Are You Your Worst Poker Opponent?

We all have been in a situation where knowing what’s good for us, we do exactly what is not good: knowing we will suffer the consequences, we do it anyway. Sound familiar? What happens when this behavior becomes a distasteful habit in your life and when you discover that a passion for poker prevents you from enjoying the game? Well, you can get into a destructive cycle that ultimately can not only destroy your love for poker but also your love for life.

Self-Sabotage

Constantly sabotaging our chances for happiness or success could derive from a psychological condition called Self-defeating Personality Disorder. According to psychology experts this disorder can manifest itself in early adulthood and it consists of avoiding or undermining pleasurable experiences, being drawn to situations or relationships that will cause harm, and preventing others from reaching out to help.

People who suffer from Self-defeating Personality Disorder usually are those who woulda, coulda, should but didn’t, and they usually act in any or some of the manners described below:

• Choosing people and situations that lead to disappointment, failure, or mistreatment even when better options are clearly available.




• Rejecting or rendering ineffective the attempts of others to help him or her.




• Responding with depression, guilt, or a behavior that produces pain after experiencing positive personal events (e.g., new achievements).




• Inciting angry or rejecting responses from others and then feels hurt, defeated, or humiliated (e.g., making fun of spouse in public, provoking an angry retort, then feeling devastated).


• Rejecting opportunities for pleasure, or reluctance to enjoying themselves (despite having adequate social skills and the capacity for pleasure).




• Failing to accomplish tasks crucial to their personal objectives despite demonstrated ability to do so (e.g., helping fellow students write papers, but being unable to write their own).




• Indifference or rejection of people who consistently treat them well (e.g., Failing to feeling attraction towards caring sexual partners).




• Engage in excessive self-sacrifice that is unsolicited by the intended recipients of the sacrifice.

According to psychologist and professor Jay Pope, there are several possible causes of this kind of disorder. For psychoanalysts, it originates in childhood, from excessive demands imposed by parents, which make the child develop a compulsive and fear-driven predisposition to abuse from failing to reach parental standards. For object relations theorists, it stems from needy parents that cover their possessive feelings with messages like “You can be whatever you want…but please don’t ever move away,” as stated by Pope; children manipulated in this way will feel torn apart when opportunities come their way. For family therapists, this behavior is created in complex family patterns in which independence is seen as a threat to family stability, and consequently, the child grows up feeling guilt for his or her own individualism. For behaviorists, it is a result from experiences in which the child learns to get rewards or attention from playing dependent or helpless roles, like the people who get sick for attention. For cognitive therapists, it stems from faulty thoughts of self-worthlessness, which undermines the natural exploration of self-confidence.

Pope says self-sabotage disorder can very well be triggered by putting others before us and not by self-hatred. This is a common phenomenon, especially in a culture which originated from Christianity, which teaches to think of everybody else before thinking of yourself. Pope also blames the standards of success available today: some people have accepted ideas of success from the media that do not correspond to their ability or ambition and feel forced to adapt to a mold or else live with a failure label on their foreheads.

According to author Leslie Siegel, “We sabotage ourselves because we have a mixture of neurological associations; we associate possible outcomes with fear.”

In poker, self-sabotage can manifest in different ways, but its usual outcome is losing chronically. According to player and author Art Santella, some players are simply afraid of winning, turning to failure just before achieving success. Santella talks about a common problem in poker playing, the need for action. Some players may not be able to withdraw themselves from a useless game or from a bad hand risk, even if that means losing all their bankroll and missing important lessons as a consequence. If this pattern becomes a compulsive habit, it can very well transform into a poker addiction that may lead to more losses than wins in the long run.

Santella also admits that poker is a game that often feeds off compulsive habits: “With some is a craving for action, with some it's a craving for winning, and I think there is a third group who craves the challenge.” He adds that there is a possibility that top poker players suffer from a type of compulsion that is responsible for their continuous success.

Self-defeating behavior can be treated with therapy in severe cases, and for minor but damaging occurrences there are useful tips that can be practiced to control it.

Stay active. Do not succumb to the fear of possibility. According to Pope, “passivity in any form (M. Scott Peck called it ‘laziness’) seems to be one of the worst of human ills. While we cannot do our best all the time (nor should we, necessarily) it is beautiful when we do our best at something.”

Build healthy habits. If you are experiencing chronic losses and a compulsion for action, Santella recommends taking a break from poker until the urges go away. Then, before going back to it, make the conscious choice of learning to be selective of games and hands and limit yourself to playing only a certain amount of hours per week. Slowly start your playing again and constantly monitor your feelings and actions, focusing on winning and not just playing.

Be honest. Determine from which cause your behavior has originated, and try to catch yourself when acting self-destructively and talk to yourself about why the feeling needs to stop, replacing it with a proud feeling about your self-worth and confidence.

Be selfish. Recognize what independence and selfishness mean to you and establish border lines for both in your life. Claim your own time and life and consider that by caring for yourself, you consequently care for others. Give yourself permission to be selfish. 

Be good to yourself. Emphasize your self-pride by doing things for yourself that make you feel proud and confident, and reward yourself (with getting a massage, going for a trip, anything you truly enjoy and never have time to do). This will make right thinking ok in your psyche and you will slowly detach from self-destructiveness.