I remember hearing what top professional player David Benyamine said in an interview sometime back when someone asked him to give a poker tip. He replied that in order for poker to love you then you had to love it back. I thought long and hard about that statement and it has many different meanings. I am therefore going to put my own interpretation to that statement because fundamentally we all love poker and this is why we play the game. But the fact of the matter is that poker and playing poker can be an absolutely horrible experience.
This is a fact for some people and it is usually to do with losing something that many people cherish above everything else…..money! If you honestly and truly cherish many other things more than money then you will no doubt be the type of person who tilts less or even doesn’t tilt at all. So losing in poker is inevitable and something that cannot be avoided and what is more, you will have the capacity to lose a lot of money relative to the stakes that you are playing. The more you cherish money and the more you hate losing then the more poker is going to be a nightmare experience for you.
At the end of the day you are trying to control events that cannot be controlled. You can spend ages waiting for opportunities and finally get your opponent all in for one hundred big blinds with AA against their JJ and the flop comes 9-8-7 with a ten on the turn and you are history. This happens because in order to maximise your earn rate in poker then you have to accept marginal situations or situations where you are not a shoe in to win the hand.
I think that one of the major issues with people who play Texas Hold em poker is that essentially they either do not understand gambling concepts or they do not accept them psychologically. Either way they are attempting to control an environment that cannot be controlled and this can lead to tilt and anger and a whole host of negative emotions. So I think that what Benyamine meant was to accept all that poker is and see poker for what it really is. All too often though people put their own interpretations to poker or any complex event for that matter and so they never really see the truth.
I am not saying that I have all the answers when it comes to playing poker because I haven’t. The game is so complex that you can never master it and all you can do is to take your game and your mindset to a level where you can be considered an expert. But the definition of “expert” does not mean that you know everything that there is to know about poker. But I will repeat myself by saying that you have to love poker for what it is and it is a bit like a partnership with the opposite sex. It really doesn’t matter who you are with, they will have faults and flaws and accepting them is part of being with someone.