April Results + Going Forward

A big part of the mental game is not reviewing monetary results too often, but once a month is fine and so I'm putting April into the bank. I won money, woo.

I *literally* had a ~$200 bankroll at the start of this month lol. I took a picture of me 2 tabling 100nl to mark the occasion. There's worse things can happen in life of course, but still pretty much a 'career' lowpoint!

Luckily runbad didn't completely wipe me out, and I likely ran above expectation the rest of the month.

Part of me wants to get a bigger sample at 100 to see how sustainable the 5.12 winrate is, as I'm not overly certain I'd win a 2.6bb at 200nl. A bigger part of me though feels totally unchallenged at 100...... and as I'm finding out from Mental Game of Poker 2 this can cause predictable mental problems with regard to motivation and playing in 'the zone'.

So I'm moving back to 200nl from now. I originally planed to give myself say 5 BIs, but in practice this just lets my brain know I'm playing on a 5BI bankroll and detracts from my A game, so I'm basically going to play there for as long as I'm playing well and am rolled.

I had a few mental problems playing 100 today, so before I start playing I need to write some mental game stuff out to reinforce the good mental habits when faced with challenging situations.

So let's go through a couple of them......

We get the money in good, and get sucked out on - this one isn't usually a big problem for me, 'cos I tend to only care about the EV line anyway, but still some 'logic' to inject will help me here. When it happens VS fish, then 'it's a good thing variance like this happens, otherwise fish would just stop playing!'. When it's VS a reg, then 'just because you got it in as a 90% favourite doesn't mean you win every time. It only means you win 9/10 times. This is one of those 1/10 times, even if they're grouped together'. The thought process above is basically the same for coolers.

We make a technical mistake - Mistake tilt used to be a bad one for me, I'd stew and stew and stew and be all like 'I'll never win at 5bb now'. Some logic though; 'some mistakes are already built into a healthy winrate.... your winrate only takes a big drop if you let it lead to more mistakes'. 'Thinking about the mistake now will only make more mistakes more likely, mark the hand, forget about it now, and review after the session'. Acknowledging that mistakes are often a precursor to learning something also helps me. Also of course, it might not actually have been a mistake.

Most importantly I think is being aware of, and expecting, mistakes to happen before they do happen. Most tilt is caused by surprise or entitlement, so we're cruising along nicely and then out of nowhere comes THE MISTAKE. We expected this sometimes though, it's fine, winrate still healthy, move on....

We make a mental mistake - in a way this can be harder to deal with than a technical mistake, 'cos it feels as if mental stuff is much more within our control. The odd slip will happen though, (a common one is not trusting my instinct on the river in a big pot) and again it's about expecting the occasional slip and not descending into self loathing and hatred at myself for it. Acknowledge the mistake, write it in the mental diary, and consider stopping the session if it seems like a symptom of lost concentration or something.

Winrate - I've talked about this before, but a huge part of my tilt in the past came from not intuatively understanding a good winrate and what it's made up of. So if I made a mistake it was all 'winrates out the window', or got sucked out on 'cant win at fucking 4bb now can I'. LOGIC - if everything went swimmingly, we'd win at 40bb/100. A winrate of 5bb/100 contains some bad play, suckouts, mistakes, and even very small amounts of mental tilt.

Other stuff- part of my problem on occasion has been that I'm still a little bit $ results oritented. I wasn't at first, but after a while and kept winning I thought well whats the harm in indulging and acknowledging my $ results. The problem is that you can't have it both ways, as soon as you say to yourself 'I'm up $800 for the day' then your brain has 'banked' that money and becomes loss averse, resulting in sub optimal play. So yeah, I need to focus heavily on results, but only the results of how well I played a session and how stable I was able to keep my mental game.

Trusting Instinct- This can be bad advice when on any sort of tilt, as the instinct is heavily coloured by loss aversion, need to increase variance, false pattern recognition, etc. When in the zone though, instinct is >>>> any reasoned logic, especially the sort of logic that comes from whatever is supposedly a GTO calling spot.

