An Experiment in Decision-Oriented Thinking - Courtney Gee

Long time no blog for me! The last time I wrote, I mentioned that I was about to start playing poker again for the first time in a month. Getting back to the grind has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.
I was pretty rusty when I started playing again in January. I started off at lower stakes and with less tables, but it was still really difficult! I was surprised that a break of just one month made that much of a difference.
While I certainly punted more than a few stacks shaking the rust off, I have also been running quite badly so far this year. You probably already know that losing day after day at poker isn’t very fun marked poker, so I haven’t exactly been in high spirits the last few weeks.
You always hear people claiming that in order to be a good poker player, you have to learn not to care about your losses. That if your bankroll is large enough, you shouldn’t worry about downswings because you should always have enough money to play through the variance.
I, myself, stand by these statements.
Just because I say it, though, doesn’t mean I take my own advice. Honestly, it’s REALLY hard to not care about losing money day after day.
The thing with me is that the actual money doesn’t matter much. This is because my bankroll management is very sound. It really comes down to the fact that I hate losing. Money is a way to keep score, so seeing losses over and over again is quite discouraging.
Blah blah blah, right? Downswings are standard. Everyone loses. I just have to keep learning how to deal with it better.

The Experiment

I think it might help me to stop “keeping score” for a while. Keeping track of account balances and bankroll funds can be important when it comes to moving up and down in stakes, but aside from that, I can’t think of any additional benefits. I don’t plan on drastically changing stakes anytime soon, so I can safely ignore my bankroll for the time being.
I’m going to try just playing online poker while ignoring my wins and losses for a week. I’ll focus on playing well, and as long as I’m doing that, it doesn’t matter what the score is.
If I run bad and still feel extremely tilted even without knowing how much money I have lost, then perhaps the root of my tilt problems is somewhere else. Running the experiment will at least help me rule this one element out.
I made up this experiment as I wrote this blog post! I think it’s an interesting idea for me, though, so I’ll definitely try it. It will be an exercise in discipline, too, because I always check my results at least once a day (usually twice). I hope that I will be able to resist checking for a week!
The next time I write, I’ll let you know how the experiment ended up (and how long it lasted… hopefully for a week and not just half a day).
Until then, good luck at the tables!