I'm Curious.

[steve7stud 0]

One of the things that I've always realized about poker is that losing feels much worse than winning feels good.I recently saw an episode of 2months2million, and one of the guys on the show shared the same thoughts.So give me your take on it.......

[lurbz 2]

One of the things that I've always realized about poker is that losing feels much worse than winning feels good.I recently saw an episode of 2months2million, and one of the guys on the show shared the same thoughts.So give me your take on it.......

...pretty simple. A player expects to win (and if you don't you either need to drop down in levels or quit) due to their skills and if they don't they're disappointed in themselves, unlike losing which is what they believe shouldn't happen.Analogy: AA holds against KK - expected result. This is the winning part. AA < KK - unexpected disappointment/losing.In other words he made the most obvious statement ever.

[spydur86 0]

Okay, I'll bite. I feel the same way about my bowling league. It's my first year bowling seriously, and when I started I was horrible. At that point whenever I did well I felt accomplished and felt good about what I had done. As I started to get better I started to have certain expectations of myself, and at that point, there was no more happiness in "doing well," just disappointment when I failed to meet my expectations.I think that applies to poker because at a certain point all we have are expectations of what we should be doing, and when we meet those expectations we have neutral feelings, because that's what we feel "should" be happening, but when we fail to meet those expectations we're disappointed with ourselves. Yes, there's still going to be positive feelings when we FT or win a huge tournament, but those are few and far between, and we're left with mostly neutral or disappointed feelings.

[steve7stud 0]

...pretty simple. A player expects to win (and if you don't you either need to drop down in levels or quit) due to their skills and if they don't they're disappointed in themselves, unlike losing which is what they believe shouldn't happen.Analogy: AA holds against KK - expected result. This is the winning part. AA < KK - unexpected disappointment/losing.In other words he made the most obvious statement ever.

Yeah, I don't kow if that's an obvious statement at all. I mean this in a good way, but I'm not sure how long you've played for.You can book a win for 30k and feel good about it. The next day you book a loss for 10k and hate life.In regard to expectation, you are doing quite well with net results. But that doesn't change the fact that you feel miserable.Of course everyone expects to win when they play, or at least they do on some level. However, I don't think this is as true for tournaments.I still think there's more to it than expectations. But, ok.....you made your point. Seems reasonable.

[spydur86 0]

Also, there's always going to be that feeling in the back of your mind that "If I would've quit playing poker yesterday I would've been up 30k, now I lost 10k today... I should've just quit yesterday." I don't have enough experience to know whether or not hardcore grinders still get that feeling, but I'm doubting they do, but for the average joe, net gain doesn't mean much when you lose some of your profit at a later time and realize "you could have had more if you would've just quit when ______."

[offset 0]

I always feel worst when I've played badly. Losses don't really affect me if I think I've played alright. If I get lucky and book a big win and played well then I'm pretty happy.

[GreyBeard 0]

I read an article on this a couple of years ago from some phsycologist.He stated that the feeling of losing is always far worse than the joy of winning.I don`t remember the technical stuff he said but he did refer to bad beats sticking in your mind longer and more clearly than a winning hand

[BaseJester 1]

I don't always feel more bad, or bad at all, about losing. I feel bad about playing stupid. Losing, on the other hand, can be a rush.

[dna4ever 2]

