I have never dealt with failure well. When I wasn't doing well in high school, I became fanatical about studying and jumped 60 spots in rankings in a semester. When I start out playing a new computer game I absolutely hate the idea that someone else is doing better than me, and I completely kill myself to become the best. I don't even enjoy the process, and I rarely enjoy the spoils of being "successful" - I just hate failure that much more. I think this is all a very unhealthy way to approach things, but I'll have to deal with that later. What's more important to me right now is exploring the differences between poker (which I haven't been successful at) and the other things in my life I would say I've been successful at.

I think the main frustration for me with playing poker is the inability to easily quantify success in the short-term. Every other endeavor I've had in life up to this point has been easy to approach in the short-term. When you study, you get a good grade. This is a very simple, closed system where short-term success is clearly defined. The same is true with video games. I played an absolute asston of diablo 2. When we'd do baal runs, I knew for certain that every baal run we did brought us one step closer to our goal of being #1. It was easy for me to stay focused then. The sensation of progress and confidence in knowing every step was right kept me constantly encouraged.

None of this is true for poker. You take 3 steps back and 4 forward. You deal with the sensation of failure on a daily basis. You deal with the frustration of not knowing if what you are doing is right (this is a HUGE problem for me). It's also been very hard for me to deal with the idea that I can no longer brute-force things; everything is much murkier and I have to rely on my judgment to navigate them and, inevitably, I will make mistakes. In this way, it's much like life. I'd say everyone's goal in life is to be happy. But how do you get there? Do you follow this belief system or that belief system? Which school do you go to? What do you study? Do you take this job or that job? How can you possibly weigh all the little nuances that will have immense, reverberating effects on the rest of your life? Nothing is defined, nothing is standard. You no longer have the comfort of a system where success is well-defined.

Of course in the long-term success in poker is well-defined: whoever makes the most money is the most successful. To do this, you must make the best decisions in the short-term. But the open-endedness and ambiguity of the short-term is absolutely infuriating to me.