Ok we know, sometimes it is very hard to lose even more if the amount lost is a big quantity of money, but controlling your temper is a good thing not only for the sake of the things around you, also for your health. When you are angry or stressed you are getting old faster, remember this.
Although this advice is almost a cliché, most people do crazy things when they lose a hand at online poker, maybe because they know nobody is looking at them or maybe they just don’t give a shit if they are being looked or not and just need to relieve their stress in the wrong way.
The most common reaction when losing a hand is to hit near objects and as you are sitting in front of a computer while you are playing online poker, these objects are likely to be either the mouse or the keyboard. Hitting the keyboard is very easy and even pleasing to the touch as they are soft and the keys get pressed down with our hits giving the hitter a nice feeling of power, the wrong feedback of the action is that keyboards are easy to break and if the keyboard is usually the victim of you rage it will be wise if you got a couple of them just in the case.
The fellow friend of your keyboard is the mouse, always standing next to it. Our rage also falls upon it, but despite being smaller than the keyboard, mice are more resistant to hour rage. If our reaction is to drop a descending hammer-like blow to it the only thing we’ll get is a bruise in our hand, the round shape of the mouse makes them really hard. For an effective mice hitting we must pick it in our hands and crash it against the table, this will stop our rage and probably break the mouse or at least scratch the table.
The most dangerous object near us when we are playing poker is the screen. Using a jab strike against it will for sure break it, but the crystal nature of screens makes them pretty dangerous as they will cut our fist for sure. Although most of our screens are LCD or plasma, if we are stupid enough to hit directly a CRT screen we are getting a high risk of receiving an electrical shock.
When it comes to our pocket, kicking the CPU is the most dangerous reaction. CPU’s are expensive and if we got them near our feet it is very tempting to give’em a football punt… but it is not a wise idea. Probably we will lose the tournament if the computer is broken and also we’ll lose the money of the CPU. If you usually rage against the machines near you, keep your CPU out of reach.
Having a laptop can be a hairy situtation as well, many times I have just wanted to pick it up and throw it out the window, not always because of poker directly but alot of the time due to computer problems interrupting my game, I play on my desktop now though to avoid that temptation.