[Highn]

Somehow this has turned into an abomination of a rant, mega tl dr warning, also this is all old news so don't waste ten minutes of your life trying to read this, unless when really, really bored.

I think to become really great you need to be a passionate and driven person. However, one of the skills you need to develop is to some extent apathy. The apathy could also be translated as an understanding of variance. I like to think that I'm very passionate about improving myself and trying to play every hand perfectly. But certainly I also aim to cope with losing, which is probably one of the most important abilities to have when pursuing to play poker for a living. Considering most of us are perfectionists, competitive, and ambitious this is possibly the most difficult things to teach oneself.

How do I do this?

First of all I try to understand that playing MTT's means you will lose all the time and occasionally win. I mean, most of us understand this rationally but when egos are involved we tend to become emotional and forget.

Secondly my goal is to play a lot of tournaments a day. I remember from a Well post by a well respected STT'er (can't remember the name, sorry) that he told the forum he didn't get fazed by bad beats anymore, basically because he has seen them happen so ridiculously often. So besides reducing variance, playing a lot also helps you to numb the pain of getting sucked out on.

Thirdly, because I recognize that even with the above mentioned precautions you will occasionally have your dreams crushed because losing when being a massive favorite when deep in a MTT is way more frustrating then losing in a STT. You need take a moment to allow yourself to accept the sick beat; ignoring that you're feeling kind of tilted is the worst.

In essence I guess what I'm trying to say is;

Variance in tourneys is HUGE, in (live) tourneys you will never play enough to be able to ignore variance. Accepting this and being passionate about playing well and trying to maintain some form of apathy about the result seems to be the easy answer.