Return to Midstakes, New Regime, Anger At Myself TL;DR

The first day of this month I dropped $2k at 400nl and endeavoured to play 20k hands of 200nl before moving back up. I made money during this period, but not the $8k I was striving for. I was well on track until the last 4k hands or so, when I let myself down in super typical fashion.

First a bit of background- I have this head thing that causes immeasurable problems for me as a poker player. I get it at various times of the day, some more than others. I call it 'light headedness', but really it's like a disconnect from reality that takes over from time to time. It's not painful, but is definitely a physical feeling. It doesn't stop me from doing anything; driving, cooking, talking to people etc- what it does do though is completely separate me from caring in the slightest what is happening as I play poker. I'm basically reduced to clicking buttons for fun, but it's not even fun- more like I'm trying to lose (or win big) in order to actually feel something, anything.

Without being overly dramatic, I think it's comparable to those mentalists who cut themselves in order to feel something.

I'm aware of having the feeling before I start playing, but the feeling itself perpetuates itself by the fact I don't even care that I have it, and I'm ambivalent to the truth that all that's about to happen is that I'm going to sit and throw 5 BIs down the drain.

Anyway, I decided some time ago that this physical feeling was definitely connected to my overall health and diet (vegetarian diet for the last 5 months or so). So, I changed up my diet, got a load of vitamins and fish oil type supplements, and tried to do more exercise than just my usual weekly footy match. The light headedness actually receded and I felt a ton better.

Obviously, what I'm getting around to saying, is that I didn't stick to it.

I didn't stick to it, because I became preoccupied with technical aspects of my game that needed work. For a long while I obsessed about exact 3bet ranges, cbet strategies on different boards, 'erm guys do you think I should barrel this K turn' yada yada yada. What I couldn't understand was how I used to be so sure of everything, but now so uncertain.

Luckily, I hadn't gone crazy. There was one massive massive massive leak that had crept in, that was blatently obvious, that was instantly correlatable to all my losing hands just by looking at them, and was instantly fixable. That leak was that in 6max poker I had somehow opened up my range to the point where I was opening 30% of hands UTG and UTG+1 in every session. I was like........ omg position really matters?

So, apart from tightening up there, I've started refusing to play single raised pots OOP. Sorry if this is all a little bit BRAND NEW INFORMATION, but jesus the difference was immediately noticeable, like overnight noticeable.

As soon as I started winning again playing basic IP ABC poker, I suddenly had the confidence to do everything else I used to be good at. Such as gameflow; my favourite part of poker is 3 betting the shit out of the guy to my right until he cracks, anticpating his reactions by suddenly 5bet jamming AJ and getting a nailed on fold, before getting in JJ vs 55 for 150bbs.

The above just isn't possible from a confidence perspective when I'm opening 96s utg, getting 3 callers, and I'm cbetting QJ9 into all 3.... then wondering why I'm losing. 'Oh, must be the spewy button stuff, stop bluffing IP dan'. Moron.

Anyway, I need to start weaving the various strands of this blog post into some form of coherentness. What I basically want to say is that I feel my technical game is as good as it's ever been right now, and being aware of my most basic of problems means it's not likely to regress such as in the past.

What I'm left with then, is that I need to really really change my lifestyle to try and attain physical fitness and mental wellbeing. My *hope*, but also knowledge from experience, is that this will cure the light headedness thing that's currently the only thing stopping me from being a paper millionaire.

You know what I wish, I wish there were some way to FORCE me to do certain things day in day out. I'm going to list them here anyway, but I need suggestions as to how I can be punished for not doing them.

Ok after writing that last paragraph, I had a little break and just read Baz's blog. I like his daily/ weekly goals thing. That's basically what I need. I'm still stuck on the way in which I can be forced to do them though. I'm thinking some sort of financial prop. Like, every day I don't write a blog and do all of my daily goals I'll donated $50 to a charity of whoever comments first's choice or something.

Anyway, my daily goals are as follows:

Gym in morning (between 8-9am)
Whole wheat for breakfast
Tidy office
1 pint of protein shake in morning, 1 in afternoon
Take fish oil, vitamin b12, multi B vitamin
Blog immediately before session- comment on the light headedness.... is it there?
Drink water all throughout day
Wholewheat pasta in afternoon
Session length of 35-60 minutes
Have some competitive pride.

Technical goals will be dicated before each session, and reviewed thereafter.

Is all.

dan