal is to have fun while I play. I started poker because it was the most interesting game I had ever come across and I have no intentions of changing that! Is your goal to have fun or is it to be miserable? I'm guessing you want to have fun, right? That makes two of us. Identify what is standing in your way of fun. Maybe you are playing a limit that is too high or maybe you just need to re-arrange your priorities. I don't know. Ultimately it is up to you to find your own way.

3. Being Aware - Awareness is crucial to any good poker player. You have to observe yourself. Otherwise you just do not know how you can improve. You might get hot and become frustrated after a few bad beats. Once you know this you can stop playing before it starts. There are always signs before the signs, did you know that? If you learn more and more how you work then you can start changing that to more useful ways.

4. Quitting - This is a big, BIG part of any good poker players game. Did you know that Phil Ivey quits the highest online poker games after he loses one big pot? Now that takes discipline to do. And it is something you too should do. What would happen if you quit playing whenever you started playing bad and tilting? Your overall winrate or amount of fun would go up. Identify your signs of tilt and start quitting whenever they start creeping up on you, you will thank yourself!

5. Fun - Keeping it fun is what has kept me from going insane. It is all to easy for me to fall into a rut of making money, making money and making more money. Money is not where happiness lies, it is the things that it can give us. Freedom is one of those things and of the most important for me. And if I cannot keep poker fun then why would I want to play? Ask yourself these questions and see what comes up :-)

Article Source: http://www.orbitaloc.com/

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