One thing I always tell people: Pain isn’t optional. But the suffering is.
There is no place where this applies more than poker — where as long as you choose to keep playing, there will be things that hurt really, really bad.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be miserable. The losing doesn’t have to eat at you. Experiencing pain does not have to make you whiny around your spouse, checked out with your kids, or secretly rooting against the success of people you like.
It’s pain, not a death sentence.
How do I know?
Because none of these things did this to you when you first started. When you first started, the losing stung, but it didn’t turn you into a version of yourself you’re humiliated to have become.
When being ‘serious’ starts hurting your poker
You were always fine to keep playing before. You still loved being a poker player. It hurt, but you learned, grew, and played on happily.
That's how you got that first wave of results. But then you got “good,” and they brainwashed you with all the bullshit advice on how to be 'serious' or 'professional' when it came to poker.
Systems, rules, accountability. Ways to "reframe" variance and winning and losing. Stuff that sounds smart and useful. But also stuff that blows up in your face once it inevitably kills off the part of you that’s able to just sit down, have fun, and play like a kid. Lose that, and you’re f**ked.
You stop discovering new stuff. Instead you become stiff and rigid and resort to copying what you see working for others.
You lose any and all capacity to make your own reads and pull the trigger on what feels right in each moment – the stuff that makes you the most money and keeps you in love with the game of poker.
If you’ve lost that, the bad news is it won’t get better until you make bringing it back the top priority in your poker game
How to learn to love poker again
If you’re still with me, there is great news. You don’t have to learn anything new. All you have to do is unlearn all the bullshit everyone around you has been shoving in your face and learn how to just play again.
The rest will take care of itself. Because you will be happy again at the table. When you’re happy, you play your best. When you play your best, you tend to win more.
And even if you don’t, and the cards are not in your favor, you’re still able to walk away from every session feeling completely at peace instead of having that dark cloud follow you home and everywhere else you go.
My opinion? If this isn’t how you operate, there’s no point.
There’s too much pain and suffering you will never be able to escape, and poker will simply torture you and make it impossible to enjoy your life until you either figure this part out or give up the dream.
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.
