Head Games: Staying Positive Through Downswings

The Pros: Daniel Buzgon, Adam Friedman, and Jake Ripnick

Craig Tapscott: Every player has experienced variance and downswings in their career. Please share some of the advice you may have for players who have a hard time handling these swings.

Daniel Buzgon: A typical poker career will usually contain sky-high moments, rock bottom ones, and everywhere in between. My career has been no different. The low moments usually feel much worse than the high moments feel good. Learning how to deal with them is crucial if you want to withstand the ups and downs that you will face along the way.

Like most young players coming up, I had no idea how to deal with my first huge downswing. My options were to move down in stakes, find a regular job or find a backer. So naturally I found a backer. Big backing stables were a little more common back then than they are nowadays. Having a backer not only put a stop to the financial pressures but gave me a group of players I could talk poker with. This really helped my mental state at the time. I was able to continue playing and improving as a player without the risk of going broke. 

After another downswing a few years later, I took a few months off from the online tournament grind. During that time, I started to play online cash games. Not only did I find that it really helped me with the early stages of tournaments, but I found it to be so much healthier for my well-being. Playing one to three hours a few nights a week instead of the normal six-to-nine hour MTT sessions really got me in a good routine. I was becoming a lot healthier and doing a lot more things outside of poker.

There is no hiding from downswings or variance so it’s best to prepare for them, so you know how to deal with them when they come. Some of the things I learned along the way were these: Don’t be afraid to move down in stakes or sell a little more action. Play less and study more. Find people to review hands with so you aren’t overlooking things. Try to learn other formats or other games. Prioritize your mental health and a healthy balance of doing non-poker things.

Adam Friedman: Variance and downswings are inevitable for every poker player. In my younger years when I played a substantially higher volume, I found myself swinging back and forth between cash games and tournaments. I did this for a few reasons. First, whenever either cash or tournaments would go cold for me, I would simply play the other form of poker. Being a chameleon of sorts in poker allowed me the benefit of changing it up whenever the pots were being pulled in a direction other than my own.

However, when I was losing at both forms of poker, I would and still do take extended periods away from the game, sometimes as long as six months. I do this to not only clear my head of predominantly negative thoughts I had with poker, but I don’t want poker interfering with the rest of my life. In my 20s, whenever I ran badly at poker, I let it interfere with every other part of my life. I did not know how to separate poker from the rest of my life as winning and losing mostly dictated how well my life was at that given moment.

Every time I have come back after a hiatus away from the game, I have always come back fresh, ready to play and put in a lot of hours. One of the other things I have done to curb downswings over the years is to sometimes lower the stakes until things turn around. I have watched several poker players over the years do the exact opposite figuring that their ‘run bad’ will eventually end and they want to increase the stakes. This has led many players to going broke, some recovered, while most never came back.

If you are in a downswing, lowering the swings has plenty of benefits. you can stay in action much longer by lowering the stakes, and more often than not you will be playing softer competition.

Jake Ripnick: Variance is an inescapable part of the game. It’s as sure as sunrise. Unfortunately, the simple knowledge of this often isn’t enough to prepare us for the downswing when it happens. In the very beginning of my career, once I decided to give poker all I have, I continuously watched myself make correct decisions, put all the money in good, and still lose by the river.

When it first occurred, I thought nothing of it. “This is a game of variance,” I told myself, “You’re going to have nights like this, so you better get used to it.” Then it kept happening… and kept happening. Eventually, I began fearing the outcome of each all-in, predicting my own loss even when I was mathematically ahead. It seemed as if all the negative variance conditioned me to expect to lose no matter what. In time, I recognized how unhealthy a mindset that was to be in. 

Through my own awareness, as well as the help and assurance of a good friend and fellow pro who believed in me, I had a change in mindset. Running bad became actual motivation to study harder and get better at the game. I even began to find the humor in the pots I lost versus opponents who were putting in loads of money with hands that just didn’t belong in the pot to begin with. It was as if the Poker Gods were telling me, “You’re not going to win by getting luckier than everyone.”

It all became motivation to study and learn how the game was played on a deep level, to execute on my game plan as best I could, and trust that by following the process, the results I were hoping for would materialize in time. By becoming more process-oriented and working on what I could control, the aggregation of my positive EV decisions finally came to fruition. Now I have four words written on a post-it note at my desk where I play. It says, “Make Great Decisions Today.”

Craig Tapscott: Letting a bad beat or bad decision at the table put you on tilt can ruin your chances of going deep or even cashing. What are some of the ways you deal with the emotional swings of poker?

