Social media has become a primary form of communication in the poker community. I actually think I was one of the first to use Twitter for this. A friend told me about this “new technology” and how I could use it to keep my friends, family and investors updated on what I was playing and how I was doing. I no longer had to manage group texts and deal with the one-off person who would text “How’s it going?”
The Twitter poker boom didn’t have anything to do with me by any means, but it boomed worldwide and I remember the Twitter servers crashing during the World Series of Poker the next summer because the poker world had caught on.
However, there are a few negatives, and I’m going to be more cognizant of these issues.
The most important is the inevitable “bustout tweet.” We’re going to bust at some point of almost every tournament we play. This tweet is always negative at some level and many times extreme. It’s a bad beat, cooler, bad play or whatever it is, it has to be negative.
We are out of the tournament. No matter how far we made it, if it’s a bust hand, it just sucks. This is bad for our mind-set and often comes across as whining. Whether we are upset or not, it’s a reinforcement of something negative for us and typically for a family member, friend, investor or fan. Many times, this results in the player (you) or even someone else on Twitter or Facebook berating the villain in the hand. Something even worse for your mind-set is someone may berate you about it.
When you come across someone else’s bustout tweet, it’s almost always just a way to send a mass bad-beat story and none of us needs to spend our time destroying our mind-set reading about everyone else’s misfortunes.
Your bustout hand is almost always completely irrelevant. You may have been one of the luckiest players in the tournament that day right up until you had your aces cracked or got coolered set under set to bust. Every decision you make throughout the tournament is what matters. We all have those coolers and beats.
When you tweet something negative, it’s only going to reinforce negativity in your mind-set and everyone else’s. Let’s all just let our peeps know we’re out and try to cut down the communication about how unlucky we are. I’m willing to try if you are. I’ll also write more about social-media pitfalls next month. Until then… Decide To Win!
— Lee Childs is the founder and lead instructor at Inside the Minds. For information about his group training sessions and personal coaching, visit inside-the-minds.com.
