A few months ago, I wrote down a quote I heard from living-legend poker player Adrian Mateos. I don’t remember what it was from, but every time I see it in my notes, I think of what a powerful lesson it is.
This is what he said (presumably while crushing another poker tournament):
“I have to control my emotions even when they’re positive. I’m very happy right now but I have to play each hand the best I can”.
In poker, we talk a lot about the dark side of the game—the bad beats, the blowups, the tilt. But what about the times when things are going well? How do we optimize for those moments too?
There’s an old saying that goes “When do soldiers train? In times of peace,” which seems to be exactly what Mateos has figured out. That developing emotional resilience and learning to stay even-keeled doesn’t only happen in the heat of battle. It requires a consistency of practice through both dark times and light.
We’ve all seen it happen countless times. A player runs hot early in a tournament and suddenly they’re playing way too many hands. The same player who might have otherwise folded pocket tens to a three-bet is now calling all-ins with ace-jack because he’s “running hot.”
In a way, rage tilt is safer than success tilt. With the former, you can’t help but know that it’s happening. You can literally feel it in your body, surging through your veins, making your ears heat up.
But when you’re on a ‘sun run,’ all you feel is the light on your cheek and the growing conviction that there’s no risk you can’t afford to take. You start to play speculative hands that you know aren’t profitable because you expect to hit them anyways. And for a while, you might be right. But viewed from a wider perspective, what you’re really doing is negating good fortune with plays that lose chips in the long run.
Like the rest of us, that’s a lesson even a crusher like Mateos has no doubt been forced to learn: Poker has a way of humbling anyone who plays with too much emotion, regardless of whether it’s the good kind or the bad. The moment you let your hubris convince you that you’ve transcended that basic truth is exactly when it’ll come back to teach you otherwise.
But what I hear in Mateos’ quote is his practice of the good kind of detachment, the kind that actually keeps you fully present and alert. Rather than suppressing or avoiding his emotions, he’s letting them pass through without grabbing on. He knows that both joy and melancholy can be equally destructive to his game. That playing a hand with too much excitement can lead to his downfall, just as easily as one played with too much rage.
And if someone like Mateos, who has every reason to think he can loosen the slack on his emotional discipline, is still reminding himself not to get high on his own (ego) supply, it seems safe to say that you and I should make it a priority as well.
