04.05.2024

What's the best way to desensitize yourself from higher stakes games and look at the chips as  . units, not money? It's a great question. You've identified a really important  . aspect of playing poker at higher stakes.  Funnily enough you know, it's the kind of thing  . that gets better with practice, however it can get worse over time, which is what I experienced. Because  . I went from you know, playing nosebleed stakes games online before I even spent any. money in the real world. And so part  of this is being young, but part of it is . you know, not having spent any money and like all of my friends not playing massive stakes and not  . having a lot of money. I was never scared  to lose it all at the beginning because. you know, it wasn't that long ago that I had no money and. I was perfectly happy, and all my friends  with no money are perfectly happy. And so like.

It didn'tand it wasn't impacting my  quality of life yet. Like the fact that I . had a lot of money at that point, like the only differencethis is like when I'm 21, 22,. you know the only difference in my life besides poker to a few years prior, is that like I would. not think twice about ordering food at night, otherwise my life was entirely the same. So . before you have kind of thebefore you start spending real money, I think it's kind of easy. to be desensitized to it and treat it as just  kind of units in a game that you're trying to grow.. Then after you know, well fast forward to  now and I have a house and a wife and a son and  . expenses in the real world, it actually  takes in some ways more effort. Even though  . I have played so much high stakes poker  that I'm somewhat desensitized to it but.

Still, if I'm playing big enough and I'm not being responsible enough with my bankroll decisions  . to the point where I'm playing something that's gonna have like an actual impact on. you know, my net worth and potentially my quality of life or like. an impact on what I can do in the next year or two, it can get kind of scary. And I think the. one way to work on it is to just have experience and practice it, another way. is when you find yourself in spots that feel scary, stopping before you make the kind of. instinctive or intuitive play which might be driven by emotion, and say okay am I feeling. that I shouldn't bet here because I'm scared? Or because I don't think it's the right play?. And then you decide you know hopefully you have that talk with yourself and you can figure out  . what you think the actual right play is. The  third way and the best way, is actually to.

Make sure that you're playing reasonable  stakes compared to your bankroll. And. I've talked about this in a previous video but essentially, it can be tempting to  . play bigger if you think you can beat the game, because then your hourly is higher and. you know, from there you can earn this much and then move up again and so on and so forth.. But what ends up happening in reality is you know, in the real world there's a lot of variance. and also in the real world the higher you  you play, the tougher the competition generally  . is, and especially if it's getting to a point where you're a little bit uncomfortable the worse . you're gonna play. And not only are you gonna play worse on your "A game" and your "B game" but,. your "C game" and your "D game" are gonna be much, much worse. And you're gonna be hitting those more often.

Because you're going to have a bad session, it's going to really impact you emotionally. and it's going to be harder to play at your best. And so what ends up happening is,. yeah in theory, in a perfect world, you have more expected value in that higher game but in practice. you're playing worse and then you go on a downswing.. You're miserable rather than just like you know, kind of annoyed if you're going on a downswing . at lower stakes. And then potentially you play a lot worse, or potentially you take a lot of time. off because you can't handle it emotionally. And now you're missing out on some of that  . like expected value that in your theoretically perfect world you were getting. So really the. best thing to do is to move down if you're feeling yourself be really uncomfortable with. those stakes. It probably means you're playing with too high a percentage of your bankroll. And.

The right percentage of your bankroll to play with is different for everybody, because. it depends on your life goals, it depends on your expenses, it depends on what games are available. to you and your win rate in each of those  games, and then it depends on how emotionally. fragile you get at certain stakes. And some people can handlewell some people to their. detriment can handle a ton of risk, but some people can handle like what you would call an. appropriate amount of risk. If you were to do like a bunch of math, like Kelly Criterion and. and figure out exactly like what you should be gambling with at a certain win rate but, others. you know you can do all that math and figure out what you theoretically should be playing with. but it's still too high for you, because  you're just not like emotionally able.

To handle it well. And again like it's  not even just about having those bad days. and then losing EV because you're playing badly or quitting, it's also about your quality of life. throughout all of this. I mean you're going to be playing pokerpresumably if you're asking this. you're playing you know, semiprofessionally or something, or professionally or maybe. aspiring to be one of those, so you're  going to be playing a lot of poker and. if it's a really stressful experience for you, and you know a third of the time you're on a. downswing that's really upsetting for you,  you're just gonna be an unhappy person. you know, a third of the time or more and that's gonna you know have an impact on a lot more than  . your bottom line and your bankroll. It's gonna impact everybody around you and it's gonna impact you.

know you, so ask yourself what's actually important, why are you actually playing in the first place  . and I think you'll find that if you're  playing in a way that you're not enjoying and. it's actually making you unhappy, you're not working towards your goals properly.