Confidence and optimism

Sky_Poker

Interesting one to discuss...

In sport, for example, you will see a manager say something like 'we're feeling positive at the moment the boys are playing with a lot of confidence'

Do you think that being confident and / or optimistic helps your poker results in the long-run or is there a flip side?

alex1229

Confidence is good, Cockyness is bad

MrWh1te

absolutely

confidence breeds bets and aggressiveness

lack of confidence leads to more check/calls rather than raises, people start catching cards against you and you lose more (an underrealised form of tilt actually)

jordz16

I think when you get to the stage where you play poker with no emotion at all then you tend to play better...

but its better to be confident than scared.

oynutter

I always have the total confidence of a tournament winner, because I won one, and I only ever lose by bad luck

Lambert180

Yeah over-confidence can be bad but I think confidence is really important.

That's why it can be such a streaky game at times like when people go long dry patches in MTTs, then a few deep runs and starting winning them right, left and centre for a bit. Obv variance is involved there too but I also think the confidence of having some strong results under your belt recently really helps.

hagisboy

Confidence goes hand in hand with results and tilt control imo.

We all been there when suffering adversely from varience, confidence goes down and you play more passively as you 'know' that 3 outer is coming