Chess vs poker psychology impact difference.

We know that suffering a loss can be hard in chess. Especially if you fought hard and was close to a draw or maybe to a victory. But how does it compare to the impact that a loss in poker game is having on a player?

I would say that poker is more difficult psychologically than chess, since a loss in poker involves losing money. In chess it doesn't.

However there are players who cry and feel depressed or infuriated if they lose...

The entry fees for chess tournaments in my country are from 100-300 USD, so it does involve losing money - although the cash prizes and stakes in poker are much greater. 

Poker is psychologically greater because there is bluffing involved. In chess, bluffing is much more difficult, especially in the long time controls that give out big prizes. 

As for online chess or online poker, it's no big deal, just learn from your mistakes. 

Anyone who cries or feels depressed for a long period of time when losing a chess game or poker game, especially online, should learn to be more mentally stable or stop playing. 

For me it's tougher to lose in poker.  In chess, I only have myself to blame when I lose.  I can deal with that.  But in poker, you can completely outplay your opponents and still lose big.  Back in the days when U.S. players could play on line, I used to play a fair amount.  I was playing 4 tables on a site one day (cash games, not tournaments) when I got pocket Aces on two tables simultaneously.  (This was Texas Holdem, obviously.)  On the first table, a guy shoved right in front of me.  I called instantly of course and everyone else folded.  On the other table, the SAME GUY raised an insane amount in front of me and I re-raised all in.  He called.  He had JT suited on one table and pocket Qs on the other.  On the first table he hit a straight and on the second table he got a Q on the river.

Boom.  Just like that, I'm down about $100 when I should have been up $100 or at least even.  But it's not the money that bothered me.  It's the perverse universe that does things like this to you in situations you can't control.  In chess, everything is right there in front of you.  No excuses.  In poker, you can do everything right and still lose your shirt.  That happened several years ago and I still remember every detail like it was yesterday.  I've lost many games in chess, but none that bothered me like that.

Apologies to non-poker players who don't understand the terminology I used.

You can regulate that nervousness in poker by playing mathematicly sound. That also means within your budget. 200 to 250 times the big blind , and you negate that feeling of losing money every hand. If one loses a low amount but has a great night that also kind of cancels it out. But it seems, that it never gets better in chess. On my level of proficiency, nearly every loss is clearly based on some basic oversight. Peu a peu, winning consistently at the 5$ Sitngo, equates to winning at the 1500 to 1600 lvl. Same kind of mental discipline involved, logical reasoning, pattern recognition, intuition. Just to different proportions. Good luck with both.

It doesn't get any sounder pre-flop than getting all your chips in with pocket aces against a single opponent.  I understand the math very well, and that can sometimes be a problem.

On one poker site there was a type of tournament that was very popular for a while called Double or Nothing.  Ten people entered and sat at one table.  As soon as 5 were eliminated, the tournament was over and the remaining 5 doubled their entry fee.  In order to break even, you had to win a little over 50% of the time (the site charged a small percentage of the entry fee as their cut).  This was a fun format for a number of reasons.  Easy to understand, and the strategies for surviving were pretty straightforward, too.  One thing that became clear quickly was that if you doubled your stack early, you could almost always fold your way to the money.

Anyway, I was doing well at the lowest level ($1.10 entry fee with $.10 going to the site) playing 24 tables at a time and calculated that at the next level up ($5) I could make something like $25/hour if I could maintain the same win rate.  Not bad for a little mindless fun in my spare time.  And of course, there were much higher levels than that.

It didn't work out that way, of course.  Players at the $1 tables were mostly recreational players who didn't understand even the simple strategies involved in the double or nothing games.  Players at the $5 tables were a little harder to beat, so your win rate went down accordingly.  I expected that, though.  What I didn't expect was what happened to my "luck".  I mentioned that doubling your stack was a near-guarantee of making the money at the $1 tables.  At the $5 tables it wasn't quite such a sure thing as the players tended to survive longer overall, but it still usually worked.  A great way to double your stack was to flop a set (assuming you could get someone to get it in with you).  You're only going to flop a set once for every 8 pocket pairs you're dealt (11.8% of the time, actually), and you're only going to be dealt pocket pairs about 6% of the time.  Overall, then, you'll only flop a set in about 0.7% of the hands you're dealt.  Less than once in every hundred hands.  Even so, "set-mining" was one of the key components in a successful Double-or-Nothing strategy.

After a while, it dawned on me that I hadn't flopped a set in a while.  I dug into my hand history and found that since moving up to the $5 tables, I'd seen the flop with a pocket pair 30 some odd times without hitting a set.  Bad luck, but it happens.  After that, I started paying attention.  I continued missing my sets for another 40 something hands.  I think it was 73 consecutive misses before I finally hit a set.

The probability of that happening is 0.00010452.  About 0.01%.  See, I understood the math just fine.  That was the problem.  When something like that would happen, I would think, "There is no way this should be happening!  Gaahhhh!"  I understood objectively that with a non-zero probability (and with hundreds of thousands of games a day being played on that site) something like that was going to happen to somebody, but that really didn't help me understand why it had to be me.  Why meeeeeee?

Okay, rant over.  Anyway, that's why losing in chess is much less upsetting to me than losing in poker.  If I play well in chess, the only thing that will keep me from winning is if my opponent plays better, and that's fine with me.  But in poker, you can do everything "right" and still go on a losing streak that will break you.  You have to have a certain psychology, a calmness of spirit, to be able to continue to play well under those conditions.  Some people have it, some don't.  I belong in the latter category.  

You can to a certain degree, but again chances of losing money is high in poker. And a lot of people don't have the discipline it takes to control their losses, including some pros.

I hated the double or nothing format. And i remember a good article why it was introduced. The pay-payout structure was not in the players interest. Also, a good player has a much higher return on a normal sitngo format. Having said that, all poker players know which turn the money takes when playing on tilt. Remembering some cruel losses I just couldn't play on sometimes. However, some professional poker players have been through 7 months slumps and it is still mathematically sound. Btw, preflop all in with aces is cash strategy not optimal tournament strategy. Never all in, never out of the tourney in one hand. There are even a few cases where its sound to put down aces preflop.

The bad beats on the aces were at cash tables.  I mentioned that in my original post.  And yes, there are cases (almost always in tournaments) where it is correct to fold pocket aces.  Double or nothings especially had those cases.  There are also times, again mostly in tournaments, when it's correct to call all-ins with anything.

The good thing about the double or nothings was that the strategy was so simple I could play 24 tables simultaneously without exertion and almost without mistakes.  I never got good enough at regular sitngos to be able to play that many.  I could manage 6 or 8, but beyond that I started making too many mistakes.

Anyway, I was never good enough to make a living at it.  Over the course of 4 years, playing in my spare time, I lost around $200.  According to my hand history file, I paid roughly $10,000 in rake and tournament fees in that time.  If I'd had, say, 27% rakeback, I'd have actually made $2,500 in those 4 years instead of losing $200.  That would have been nice, but it still wouldn't have made me what I consider a winning player.  My wins were staying ahead of my losses, but just barely and not enough to make up for the rake.  So, I was a losing player overall.

Still, I had a good time at it and I'd probably do it again if it ever returns to my country.

Gotta hate rake, ps used to offer 70% rb to full time pros (requirement would be to rake ~200k a year to get that). Phil Galfond has promised to open a site that is fair to its players, though I am not sure whether it'll be allowed in the USA.

Poker without money. Chess with money.

Yes, poker is more psychological damaging...