Wounded in battle
September 8, 2008
There are some times in poker where you will be hit hard by an opponent. For example, if you bet three fourths of your chips and then you end up losing them to a five card combination while you only had a triplet. If you have triplets then there should have been some level of confidence in you although you were still knocked out. The deepest wounds in poker are those where you fought valiantly. These are the wounds that were caused by thinking that you had something but someone had something better. In poker, what is important is to get up from your fall and to fight back. Your wounds will heal later on but what is important is that you fight back and get up.
What are the ways where you can fight back from a big fall? One of the things that you should keep in mind is not to steam up. What do I mean by this? When you steam up after a fall in battle, you are emotional and you are enraged. You are like a train that is going at full speed. You will feel like you want to take out everyone. In this state of mind, you are almost irrational. All you are thinking about will not help you get back into the match. When you are steaming, you have tendencies to go all in on really strange hands. Even if you have a three and a nine that are off suit, you might even go all in. At this point, your wounds are so deep that you may not even feel like winning anymore. Yet this is not the attitude that you should be taking. You should be willing to fight until you are knocked out. When you suffer a huge wound in battle, do not steam up, do not get angry, and do not do irrational things. Just calm down and accept the wound and the blow as it is. Give it some time so that you can return to normal.
Another thing that you should keep in mind is to try to get back in the game. You are not yet out and you still have a chance to get back in. How should you get back in the game? After your big blow or your big wound in battle, you have to make sure that you are aggressive enough to get back your chips. If you are overly aggressive or if you are steaming then you might end up losing all your chips. You need to have the right amount of aggressiveness when you are playing poker after a big blow. You can not be cruising like the chip leader and you can not be just a little bit off the edge like the normal players. You are catching up. You are trying to get back in the game. You have to do everything in your power to catch up in terms of chip count or else you will be history soon. If the blinds are getting pretty big already, you better make your move fast.