Never Hide Your Poker Mistakes
Not hiding your mistakes and failures is a critical part of playing professional-level, winning poker. You can never overlook mistakes. You can never put aside losses. You can never hide from failure. You absolutely must acknowledge, embrace and proclaim your disasters.
Losing players "forget" losing sessions, "ignore" bad plays that cost them money, and "overlook" the tilty, emotional play that is the foundation of their failure. They don't acknowledge losses, errors and problems because they're scared people will know that they are bad players. Maybe their wife, maybe their friends, maybe other players will realize that this guy is full of baloney. But the main reason they ignore, hide and overlook is because THEY don't want to face the realization that they are the cause of their own failure.
Basically, if they are losing players, then logically they should Stop Playing. But they don't want to stop playing. They want to keep playing because they like to play. So instead of facing their inadequacy and getting better, they hide it and stay bad - or even get worse.
So your goal should always to be to downplay your successes - they are expected, after all - and to highlight your failures. Learn to focus on them without judgment or getting down on yourself. Learn to get very curious about them, like a young boy with an interesting bug. Poke it, flip it, pick it up and let it crawl on your fingers. In other words, examine it and ask it some questions.
Questions to ask your little red failure bug (mine is red):
- Where did you come from, little failure bug?
- Why did I invite you into my house?
- Are you part of my approved game, or did I vary from what I consider to be optimal play?
- Are you really a failure, or are you just bad luck in an interesting form?
- Did I play you to make myself feel better?
- What other forms has this bug/mistake taken in my game?
Look for variations of the same mistake and find a pattern.
Find out how much this type of mistake has cost you in the past. Think about it; put a DOLLAR figure to it. Now, project into the future how much that mistake will cost you. If your goal is to play twice as often at twice the stakes for the next decade, and this mistake cost you $100 last month, then you can safely say that if you don't correct this mistake, it will cost you $48,000!!!
Now that little failure is not such a small thing, is it? If this is the one mistake that keeps you from being a winning player, then it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your poker career - a career that may never exist.
Now, make a new rule - or revise an existing rule - to eliminate this mistake and drill it into your game. Use the rule writing formula. Write your new rule 100 times, put it in your journal, tape it to your screen.
The point here is to never ignore mistakes. They are the Most Powerful tool you have for making money in poker. Make them known, talk about them with others and let them out. When you keep these issues inside yourself, they will fester and cause emotional constipation in your game.
You want to keep you poker mentality fresh and ventilated. The only way to do that is to keep it transparent. Any parts that you hide will rot from lack of oxygen and create dead areas in your poker psyche.
Remember any failure is a window through which you can see future, greater success. If you open it, explore it, and go through it you'll find new, sunny vistas. If you close the curtain on it and try to ignore, it will become a cold draft that annoys you forever and steals life from your game.
Not hiding your mistakes and failures is a critical part of playing professional-level, winning poker. You can never overlook mistakes. You can never put aside losses. You can never hide from failure. You absolutely must acknowledge, embrace and proclaim your disasters.
Losing players "forget" losing sessions, "ignore" bad plays that cost them money, and "overlook" the tilty, emotional play that is the foundation of their failure. They don't acknowledge losses, errors and problems because they're scared people will know that they are bad players. Maybe their wife, maybe their friends, maybe other players will realize that this guy is full of baloney. But the main reason they ignore, hide and overlook is because THEY don't want to face the realization that they are the cause of their own failure.
Basically, if they are losing players, then logically they should Stop Playing. But they don't want to stop playing. They want to keep playing because they like to play. So instead of facing their inadequacy and getting better, they hide it and stay bad - or even get worse.
So your goal should always to be to downplay your successes - they are expected, after all - and to highlight your failures. Learn to focus on them without judgment or getting down on yourself. Learn to get very curious about them, like a young boy with an interesting bug. Poke it, flip it, pick it up and let it crawl on your fingers. In other words, examine it and ask it some questions.
Questions to ask your little red failure bug (mine is red):
- Where did you come from, little failure bug?
- Why did I invite you into my house?
- Are you part of my approved game, or did I vary from what I consider to be optimal play?
- Are you really a failure, or are you just bad luck in an interesting form?
- Did I play you to make myself feel better?
- What other forms has this bug/mistake taken in my game?
Look for variations of the same mistake and find a pattern.
Find out how much this type of mistake has cost you in the past. Think about it; put a DOLLAR figure to it. Now, project into the future how much that mistake will cost you. If your goal is to play twice as often at twice the stakes for the next decade, and this mistake cost you $100 last month, then you can safely say that if you don't correct this mistake, it will cost you $48,000!!!
Now that little failure is not such a small thing, is it? If this is the one mistake that keeps you from being a winning player, then it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your poker career - a career that may never exist.
Now, make a new rule - or revise an existing rule - to eliminate this mistake and drill it into your game. Use the rule writing formula. Write your new rule 100 times, put it in your journal, tape it to your screen.
The point here is to never ignore mistakes. They are the Most Powerful tool you have for making money in poker. Make them known, talk about them with others and let them out. When you keep these issues inside yourself, they will fester and cause emotional constipation in your game.
You want to keep you poker mentality fresh and ventilated. The only way to do that is to keep it transparent. Any parts that you hide will rot from lack of oxygen and create dead areas in your poker psyche.
Remember any failure is a window through which you can see future, greater success. If you open it, explore it, and go through it you'll find new, sunny vistas. If you close the curtain on it and try to ignore, it will become a cold draft that annoys you forever and steals life from your game.
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