Understanding Your Own Emotions

Part one of this series defined EQ as your emotional intelligence score and listed five components for poker players:

1. Understanding how emotions affect your own play
2. Controlling your own emotions
3. Understanding how other people emotionally react to you
4. Understanding how other people’s emotions affect their play
5. Manipulating other people’s emotions

Part one is, by far, the most important part of your Poker EQ. Many players disagree. Even if they are skilled at reading and manipulating their opponents’ emotions, they may not even try to analyze their own feelings and their effects.

It’s a huge mistake. If you don’t understand your emotions, you will probably make costly emotion-driven mistakes. You may even go on tilt and blow your whole bankroll. It happens every day. This column will recommend ways to increase your self-understanding and self-control.

Which Emotions Are Most Dangerous for YOU?

Nearly everyone has most of the emotions described here, but your personality determines their intensity and effects. You may ignore ones that seriously hurt me and vice versa. As you read about them, ask yourself:

• How dangerous is that emotion for me?
• What are its specific effects upon me?

Hope is the driving force behind most gambling. If we didn’t hope to win, we wouldn’t gamble, and this hope can make us deny reality. Bad players deny it frequently; good players only occasionally; but everybody denies it sometimes.

We know the odds don’t justify calling, but call anyway. We see that a game is too tough for us, but still play. We make mistakes because we hope to get lucky.

• Do you let hope cause mistakes?
• Which mistakes?
• How often do you make them?

Love for action makes some people take foolish chances. If we didn’t like action, we wouldn’t play poker, but we can’t afford to love it. Virtually all action-lovers are heavy losers.

• Do you love action?
• How does that love affect your play?

Fear of risk is the opposite of that love, and it’s much less expensive. Fearful players can win if they play only against weak players, but they can’t win much. They fold too much and “save money” foolishly. For example, they save a bet by checking when they should bet or calling when they should raise, but the free or cheap cards they give away cost them entire pots. Good players bluff frequently to exploit their timidity.

• Do you have too much fear of risk?
• How does it affect your play?

Conflict-aversion makes some players act too nicely. They check when they should bet, call when they should raise, rarely check-raise or bluff, and even show down winners without betting (especially when they’re heads up).

• Are you too conflict-averse?
• How does it affect your play?

Anger is the most visible emotion, and it has the most obviously destructive effects. We’ve all gotten angry, and we usually paid for it. We tried to punish someone, continued to play when we should have quit, and we made steam raises and other stupid plays.

• Do you get angry too often?
• Do you get too angry?
• How does it affect your play?

Aching to get even has caused countless players to take foolish risks, get deeper into the hole, become more desperate, go on tilt, and lose much more than they can afford.

• Do you ache to get even?
• Does it happen often?
• How does it affect your play?

Pride can make us play better, but excessive pride (arrogance) is extremely destructive. It’s related to some other emotions. For example, one reason we ache to get even is that losing hurts our pride, especially if we think the game is easy. We essentially ask, “How could these weak players beat a superior player like me?”
Arrogance also makes us believe we can beat games that are too tough for us, play weak cards, or play well when we’re exhausted, sick, or distracted. We’re too arrogant to accept reality.

• Are you arrogant about poker?
• How does it affect your play?

Identify Your Triggers

An important step toward reducing emotions’ destructive effects is to understand your triggers and their effects. A trigger is anything that causes an emotional reaction.
Triggers are extremely individualistic. You might shrug off something that arouses strong emotions in me.

If you understand which emotions are dangerous to you and what triggers them, you can greatly reduce or even eliminate some emotional dangers. For example, if you know that you have an excessive ache to get even after losing three buy-ins, go home after losing the second buy-in.

Here is a short and incomplete list of triggers. Most of them are unpleasant, but a few are pleasant. Unpleasant triggers are more dangerous, but pleasant ones can cause negative reactions. For example, you can go on “Happy Tilt” and become too loose and aggressive when you’ve won a big pot or several pots in a row.

Check the ones that can cause strong emotional reactions and insert words or numbers in the blank spaces.

__ Bad beat when someone made a stupid mistake.
__ Bad beat when nobody made a mistake.
__ Losing $___
__ Winning $___
__ Losing several pots in a short time
__ Winning several pots in a short time
__ Losing ___ sessions in a row
__ Winning ___ sessions in a row
__ Nasty players
__ Very slow players
__ Drunks
__ Very friendly players
__ Attractive members of the opposite sex
__ Maniacs
__ Rocks
__ Calling Stations
__ “Idiots”
__ Bad dealers
__ Being card dead for ___ minutes
__ Making a monster hand and getting no action
__ What other triggers do you have?

Keep An Emotional Journal

Most players can’t answer some of these questions because they don’t remember their emotions and their effects, especially their emotionally-driven mistakes.

An emotional journal can greatly increase your understanding of:

• Which emotions are dangerous for you
• How they affect your play
• What triggers them

Jan Siroky, a respected tournament coach, calls it, “taking your emotional temperature.” He and I agree that you should take frequent, very short breaks, especially after an unusually pleasant or unpleasant experience. Then honestly and thoroughly answer these questions:

• How do I really feel?
• How important is what just happened?
• Am I overreacting?
• Why am I overreacting?
• How has it affected my play?
• What should I do now?
• Why?

Record your answers in a journal. Otherwise, you’ll forget some of them, especially the most painful ones. The more painful an answer is, the more important it probably is, and the less likely you are to remember it. You don’t want to remember emotionally-driven mistakes.

If you keep an emotional journal and review it frequently, you’ll see patterns. For example, you’ll realize that certain kinds of people cause specific emotional mistakes. Or you’ll see that you can’t handle losses larger than $X.

You can then make much better decisions such as avoiding those players or quitting before you’re in danger of losing $X. Those better decisions will increase your profits. ♠

Dr. Al (alan[email protected]) coaches only on psychology issues. For information about seminars and webinars, go to propokerseminars.com. He is David Sklansky’s co-author of DUCY? and the sole author of four poker psychology books. You can check out many articles, blogs, videos, and books. Please visit my website, AlanSchoonmaker.com and get a free book. _