Does moaning hurt your poker game?
Following Daniel Negreanu's comments about good players not whining, we look at how harmful complaining can be for your game.
Daniel Negreanu always gets people talking and last week in our interview with him, his views on Super High Rollers sparked a lot of attention on Twitter. Most notably his thought that a big commonality amongst all the players at the highest stakes is that they do not whine about bad luck:
What you see in those events besides the play is that there is less whining. There is more empowering conversation. There are more thoughts to changing the world, the problems we face in the world and what we can do to make this a better society. You are dealing with a group of people who have reached the pinnacle of poker and they have done so by not being whiners or complaining about bad luck. These are empowered people who are very emotionally intelligent and present. The Germans specifically see the world in a very different way. They don’t complain about results, they take responsibility for their own life, and that is a testament to what it takes to be effective and successful at the highest levels.
While the notion that the high rollers are changing the world from the poker table might be a stretch, there is something compelling about the idea that there is a correlation between success and not whining.
Poker is a game where moaning plays a big role, in the form of bad beat stories. This is a game where you literally can do everything right and still lose, so it is basic human nature that leads us to whine about bad luck.
Venting with bad beat stories
Most of us will say we moan as a way to vent. Losing to a one-outer causes a tension within us that would, if not released by moaning, manifest in more stressful ways further down the line.
Having said that, there is a growing body of research that suggests that venting about something actually makes you feel worse. Rather than being cathartic, it creates a self-perpetuating cycle. The more you moan about bad luck, the more likely you are to blame bad luck in the future. You are what you repeatedly do, and if you continue to moan about bad luck, you will form a self-image that you are an unlucky person.
The problem with whining about how life has dealt you a bad hand is that it is a very limiting belief. If you believe you are unlucky, you won’t be incentivised to work on your game, because what’s the point? If all you can do is criticise, you will not be in the mindset where you seek out solutions to problems. It’s easy to envision that Super High Rollers would think much more clearly and creatively when they don’t have these nagging voices in their head derailing their progress.
Positive thinking
This creates a chicken and egg dilemma. If Negreanu’s hypothesis is true, are the high stakes elite successful because they don’t moan, or do they not moan because they have a success orientated mindset?
Negreanu is a big believer in positive thinking. He would probably tell you that you can will yourself to stop whining and if you visualise yourself succeeding, it can lead to great things.
That is a wonderful viewpoint as long as this positive attitude is focussed on the things you have influence and control over. In a game like poker where variance and cognitive biases run amok, artificial optimism can be very dangerous. In the wrong hands, such delusion can lead to reckless gambling.
A healthy dose of pessimism
It’s hard to completely refute when you look at the opposite side of the coin. While it’s hard to argue that positivity alone will lead to success, it's much easier to see how negativity can prevent success. It’s hard to even get out of bed in the morning when you are an extreme pessimist, so achieving great things seems almost impossible
Like most things it’s a case of balance. In life those with a positive attitude probably get ahead, but a healthy dose of pessimism is needed to steady the ship.
So should we all make a point of resisting the urge to tell bad beat stories in the future? It’s very hard to say what impact it will have, but it does seem like a harmless self-experiment we could all do that doesn’t really have a downside. It’s almost impossible to never complain, but the sheer fact that you are trying could lead to surprising results.
You never hear anyone wish they could hear more bad beat stories, so if nothing else it will make you more enjoyable to be around.
Do you thinking moaning is harmful, or does it help you let off steam? Let us know in the comments.
