Blog when I'm losing, I only blog when I'm losing

Funny how things change. You can virtually disregard the last blog for my current poker thinking.

My current gameplan sounds crazy, but it comes down to 'do I what I think is right'. In a nutshell, I'm trusting my instincts (*blink*) each and every hand, forgetting balancing (though I'm clearly naturally balanced in a lot of spots). Bluffing when I think it'll work, folding strong hands when I think I'm beat, overshoving when I know he can't call, etc.

It's hard to give concrete examples, but I think that I'll look back on this as a massive revelation on moving away from 'mehanical' thought process to an 'instinctive' one. I can picture the moment my poker all went wrong, and I described this to someone the other day as this:

When I joined Leggo, I'd had 12 months of very decent success. Suddenly I was making videos. Suddenly, not only did I have to record my play, I also had to describe it. I really struggled making the first few, because I found I couldn't really explain why I was doing stuff. So, all the overbet rivers I was doing probably couldn't stand any real critical analysis, but I just felt like they worked.

Saying 'it works' wasn't adequate for Leggo. They wanted talk of balance, and range, and frequencies. Maybe omitting those would be fine if I was able to describe how I just 'knew' a certain player would call bottom pair in a certain spot, while another player was certainly folding top pair to an overbet, but I found I couldn't explain these.

So getting into this mechanical and technical world meant I started critiquing everything I did. I started overthinking spots, thinking 'how could I verbally justify this' and trying to overrule my subconscious with a set of inflexible rules and plays.

Right the way through the year, there's been a thousand spots where timing, gameflow, player type, a ton of intangible things have combined to give a feeling of certainty about the right play in a given spot. In the search for mechanical perfection though, I overrule it for the far inferior technically justifiable play.

An example might be.... say I 3bet TT BB vs CO 110bbs deep. Co 4bets in such a way and size that I feel certain I'm crushed, but rather than listen to the voices screaming now fold, I get like "well I shouldn't have 3bet it if I wasnt planning to 5bet jam it". I'd 5bet jam and lose to AA and chalk it up to a cooler........ and then wonder why my hourly was at $37.

A corrective example might be this hand: http://weaktight.com/3097323

Now mechanically, I'm never folding tptk in a 4bet pot. On the river, my brain screams 'CRUSHED', but I'd overrule it on that basis. Here on my A game, there was no doubt it was getting folded to a proper bet. Just listening to what I think villain has in every spot means I'm making huge calls and huge folds, and a mon avis being right a ton of the time.

Here's the caveat though. Playing like this requires superb mental concentration. It also means being really tuned in, and really happy and relaxed when playing. If my thoughts are clouded, then my mind simply returns no answer in any spot! My massive flaw at the moment is playing on in these conditions.

Blog when I'm losing. Well I'm not quite losing, I've won 2000 United States Dollar bills, but oh my god it could be so much more if only I got more consistent at having my mind at ease. Ultimately, the A game is not going to matter without doing it day in day out.

It's a bit like the recent cricket match between Australia and England. Australia have a bowler, Mitchell Johnson, former world cricketer of the year and thus on his day brilliant. England have a similar guy, James Anderson. Now you don't judge their abilities by the very best ball they're capable of bowling. Johnson produced the occasional magic, but was wildly inconsistent, leaking a ton of runs on his way to being Australia's top wicket taker. Anderson's deliveries though were just constantly excellent without respite, and at the end of the day this makes him 10x the cricketer as the ability to have this consistency is part and parcel of the skill of cricket.

Probably just another way of saying what I've said before, but it's so true with regard to poker. If your A game is the best in the world, but you only produce it 3/4 sessions, then you are simply NOT good at poker. Consistency is as much of a poker skill as handreading, and so given this, at this moment in time until I improve, I am NOT good at poker. Not remotely good. I'm Mitchell fucking Johnson good at best.

I'm having some good poker chats at the minute with a couple of decent players and will keep on doing that to improve technically, but the immediate goal here on out is to be 100% every single session, or else resign myself to sucking at poker and indeed life, like this guy has (only at bowling). Updates to follow!