Keep Your House in Order to Keep Your Poker Game in Order

Poker is a very emotional undertaking on its own, so poker players don’t need any added grief when they sit down to play cards. When you bring outside stresses and issues to the poker tables you are really compounding your problems, and making it increasingly difficult to remain level-headed at the tables.

As we all know, when you have stresses at home, or in any other part of your personal life, it will greatly affect your job performance, especially if you have a high-stress job! So, anyone who is partaking in poker to earn a living needs to understand that you need to check your personal problems at the door, and if you can’t do this you shouldn’t be playing until you have resolved your problems in your personal life, or at the very least gotten them under control.

A lot of people are able to leave their personal issues at the door, and focus on the game itself, but even these people will be affected by their outside stresses. They may not be stewing on it, but when a bad beat, or cooler, happens it’s far more likely that it will start the slide toward tilt; a player with no outside issues is far less likely to have one or two negative outcomes send them reeling. Just think to a time when you nearly bit someone’s head off because you were already stressed out about something else.

Then there is the group of poker players who simply can’t leave their personal problems at the door. These players usually moan and complain about them before anything untoward even happens to them at the poker tables, and then when something does go awry the wheels come completely off the bus and these players absolutely crash and burn.

Now the first group of players simply needs to be aware that they have some outside stresses, and should assess their play more often than you normally do, to make sure they aren’t sliding toward tilt. You could also think about setting a stop-loss limit which is normally not the best idea in the world, but does have merit if you feel you could easily go on tilt. Another way to deal with stresses is to play lower stakes where losses won’t sting as much, or even make sure you have less money than usual on your person.

The second group of players’ needs to take these measures even further, and some of you that are afflicted by this problem may want to consider taking a hiatus from poker until your personal life can be put back in order. You should definitely play lower stakes where losses are less likely to tilt you -going so far as to play stakes that the losses suffered could even be seen as comical. Another way to solve the problem is to take up a new form of poker: Not only would you have to start out at lower stakes, but a new game will require more concentration and focus, so it’s less likely your mind will have a chance to wander.