In Confessions of a Winning Poker Player, Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won -- strange as it seems -- but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." Seems true to me, 'cause walking in here I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking how I lost it.I don't really play poker for real anymore, but when I used to grind every day for my $100 - $10,000 goal I can remember at least 2 nights of retarded depression after having near 100bb (i only played limit) downswings. I eventually learned the power of the stop loss process and that helped tremendously.As it was said above, you tend to have an expected win rate and when that happens it is normal, but when things go terribly wrong it feels awful.Funny enough, I found this to be true on the opposite end of the spectrum as well. Of the thousands of hours I played and the hundreds of sessions I had, I can only really remember 2 or 3 winning sessions because they were so far above expectation because I ran insanely good. It has been nearly 4 years and I still remember this session I wrote about on my old blog:------------------------------Friday, September 29, 2006Ummmmm I just Rode a Crazy RushSo I decide to sit down for 30 minutes during my lunch today @ the $25/$50 table on FCP.27 minutes26 hands+32 BB$1613 net profit-------------------------------Only reason I really remember that is the results were so far above the norm that it left an adrenaline high of pure elation. To run 125bb/100 when you were averaging 2 or 3bb/100 is the sickest feeling in the world; in a good way.So I guess from my experience, it seems extreme variance highs or lows are rememberable while standard up/down swings are expected and therefore not really reacted to.

[TrueAce13 18]

I usually expect to lose. Lose. And still go on monkey tilt. fml

[Mercury69 3]

Tp bastardize the title of a Cole Porter song:What Is This Thing Called Winning?There are times I wish I didn't love MTT's so much...

[ghostlove 0]

i hate losing at anything.

[lurbz 2]

Yeah, I don't kow if that's an obvious statement at all. I mean this in a good way, but I'm not sure how long you've played for.You can book a win for 30k and feel good about it. The next day you book a loss for 10k and hate life.In regard to expectation, you are doing quite well with net results. But that doesn't change the fact that you feel miserable.Of course everyone expects to win when they play, or at least they do on some level. However, I don't think this is as true for tournaments.I still think there's more to it than expectations. But, ok.....you made your point. Seems reasonable.

Bolded 1: Played ~2.5 years, grinding as primary income ~ 9 months.Bolded 2: If I am playing, I expect to profit, period. Yeah variance happens but knowing you're not at the performance level you should be at is why the feeling hits.Bolded 3: If you're playing tournaments that you don't feel you have an edge in and should be FTing or running super deep in, I'm dead sure there's a more +EV game out there that you should be playing instead.

[pbwl11 0]

I'm in the midst of a 200BB downswing playing 3/6 LHE live twice a week.I've had 12 losing sessions in a row and counting.Combo of other players chasing and catching, me missing draws, and I'm starting to get gun shy, and starting to play like a wuss.If this keeps up much longer, I'm gonna climb to the top of a water tower and start picking of girl scouts with a RPG launcher....Seriously though, losing sucks.

[vbnautilus 48]

For one thing, it's a fact of human memory that we remember bad things better than we remember good things. From an evolutionary perspective, this is adaptive: it's pretty important to remember the things that made you feel bad so that you can avoid them. Avoiding things that are a danger to you is generally more important to your survival than remembering things that were helpful to you.

[JoeyJoJo 18]

For one thing, it's a fact of human memory that we remember bad things better than we remember good things. From an evolutionary perspective, this is adaptive: it's pretty important to remember the things that made you feel bad so that you can avoid them. Avoiding things that are a danger to you is generally more important to your survival than remembering things that were helpful to you.

This isn't really a question about what we remember, it's about what we experience in the present.I think expectations is the most reasonable answer. It's how an event differs from your true expectations. If winning a tournament is vastly beyond your expectations, than winning will feel "more good" compared to how bad losing would feel.It's like the athlete who has multiple championships. If you ask him which one felt the best, the answer is usually the first one. I think this is because before you win it, there's always going to be some doubt as to whether you can, but once you get that first one, you know you can do it and you almost expect to win it. The only time the answer isn't the first one is when a subsequent one is the result of overcoming significant obstacles, which provides more satisfaction because each obstacle reduces your expectation to win.

[Biff Goods 0]

I always feel bad when I lose because it leads me to believe that I don't have it or to some self esteem issues. I read an article the other day though that helped a lot. Somebody interviewed Ivey and he said something along the lines of, "Poker is the only thing out there where "losing" is actually part of the game. You have to learn how to lose to become a winning player." Really jumped out at me.

[vbnautilus 48]

This isn't really a question about what we remember, it's about what we experience in the present.

