How to move on from making mistakes?
If I make a bad play that I should have known better to play differently, and even more if lost money from it I can't stop thinking about it and being annoyed at myself. Any advice?
7 Replies
If it is the deck being unkind, let it go. It happens. The rest comes down to discipline e.g. finding folds vs. paying off despite knowing we are likely behind. I struggle with discipline as well.
If I make a bad play that I should have known better to play differently, and even more if lost money from it I can't stop thinking about it and being annoyed at myself. Any advice?
Take a break and let it be a lesson for you in the future (i believe this is the reason we are made to remember bad painful experiences by evolution)
I like to think about mistakes as something that is "baked" in to my winrate. If I made no mistakes I would be a xxbb/100 crusher, but since no one is perfect we likely are xbb/100 winners at best. You will never be perfect but you can/will make less mistakes on average vs other regs and recs, and that's most important. If you never made mistakes, poker would be easy. Would you be proud of yourself as a good poker player if it was impossible to make mistakes?
Invert it. Bad play = valuable lesson. Mark it, then park it mentally in your mind as an extremely valuable piece of gold to unravel later in the saftey of your lair. A shiny nugget from deep in the mine of WAR full of sparkling future EV for you to unravel and unpick. Later, squint and you can even see all the little bits of EV flying off from under your rock hammer into the giant equity bucket as you chip away into the lonesome night.
To reprogam your thoughts replay the hand another day and test yourself. OR take drugs.
I think the first step should be to accept that mistakes are inevitable. Especially if you want to progress, learn and apply new things. It's impossible to improve without making mistakes.
Now, if you keep making the same mistakes all the time, first thing to do is be kind with yourself, work with your inner dialogue. Based on your post I imagine you're probably quite harsh to yourself when you realize you made a mistake. So try and rephrase that dialogue and be kinder. This way you'll have more mental energy to figure out what's happening?
Then analyze why do these mistakes happen:
- Is it lack of knowledge? If so, that's fine. We can never know everything in poker, we get better day by day and you'll slowly learn the spots.
- Is it a mental game issue? Such as getting attached to results, not wanting to give up resources? Is it just autopilot? Is it tilt?
There's different ways you can work with each of these things, but first you need to figure out what's going on inside of you that make you repeat the same mistakes. Do this with patience and kindness though, not berating yourself for it.
You pragmatically and honestly look at where you suck and improve those areas.
All great advice. Ty everyone