I'm here to talk about how my mental game has been TERRIBLE of late. Well, the past month and a half anyway.
As an aside, my writing has 'gone' atrocious as well. I swear to god I used to be pretty fluent and could write in a way that didn't sound all disjointed and, well, written by a 9 year old trying too hard.
Anyway, back to my terrible mental game, evidence of which I can see right at this moment as I rush to finish this blog so I can get back to playing with a mental fish's outlook and probably lose a ton more money.
If I was asked to describe the nub of my mental problems at the moment, I'd say I don't exactly feel 'relaxed' as I'm playing. I can certainly convince myself I feel relaxed, but I find my brain constantly taking itself off on a journey away from poker, or at least the things that are important. My mind will slightly drift, I find I've 3bet KJo oop to a good player deep. Flop comes J94ss and I check call a 3/4 bet. Uh oh, and then typically spend the next 2 streets berating myself for auto pilot 3betting it in the first place.
Certainly all my problems could be solved by being more 'present' in the Eckhart Tolle sense, but until I've mastered that art I certainly need to learn to deal with my thoughts in the way that Jared Tendler would advise in the more mainstream way of dealing with tilt.
Actually on that, I guess I don't need to become amazing at the Eckhart stuff (by the way, if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, read 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, it's the key to happiness (promise)), rather I suppose just 'noticing' my tilt thoughts as they occur goes a long way towards solving the problem.
Just had a read through some old mental game blogs; this one http://grogheadflowanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/april-results-going-forward.html I think is really good and helpful, and illustrates the kind of mindset I need to work to achieve again.
I suppose, (sorta a lightbulb moment) that the main aim of this blog, and the key to playing well consistently, is to make the mental game and the nuances of it 'THE MAIN THING' when going about my day to day poker business. My thoughts have certainly strayed before into thinking things like; the technical aspect of my game is letting me down, or like oh I'm not winning 'cos I'm not being aggressive enough or I'm not calling enough or I'm forgetting to do XYZ. The truth is, now that I'm a bit calmer, that if my mental game is spot on then I'm going to be at least a small winner in any 2-5 game.
Basically what I'm maybe saying is, that any technical improvement will only yield fractions of bb/100 in the long term, whereas mental game improvement is actually hugely beneficial, probably at a guess a difference of around 10bb/100 and that's not exaggeration. I'm not even talking about huge tilt monkey vs Zen master, more like average reg who doesn't pay attention to it and when tilted loses at 4bb/100 VS the same reg who works on his mental game and suddenly in the same situation manages to still have an expected winrate of 6bb/100.
So yeahhhhhhhhh, I'm all about the mental game from now on. Technical stuff will come to me in game when I'm super mentally zoned in.
I love writing blogs, I could never have unearthed these thoughts without writing them down. Mad eh?
I just realised something else....... I've got a big (internal, I don't generally smile to myself) smile on at the moment at this realisation. Basically, a lot Eckhart Tolle's teachings are about how noticing things within yourself makes them die and disappear. So like, once you notice your ego in certain situations, the sheer ridiculousness of it becomes apparent to you and thus it falls away and you become more present.
What writing this stuff down has done is much the same effect on me. Just the thought about getting upset about losing a flip, getting coolered, making the odd mistake is (I've just realised) just so SO ridiculous that I can feel it dying away even as I write this. Poker should be seen as basically a wave that your ride, and the skill is in riding the bad waves as well as the smooth ones. In fact, riding the bad ones is way more important than riding the good ones, and as such each 'bad' situation is an amazing opportunity (one that happens with the same frequency to ALL your opponents) to make a quality long term decision unaffected by mental noise or anguish or loathing of the past or fear of the future.
So that's my goal right now, to get to a place where I see a bad situation as an AMAZING opportunity. Can you imagine the mental power in actually thinking that way? And the best thing is, it's not a delusion, rather; the standard way most people think is the delusion.