----------

Technical stuff - I need to keep up cbetting, especially IP, this has started to drop again and it's taking a heavy dent out of my WWSF. Also important that I keep up a spazzy image, and to this end I need to err on the spewy side of 3bets/ 4bets/ flop raises, floats etc, whilst not ever getting ridiculously spewy out of line. Image will take care of the rest. Mentally though, it's important to remember that the intense style of bluffing loads is an A game style...... if I'm a bit tired but looking to get the hands in, reverting to just a super solid style is what I need to do.

Right, that's it. I wanted to talk about tournaments because I played a load of them and I'm down $400 or so, but I'll talk about that next time.

Mental Game Update

Mental game has been good of late, though I may not have been fully tested with regard runbad. Still, I've had mistakes to contend with that I've been able to be ok with, and winners tilt to deal with too. One thing the past few days has been motivation........ I haven't read that chapter yet, but I've decided to have a pop at fixing it myself.

Basically, it's 11pm. I planned to play through the night, but I'm up for the day and ready to stop. Super poor mental game, and instead I need to realise that in fact until a suitable period of time (monthly at least) I haven't won anything. Plus, I should simply see the next 6 hours as a shift that needs putting in. Thinking like this, the MTT I'm entering in a few minutes now seems like something I want to really final table, instead of something to keep my session going an hour then bustout of.

Technical game has been good as well. I'm not particularly working on anything at conscious competency level at the moment, but I guess constantly keeping an aggro image whilst not getting spewy requries most of my thought. I think I'm quite sorta game theoryish in a lot of tough spots now which has freed up a lot of mental processing. For example, in this spot. Should I bluff river, or shouldn't I? Well it's close, and so I should bluff the rock bottom of my range and not bluff stronger hands than that....... hard to argue that 8hi on this board is about as rock bottom as it gets, so bluff it is. Bad example 'cos it worked, but I've had dozens of these spots lately, and when they don't work I'm just super fine with it 'cos, simply, they're not supposed to always work!

Playing $5 rebuy tonight to keep my sessions ticking over.

Mental Diary

Had some 'mistake tilt' creep in during my most recent session, and wasn't able to inject logic quick enough to be able to stop it causing me to make more mistakes. I then became aware of that mistake, and the mistakes spiralled......... that's why mistake tilt is the worst, it just cascades and things get worse and worse.

Mistakes are fine, and already built into a decent winrate. It's allowing mistakes to spiral that is the bigger mistake. That's what I need to recite to myself when making a mistake.

Actually in terms of the mistakes, they probably weren't actually bad mistakes; just running into the wrong hands and stuff. This hand for example, flop turn and river are all pretty much mandatory. The step up in stakes likely has something to do with it, my instinctive patience for the long game being tested through underolledness.

One other thing is worrying about the money lost........ it's really tough, but I need to remember that money is not won, or lost on a daily basis. It's simply an illusion........ at month end we can evaluate, but until then; even looking at your day's winnings gets you into terrible mental habits. I didn't win $900 yesterday, and I didn't lose $650 today. Understanding this and believing it is key to mental stability. I really need to get into this habit, so I won't be discussing $$$ results until month end from this point onwards.

In terms of technical adjustment, I had a few hands where I gave 200nl regs wayyyyyyyy too much credit 'would he really 4bet massive ep-bb 100bbs deep and have a hand??' (yes), and that's just time spent at 100 and thinking a step up would matter, without remembering just how little people do still actually think at 200 a lot. I think a general gameplan should be to play pretty tight/ solid at 100bbs, then look to unleash bluffs and stuff when I get deeper. I've talked about this before, just need to actually put it into action.

I'll play a short 30 minute session now/ soon and review all the hands here to get back on track.

200nl Session Review

First session back went 'well'. I'm nowhere near where I want to be mentally yet though, 'cos my 'well' is still automatically derived from the fact that I won a couple of buyins. I played well too though, and felt mentally in a good place.... didn't pissed off when things went wrong (things going wrong is all built into the solid winrate, only getting mad at the mistakes and making more mistakes because of it leaves you with a breakeven winrate) and I just felt like I was executing a preplanned strategy a lot of the time rather than doing things off the hoof and making it up as I go along.

