New Goals

It's amazing now I lose sight of how much recording every session really helps me. It's like I do it, it immediately helps, then I stop 'cos I'm winning, then it takes me the best part of 4 weeks to remember to record results of sessions, analyse the sessions, set goals for next session etc.

I'll address each important component of upcoming success here:

Mental

Obviously for me, the biggest. I've always attached far far more importance to it than anyone else, but conversely I'm also pretty bad at sticking to it. Example, I have plans to go for drinks later, but I want to get some hands in. It's 16:00, the house is a mess, I'm a little tired, a little hungry. Nagging in the back of my brain is the fact that the rabbit hasn't been fed, the dog hasn't been walked, etc.

These things have a PROFOUND effect on my play, but in the moment my willpower to be professional caves in and I end up dropping $3k or something. This actually happens all the time, literally all the time, to the point where it's actually embarassing that I dare to call myself a professional and yet still cannot stop myself from pressing the self destruct button periodically purely down to lack of organisation in other areas of life. I need to just be better at life, sleep less, do more when awake, which will equal more poker hours and mre fruitful ones.

Competetiveness

I read something about poker once, probably not from anyone particularly wise, but it stuck with me and recently I've remembered it and need to remember it more. It is this "If you believe that you 'are' good at poker, and that winning wouldn't be a problem if only you didn't spew/ tilt/ play when tired as much, then in actual fact you are NOT good at poker".

The above really motivates me.... the chance of me NOT being good at poker after almost 2 years as a professional is pretty fucking scary to say the least. I'm terrified of not being good at poker. So long as I play with things nagging on the brain, I still won't be good at poker. Time to get good. Time to HATE LOSING, time to regain my COMPETITIVENESS.

Technical Aspects

My biggest problem with certain technical aspects is just having the mental state of mind needed to be able to draw on what I know. The knowledge is already there, but it certainly helps to be relaxed when playing and also to remind myself regularly of the things that I see as the cornerstones of my game. Currently, I need to remember the following:

Reverse Equity- Avoid like the Swine Flu, just don't be afraid VS some regs to fold flop with decent SD. Not always the guys like Yellowdawg who bet once then give up, but the Stainless and LrdOfDrkness's of this world. If I ever find myself calling down OOP with 66 on T52ss QK again then I'm gonna have some pretty strong fucking words with myself. RE KILLS THE RED LINE.

PF Gameflow- this takes a ton of concentration to know when XX is ready to 4bet jam any pair on you. I used to be so good at it, so good at knowing exactly what adjustments were about to be made. I need to get back to this, in particular the early pressurising/ constant 3betting followed by seizing on the spazzy adjustments that follow.

Creativity- something else that went missing somewhere. Back in the day, I literally always was trying to convey the opposite strength of my hand (within reason, I'm not about to check top set IP on T97ss any time soon ALA Sh58). This is, after all, the whole point of poker. I used to do a ton of creative things, that I won't detail in full here, but somewhere they dropped by the wayside. I need to remember that by and large every reg plays the same, and expects me to play the same. Disguise needs to come back to the forefront.

Aggressions- An obvious one this, I'm going to play my own hyper aggressive game. However, where I've fallen down of late is remembering to know my opponent. There's a time and place to ship $1000 into $450 at 400nl on the river when he 'cant have the nuts', and that time and place is when I know the opponent is capable of folding. After a bit, I'm going to start profiling my opponents again into the animal types that I once had before my computer went busto (rather computer than me).

So, in summary, I'll be going forward as follows. Playing short sessions, hopefully of fixed length. I will have a $1000 stop loss on each session, and review each session prior to my next session here before continuing. I'll be back on the ol' grades/10, which for starters will be the following:

RE
TIMING
CREATIVITY
KNOW MY OPPONENT
PF GAMEFLOW
FEEL COMPETITIVE

Session 1, playing under Catwotisadog on UB, coming up.....