Originally posted by Alan883
It looks like you play right now more vs yourself than others.
You almost exactly read my mind.
Thx for your kind words.
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Ok, I'm finally back.
It's first time I took such a huge break from the poker. I hadn't played a single hand for almost a month.
In general I don't like the idea of taking such breaks, it looks like evading a problem instead of dealing with it. But in this situation I just had to do it. Looking back I can see my appalling psychological state at the beginning of April. Plus I had no idea what to do to fix the situation. So taking a break was the only option. And it took me almost two weeks to get my condition to the level where I could start to find the answers to my problems.
First thing that bothered me, that my "marathon" didn't produce any results what so ever.
After some thought I distinguished two possible causes:
- My methods of working out of the table are fundamentally flawed.
- My psychological problems negate all the possible progress.
To address the first problem, I returned back to the material about learning.
I had a copy of an old post from the 2+2 forums about 4 stages of learning in the adults (I also found it later in the mindgames book by Jared Tandler).
They are:
- unconscious incompetence
- conscious incompetence
- consious competence
- unconscious competence
Then I checked my game and off-table work trying to find how my skills relate to those stages. When I was doing off-table analysis, I was king. I could easily spot all my mistakes and weaknesses and come with solutions what lines should I take, what sizing should I use, what I should do with different hand types in the same spot etc.
So I have no doubts about my abilities at the conscious competence level off the tables.
After that I checked a couple hours of footage from my last sessions. And the picture there is quite different. I still make some good decisions in particular hands as well as at my general strategies. But most of the time the is something off with my game. I play much simplier and make mistakes, lots of mistakes. And most of time I can't remember what I was thinking in such spots by looking at the footage, as If I just wasn't there at all.
First I have the problem with attention, where I'm slipping to some autopilot state and don't even notice. Second my autopilot state is very poor in comparison to my normal understanding of the game. Which means my unconscious competence level is low. When you look at the difference between the 3rd and 4th level, it becomes obvious that the transition between them is simply broken.
After that conclusion I stopped for little while, cause this is a new problem for me. I tried to think about my learning process during my whole life, to find anything that resembles the current situation. Nothing came to mind. More of that I tried to make a connection from the current problem to my learning processes in the past. And I found it. In my whole life I never tried to master anything. Every time I gained some new knowledge or skill, I practiced it to the state where I "sort of can do it", nothing more.
And this became a habit of mine, so If I look at my poker game, I definitely lack of discipline. But it's not the discipline to play a lot or diligently work off the tables. It's the discipline to work on one particular aspect of the game until you can unconsciously apply it at any time in any situation.
That's what I really lack and that's what I have to train in the first place. Not some marathons to play more and study more. The quality goes first. I need to make sure that my playing and off-table work benefits my learning process and plugs my poker leaks. Without it any amount of playing and analysis will not be enough.
At the moment I'm writing this, I already played a little bit. I tried to work on my thought process, on how to think about particular aspect of the game during the practice, to make sure your conscious competence transforms to unconscious with out losses or distortions. But 10 min into the first session I found myself playing 7 tables instead of 4, justifying it to myself: "There re too much fish, I just can't close those additional tables". The whole purpose of the practice was totally forgotten. This emphasizes the difficulty of getting rid of old habits, which you even wasn't aware of. I also played 2 more sessions , I still have an urge to open more tables that it's necessary for the practicing purpose. But I also was able to recognize the moments I was sliding from the true goal of the practice to mindless grind, and that kept me on the right track. The only thing that left is to keep this deliberate practice without switching to other things too early.
Second problem was the psychological one. Even when I found flaws in my practice, the overall feeling about the game is far too off and the frequency of my mistakes was too high for just one problem to be the cause.
Ok, now my post is getting too big. And frankly I have some other thing to do, like playing a couple of sessions.
I will write the 2nd part about finding flaws in my psychology later.
As some conclusion these are my simple goals for the next week:
- I'm going to play several sessions a day. With full awareness of my goal, which is to train single predefined aspect of the game to full unconscious competence. I started with stealing. This doesn't mean I will ignore post flop or playing from EP & MP. When I'm in steal situation I will recheck my first impression about what I need to do with my conscious analysis of every factor and compare the results, by that I can expose my flaws in the unconscious competence level. Also at the first sessions showed the overall improvement of attention in any situation due to such additional level of thinking at steal/resteal situations.
