The Importance of Emotion Control for Winning at Poker

Poker isn’t just a game based on luck. It is a confrontation of skills, won by the fittest. Although your luck plays a quite important role, quintessential for winning are your knowledge of the game, your skills and especially your ability to control your emotions.

Both your verbal and non-verbal language can reveal you unless you are careful enough as to keep it well hidden. If you’re not able to control yourself, your excellent poker skills won’t be of any help.

Emotional control when playing poker refers to a player’s ability of playing his hands without letting anything disturb his game. That means that a player who can control his emotions is perfectly capable of best playing his present hands without letting the excitement or the disappointment from his past hands interfere.

It is of great importance to learn from past hands, but do not let those experiences affect your game! What you must do though is look at your opponents and see if there are any betting patterns, or visible emotions that you can take advantage of. That is why you must avoid being on tilt and letting that affect you: do not lose your calm and do not become a “poker face”.