Poker Advice from Professional Poker Player Eric (Rizen) Lynch

Special to FOXSports.com

Tournament star Eric (Rizen) Lynch shares unique insights into the inner game of poker with Foxsports.com in part two of this interview.

FoxSports.com: You are always looking for ways to improve your game. More players could benefit from this type of self-analyzing.

Eric Lynch: I was reminded recently of something I said a while back, and some recent events have had me thinking of it again:

‘Poker, especially tournament poker, is a game where hours of brilliant play can be undone by one momentary lapse of thought.‘

I still think that’s probably one of my better all time quotes, and I’d like to expand on the idea a bit, and provide another quote that may not be quite as good, but is similar in nature.

‘It’s often the mistakes we know we’re making that hurt us the most.‘

What I mean by that, is when I’ve been doing some hand history reviews or talking with people about certain plays, I hear people often tell me ‘yeah I knew that was stupid when I was doing it, but for some reason I did it anyways’ or some similar quotes, even from some VERY good players I’ve talked to.

So, instead of reading more material or studying more, I decided on a different approach. Every night when I was done playing, I’d go back and look at key hands from the tournaments I had played and some key cash game hands and look at them and try and evaluate my play honestly, and I found a disturbing trend. I was consistently making plays I knew were mistakes! I’d let emotion or ego get in the way, or I’d make the classic blunder of finding a way to put my opponent on the one hand I could beat. Sometimes I even remember telling myself as I was making a call that it was a mistake, but I pushed the button anyways!

My point is, I was making plays I knew were wrong, and even though I knew they were wrong, I was still doing them! This was canceling out all of the good, solid plays I was producing and killing hours worth of hard work. Sure, I was still a winning player, but not at a rate that satisfied me, and I wasn’t showing improvement the way I could. So after a month or two of seeing this trend of constantly making mistakes I should have known better than to do, I finally got the discipline for myself to stop making those dumb plays. I can’t honestly say what the key was, but after realizing how much I was costing myself I was able to put aside my ego and emotions and just constantly make good plays. Within a span of just a few months I went on to win the 55k (aka rebuy madness) and the Friday Special for over $60k total. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, at the end of the night I go back and look at my play. If I can look at my play and tell myself I honestly played to the best of my ability and didn’t do anything I knew was wrong, I consider the night a success, even if I end the night with no cashes and down over $1000. Conversely if I win $10k in a night, but I made a dumb move heads up at the end that cost myself a chance to win $20k instead, I consider it ‘lost opportunity’ and get a little upset with myself. To use an already over-used sports analogy ‘control what you can control, don’t worry about the rest, and success will follow’. Don’t dwell on bad beats or cold decks. Those happen and you can’t control them. Focus on your own play and if you’re putting yourself consistently in the best position you can to succeed, then you’ve already won.

© 2007 Fox Sports Interactive

Updated: January 11, 2007, 2:11 PM EST

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