Previous part of the book “Mental Game of Poker”: Bridge of Injustice
5.3.1 Inability to See the Positive Variation
Players, especially those under emotional pressure, tend to remember their failures more than the moments when they succeeded. Rarely will you hear such players talking about how they suckout against another player, but stories about their own bad beats are inevitable. Greater focus on failures creates a very distorted perspective because what you pay more attention to, you know more about. It can be said that we are more skilled at noticing failures and completely unable to see when we succeed.
Such exclusive attention to failures greatly distorts your perspective, and when you are weighed down by a bad period, failures are the only thing you remember. Thus, the statement “I always have bad luck” begins to seem logical because you see only failures around you. At that moment, you truly believe that luck never smiles on you, and this is essentially because you are unable to notice it.
5.3.2 More Than Deserved
When you think that luck is the result of your good play and/or believe that your mistakes are the result of bad luck, you are mistaken, and such a mistaken view distorts the scales of poker fairness, making it seem like variation is unfair to you when it actually isn't. This idea can be illustrated as follows:
The first picture shows a balanced and neutral view of variation. You know your and your opponents' skills and mistakes. The second picture illustrates how the bridge of injustice develops. First, if a win actually happens due to luck, but you think it happened because of your skills, then part of the luck is taken off the scales. Second, if your mistakes are the cause of the loss, but you think it's due to bad luck, then part of the bad luck is added to the scales. By associating luck with your skills and mistakes with bad luck, you think that variation is against you. In both cases, it turns out that failures happen more often, and you tilt thinking that poker is unfair when in reality, you are the one making mistakes.
Now think about what happens when such a distorted view continues for a long time. Eventually, believing that you are cursed or that variation is unfair can seem very logical since a large part of the wins is attributed to skills, and losses to bad luck. In a way, all this can be attributed to basic math problems, but since each factor is so hard to measure accurately, it's far from simple. For this reason, better ability to objectively evaluate your and your opponent's play and variation allows you to create an advantage in poker.
Sometimes it's really hard to recognize luck, but as I mentioned, this is partly because we are not inclined to associate our wins with luck and are more skilled at noticing our failures. This raises the question, why do we try to attribute wins to skills more than to luck? This is because you want to believe that you are as good as you think, despite the fact that you might not actually be. This is a confidence issue, and your subconscious knows that such pseudo-confidence is not stable. Therefore, during periods of failure, you doubt your game, lose confidence, and may lose motivation. More about this in chapter 8.
Here are some suggestions to help correct your belief about what is fair:
In the short term: improve your ability to notice luck and your mistakes. This will help balance your view of variation. Also, refer to the chapter “Developing Stable Confidence” to improve your recognition skills (of variation, your and opponents' abilities).
In the long term: remember your poker career, perhaps even your personal life (sport, business) and identify those instances of luck that you unfairly attributed to your skills. Also, think about instances when you thought you were unlucky, but you were actually making mistakes. Correcting a bad, biased view becomes much easier when you fix past misunderstandings. You can't change past events, but changing your perspective on them can provide a more objective view of the present.
INSERT LOGIC: POKER DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR VIEW OF FAIRNESS.
5.3. Opportunities Offered by the Bridge of Injustice
Looking for positive opportunities in all types of tilts can make you psychologically stronger. So what are the opportunities offered by the bridge of injustice?
- Better handling of failures gives you an advantage over your opponent, and it also provides an example of what you can start learning tomorrow. When you have an example, it means you can start learning what will help improve your game and give you an advantage over opponents while they are trying to deal with the bridge of injustice.
- How you handle failures shows how you will handle success. Improved understanding of the deep-seated causes of the bridge of injustice will improve your ability to handle a successful period. The ability to maintain a balanced view of variation is very important when playing poker. Since the poker boom started by Chris Moneymaker, there have been many poker players who won the poker lottery but couldn't handle it. This is very similar to people who win the real lottery but then quickly go bankrupt.
5.3.4 Wishing Poker Wasn't What It Is
When trying to figure out why failures trigger players' tilt, most players admit that they wish poker wasn't so influenced by variation. Logically, they understand that variation largely makes poker profitable, but that's not enough. There have been cases where well-known players tried to create versions of poker where there was no variation or it was very minimal. These attempts ended in failure because variation is a fundamental thing that makes poker profitable and such an engaging game.
The old saying “Be careful what you wish for” is true in this case. Think about what would happen if such a wish came true and short-term results were 100% directly dependent on the player's skills? Weak poker players would disappear because poker is a war of both real and imagined skills. Eventually, poker would become like chess.
If we assume that all this is true (and most of you know it is), then what is the value of wishing that variation didn't have such an impact in poker? It's the same as saying: “I can't handle the emotions caused by variation.” If variation didn't cause tilt, you would like its existence.
Since you can't control variation, the only possible solution is:
- Understand it better;
- Improve your emotional reactions to it.
A better view of variation means acknowledging it. Acknowledgment happens naturally when you understand why you actually don't want variation to disappear in poker.
