The Zen of Online Poker

Online poker is a multi-faceted game which requires both technical ability (an understanding of strategy, odds, position, etc.) and an appreciation for the fact that luck also plays a role in determining who wins and who loses. However, even if you are a technically skilled player and you allow for your luck to run hot and cold, you still need one more thing to have the best possible chance of winning consistently. That ‘thing’ is emotional mastery, or what some people like to call the Zen of online poker.

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Emotional mastery is the ability to remain in control of your emotions at all times throughout the poker game. If you lack this mastery then your emotions can easily overwhelm you and the result of this will almost always be a loss of self discipline.

For example, after a bad beat you may start trying to claw back those losses by playing poor starting hands, by chasing the cards down to the river when the odds suggest that you should fold, or by betting more or less than you should in a given situation. Similarly, your emotions can just as easily get out of control when you are doing well, and if you don’t watch out you could start playing with too much aggression, as if your luck will continue to run forever, which makes you a prime target for trapping through slow-play.

Clearly, emotional mastery is vital if you want to succeed over the long term, so how exactly do you develop it? Here are three ideas that should prove helpful:

1 – Detach from the Outcome
When you sit down to play a game of poker, you should try to detach yourself emotionally from the outcome. You will of course want to win, and you will play to try and do so, but you should accept the fact that it might not happen. If that notion upsets you then you should not play (perhaps playing at lower stakes would help here), but if you can be objective about the idea then that is certainly in your favour. Having detached from the outcome you can focus the entirety of your attention on making the best possible decisions throughout each and every hand.

2 – Play for Display
Playing online poker is usually quite a solitary experience, with only your opponents at the table watching the moves you make. This is fine as far as it goes, but it means you can get away with playing poorly due to emotional variance and largely escape criticism (muck the hand and nobody is any the wiser). Our advice is therefore to ‘play for display’. Imagine that you are being watched by a pack of eagle-eyed poker students, and that your task is to demonstrate how to play well for their benefit. This is a simple ‘trick of the mind’ which you are playing on yourself, but if you go along with it we think you’ll be surprised at how your level of emotional mastery improves.

3 – Train Your Mind
The third way to develop emotional mastery is to train your mind even when you are away from the poker tables. Many professional poker players really do practice Zen and other forms of meditation on a daily basis to strengthen their emotional control, and if that approach appeals to you then you should feel free to pursue it. If you would prefer to take a more scientific approach then our advice would be to study Neuro Linguistic Programming (also know as NLP), which will give you the tools to change the way you think about situations and also to change your emotional state at will. NLP isn’t nearly as complex as it sounds, and if you want a practical book that provides a complete overview of the subject then we highly recommend The NLP Workbook by Joseph O’Connor.

Developing emotional mastery takes time, and it is something that you will need to work on improving for the entirety of your online poker career. The good news is that getting to grips with the Zen of online poker really will help you improve your game in a significant way.

William Briggs