The Warrior Spirit

Leonidas had that warrior spirit.

Don Juan was a Spanish badass that seduced women and then beat up their boyfriends.  Even though he’s fictional, he spoke these wise words:

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse.

That’s also the difference between a winning online poker player and a loser.  The winners see every setback as a challenge that they need to overcome.  If they lost a couple of buy-ins against an opponent, they’ll go back and analyze their hands.  They’ll figure out where they went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The losers think they lose because they got unlucky.  If they have a brutal session, they just say to themselves “the jerk got lucky”.    Now, sometimes they’re right.  Sometimes their opponent DOES get lucky.  But even if they did, they should still review their hands after a losing session.  You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.
I admit I haven’t always analyzed my hands after a losing session (shame on me).  But here’s what I found effective:

• Don’t tell yourself you’ll review those hands later – you’ll never do it
• You have to get in the habit of reviewing hands immediately after a session.  That doesn’t mean you have to review your hands for hours.  Just spend 5 minutes looking at questionable situations.  Hold’em Manager or PT3 let’s you conveniently sort by biggest losing pots

Do you have the warrior spirit or are you an ordinary man?

Originaly posted by Guzel @ http://www.anskypoker.com/