[Closed] Emotion and poker?

My goal is to make decision emotionless, but to have fun and enjoy the challenge. Having fun is part of positively motivating myself to continue playing the game.

optimal stress is needed,
if you stress too much, you end up being nit and pasive.
if you don't stress at all, you spew up money.

don't know if this has something to do with emotions

In terms of decisions every decision should be completely rational, therefore involving no emotion. But as YinYang said, that's not to say the game should be played emotionless, hell we have to have fun! But there's a difference between having fun playing the game and bringing your emotions into the decision making process. By definition emotions aren't rational, therefore decisions based on emotion will not be rational.

Just from my experience (and I play poker for about 6 years by now) and therefore imo emotions have a bad influence on your poker game. Since I'm an impulsive person myself I really had a hard time for years. Even if I consider myself highly poker educated I would say that emotions are the reason why I'm not as successfull as I wish to be.

Example:
happy about being that good (in terms of poker decission) lead to a more loose play (losing) because you always think you can play the flop better than others. Poker is a game of small edges and those marginal and merky spots are really really tough.

Having several downswings. -> lead to change of my game ( a mistake by the way) because you concerned about that you play wrong.

Taking revange on another player is really really bad too.

I probably could name you thousands of examples out of my experience, as a recommendation why emotion should be eliminated from one's game. So I fully agree with the authors of the book and imo you should strive for of beeing emotionless during a game/session/...

It took me years to achieve this goal in 95% of the time and it is actually running better since.

@Saruniks: I don't think optimal stress is needed. Since money should not actually be an issue at all. If you start thinking about money you invested either way you aren't making optimal poker decisions and that's what a winning player should aim for -> making as many right decision as possible.

Originally posted by TiTime
Just from my experience (and I play poker for about 6 years by now) and therefore imo emotions have a bad influence on your poker game. Since I'm an impulsive person myself I really had a hard time for years. Even if I consider myself highly poker educated I would say that emotions are the reason why I'm not as successfull as I wish to be.

Example:
happy about being that good (in terms of poker decission) lead to a more loose play (losing) because you always think you can play the flop better than others. Poker is a game of small edges and those marginal and merky spots are really really tough.

Having several downswings. -> lead to change of my game ( a mistake by the way) because you concerned about that you play wrong.

Taking revange on another player is really really bad too.

I probably could name you thousands of examples out of my experience, as a recommendation why emotion should be eliminated from one's game. So I fully agree with the authors of the book and imo you should strive for of beeing emotionless during a game/session/...

It took me years to achieve this goal in 95% of the time and it is actually running better since.

@Saruniks: I don't think optimal stress is needed. Since money should not actually be an issue at all. If you start thinking about money you invested either way you aren't making optimal poker decisions and that's what a winning player should aim for -> making as many right decision as possible.

well, just quated one sentence from article, dunno about that.