People played awfully against me this session, which I guess is a form of rungood, but it bodes well.

http://weaktight.com/5736923 - frequent 4bettor, and I with gameflow at a standstill (no recent 200 history) my 4betting and bluff frequencies need to slightly on the higher side to take advantage of the fact that no history usually = no spaz from opponent. 140bbs deep, nutted hand, can make a wheel, gotta be 4bet. His flatting range contains AQ AK etc, so I decided to throw this into my check not folding range. River is just like........ he can't have AK AQ AJ QQ JJ by this point and I'm just always ahead or splitting and so a bet is pretty mandatory both for vacuum and overall gameplan reasons. He snap calls, which I think I'm gonna label a station call really.

Actually one of the sickest changes I've recently made is having a 'calling station regs' note colour. I see a call like this, they go purple, and I don't do the kind of 'get em off top pair or trips or flush on a paired board' bluff on em ever again. Do people adjust? lol

http://weaktight.com/5736938 - another station call. He makes a sorta gto river call which I'm pretty sure is too lose for GTO even given positions.

http://weaktight.com/5736944 - no history, but he was on 4 tables and I was 3betting a huge whale. Cold 4betting so rife at 200 I basically have the nut bluff 'must jam' hand given how wide I'm definitely 3betting there.

http://weaktight.com/5736951 - certainly a couple of imbalances here on his part..... the small cbet, and then the flat OOP. I just certainly have the best hand on the turn, but he can't stand too much more heat and so I plump for the 1/3 where he might do something silly. Alas the snap flop call, snap turn cf. Flop raise is just part of what I was discussing in my last blog.

http://weaktight.com/5736957 - only note I had read 'weak weak weak weak' which I presume meant I could make him fold AA down. So lol imbalanced with his cbet size on this board.

http://weaktight.com/5736964 - excpected a very wide 4bet bluff range PF for the usual reasons...... couldn't see him just CF this board, and didn't wanna stab turn without jamming river, so was left with a 'bottom of range gotta bluff' on this river. Ace hi goes away, TT if he has it. Alas not this.

http://weaktight.com/5736969 - I stole this 'lead turn that hits us small' move from flippety, and he from Sauce. Doubtless it's misapplied here, I need more thought. Can't see this guy bluffing here really.........

Right, gonna play another. Just need to keep up the strong mental side.

Movin On Up

I feel in a good place at the moment to give myself 5 BIs back at 200nl. I've been playing well at 100, and my mental side has improved to the point that I know what to expect at 200, know the risks involved, and will have acceptance if it all goes pear shaped.

I need to do this properly though, so my first few sessions will be followed by some rigorous session reviews to talk over technical and maybe mental adjustments.

My cbetting has dropped a ton again, so need to keep an eye on that, especially IP. It's probably only a small mistake to cbet too much IP, and a small mistake to cbet too little OOP.

PF at 200, people are just run over less often, so I'm going to be 3betting a bit less and also flat some big pairs to raise flops and cultivate the spaz image that I think is so necessary at 200 down.

Review to follow........!

Mental / Technical Update

Had a good 2/3 days in terms of $$, but the fact that I even still see it in terms is a symptom of mental weakness. Yesterday I was down $900 at one point, and at the point of being down a ton I'm actually pretty mentally strong. I came back to be up a buyin for the day. Today I'm up 8 buyins or so, and that's where the mental weakness comes in for me.... at least in the past. Winners tilt- comes in different forms, but for me it's the 'don't wanna lose this money I've earned' side of things. I then become aware of this, overadjust, spew off money, etc.

So what needs to change is the unconscious perception of how I view money and results. Essentially, the money I won today is an illusion. I haven't earned anything yet, and if I lose, I haven't lost anything. Of course, you should set a reasonable timescale for when you can decide that you've won xyz, but this should be monthly at a minimum. All I've done today is play x mentally good hours, and this will contribute towards my realising my edge investment at the end of the month. My default (which I very nearly did) of saying 'up 7 BIs, day's works done! Straight to the pub' is a pretty big mistake in this context.

