The hand is over... but why does it keep playing in our heads? 🤯♠️

Say a bunch! Good afternoon, as they are, ♠️♦️♥️♣️



There's one thing about poker that I find curious.

Sometimes the hand is over, the tournament goes on, the table turns... but that move is still there, hammering in our heads .

It's amazing how a hand lasts a few minutes... and can occupy the mind for hours 😂

Sometimes it wasn't even the worst bad beat in the world.

It wasn't even a gigantic pot.

But for some reason that hand sticks.

You keep remembering the call.

From the fold.

Do all-in.

or “what if I had done it differently?”

And the funniest thing is that, many times, pain doesn't come just from losing.

Sometimes we lose doing everything right.

And yet the brain insists on opening the same hand about 37 times , as if the 38th was going to change the river 🤡

I think one of the most difficult parts of poker isn't just understanding odds, ranges, or variance.

It's learning to live with hands that end up on the table... but keep playing inside our heads.

And maybe that's precisely where a lot of people lose more chips later.

Because a mentally ill-resolved hand usually causes another crooked decision soon after.

Just yesterday, I was thinking for hours that I could have done something different...





Now I was curious:

What type of hand usually hammers the most on your head?

• when does it dominate?
• when do you take Bad Beat?
• when does it make a wrong reading?
• or when you feel you could have played better?

Can you forget quickly... or do you carry your hand with you for the rest of the session? 😅



GL on the tables... and on the head too.

Suffering begins when you expect complete control over an incomplete game.

It stays there because you let it remain in your mind. This advice I give beginning shooters applies to poker as well.

"Once you’ve fired a shot, it is over and done so forget about it. Concentrate on the shot you are taking now."

Your concentration needs to be on what will be, and not on what was. There will be plenty of time after the tournament/session to work out what you might have done correctly or wrongly. At the moment you need to focus on the hand that you are in.

The hands that stay in my head the longest usually aren’t the bad beats… it’s the spots where I know I misplayed something

Like when I later realize it makes zero sense. A bad beat hurts for a few minutes because variance is variance. But punting chips because of ego, tilt, or impatience follows me all session, sometimes a couple days. The brain keeps trying to fix a hand that is already in the past and will not come back (maybe in the future in a similar spot, but never the same situation).

The deck has no memory, let's go ahead with our heads in feet gl all

austral said:

O sofrimento começa quando você espera ter controle total sobre um jogo incompleto.

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Concórdia. I think the tricky part is precisely that feeling that you could control everything. Do you tend to suffer more when you lose playing the right game... or when you feel like it was your mistake?

Emily Trott said:

A imagem permanece lá porque você a deixa ficar na sua mente. Esse conselho que dou aos atiradores iniciantes também se aplica ao pôquer.

" Depois de disparar um tiro , acabou, então esqueça. Concentre-se no tiro que você vai dar agora."

Sua concentração precisa estar no que será , e não no que foi . Haverá bastante tempo após o torneio/sessão para analisar o que você fez certo ou errado. No momento, você precisa se concentrar na mão em que está.

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I really liked that 'the hand is gone, now it's the next shot'. It doesn't seem like a simple theory... in practice sometimes the head insists on asking for a replay 😅

Have you been able to learn this over time or have you always had that control?

rhoudini said:

As mãos que ficam na minha cabeça por mais tempo geralmente não são as bad beats… são os momentos em que sei que toquei mal em alguma coisa.

É como quando eu percebo depois que não faz o menor sentido. Uma bad beat dói por alguns minutos porque variância é variância. Mas perder fichas por causa de ego, tilt ou impaciência me acompanha durante toda a sessão, às vezes por alguns dias. O cérebro fica tentando consertar uma mão que já é passado e não vai voltar (talvez no futuro em uma situação parecida, mas nunca na mesma).

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That's exactly it. Bad beat bothers, but the mistake itself seems to stick more. I think the ego weighs a lot at these times.
What was the last hand you made to think 'I gave this one for free'?

TCeNTuRioN said:

O baralho não tem memória, vamos em frente com a cabeça nos pés, boa sorte a todos.

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Good. The deck doesn't really hold a memory... we're the one who guards it 😂 And sometimes that's the problem.

Can you turn the switch around quickly, or are you still left one or two orbits rumbling around?

Curious how almost everyone remembers the badly played hand more than the bad beat.
Would you do more to lose money... or would you realize that you delivered an EV? I want to hear more stories 😅