Do You Think the Worst Things That Can Happen Will Happen in Tournaments?

Steve1821

Steve1821

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
May 31, 2017
Total posts
76
Chips
0
Hi all, well tbh I do suffer from depression but I am a winning player in micro tournaments but just wondered if anyone suffers from anxiety from poker? Maybe it’s when you go deep in the tournament and your scared to make moves late on that you know you should be doing or even scared to enter a tournament as you been on a bad run or won the same tournament back to back and think your luck will run out now as we all know we need luck to win a tournament! From my experience there is all different types of anxiety in poker and it could be from a player who always seems to beat you in big pots ect so your scared of that player Now and this affects your game with him! Guess what I,am trying to ask is what is your anxiety in poker and most importantly of all how you deal with it?
 
blott

blott

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Total posts
246
Chips
0
If playing tourneys made me anxious I would find another pastime which I could enjoy.

Being anxious must be bad for your health.
 
R

Rational Madman

Legend
Platinum Level
Joined
Jan 11, 2017
Total posts
2,478
Chips
0
I used to be both severely anxious and depressed. The secret to fighting this is to first fight the anxiety.

Fighting depression is purely sleep-routine related and drug related. The issue is the the thing I fight my depression with is energy drinks but that increases anxiety (caffeine basically amplifies heart rate so if you're already anxious it will amplify that).

So, to deal with these there are 2 things I did:

1) I accept that there is always a sacrificed opportunity when a choice is made. You choose to date this chick, you give up dating other chicks or even meeting other chicks due to the time and loyalty to that one. You take one job offer, you've shut off other potentially better ones. I fully embrace this and learn that, like in poker, everything in life is a calculated risk. In accepting this, I learn to be MORE ANXIOUS OF THE COST OF NOT TAKING OPPORTUNITIES than of taking them. It's about balanced anxiety. Everyone is anxious unless they are very low IQ. You need to panic more about the decisions you don't take than the ones you make and this will drive you to make better decisions as you learn from the wrong ones so on and so forth.

2) To deal with depression the first step that helped me was having caffeine when I am supposed to be awake (energy drink Monster is my poison of choice) and this helped me so much in 'dropping asleep' hard and peacefully. Get a nice, healthy sleep pattern and you will find life becomes just so much more enjoyable it's literally hormonal. As for 'life is meaningless' yeah it really is but death is more meaningless so suicide is a bad trade-off.
 
A

AKbadboyAK

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Total posts
471
Chips
0
we have to be prepared for the worst or make some wrong decision.
 
P

ph_il

...
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 5, 2005
Total posts
10,128
Awards
1
Chips
25
Hi all, well tbh I do suffer from depression but I am a winning player in micro tournaments but just wondered if anyone suffers from anxiety from poker? Maybe it’s when you go deep in the tournament and your scared to make moves late on that you know you should be doing or even scared to enter a tournament as you been on a bad run or won the same tournament back to back and think your luck will run out now as we all know we need luck to win a tournament! From my experience there is all different types of anxiety in poker and it could be from a player who always seems to beat you in big pots ect so your scared of that player Now and this affects your game with him! Guess what I,am trying to ask is what is your anxiety in poker and most importantly of all how you deal with it?
Hey, I have depression and I'm also a winning micro-stakes MTT player!

To answer your question: No, I don't suffer any anxiety from MTTs because there is nothing about them that bother me. Here is something from a different thread on some of the main things players might fear while playing:

1. Losing a buy-in/money
It's impossible to play any game without the risk of your BR dipping down a bit. In MTTs, with higher variance than other games, seeing downswings in your BR is not uncommon and is to be expected. Good BRM is the best way to counter this. If losing buy-ins is scary, have a stricter BRM plan. 100 BIs for MTTs is pretty standard, but you can make it 150-200 if it's more comfortable.

2. Losing with a strong hand?
It's inevitable. No matter how much of a favorite your hand is preflop, if your opponent has some equity, they can beat your hand. Even 27 vs AA is winning 1/5 of the time. That's nothing to be afraid of as you can clearly see that AA is winning 4/5 of the time. You are never going to win every hand you play, but hands with better equity (favorites) preflop will win more often in the long run. Win more than you lose and you'll be fine.

3. Getting knocked out from a tournament?
Again, it's inevitable. While it does suck to sometimes play for hours and end up not having anything to show for it, you're going to bust out of MTTs a lot. Get used to it. A decent ITM% for decent MTT players is ~20%. This could be lower if players give up easy bubble cashes in exchange for deeper runs or it could be higher at the cost of a lower ROI%, but 20% is good. That means, 80% of the time you're busting without cashing at all. In 100 MTTs, you're only cashing in ~20 of them.

That's nothing to be afraid of if you have a good ROI, which comes from running deep and making final tables/winning MTTs. If your ITM is 20%, but you have a negative or break-even ROI, then you have some leaks in your game that need plugging. That's a completely different topic, but the main point is, you don't need to cash in every MTT to show a profit (because that's impossible), so don't fear busting out of a few MTTs.

Think of it this way: whoever your favorite MTT player is, they've busted out of more MTTs than they've cashed. They still do well because when they do cash deep, it makes up for those losses.

Everything ties together.

You're going to bust out of a number of MTTs as you play; possibly going on some pretty bad downswings, because variance. But if you're playing hands with good equity preflop and maximizing your value when your big hands hit/hold, then you'll find yourself running deep, where more profit is made. Remember, you only need 1 good, deep MTT run to negate the downswings. Having strict BRM helps you handle the downswings since you're only putting a small amount of your BR at risk each time.
 
Vlad symrak

Vlad symrak

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Nov 30, 2016
Total posts
418
Chips
0
Good motivation the game gives a strong and quick start, without it it's hard to start, but it is possible!
 
terryk

terryk

TheCanuckwithalltheluck
Bronze Level
Joined
Dec 14, 2016
Total posts
7,053
Awards
10
Chips
1
I played alot of sports as a young guy,i guess all those pressure situations helped me,because i feel nothing but excitment when playing($$$)i`m very lucky,I have a close friend who suffers from panic attacks(but never around me,he says i relax him:))i feel for those who suffer,it must be awful.
 
Ice Wolf

Ice Wolf

Legend
Bronze Level
Joined
Aug 9, 2008
Total posts
1,008
Awards
1
Chips
0
Lol what is this Murphy's Poker Law? I don't know the time frame your looking for but if you play long enough I am sure you will see just about everything there is to see, as far as bad beats are concerned, in a tournament.
 
Top