Technically, plenty of leaks have been learned to unconscious competency level (at least for now) so I've been able to play longer sessions with less tax on the brain. This makes room for new conscious competencies to focus on, and so what I'm doing at the moment is working on having a spewy image again. Basically just gone in fith gear, 4betting 90%, raising tons of flops, barreling wide, but then not going so far as  to any ridiuclous spew in big pots. Might be an illusion, but so many of the winning pots today seemed like a straight up reaction to my annoying people. People at 100 just overadjust, do the 'monkey see monkey do' thing, and just stack baddddly.

http://weaktight.com/5726453 - tarp

http://weaktight.com/5726455 - I have bluffs on the flop atm, not really the river tho

http://weaktight.com/5726458 - crushed when the money goes in, needs a lot of folds

http://weaktight.com/5726462 - bad stack

Yeah thing image is decently important. Even bad regs at 100 will make OKish folds VS people they perceive to be not capable of bluffing. I know this from experience........ and it doesn't have to be a long term thing of changing stats, people get pissed off in a single session...... managing this side of poker is probably the most enjoyable part of it for me.

Right, another session now.........

Start of day stuff

Start with mental stuff. Was just discussing all this mad stuff I need to spend tons of money on, and got me a little tilted and so I disengaged from the conversation. In the past I'd probably just kick off a quick session with a 'need to make money' mentality and spew off 9 BIs, but now at least I can do some stuff about it and get myself in a better mode.

Basically, I only have control over how well I play, and so worrying about external factors such as rungood is a huge waste of mental energy and counter productive. I feel like I'm slowly turning round the oil tanker in terms of how I view session decisions in relation to winrate..... just realising that making a big fold or even losing an unavoidable buyin, or even losing a buyin that was close, contributes to a 5bb winrate as much as winning large pots does.

I've also been grading myself every 10 minutes on my ability to have video narratives kick in on all the key pots. Having it there is very mentally intensive, so it's not like I need it for every PF decision or whatever, but once I have 10bbs invested into a pot then I need to start articulating the correct way forward as if being watched a few 100 people.

Technically, probably my biggest leak thus far is allowing reverse equity situations to build when I'm OOP. A couple of huge soul reads starting on the flop when he's always betting 3 streets, but marginal. I 3bet KK the other day, and CC down AQ8r VS a wide PF range where he'd only ever bet AQ or 88 3 streets for value. So 12 combos vs a wide PF range and a range where his air is stabbing flop a ton......... so maybe the soulread isn't that bad, but I guess at 100 just sorta *unnecessary* really. He had 88.

Other than that, quite happy. I've been cbetting more so my WWSF is pretty high again which can only be good.

Right, er that's it. Hopefully won't be long now till I'm free of this cursed limit. At least I have a house to my name tho!

6am Musings

It's 6am, I'm up ready to attack the day and get into a normal sleep pattern! Not really, I'm just about to go to bed obviously. Just thought I'd throw some quick notes down about stuff before I go to sleep. On a side note, anyone that says 'catch some zeds' needs shooting in the head.

A side effect of just playing more pot control VS fish and bad regs was that I noticed my wwsf for the past few days had sunk to an all time low of 42........ wtf! Checking my cbet stat, it had sunk to 33....... woah! So yeah, I'd gotten out the habit of cbetting and was ceding far too many pots. So I corrected that the last 2 sessions and had 50+ wwsf again.

Mental game was good today overall...... today was a decently hard test 'cos I definitely ran abysmally in about a million spots and previously it probably woulda spiralled. Finished $150 down on the day after being stuck $600.

I realised from reading Mental Game of Poker that my biggest tilt 'flavour' (or whatever) is Mistake Tilt. Basically making mistakes is the only proper form of tilt I actually experience. Bad beats (within reason) I'm fine with, coolers, fine. Mistakes though, I just myself getting angry at myself and for the next minute I'm much more prone to other mistakes.

