I once knew this woman. She was a pro, and probably would book a win for 90% of her sessions.
Sounds great in theory.
And I can imagine her looking at her results. Feeling proud of winning 18 sessions in a row or whatever.
Except the way she got to this absurdly high success rate was that if she was losing, she would basically play until she was either completely out of all options to get more money or just couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.
At a certain point I lost count of how many times she played 70+ hours just so that she could leave without having to record a loss.
Meanwhile, if she was winning she was out of there pretty fast.
It didn't matter if the game was amazing and she was giving up huge amounts of money by leaving — it was just always more important to keep the streak going.
Clearly this is not a good way to live
For one, you make way less money overall.
And you end up spending the majority of your hours playing poker chasing your losses, and anytime you’re winning you’re just constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure you don’t lose the winnings and are unable to just enjoy winning.
It sounds dumb as hell when you read it. But people do it anyway, because they never learned one simple thing: To accept the emotional experience that comes with losing.
If you never learned how to accept these emotions, you will do anything and everything to avoid them at all costs — even if that means you knowingly cost yourself a great opportunity to score big in the perfect lineup, or take years off your life by playing for days at a time.
If you want to win as much as you can at all times?
You must have this skill. Learn it, and all of a sudden you magically start to leave when the situation isn’t in your favor, while sticking around to win all the money when it is.
More money, with way less stress.
I highly recommend it.
Jason Su is the author of The Joy of Poker and coaches many of the world’s top poker players on how to perform their best when it matters most.
Learn more with Jason on YouTube and through what some say is 'the best newsletter in poker,' which you can access for free at pokerwithpresence.com.
