07 Jul 2025 Intermediate This material is for medium-skilled players bad beats downswing mindset motivation variance Every regular poker player knows the feeling of helplessness: you study, take notes, analyze hands, try to play correctly, but no matter what you do, you only lose money. You build big pots with a confident edge in equity, but still end up in the red. In medium pots, things don't go well either. Small pots are a whole other story. No matter how you do it, you should be able to get through it with minimal losses and ultimately become stronger. Popular poker coach James «SplitSuit» Sweeney will tell you exactly how to do this. Further text is in his words. A common problem in unsuccessful periods of the game In my training Discord channel, a subscriber asked a question that many of you also ask: I've looked at the top 30 spots over the last 25,000 hands and I run $600-$700 below EV - what I should have . And I can't do anything about it. So basically, I'm playing well but I'm unlucky. I know I'm unlucky but I can't shake the negative thinking that comes with constantly losing despite playing well. What should I do? First, know that you're not alone in this - that's the most important thing. Anyone who's played even a few thousand hands of poker has been in exactly this same situation. A typical situation in such periods looks like this: you look for problems in the game, watch big pots as the most memorable, find out there that, as a rule, you invest money with a big advantage in equity, but in the end, opponents pull their draws or catch a pair to an overcard on the river in a huge 3-bet pot. You start to think that if you had not hit such and such a spot, if you had knocked out your opponent in another with a larger bet, and so on - the main thing is not letting him see the cards - you would not have let him hit his out, and the win rate would have been amazing. What can I say here? Banal: this is poker, and variance is in its nature. It has many ugly manifestations that constantly hit those who play a lot and therefore see clusters of such situations in a short sample. This negativity sticks in the memory, the player has natural questions and indignation, but he does not know how to influence how the cards are dealt. All professionals and serious regulars face this throughout their career. And the same awaits you, even if you just continue to play - you will not be able to avoid variance. Therefore, you should accept this as soon as possible and understand it as a given, and then work on strengthening your mindset. Mindset is the foundation of long-term poker success All poker decisions are made based on both strategy and the current mindset («mental» / way of thinking / whatever you call it). If you consistently invest money in the right way, then the strategy is probably fine, but when you start losing serially, the «mental» is hurt in any case. We are humans, we have emotions, self-esteem, sometimes - a thirst for revenge, and so on. A lopsided mindset soon begins to affect the strategy: the player begins to play too loosely and fearlessly, bluff and outplay and squander chips in all sorts of ways. Okay, if a significant tilt occurs occasionally and at the same time you immediately slow down the game or play adequately even if angry, then this is one thing. But it is quite another when you constantly deviate from the A-game due to overwhelming emotions. This is not good. For long-term success in poker, you need to have all 3 components: And a good strategy that shows profit when properly executed, And a stable mindset + control of emotions, And a bankroll as a safety margin. In this article, we will not delve into improving your personal psychology. I recommend that you study the literature on self-management and tilt. For example, the books of Jared Tendler and others. Unlike poker techniques, tactics and strategies, which sometimes become outdated, the human psyche remains approximately the same as a biological species. Therefore, the advice in such books will be relevant today, even if the books are many years old. And develop in yourself such a quality as stoicism - you will definitely need it in our super-volatile business. How to Deal with Downswings and Improve Your Game Since you didn't come here to hear me say something cliche like «Bad things happen in poker sometimes», here's some practical advice. If long, deep drawdowns are a regular occurrence for you, or you're currently on a downswing, take note of the following. #1. Make sure you're playing well in general If you're consistently playing big pots with hands that are good for them and putting in money with an equity edge, but you're losing... - Okay, it happens to everyone. However, most poker situations are played in much smaller pots. Due to human perception, we don't really remember them, but they often have a much higher influence on your overall win rate or lose rate - due to their number. Than the pots we remember - due to their size. Therefore, you can't just say that you are losing purely because you are not winning in big pots - Are you sure about the other pots? To tell the truth, we don't always win in big pots because we play correctly. It happens that we were «wrong» the whole hand, and on the river we get it and we cool the opponent. Or when we get all-in against an aggressive fish, having a second pair, and then we badbeat him. - This happens both ways, and as I noted above, it is deeply etched in the memory. What distinguishes good pros from the mediocre majority? A lot. - First of all, they are focused on the quality of their game. What does this mean? I will explain using the example of analyzing hands. Let's say a player lost a stack with some strong hand. A mediocre player will look at it superficially, see that he got a flush, but got hit by a flush higher than his own - like, well, that was a cooler, I was unlucky there. But a good player will often see and admit that perhaps he should not have been in that spot at all - starting with his hand choice at the preflop stage, then on the flop, and so on. He will also consider the action that took place in the hand - what if he should not have continued to that big bet for two with his FD, and at that, a low one, and in a sandwich? So not every cooler or suck-out is solely due to variance. The player makes the decisions himself, and he should always