The cognitive bias of loss aversion argues that people are inherently irrational risk takers. They overestimate loss aversion and underestimate the potential earnings. For example: if you are in a 300bb pot and have 200bb with which to bluff shove on the river, and you think your opponent has 50% times, do you shove or fold? Even with these assumptions, most people check back on the river because their minds inherently push them to keep the money they have. The 200bb you already have seems more valuable than the 300bb in the middle of the table. Losing the 200bb you have feels worse than winning the 300bb in the middle.
Of course, in reality, every dollar should be valuable. A dollar earned should be as valuable as a dollar lost.
This bias is one of the most difficult to overcome because it is based on emotions, and emotions play a big role in the internal decisions in poker. The impact is not only on strategy terms, but also on how we play, when we play and what we play. A tool to help overcome this shift and become more process-oriented is self-talk.
Self-talk is the process of talking to yourself by doing things to yourself. It is a ubiquitous trait that is used to evaluate, to remind oneself of something, to criticise oneself, to act in the world. There are three main types of self-talk: positive, negative and instructional. Positive self-talk is self-promotion, reinforcement, e.g. "I've already got it!", or "I'm so cool!". Negative self-talk is reproaching oneself, e.g. "I'm such an ass" or "How could I have made that call?". Educational self-talk is guiding yourself to do something, e.g. "call on this turn and then shove on any river" or "don't call, be patient and wait for him to 3-bet'ins you again".
It will come as no surprise to learn that having a positive conversation with yourself is much more useful than a negative one. But research has shown that a learning conversation with yourself is even more effective than a positive one. But that is up to you. I'm not trying to say that positive self-talk doesn't perform an important function, it does and more, we'll get to that shortly, but educational self-talk is the best cure for loss aversion cognitive shift.
With educational self-talk, we can help our rational mind deal with cognitive shifts in our subconscious. "Ok, no big deal, I lost two buyins because I had a good shot at three buyins, and that bluff had a very positive EV." Just by saying that to yourself enough times, you learn to accept it as a satisfactory justification.
By constantly challenging your natural fear of loss by talking to yourself, you can counteract your mind's impulse to continually repress an action that can lead to loss. In situations where you have not yet suppressed your fear of loss, you must keep yourself busy talking to yourself. Every time you make a good bluff or call in which you get caught, you have to tell yourself in your mind that you did everything right and try your best to accept it. By repeating this over and over again, you will eventually overcome this shift. In fact, you can apply this technique to other cognitive shifts, such as the first impression shift (when you hold on to your first impression for too long). In essence, self-talk is an invaluable tool for poker players, a skill that needs to be developed in order to truly master the game.
As you may have noticed, quite often our brains interpret different feedback 
differently, giving certain events more importance than others. I call this an imbalance. As a result of this imbalance, our brains attribute more noise to it than to the distortions that are already inherent in poker.
Let's look at the negative developments. A negative event is when you decide not to do something you had planned to do. Negative events happen all the time, even though we rarely think about them. You chose not to 4-bet, or you chose to checkraise before the flop. The problem with negative events in poker is that we rarely let them affect us.
For example, you're in a big pot, you've barrelled two streets and now you're deciding whether to bluff the river or not. If you barrel on the river and your opponent folds, you win the pot, feel very good and give yourself a lot of positive reinforcement. If you bluff on the river and your opponent calls your bluff, you lose and give yourself a lot of negativity. But what happens if, after some deliberation, you don't bluff on the river, you lose, and he shows the nuts? How will you feel then? You might feel some relief, but most likely you'll just feel neutral and even a little annoyed that he had the nuts and won the pot.
That's where the feedback imbalance comes in. When you make the right decision in the barrel and your opponent folds, you get a lot of physiological confirmation that you made the right play. But when you make the right decision by checking and the opponent wins with the nuts, you get very little feedback that you played correctly. It doesn't feel like a win, even though strategically it is.
Haseeb Qureshi
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