Posts Tagged ‘Grant Levy’

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Ego and Variance

The most difficult thing about playing poker for a living, far more difficult than being good at cards, is dealing with the ups and downs. Although I’ve always ended up with a nice income at the end of the year, I have periods every year where it feels like nothing is going my way and I am losing tons of money. Even after experiencing them multiple times, I still find it difficult to keep a clear head during these “downswings”. This is probably due in part to the fact that for the last few years I have been playing ever higher stakes, meaning that each year brings the necessity of getting used to winning and losing larger sums.

Still, it surprises me a little that although I understand intellectually that poker is a game of the long run and that the results of a single day, week, or month don’t mean very much, emotionally I get stuck on these short-term results. After a good week, I feel like I am the greatest player ever. After a bad week, I often question all of my instincts and decisions, even though in both cases the cards probably contributed far more to the outcome than did my individual decisions.  Read the complete post...