The Reasons Why You Purposely Make Yourself Lose at Poker and What to Do About It
I know some tight-wads out there may have a negative view of poker. Truth is though, poker is a game that actually help you learn various lessons in life. Now, it’s not at a level of reading Emmanuel Kant’s philosophies, but it’s a game that can actually let you see different sides of the same situation, oftentimes forcing you to really look deep into situations and find the advantage in it, whereas most wouldn’t even bother trying to find a solution and just give up. The reality of the situation is that a lot of people out there stay stuck in their same negative patterns and only until much later in life they realize they pretty much put their life in the crapper. Poker is the same way, but on a smaller scale. You psych yourself by thinking you have a bad hand, but then you read about the Myth of the Bad Hand, and that little bit of information puts you over the top. See how important it is to sign up for the CasinoSmack email updates? Now you know.
If there’s one thing poker has taught me, besides the fact that strip poker is oftentimes prevalent in the Playboy Mansion, is that in order to understand people, you should first understand yourself. By looking closely at how you react to certain situations, you can often predict how others at your table may react as well. You can tell what their reactions stand for, what their countenance belies, by merely studying yourself. If you want to get a little more mumbo-jumbo on this topic, by observing other people you may even see parts of yourself, Carl Jung called it the “shadow”, a negative part of you that you don’t accept. This could give you an opportunity to realize that there are some aspects in your poker game that you know you need to change but for some reason you don’t accept that you should change them. Do you smoke, but only when playing poker? Carl Jung might call this some sort of repressed emotion bubbling up to the surface. Maybe it’s an oral fixation. Casinos are trying to ban smoking – what will you do then? Sometimes it’s hard to know what you need to know when you don’t know what you need to know in order to know what’s needed to know, you know?
Poker can also teach you critical analysis skills – you learn how to critically analyze situations and use your own decision-making skills to make the particular situation you’re in work out positively in your favor. You don’t have to be David Chiu in order to understand poker. You just need to learn how to manipulate the information you have in your head and make the situation you’re in into a win-win situation for you.
No matter how bad the situation you’re in, you have to learn something each time – there’s a lesson there to learn, no doubt about it, just really think about it and learn it! It’s on you whether or not you learn it. Are you a lazy slob? Unlazify Yourself™ and treasure those little golden-brown nuggets of data, stuff ‘em tight in your brain and don’t let ‘em go no matter what. If there’s anything The Stages of Poker Mastery teach us is that we’re all on the path, we just gotta keep going at it.
Even though by learning each time pretty much assures you can’t fail since you’re learning something, it’s not for sure that you won’t fail sometimes. Let’s say you drop $5267 on a hand of poker at Full Tilt Poker. You lose the pot. Well, what’d you learn? Sometimes, failure is a signal and also a challenge for us to continue our hard work – it can force us to continue putting forth effort in everything that we do. It doesn’t matter if you don’t play your hands perfectly or manage your betting patterns perfectly – the important thing is that you gave it your best shot and you have no regrets.
As we know, gambling in itself isn’t a bad thing. Don’t let some disappointments sidetrack your dream of poker and casino riches! Keep going strong with your dreams – keep that eye of the tiger – and couragously stand up at your poker table and scream out, “I WILL NOT BE DENIED!” No one can ever tell you when to stop – except yourself. Blaze your own path to success because it’ll never make it’s way for you. If the door of opportunity doesn’t open for you, bash that bastard in with your brass knuckles. Guess what buddy, don’t stop believing. Hold on to the feeling, streetlight people.
Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on
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Sometimes you have to lose to win.