Feelings hurt by poker
by PokerAnon ~ March 3rd, 2010. Filed under: Philosophy and approach, Poker psychology.
I read an interesting post on a forum the other day. The topic of the thread was bad beats and one female player, whom I know is a decent but not yet a great player and has played for some time, made the comment that when she gets bad beats, her “feeling are hurt by poker“.
That comment made me stop and ponder because I’d never thought to react in that manner, or to interpret any of my reactions to bad beats in that way. Probably because I’m of the wrong gender to react this way (which is why I point out that this person is female). I think that she is too emotionally tied to poker because she reacts this way, but it helps me as well to recognize that I too am still too emotionally tied to my poker game as well. I react in a more typical male manner; I get angry with the player. “What a donkey. You idiot.”
This emotional connection manifests itself in a number of other ways as well. I was watching an Ed Miller video on the dangers of running good or of running bad and he mentions that most times other players are not “out to get you”, though sometimes that will be the case. Rather, most times the players are just playing their cards, while playing 11 other tables at the same time or watching television or talking with a friend on the telephone.
~
Individual personality traits can sometimes, though not always, manifest themselves in poker play and styles. By nature I’m not a gregarious person. I’m one of those people that identified with Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek; second in command, unemotional, basing his contributions to discussions on science or facts. I’m not a Trekkie but I’m still not inclined toward small talk or toward stepping forward and taking a lead in social situations unless I have specific useful information. As an example the other night my wife and I were out at a bar with a group of friends. The whole group of us were pretty spread out so it wasn’t obvious that we were all together when a woman on the dance floor apparently began flirting with me. I thought she was just trying to get me loosen up my dancing but I was otherwise clueless until afterward on the way home my wife pointed out what to her was pretty obvious. I was astonished, but I’m not exactly adept in social interactions. Spock or Data probably would have been similarly oblivious.
So for me to even step forward and open raise can sometimes be a challenge. For me to increase the financial risk by raising a flop bet can be difficult. Sometimes to continuation bet or semi-bluff or to outright bluff can be difficult.
But oddly enough at other times the “social” aspect doesn’t slow me down at all and I’ll open raise too much, c-bet too much, and especially run too many semi-bluffs and outright bluffs against players who don’t fold. My probably-testosterone-driven aggression, uncontrolled poker “superior knowledge” and impatience sometimes overruns the social inhibitions and poker-sense for the players that I’m up against. Hence the paying off of the obvious slowplays and slowrolls and ugly minraises from small stacks.
~
My wife and I have had discussions about her mother who is experiencing some vascular induced dementia. That is, her personality is fluctuating but is also changing overall supposedly due to age and her brain just not always getting the same degree of blood flow as it used to get, simply because the vascular system is old and not circulating as well as it used to do. The theory for the fluctuation and change is that some areas, especially inhibitor areas, may not be functioning as well as it used to do resulting in less inhibited or restricted thoughts and actions. For example she has missed appointments with friends and with doctors and others simply because she decided to do something else, which is a social pattern which she never would have followed in years gone by.
Sometimes my social inhibitors are more present than at other times. Sometimes my patience is higher or lower, my focus is higher or lower, my emotional attachment to my poker game is higher or lower. Unfortunately even though my social interaction skills are sometimes as clueless as Spock or Data, my emotional detachment and reliance on pure intellectual reasoning skills are not comparable.
