Suppressing emotions or trying to ignore them is an all too often misstep that can increase anxiety. Instead, learn to recognise and acknowledge your emotions so that you can manage them constructively.
Write down any negative automatic thoughts that come to you automatically, then create an alternative thought by carefully considering evidence both supporting and countering it.
Recognise Your Emotions
Emotional regulation is an invaluable skill for poker players to develop. It will enable you to maintain composure and focus at the table, making better decisions that lead to consistent results – but sometimes controlling emotions during high stakes situations is hard to do.
Recognising your emotions is the first step toward controlling them. Being mindful of your emotional state enables you to recognize any triggers that might cause outbursts of emotion, as well as understand why these feelings arise in the first place. Once identified, patterns can begin to emerge within them that allow for timely responses.
Imagine experiencing your worst downswing: weeks or even months of losing every time out. This feeling of injustice can erode confidence and compromise good decision-making abilities, yet you don’t need to escape these feelings altogether; they can be channeled into useful channels such as motivation or anger and used effectively by you to increase decision-making skill and make opponents less able to read tells from you.
Name Your Emotions
Professional poker players possess an in-depth knowledge of themselves and their emotions, which enables them to effectively manage them and remain consistent regardless of loss or bad luck. Their mental strength gives them a distinct edge over opponents, which they can cultivate using techniques such as mindfulness or meditation.
One way of doing this is to identify feelings as they occur. For instance, when feeling frustrated it’s helpful to recognize this emotion without judgment before trying to calm yourself by taking deep breaths, watching something humorous or going for a walk.
An effective way to manage your emotions is to adopt an attitude of detachment from individual hand outcomes. Recognizing that variance is normal and long-term success depends on making sound decisions can help keep the focus on what really matters.
Accept Your Emotions
No matter your emotional state – whether that be winning cash game pots or suffering through an array of bad beats at the poker table – emotions can wreak havoc with decision-making processes and alter our decisions as players. Recognizing and managing these emotional responses will allow for improved poker play overall.
Mindfulness techniques such as deep breathing and body scans can increase awareness of your emotional state, helping you identify when something feels off balance. A thought record can be especially beneficial as it allows you to identify negative thoughts by providing evidence against them and countering with more constructive reactions.
Establishing an attitude of emotional detachment is an effective way to keep emotions from clouding your decisions at the poker tables. Doing this requires keeping an eye on long-term results while understanding that variance is inevitable within this sport. In addition, maintaining a balanced perspective helps when short-term results don’t define overall skill levels.
Manage Your Emotions
Mastering emotional resilience is an invaluable skill for poker players at home or in casinos alike, whether at home or away from the table. Being in control of your emotions allows you to make more effective decisions under pressure situations.
One effective way to remain tranquil is through practicing mindfulness techniques. Focusing on the current moment while eliminating distractions, mindful observation of thoughts and emotions without judgment or bias are the core tenants of mindfulness practice. Practices may include deep breathing exercises, body scans, meditation sessions or gratitude practices as forms of mindful practices.
Practice these strategies prior and during poker games to understand and control your emotions, such as frustration and disappointment, more easily. Labelling emotions also helps understand why they arise and may help with managing them more easily. While acknowledging these emotions may be challenging at first, learning how to accept them can improve mental game strategy while decreasing feelings of stress and anxiety.
