SCOOP & FOMO: Don’t let your performance get affected

4 min read

SCOOP started and there is no poker player who is not excited about the idea of playing as much as possible, and this is the reason that brings me to talk to you about a very important topic: FOMO during big series.

Before we delve into this topic, it is important that we understand what the famous Fear of Missing Out means:

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when we believe that others are enjoying an activity much more than we are.

FOMO is a phenomenon that has grown a lot in recent years with the growth of social media and the exposure of other people’s lifestyles. That is, nowadays we have many more possibilities to know about the activities and lifestyles of others. When we see that others are enjoying something and we are not, we experience this idea that we are “missing out on something.” This feeling of missing out generates the idea of “being left out”, resulting in social concern, anxiety, and fear of not fitting in.

We can then understand that FOMO falls within the category of social anxieties.

How does this impact us? First of all, any type of anxiety that we do not know how to manage has a negative effect on our quality of life. If we add to that the burden of social comparison, FOMO ends up having a great and unnecessary impact on our stress levels.

Remember that high levels of stress negatively affect our performance, so it is of utmost importance to understand that we must learn to manage this phenomenon, not only to improve our performance but also to improve our quality of life.

And what is the result of not knowing how to manage FOMO? Well, players who do not know how to manage it are exposed to higher demands due to having thoughts like:

“I may regret not playing as many tables”
“The prizes are very good, and there are other players taking advantage of these tournaments”
“I’m not doing enough, while others are”
“I’m not working hard enough”
“I’m missing out on the opportunity to play a lot”
“I’ll play more and rest when SCOOP is over”
“I’ll increase my table count to play more tournaments”

What are the main affected areas?

Sleep and Recovery

Players with FOMO often play more days and hours than they should, and end up sacrificing sleep and recovery. A bad night’s sleep affects our performance and decision-making ability incredibly. Several nights of little sleep or different schedules also greatly affect our emotional regulation capacity. By sleeping less, we experience:

Difficulty in emotional regulation.
Low frustration tolerance.
More impulsive decision-making.
Less creativity (affecting the possibility of making smarter or less expected plays).
Low energy levels.
Low concentration levels.

If we add the lack of recovery, and when I speak of recovery, I mean days off, we have many possibilities of reaching a Burnout state. Therefore, players who do not respect sleep and recovery end up having a declining performance during SCOOP because their sleep debt grows as the weeks pass.

Performance

There are two very important variables that depend on the player and have a great impact on performance: Table count & Stakes. Many players, due to the ambition of playing more, end up increasing the number of tables they play. Others decide to play at stakes higher than they should because of the attractive prizes of the tournaments. Then we have some who increase their table count and stakes. The result of these decisions? Worse performance. Why? To perform well, we need a balance between the level of challenge and our skill level. If we increase the number of tables or stakes too much, we expose ourselves to higher levels of anxiety because the challenge becomes too great for our abilities. Believe me, playing more tables or higher stakes is not a matter of “mindset.” Players end up experiencing more levels of anxiety just by raising their table count or stakes.

Performance routines

Due to the increase in the number of hours and days of play, we not only sacrifice performance but also begin to sacrifice other performance routines. Which ones? Players play later and that affects their bedtime routine (the consequence of this we saw above), it also affects their morning routine and warm-up routine, three of the most important performance routines. As a result, we have players who wake up, do not eat well, do not engage in any type of physical activity in the morning, and many do not even leave their houses all day.

FOMO is a serious phenomenon. And the question that many may be asking themselves is, what do we do about it?

The first step is to become aware. We cannot change anything we are not aware of. Some questions we can ask ourselves to generate that awareness are:

Do you find yourself checking social media very often to see how others are playing SCOOP?
Does it bother you or generate anxiety when you see that others are playing more than you?
Do you feel like you are wasting your time if you don’t play more?
Do you feel that you are sacrificing your sleep to play more?
Are you willing to give up days off to play more?
Are you increasing your table count just because you want to play more tournaments?
Are you raising stakes just because the prize pools catch your attention?
Do you feel that you are not doing enough to win?
Do you feel anxious to do more and as a result end up playing more than you should?

While it would be ideal if you could work with a mental health professional to understand if you are experiencing FOMO, these questions can be triggers to understanding that this phenomenon is happening to you.

Some tips that can help you:

Work on understanding how lack of recovery and sleep impacts your well-being and performance.
Work on discovering your optimal table count and how increasing it affects your levels of anxiety and performance.
Being aware of your skill level and which stakes you should play accordingly.
Being aware of how your daily routines affect your performance.
Accepting that every poker player has their own process and that we don’t have to imitate or match what others do.

When we work on identifying the above points, we begin to enable another perspective to manage our FOMO. It is vital that each player knows themselves and works on their own process. We can learn from other poker players, but imitating what they do or how they act without knowing why we do it can have a huge impact on our professional careers.

And remember, if your anxiety levels are very high, it is important to work with a mental health professional.

Build your performance by taking care of yourselves.

Have a great first week of SCOOP!

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