Aballinamion
Dark Lord of the Sith
Bronze Level
Yes, they are. But how to develop these skills is the main factor. How to have peace of mind when your hands start to break after one thousand hands played, villains almost always hitting a couple of outs on the river, how do we have patience?
We gotta be cold as if we were in a war field, bullets flying around and bombs exploding, how to be calm?
We gotta face a poker table as a battlefield: we should consider that we are already dead and not expecting to live behind the fences or under the trenchers.
It is easy to say, but we must practice this action of not caring about if we win or if we lose, if we are dealt AA or 72o, if we have a quads and got coolered by a straight flush:
We must care only about looking for the best move in given scenario and let the chips fall.
The worst enemy of patience and self control is our ego, which obliterates the passage for understanding and knowledge, the ego (self) keep ourselves locked up into a cage, and we cannot accept reality as it is.
We are addicted to our way of being and acting and we despise changes. Thus it becomes harder to achieve this prime goal of having patience, like a monk meditating upon the high mountain top.
To drink water, control our breathing, organize our poker play with love as if we are running some company, or making a job to somebody else.
We must love to study and to apprehend, we must love poker in a way that we don’t care about what is really happening: we planned and organized things before they happen, we have bankroll which is the main key for mental health in poker, we have been studying and analyzing hands, we have accepted that we are not so good as we think we are, and more than that, we don’t want to be good, we don’t want to show to anyone, even ourselves that we might be profitable at the tables.
Concentration in the game is another key to patience, as you said is paramount for a good and healthy gameplay, and we get focused playing with no distractions or disturbance around, no television, cell phone, tablet, music device, people around, kids, wife/husband, brothers and sisters, friends: we are working and we need focus, so we eliminate anyone and anything around, because having focus we can act like a warrior and fight our battle at the tables peacefully, getting ourselves in the path of patience and self control.
MishkaZL
Legend
Platinum Level
I agree with you. The emotional and psychological state of the player plays a very important role. Calm and focused players will always have an advantage over nervous and distracted ones.
...it all depends on the way you feel in that day