The Numbing Effect
Sometimes when you play poker, everything seems stacked against you. On the flip side, when things are going right, do they ever go right. When I started playing poker, I would get excited when I took down a $50 pot. Soon, I only got excited if I won a $100 pot. I still remember when I won a $329 pot in a 50 cent/$1 NL game at Partypoker. I just had to call my wife to tell her that I just won more in one pot than I could make in a day of working.
As I worked up the limits, the pots obviously grew larger and larger. My threshold for pain rose as the limits increased. Today, I do not bat an eye if the pot is under $500, and I certainly do not get excited unless the pot is over $1000. I played at the Venetian in Las Vegas in March 2007 and lost a $1900 pot to a terrible beat.
When my wife asked how I felt, my reaction was, “I got my money in as a 95% favorite. There was nothing else that I could do.” She could not understand how I could not be phased by losing a mortgage payment on one hand. “They are just chips”, I tried to explain. Still, the thought of losing even $100, makes her stomach churn. (She does give me credit for keeping a separate poker bankroll so I do not ACTUALLY lose the mortgage payment.)
Through my progression, my mind has numbed to the devastating beats that invariably happen in poker. You have to. It is part of the game that happens to everybody. If you do not think that the pros suck out every now and then, you need to watch this video:
Likewise, when I win a large pot, my mind is usually numb as well. In Doyle Brunson’s Super System book, he says that you have to think of the pot in terms of chips. If you assign them a dollar value, then you are probably playing in a game that is too large for your bankroll. This advice is so true. On the largest pot that I ever won (which was $1986), I had a numb mind. I viewed the pile of chips and contemplated the “work” I had to do to get them all stacked. Of course I was excited, but the excitement was gone when the next hand was in the air. I had more chips to win.