Daniel Buzgon: No matter what they tell you, everyone tilts in one way or another. Some might just be a lot better dealing with it or hiding it. Dealing with the highs and lows of poker are easier for some than others. You are allowed to be upset when things don’t go the way you hoped, but don’t let it cloud your judgement afterwards.

I have never been the one to throw a mouse across the room or break a monitor. Playing a lot of golf over the years is probably why I think I deal with the emotional swings of poker better than most. Over the course of a round of golf you are going to hit a bad shot or get an unlucky break like how things work in a poker tournament. There is no sense in me throwing a club or throwing a temper tantrum out on the golf course because of it. I let myself get upset for five seconds and then it’s over and done with. That is how I try to handle a situation in poker that does not go the way I wanted it to. 

How I handle losing a hand in a live tournament is very different from how I deal with them when I play online. When I lose a hand in a live tournament, I just sit there with that blank stare cursing inside my head. There’s no sense in letting your mind wander and watching the player stack your old chips and think what could have been. But when I lose a hand online, I let it all out at the moment. No matter if it’s a five big blind pot, I still feel the need to curse and belly ache and complain that I am the unluckiest player on the planet. I am still not sure why I am able to keep my composure in a casino but can’t at home. But I make sure after the five seconds, I am off to the next hand and refocused.

Adam Friedman: Most people know that I am an emotional player. I have learned to better control it over the years, but it has never completely gone away. My closest poker friends have always known when they see me at a cash game if I am winning or losing simply by my posture and if I am laughing and talking to others at my table (and nearby tables), whereas conversely when I am quiet and I am slumped over in my chair with my head down that I am getting my head kicked in.

When a friend has pointed this out to me, I will simply get up and walk around for a little bit to get the blood flowing and to regain a better positive mindset. This usually leads me to coming back more focused and paying attention to what is going on in every hand, even those that do not involve me.

The one other recommendation I would always give to other players is when you get buried in a given day, take the following day off. When you get buried and play the following day, driving into the casino all you are thinking of is how quickly I can recover what I lost the day before, and usually you will have a negative attitude when you go into play because you are focusing on your big loss from the day before.

It is a natural feeling to want to recover everything you lost the day before as quickly as possible. But poker generally does not operate like that. Being that I play limit these days, my general rule that I have followed pretty well over the years is when I lose 50 bets in a day, take the following day off to relax and get ready to reenergize and focus the day thereafter. When I used to play no-limit, my limits were 2.5-3 buy-ins. Having a day off can make all the difference in the world when you go back into battle.

Jake Ripnick: One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned, which applies not just to the game of poker, but to life itself, is that it is the quality of our attention that will determine the quality of our lives, as well as the quality of the “future” we are attempting to create. So, to perform at our own personal best, what we are looking for is high quality attention without distortion: clarity, presence.

Tilt is the opposite of clarity. It is a negative emotion that is quite literally coloring our reality. When we let tilt take the driver seat, our decisions will no longer be made from the place within us that understands the principles, mechanics, and logic of the poker situation before us, but from fear, anger, frustration, or desire, which are all forms of resistance.  

Now, that might be easy enough to understand, but what can we practically do to reduce tilt’s power over us? Because tilt is a form of resistance, we want to bring the opposite of resistance into the situation: acceptance. We can take a step back and bear witness to the tilt, to the resistance, to the negative emotions within us. And through that witnessing, allow them to be there, without letting them take over our thought processes or drive our actions. That’s the difference. Not going on tilt doesn’t mean an absence of negative emotion, it simply means we don’t let that feeling make our decisions for us.

Therefore, the more awareness and acceptance we can bring to the moment we find ourselves in, the greater the quality of our attention, and the greater the quality of our decision-making. ♠

Daniel Buzgon has more than $2.4 million in live tournament earnings. The New Jersey pro has made four World Poker Tour final tables and has won eight WSOP Circuit rings. The 37-year-old also has $5 million in online poker earnings. Find him on Twitter
@DBuzgon.

Adam Friedman has won more than $3.5 million in live events, including four WSOP bracelets. The Ohio poker pro is best known for having won the prestigious $10,000 buy-in dealer’s choice event an incredible three times in a row. Follow him
@AdamFriedman119.

Jake Ripnick won his first bracelet at the 2021 series, taking down the $666 buy-in online event for $114,898. To date, the New Jersey pro has racked up more than $750,000 in tournament cashes. Look for him on Twitter @jake_ripnick.