Injecting logic such as 'mistakes are fine, they're part of learning and part of your solid winrate, the bigger mistake would be for this mistake to lead to worse mistakes' really helps. Also recognising that a ton of 'mistakes' aren't actually mistakes, like a thin value bet VS a fish on the river with 3rd pair and he just has top pair. Important to remember YOU'RE NOT GOOD 100% WHEN CALLED......... JUST MARGINALLY OVER 50% IS FINE.

I'm loving the game theory aspect of defending x% of my range atm...... just means I'm making tons of aggressive floats and raises....... you basically have to when defending 66% of your range on every street. I don't always do it, but in 100% cbet spots I'm defending at least the top 66% of my range and probably some more. It's really opened my eyes to, and quanitified, just how exploitable people are when they're clearly defending WAY less than 66% of their own range and we just get to auto profit on our bets. Example, I defended 66 on AA8 or something in a 3bet pot today...... I'd check down on blanks, but on the turn K to a weak barrel I double floated and jammed river. Hand history's here http://weaktight.com/5709088

Right m'off to bed. Plan for tomorrow is to have a haircut, realised today my last one was for my cousin's wedding...... last July.

Mental game improvement

Just a small thing, but after a couple of good sessions I was getting annihilated in the last one. The hands were all fine, I was in a good frame of mind and I've checked them and they're all standard coolers/ occasional thinnish shoves VS 50bbers.

Given all that, as I was waiting for the blinds to finish the session, it would've been very easy for me to call this river to 'prove' how bad I was running. His range is like JJ, and the fact I didn't call it after being stuck 4BIs shows a decent improvement imo.

Mental Fail

Well, only a very slight one, but a costly one. And it was very sorta circumstance-specific, ie it wouldn't have happened had the following two hands not happened consecutively and I had a second to inject logic and get over the tilt.

http://weaktight.com/5703255 - yeh, their calling range on the river is sets and trips, they're both calling either of these to a shove so gotta be a shove. Got coolered, whatever, these things happen and you still get to win at 5bb 'cos these are already factored in!

http://weaktight.com/5703262 - unfortunately the above hand hit showdown just as he bet this turn, and I was like 9% titlted and thought oh fuck it he can't have a flopped flush with this sizing and I look fos and he's never folding KK AA with a diamond etc. Bad logic, he's totally always cc KK or AA somewhere, and when I raise and he shoves I'm cruuuuuuuushed and probably don't have the odds at this point. So yeah I just basically needed an extra 7 seconds between hands and I would been fine here and gone call call and saved myself $100 or so. Oh well.

I'm just writing this to remind myself to take a very deep breath after any potential tilt hand and take extreme caution on any hand for the next minute or so.

The day is young anyway!

Good couple of days

Ran well for a couple of days and did well $ wise. As part of the mental game of poker stuff though I'm obviously trying to move away from evaluating success based on short term $ fluctuations, but I'm pleased with my in-game mental approach of late and also my approach to dealing with leaks and competencies and such.

I have this sticker on my desktop recording my current conscious competencies and unconscious competencies. I have a few ready to be 'promoted' to UC I think, leaving room for some more conscious competencies. Not too sure what they'll be yet though.

Dan

Musings

Decent consistency of late...... reading the mental game of poker every day has been a huge help, just to get me thinking in those terms really. I have a list of session goals that currently function as my 'conscious competencies', some of which are soon ready to be promoted to 'unconscious competencies' and thus making room for more conscious competencies to fill their place. Being aware of this stuff stops me having too many things to think about at once and overloading my brain and causing spew.

I think a big improvement has been, laughably, that I resolved to stop spewing to fish. Sounds insane, I would let them own my soul time and time again through not pot controlling, through 3x overbet river bluffs, through forgetting that my thin turn bet still means they might pot donk the river, etc. I think my competeitive instincts has been lacking VS them as well, like I hate to 'lose' to regs (where lose might mean not getting the maximum value or whatever in the 'poker' sense) but I haven't had the same killer instinct when it comes to fish. So yeah improving this has been a big help.

