The Poker Emotional Intelligence Test

Emotional intelligence, loosely speaking, is your awareness of your awareness. Poker players with high emotional intelligence are able to assess their strengths and weaknesses frankly and honestly, with acceptance, and without freaking out. To test your emotional intelligence, I'm going to present you with a number of poker situations and ask you two questions:

Has this ever been you?
How did you feel at the time?

To make the most of this quiz, just answer truthfully and write your answers down. Shine a light on your inner life; that's how emotional intelligence grows.

SITUATION ONE: You've been playing online poker for several hours in a multi-table tournament, and things have not been going your way. You took more rebuys than you wanted to, and never built a stack. Utterly unable to gain any sort of traction in the tournament, you ultimately busted out not on a bad beat but a on very bad decision. Now it's late, and you're mentally exhausted. You know you're not on your game, but the sting of defeat still owns you, so you jump into a sitngo tournament or a cash game and proceed to double or triple your losses. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION TWO: You're in a cash game and running well. You've been getting hit by the deck and enjoying a major rush. You're enjoying that rush in every sense of the word -- not just financially but emotionally. You feel high, like you're invincible, a veritable king of poker. Not only do you want the feeling to last forever, you're convinced it can. Like a golfer who has finally found the sweet spot in your swing, you believe that you have poker "solved." So you push every small edge -- or sometimes not even any edge at all -- and end up giving back most of what you won. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION THREE: You're playing against a foe you know to be inferior. He makes manifestly bad decisions, and you can't see any reason why you're not taking all his money. Yet, you're not. He keeps sucking out on you and winning pot after pot. The more you play against him, the angrier you get, until your primary motivation for playing at all is just to make that bastard pay. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

SITUATION FOUR: You're in a poker game and you're stuck. You're beyond tilt -- you're a cork bobbing on the sea of poker -- yet you can't tear yourself away from the game. There seems to be some magnetic force that keeps your ass anchored to the chair. At one point you thought you'd just keep playing until you got back to even, but you're past that point now; you're past the point of pain or even of rational thought. You probably won't move till you go broke. Has this ever been you? How did you feel at the time?

Look, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, but if you want to have a long career in poker, it's not enough to learn how to bet with the best of it or to get away from a hand when you know you're beaten. Success in poker absolutely requires that you acknowledge and address your whole underlying emotional landscape. Only when you're truly honest with yourself about what you feel and why you feel it can you hope to master the game. Grow your emotional intelligence and - I promise - poker profits will follow.