OR IS IT? We are only talking about these experiences now as we remember them. However, what I said applies to both really. The feeling you have about negative things is designed to get you to avoid them in the future. In general the body has more devoted to saying "hey things aren't right" than it does to saying "yeah things are pretty good" because when things are good and you are in a nice homeostatic state, you don't need to do anything, and when things are bad you might be dying. This relates to what you've said about expectations, though.

[JoeyJoJo 18]

In general the body has more devoted to saying "hey things aren't right" than it does to saying "yeah things are pretty good" because when things are good and you are in a nice homeostatic state, you don't need to do anything, and when things are bad you might be dying. This relates to what you've said about expectations, though.

OR DOES IT?I don't know, maybe? I think what I was getting at is if you expect to lose and then you lose, your body is going to think "yep, right on schedule, just keep on keeping on" (or what you refer to in your fancy terminology as the homeostatic state) but if you expect to win and then you lose, your body will think, "what the fuck yo? that shit ain't right."(I don't know why your body talks like that.)

[pbwl11 0]

Is anybody else the Type-A, OCD, uber competitive, hate to lose at anything type, like me?When things don't go the way we plan, it feels like the poker gods, or bowling gods, or golfing gods, or your sport here gods, are smacking you around like a tennis ball?I'm certainly not proud of the fact that I'm that way, and at least I can say I'm not a sore loser (Outwardly, at least. ) I don't berate people or tap the fish tank. I may want to push them in front of a bus, but would never blow up at them. I save it all for when I get home, where I have a punching bag in my basement to take out my frustrations on. I understand losing is part of the game, like Ivey said. Don't mean we have to like it. But I go into a funk for a while til I cool down.But when I win, I'm a happy little camper.Maybe I should see a psychologist about my self esteem issues.......?

[MaxStPolish 4]

Standard conditioning.Only your own personal will can change that. Learn to take time to enjoy the good. Not sure you can make the good and bad value equally, but people can get the margin much tighter than they do.

[steve7stud 0]

I always feel bad when I lose because it leads me to believe that I don't have it or to some self esteem issues. I read an article the other day though that helped a lot. Somebody interviewed Ivey and he said something along the lines of, "Poker is the only thing out there where "losing" is actually part of the game. You have to learn how to lose to become a winning player." Really jumped out at me.

That Ivey quote is great.

[Stiles2004 0]

I haven't read anything in this thread, but I'm a little bi-curious

[SCYUKON 0]

I find when I lose (when I play anymore, since my poker mojo is flatlining these days), it depends on how I lost. If I lose because I get sucked out on, I hate poker. If I lose because I made a stupid play, I hate myself. But it is the losing due to getting sucked out on that drives me away from the game a lot more than if I am just off my game.In general though, I would agree that the lows of losing are worse in magnitude than the highs of winning. Although I have been getting a lot of mental mileage out of some live Vegas micro tourney wins last fall. But at the end of the day, I am damn glad I have a day job, as this would be one hell of a tough way to put food on the table for a family. Hats off to those of you who can, and do.

[grocery_mony 8]

I find when I lose (when I play anymore, since my poker mojo is flatlining these days), it depends on how I lost. If I lose because I get sucked out on, I hate poker. If I lose because I made a stupid play, I hate myself. But it is the losing due to getting sucked out on that drives me away from the game a lot more than if I am just off my game.In general though, I would agree that the lows of losing are worse in magnitude than the highs of winning. Although I have been getting a lot of mental mileage out of some live Vegas micro tourney wins last fall. But at the end of the day, I am damn glad I have a day job, as this would be one hell of a tough way to put food on the table for a family. Hats off to those of you who can, and do.

So true. Came to the conclusion 4 years ago that grinding isnt for me. When I play to make money I hate the game and have no fun. I just play tourneys now because its the most fun for me and still enjoy the game. Playing $25 nl against 80% grinders multi tabling with various software running isnt fun. I actually can handle the beats very well now but probally would go on LFT if it was at a FT for the Sunday million or something.