- I will write every day. Actually it helps me to clarify my thinking a lot and to come up with new ideas. Also when I stopped to write regularly during my "marathon", I was just evading the problems that arose instead of trying to deal with them. Also writing a lot seems to be useful when reflecting on the changes you trying to make to your poker game or your life overall. So if I miss a day feel free to remind me that I'm just a lazy person, or I slipped to evasion of the my problems again. (But I think I won't give you any reason to do it this time).
- I will read the MindGames to the end, cause I found some good insights in poker psychology, I haven't even thought of before.
When i saw that you made another post i said to myself...oh damn...i almost forgot about 60+30:)...well it nice to see you back...will still follow your progress of course. I like the way you think and i think you really work hard to succeed in poker. So not the first time and even not for the last time...good luck at the tables and keep with your great work.
I hope all you psychological things will sort out. BTW? Do you have a job? Do you make your living out of poker? Maybe i missed that somewhere in your previous posts.
Originally posted by Alan883
BTW? Do you have a job? Do you make your living out of poker? Maybe i missed that somewhere in your previous posts.
I participate in some side projects from time to time, so I won't drain my bankroll, accumulated when I played nl100-200.
Paying attention to everything during the session seems to bring some dividends. Today I was able to observe myself experiencing some fear to make mistakes.
Here how it's started. I made one small (3bb) but very basic postflop mistake which led to some hidden doubts in my basic postflop lines. The feeling after that was like an itch, and as a natural reaction to it I began to pay more attention to my every move, but in a bad way. I started to question my every decision. And 20mins later I made another postflop mistake in simple place.
€0.25/€0.5 No-Limit Hold'em (9 handed)
Preflop: Hero is BB with J:h, Q:h.
UTG1 folds, UTG2 calls €0.50, 6 folds, Hero raises to €2.50, UTG2 calls €2.00.
Flop: (€5.25) Q:d, 4:s, 6:c (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG2 bets €1.00, Hero calls €1.00.
Turn: (€7.25) 5:c (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG2 bets €2.00, Hero raises to €5.80, UTG2 calls €3.80.
River: (€18.85) 6:h (2 players)
Here I knew that his range is shifted to some mediocre made hands due to his line on the turn. But I began to rethink the situation not trying to maximize my value but trying not to make a mistake. I remembered that I made one yesterday by not letting the opponent to bet himself. But I disregarded the fact that situation was totally different, I looked at this opps aggression on the river, it was 55%, and I disregardewd again the river sample size. I think this is called confirmation bias, when you are seeing only thing that supports your idea, throwing away everything that doesn't fit. So I checked, opp checked back and showed TT. And he would have paid another value bet for sure.
Hero checks, UTG2 checks.
Final Pot: €18.85.
Results follow:
Hero shows two pairs, queens and sixes(J:h Q:h).
UTG2 shows two pairs, tens and sixes(T:c T:h).
Hero wins with two pairs, queens and sixes(J:h Q:h).
After that 2nd hand I was able to recognize what was happening (thanks to my habit to read every book twice to make sure that I haven't missed any ideas). When I recognized the problem, I quickly found what was the roots for the first mistake (I wasn't in the best condition at the start of the session, and for couple of minutes played my old mediocre style of poker, which was enough to make a mistake) and the feeling of anxiety and all the doubts vanished pretty quickly.
That actually was very-very useful, because in the next session I lost 2 50bb pots, but since I was sure what I was doing it, it didn't affect me at all. And at the end of 2nd session, I got very nice situation on the river, exactly what I needed to test myself in bet or ch river situation.
Preflop: Hero is BB with 2:s, 2:c.
2 folds, MP2 raises to $1.25, 3 folds, SB calls $1.00, Hero calls $0.75.
Flop: ($3.75) A:h, 2:d, 2:h (3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, MP2 bets $2.00, SB folds, Hero calls $2.00.
Turn: ($7.75) 6:h (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks.