On the mental side, the constant reminder that every small decision contributes to winrate has kept my focus super solid too. Need to keep reminding myself of that though, it's not yet to the level of UC (unconscious competency).

Technically, I've been putting more into winding up regs with small amounts of aggression to enable them to spew. I think this is pretty important as I've discussed before. Basically have the image of a spewtard, but without actually doing a whole lot of spewing (maybe a ton of breakevenish flop minraises, turn donks, river minbets etc).

So yeah just wanted to write a blog while on a roll rather than after the usual 12 BI nightmare.

Pre Session Notes

Couple of good sessions, probably purely down to improved mental game rather than anything else. Sounds stupid, but it helps me hugely to remember that everything contributes to the winrate. Yeah this is obvious, but I'd get frustrated at losing virtually any pot 'cos I'd think 'damn, can't win at 5bb now, cos I got coolered'. Like sorta thinking that all the coolers and good pots and everything all add up to 5 bb/100, and anything taken off that means we win nothing. Whereas in reality all our winning spots add up to a gizzilion/100, and it's just minimising those downsides that leave us with a nice healthy winrate. Yeah, just helps me loads to think about it like this for some reason.

So yeah that's it, not too many interesting hands really. I've been doing lots of work on CREV on flatting 3bets..... like cos so many people auto cbet so many boards, but we have to defend 2/3 of our range to stop them having the auto profitable cbet. 2/3 of our range includes a lot of very aggressive floats and raises, so been fun to play about with those. I'll talk more about it sometime when I have it more figured out.

Did have to make this 'sigh lol 100' call today. He woulda bluffed me off 22 tho. http://weaktight.com/5679486

Is all

Session Review #1

Stopping and writing the last blog in that session was a really good move. I was stuck 2 BIs at the time because of this and this. The 87 I hate much less than the KJ........... KJ I was just sure he peeled ace hi on the turn again, but the shove is hugely bad just based on hand selection and positions and lol 100 really. As I said in the last blog, there's plenty of scope to be aggro at 100 but typically once the pot reaches a certain threshold people are going nowhere.

The 87 is like, he definitely only shoves Tx there, JJ+ gets 4bet preflop 100%, definitely isn't good enough to shove 99, etc. On the flipside, maybe I should just bluffcatch the 24 combos of JJ+ I always have there and fold the bottom of my range. Gotta make dems hero calls sometimes tho, so yeah I don't hate it, only the river really is close and he gets there with so much of his preflop calling range.

I have a definite leak of putting in too much money VS fish........ actually is crazy how bad I play vs them. Like the number of times I try a bet check overbet or something and get snapped by middle pair. Also stuff like this has to stop, I should just cc the flop and go from there rather than shovel money in without a decent plan to win the hand.

So current goals:

Be aggro in small and med pots, not spewy in big ones.
Don't spew VS fish.
Don't get it in too light CO-EP.

Mental Goals:
Video narrative on decisions
Realise that everything contributes to winrate, not just the winning pots. Folding the river well = winrate, losing the minimum = winrate. Good for mentality.

Session Goals

A couple of good sessions. Then started badly in this one and decided it was worth going over some general goals of play here, specifically pertaining to 100nl......

First of all, being perceived as a spaz is a must. Actually being a spaz though is a disaster. Very general point this, but the regs are weak enough to call way too wide on flop and fold lots of turns......... this goes for single raised pots and 3bet pots. If they're still there on the river though, time to shut up shop!

So yeah, no excuses for big river bluffs at this level. People's calling ranges are exceedingly wide in all spots, especially after a few 3bets and flop raises, and the way to exploit that is not to be jamming all in on the river with no pair a lot no matter how game theoretically correct it may seem.

Getting it in PF.......... facing a 3bet EP or MP vs BTN or blinds, we have to be really tight getting in PF. QQ is out, AK is out. Just flat them OOP.

