How to Deal with Downswings in Online Poker? Are you an online poker player? Have you ever faced downswings in poker? A poker downswing occurs when your losses are more than your winnings. The key reasons behind these are bad beat, financial crisis, rough playing style, excess drinking, personal frustration, etc. If you have been facing poker downswings quite frequently, then try the following tips to deal with them:
Take a Break and Release your Frustration
If you have been facing frequent downswings in poker, then it’s definitely the time to take a break from the game. For instance, you can go for a week-long holiday to release your frustration. This will help you start afresh and get your game back on track. Basically, you can try things that will help you wash off the emotional grime bad runs pile on your psyche; it can be anything like strenuous exercise, dance classes, reading sessions, etc.
Be Action Oriented
In the game of poker, you have to be more action oriented and less result oriented to overcome downswings and become a long-run winning player. You need to work on improving your game play instead of concentrating on winnings. In other words, you should try to maximize your potential in every hand you play instead of playing bad and running bad to make money. Moreover, you should maintain a positive attitude and always play your best game at all times.
Avoid Radical Changes to Your Game
As a poker player, you should not make constant changes to your game play at times of bad beats or bad run of cards. You should not look for ‘quick-fix’ solutions to transform your poker losings into winnings. These minor ‘quick-fixes’ impact your overall poker playing style, i.e, these radical changes fail to enhance your game playing style and rarely help to battle the poker downswings. That’s why, the more radical the change, the higher the impact of that change.
Recognize Failure as Opportunity
Downfalls happen to every poker player, and the strength and patience to outshine these downfalls to achieve your poker goals. Suppose you faced bad beat twice in 10 days. Now your test is to kick around and strive to not tilt. You may get tilted in first bad beat but you should learn to outplay the next one. Tilt control helps you make better decisions and earn more profits than your opponents, i.e, while playing poker, you could come across an opponent on the table who would tilt and loose money and that money fills pockets of other players who know how to overcome tilt and continue to play artfully.
Realize Break-Even Point
Every poker player has a break-even point where he/she needs to quit the game. That is, a point of time when you need to decide whether to play further or not with the available money. Thus, you should be aware of your playing limits in order to prevent downswings to occur. And, if you are facing frequent bad runs, you should quit, take a break and play later with a fresh mind.
