In a nutshell, poker is a matter of numbers. However, when you feel that you keep losing hand after hand, it can be hard to keep going. The truth is that poker is a matter of statistics. You could be losing for a solid week and still be a winner in the long run — it’s just a matter of data. You need to make sure that you’re thinking about the bigger picture. It’s tempting to focus on the short game, because you’re now playing for real money. If you’re completely stressed out by introducing the real money aspect into things, you might want to make sure that you’re going to handle that part first. Go back and play some free poker.
Poker is something that we do to relax, meet new people and yes, compete to a certain degree. If the competition angle is something that you can’t handle once money is involved you know that it’s an area that you will need to work on.
The point here is that you need to hold on because there’s going to be good times ahead of you in poker. If you study all of the biographies of famous poker players, you’re going to find that they struggled with the same issues that you have. You will just need to make sure that you’re thinking about the best way to go when it’s time to handle those losses. Running and hiding isn’t going to make you happy. You need to make sure that you fight the urge to give up. Even the professionals had struggles where they wanted to take a step back. You can move forward at your own pace.
You have to realize that there’s no race to the finish line here. You’ll get to be a better poker player over time. It’s tempting to think that you have to speed through everything but that’s really not the case at all. What you ultimately have to do is start thinking about what you really want in the world of poker. If you want to just be a casual player, then be a causal player. Not everyone has to be a professional that plays the Main Event of the WSOP. You have to think outside of those confines for a while.
If you need to unplug — unplug for a while. Don’t make it forever, of course, but if you need to back up for a while there’s nobody stopping you. Of course, you’ll run into hardcore poker players that will tell you that they will never stop playing poker nonstop. Let’s see where they are in five years.
No matter what you decide to do, know that we wish you the best! There truly are good times ahead in poker, but you’re going to have to stick around in order to achieve them!