In obvious bluff catcher spots facing a big bet, they have it. Well, not always, but certainly more than the maximum 66% of the time we need them to have it.

Session review to follow......

Session Review

Happy with how the session played out, particularly my thought process and the mental aspect. After doing some work on exploitation/ re-exploitation etc I was very mindful not to fold VS wide ranges. Like, folding even 40% VS a 25% opener and 66% cbettor VS our, say, 6% cc range is a big mistake, and should be more like fold 30%.

Similarly, spots where our opponents cold call too wide I've just been looking to barrel off and make virtually their whole range (after calling flop & turn) a bluffcatcher. If they call light, then easy adjustment but I think the starting point should be to attack very wide.

Also getting a bit more game theoryish with calls. This being  the near top of my range and playing VS a wide range = call VS an unknown rather than worry too much that bluffing rivers at 100 doesn't happen too much.

Probably one misake in a middle sized pot where I should've trusted my instinct and folded turn. But overall good, even though I didn't want to say that.

Update

I'm here to talk about a small downswing, and stuff to take out from it. The downswing was caused/ influenced by a few things, but least of all variance and most of all my attitude. In a word, complacency, which is absolutely scandalous really.

I think it all started when I was taking advice on how to improve my overall happiness........ essentially I tried to look at all things in a more positive light and take the good out of situations. I also had to stop beating myself up for misplayed sessions or whatever.

I think it's sound advice when applied to life, but it seems irreconcilable to me with striving for perfection in a discipline such as poker. Especially when being just short 'perfection' (meaning playing to the best of our ability) is increasingly the difference between winning a small amount and losing a ton. Reading my 2009 blogs brought home to me how much of a perfectionist I was at that time........ constant 4 figure winning sessions where I was going crazy at myself over a slightly misplayed hand.

These days, it's been more like 'oh lost 3 BIs at a table of the worst players on the internet, shouldn't have shoved that AJo PF I suppose, oh well Dan A for effort here's a nice pat on the back'. Surprise surprise, rinse repeat some other stupid time. Wonder why my winrate barely touches 1bb the last 200k hands.

Anyway, step 1 to improving means beating myself up a hell of a lot more than I have been doing. Or at least, have the implied threat of beating myself up in order to stop me being so ridiculous in the first place. In terms of overall happiness......... I need some separation basically, or maybe I'll just only be happy if doing well, which is fine by me.

Step 2 of my plan is play much less, and work much more. I just did an hour & half with Flippety from Leggo, looking at some stuff on CREV, and it's actually scary just how much better he thinks about poker than I do. (He also make me laugh, saying he always leaves tables when fish sit 'cos he finds it boring playing them- love that attitude).

My long term winrate over 900k hands is 1.9bb at 200nl Zoom, some 500 and some 100. Given decent sample graphs I've seen, I don't see any reason why I can't half the number of hands I play, but treble my winrate, through increased work and a better attitude. I can see soooooo much room for improvement that I'm also certain of it.

Some session reviews, and then a ton of CREV sims is the formula for improvement. As Flippety said, it's all about improving the maths/ combos/ game theory side to the level of unconscious competency. Just constantly doing the sims is what eventually feeds in your gametime brain and allows you to play better.

Step 3 of my plan is to delete Twitter (done), unsubscribe from the online Spectator magazine (not yet done) and save myself about 4 'leisure' reading hours in the day that I can spend instead reading mental game of poker, maths of poker, D2s books, Matt Janda's new book, or whatever.

Step 4 is to have some mental consistency. I often have these little relaunch episodes, and I crush for a while, but complacency is the worrrrrrrrrst thing for me. I'll analyse, crush, analyse, crush, then just play play play breakeven, lose 30BIs, come back here crying about it. I need to be massive on guarding against complacency and keeping the workrate up.

Step 5, already mentioned, but reading mental game of poker over and over and over. Just getting much better at it........ more and more top players I'm hearing from read it constantly..... even CTS who you would think is just like super level headed anyway has read it twice recently. I think my mindset in a ton of spots recently has been atrocious and it simply needs to improve.

The end.