I'm one tabling the shootout WCOOP at the moment, but after that I'm going to play a session and record all my mental thoughts about it here in the comments, or maybe the next blog I dunno.
Edit: Making a new blog entry having played the session
Thanks for reading........ woooo this is exciting!
3 comments:
I read Tolle (with Krishnamurti, Nhat Hanh and Osho) a few years ago. I liked how they all stressed importance of self-observation and self-distancing, but I couldn't also stand their typical far east ataraxia type of mentality and annoying accumulation of big words, excessive afflatus, etc. in their texts. Stylistically, it's very weak. But also intellectually, these texts do not provide any hard notions that could be somehow defined and used for auto-therapeutic purposes, especially that these views do not add up to a coherent system. For instance, they use interchangeably notions such as 'mind', 'I', 'conscience/awareness', 'thoughts' without clear presentation how they relate to each other. This allows them to make a lot of unclear vauge statements. Just try to define the most important notions from their essays within their wiritngs, it's impossible because there is plenty of equivocations.
I'd suggest reading some of these instead:
http://positivedisintegration.com/
I've always been into psychological/self-development literature and K. Dabrowski is the most inspiring, thorough and intellectually reliable man I've ever read. Hope you find him interesting as well.
As for your autopiloting issues, roots should be simpler I think. Perhaps you play too many tables, play tired, play too long?
You may want to check out one of D. Amen's books, very practical and direct suggestions on how to preserve healthy brain:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Good-Brain-Great-Performance/dp/1400082099/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1378774713&sr=8-8&keywords=amen+brain
This is also good, but much less "self-helping". More serios intellectually, though.
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Principles-Surviving-Thriving/dp/0979777747/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378774886&sr=8-1&keywords=brain+rules
Good luck
Pawel
hey grog
enjoyed this and the other latest blogpost.
its def v important to concentrate on the mental issues of the game. mainly so that in game you continue to think about the right things (making the right plays).
however this leads to another point which you touched upon and thats the technical aspect (or your actual playing skills). so you got x/r'd on a abc board. i know you didnt sweat it and just folded. but was it the right play?
like, its ok having good mental game (if it allows you to play your A game longer or keeps you motivated to play more hands than you have before each month) but it needs to be balanced with knowing the right play, and that comes with vigorous analysis of situations outside of game play.
what im trying to get at (eg. idk much about pokersnowie, just a little) is the monetnegrans who've been playing the game for 6 months (and alledgedly use snowie) who are small winners in 500 zoom. they could have awful mental game (thinking x, y and z unrelated to poker in a session) but if they know the correct play in the SB is to flat QQ to a tight CO open and BTN call (or whatever the weird plays it makes. they talk about it at deucescracked) and do it every time, you being mentally focused is important for you. but you still need to know their strategies and frequencies, which is completely (i would think tho could be wrong) separate to the mental game. and cant be discerned from just keeping mind your free and open during a session
NB talking of that sauce vid. only skimmed but some really indepth comments in the video comments section ar rio. he must be getting paid a lot
Cheers guys.
Pawel, I think A New Earth by Tolle is much easier reading than The Power of Now, and I think I'd argue that his descriptions are necessarily vague because he is describing things that *cannot* be described, because once they are described they are no longer the thing that they were, only a poor imitation. We could talk about this all day, and indeed I do with other people :-) I'll definitely check out Dabrowski though and your other links.
John, if the montenegrons have Snowie playing live for them, effectively like a bot, then of course they don't need mental game (a big reason why bots should be banned, poker is supposed to be a human game complete with human weaknesses) but if they're just using it to improve, then without good mental game they won't be able to access that knowledge learned to the point of 'conscious competency', ie new skills not fully learned to the point of unconscious competency. And of course I don't stop the technical side altogether, but my style and that of people I discuss hands with is much more to do with understanding the player than it is any concrete CREV stuff etc, and I think just discussing hands each day is enough to keep my technical game on top.
Just made a leggo vid about all this stuff actually so that'll be up in a few days.
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