Emotional Control

Poker is a game of decision making. Poker is a game of people. Poker is a game of instincts. And poker is a game of communication. Often strategy discussions seem to stop at the first part of the game - the decision making by use of rational analysis. Yet we humans do not base our decisions on rational analysis alone, even though we often think we do.

To a considerable degree we are the slaves of emotions that shape our decisions in various ways, often without us even noticing it. But before condemning emotions as the enemy of rationality, it is worth remembering why emotions have such a strong impact on our perception of reality that emotional reactions often override the cause of action proposed by the brain.

The fact of the matter is that the brain (the rational part of it) works too slowly too secure our survival. When you hear the sound of screaming tires rapidly approaching towards your location, you will find yourself jumping for cover before you have even become conscious about what is happening. If you don't follow your subconscious reactions you will likely be run over by a car in a split second! Likewise in poker - at times. If you have to wait for your brain to think through the situation, a valuable opportunity might be wasted. Hesitation is a deadly sin in this game.

We are capable of making subconscious decisions much more rapidly than we are of making decisions based on a rational analysis of the situation at the conscious level. And as in the example above it is worth stressing that our subconscious emotional reactions are usually perfectly reasonable, and sometimes even a matter of our survival.

Yet the problem is that what is a sensible reaction to an individual sensory input might easily run counter to the sensible reaction to another simultaneous input. Therefore, you must be able to sort through your emotional inputs utilizing those that improve your decision making and overriding those that run counter to what you are trying to achieve. But before you can do this, you must acknowledge the existence of your emotions and be consciously aware of them whenever they pop up. A good exercise in emotional control is to verbally tell yourself that you are angry, scared etc. (thereby consciously acknowledging your emotional state) and tell yourself that this is ok and actually a quite reasonable reaction to the situation at hand, and thereafter move your focus to avoiding the negative impacts the emotion in question tends to have on your decisions.

With time and practice you will start to know yourself better and you will start gain more faith in basing some decisions on emotional inputs. Often this is called a gut feeling - a very suitable term - as it takes a lot of guts to take a line of action without understanding why you do it. Cause most of what goes on at the subconscious level is of a nature that simply cannot be processed by our rationality. Poker is a game of instincts, and therefore you need to become friends with your emotions and subconscious gut feelings if you wish to utilize the full potential that you contain within yourself. You must learn to trust your subconscious decision making, you must realize that it is there and study when and how it is affecting your decision making.

Thanks to Leigh Lightfoot-Martin for proof reading this article.

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