start with himself. #2. Stop thinking you're cursed This is an extremely damaging and dangerous way of thinking that can quickly set you on a huge downward spiral. The problem is that you can stop thinking deeply and carefully about a hand's situation because... «What's the point in thinking about all this stuff if I'm meant to lose anyway?!» Once you start to experience this type of tilt, you'll soon start to think less and less about the game, => the quality of your decisions will get worse, => you'll make more and more mistakes, => more and more serious ones, => your win rates and $/hour will drop, => the consequences are up to you. This will end badly for you. After a while, you may even reach a point of painful self-deprecation. Like «I wonder how I'm going to lose money this time?» This prevents you from playing correctly, adequately and wisely, trying to make the best decisions. Soon you'll stop thinking about how you can win the pot altogether - you'll be focused solely on the next loss and how to get there. Losing always sucks, and in poker it sometimes happens in batches, in piles of lost pots, playing multiple tables at once, and over a long period of time. Many of the lost pots were played out perfectly, and when that happens it's hard not to cry out for universal justice. However, if you start thinking that you're cursed (and get used to that thinking!), I assure you, you'll end up playing very badly very quickly. (shaking his head) Losing is incomparably easier than winning, as is sliding down under the influence of a kind of gravity. It will slip in a way that you don’t even suspect. The strategy will start to tilt, and then completely fall apart, dragging the mental game down with it like a snowball. One small mistake in the strategy will already plant small doubts in yourself regarding the mindset, => more serious mistakes in the strategy will follow, => a stronger tilt in the mental game, => and so on until a very quick end. You will lose your bankroll and the rest of your self-confidence in less than a week. #3. Keep a journal of your emotions And what they lead to. And the other way around - the journal is the same, but the thoughts are different. Generally speaking, tilt is caused by predictable reasons and causes predictable problems. Once you start keeping a journal, really focus on two things: Write down everything that makes you tilt, as well as the reasons why it is illogical that they affect you so much. - Thinking through and working on them, over time you will establish deep in your brain that there are no direct reasons why such and such an emotion ruined your game. And then you need to gain an understanding of how different types of tilt manifest themselves in your game. It is important to have both points: many players are aware of what emotions or events bring them closer to tilt, but at the same time do not yet understand how exactly such and such tilt manifests itself in the game, as well as what exactly is happening with their strategy and their mindset. - In real time. Keeping a journal brings many benefits. First of all, it Helps the player to quickly understand what triggers they have and which of them lead to what, In general, highlights everything that brings trouble both in the mindset and in strategy, Allows you to start paying attention to certain areas - both in real time and to be sure that you are already observing those things that have a detrimental effect on you, Helps you notice at the slightest sign (and even before they start happening), And between sessions - it becomes much easier to strengthen your awareness and form a self-correcting stable mindset. In an ideal world, we would like tilt to not happen to us, but we are living people, we have emotions, and they need to be directed in the right direction through self-improvement. Carve out of your marble block an ideal version of yourself, where each blow on the chisel is another act of working with the diary (and on yourself in general). Even if we fail to smooth out emotions to zero, we will still make the game much easier for ourselves by strengthening the mindset, which will inevitably happen in the process. Our goal during the session is to make the most positive decisions; and for this, the minimal influence of emotions on their adoption is enough. And this level is not so difficult to achieve. #4. Remember that some weaknesses in the mindset have a physical solution Often we acquire a bad emotional background and poor perception for purely physiological reasons or because of negativity in life matters. This can be insufficiently long or good sleep, poor nutrition, a critical lack of physical exercise, as a result of which the blood does not circulate well and quickly enough, it is not of the most optimal composition, and also if the brain simply has not rebooted in terms of emotions. It is in your interests to take the best care of your biological machine. And you yourself are aware of the fact that you should not play poker for serious purposes if something in life is currently burdening you. Summing up Even if there is no «silver bullet» that would kill all the inconveniences and problems at once, we still have the power to influence a lot in poker. That's right. There are many uncontrollable events here, generated by chance and combinations of cases. However, we should not care too much about this. Our task is to be responsible for ourselves and to make sure that we are the source of our results over the long term. It would seem that one strategy should be enough for success, but this would be true if we were bots (and played for play money). But as a rule, all of us have emotions that somehow manifest themselves in the game, cast a shadow on our mindset, worsen the quality of thinking and cloud perception. That is, emotions directly affect decision-making: anger, resentment, thirst for revenge, ... fear, depression and other negative feelings make us a much worse player in the moment than we would like. However, as we Either learn to suppress them right in the bud, Or reduce their size and way of manifestation, Or get used to playing well and adequately right with them ... , We begin to execute our strategy in a much closer way to the intended one. Then our strategy gives about the very profit that it should. And finally, it is always worth checking - how good is your strategy in general.