River: ($7.75) 7:d (2 players)
here I calmly compared what which action can give me. Usually bet here will give me a call from small Ax which can chb some times when I ch, but he is MP so he has low amount of small aces, on the other hand if I check I can provoke possible mistake from him making a bet/call from good Ax hand (I see some regs do such mistakes from time to time. Or I can provoke a "confirmed" bluff here from my opponent (it's a bluff vs 2 checks on my part, lots of people tend to do it, but they don't think how their hand looks in my eyes, so those bluffs can be easily picked up). So I decided to go for ch/r. And pressed the button without any doubts or 2nd thoughts.
Hero checks, MP2 bets $5.50, Hero raises to $14.50, MP2 raises to $42.00, Hero raises to $46.75, MP2 calls $4.75.
Final Pot: $101.25.
Results follow:
Hero shows four of a kind, twos(2:s 2:c).
MP2 shows a full-house, sevens full of twos(7:c 7:s).
Hero wins with four of a kind, twos(2:s 2:c).
The only downside of that hand that after it I felt something like winning tilt. Not because I won money, but because I got a good opportunity to verify by practice my ideas about the origins of anxiety.
So it had to take a break for like 20mins, to be able to continue what I planned for a day.
Also after looking through todays sessions through filters, I found I miss about 10-15% of thin steals (mostly in the moments of distractions). So I will play several days more, training my attention and trying to lower those misses to 0.
Unfortunately I experienced some internet problems today. For some reason I got heavy packet loss, and this resulted in random sitouts on the tables which make me unable to play.
So I decided to finish the mindgames book today. I had very important chapters about the motivation and confidence left. The mindgames book overall is dedicated to recognition of the problem. It works fine with tilt and fear (when you recognize the roots of your problems you can just cut them out). But motivation is a totally different problem, you have to gain motivation. For that you need methods of working on yourself, but Jared approaches this problem from the same side, he describes the nature of motivation, the difference between the momentary inspiration and long-term motivation (which I actually found the most important part of the chapter) and some bad aspects which can harm motivation, like laziness, procrastination, postpone work for tomorrow etc. With only some general advices what to do to fix it (like set the goal make the plan).
So I guess I have to design methods by myself.
Well, what comes to mind? First, I have to patch my own bad tendencies related to work. Like I don't concentrate enough on the work that I don't find interesting. For example I have to put some effort to read this chapter to the end without skipping any parts, after I found that it lacks practical descriptions.
I already know how to deal with it. It's much easier to concentrate if you always remember that even very boring work can benefit your goal greatly. And as an example when I forced to concentrate on the reading, I found a couple of useful things (which I would likely have missed during normal reading of some boring text), about too high expectations, subconscious goals, and very small but important comment on signs of boredom during the playing.
So I will do that exercise before starting everything I planned, just to be sure that I put all my attention into the current task.
The chapter about confidence consists mostly of material from previous chapter. But it's still very important chapter, I went over some of my mistakes like making a flawless game within the current limit as my goal, or mixing the knowledge at my conscious and unconscious competence, with rare occurrences of illusion of an ability to predict bad bits.
Will pay for my 2nd internet connection tomorrow and concentrate on practicing for the next 3-4 days.
I got my 2nd internet, anticipating a couple of good sessions. I sat down, imported my fresh mining and was going to start playing. "I need a cup green tea" - I thought, and went to the kitchen. 5mins later I sat back at my chair and impatiently pressed Scan Tables button in TST. Nothing happened. TST showed only zeros and exclamation marks all over the place. Postgres stopped answering. Restart service, reboot, and even reinstall didn't work. Something in the db is broken beyond repair, so I need to delete and reimport all the hands.
I think I have some time today left, so I maybe able to squeeze one session at the end.
A valueable lesson to learn about day planning. The most important tasks must always go first, because in the middle of the tight schedule you simply cannot react to unexpected circumstances.
Was able to through a short 25min session yesterday, was too sleepy to continue.
As for today, of course I forgot that I need to start the post important thing right in the morning. Instead I started to tune postrgres, and do other stuff vaguely related to poker.
Fortunately one of my friends saved me. He tries to switch from sss to bss, starting to play nl10, so he asked me to coach him a little about basic differences in the preflop game.
I should say talking even about simple and basic principles of poker, which you already know very well, can clear your mind and put you on the right track. After the coaching I was able to play several sessions with good level of attention.
To generalize this, I think I need to add more poker stuff to my life besides playing and analyzing, to keep myself focused.
Also I found a book about procrastination.
"If you do the important tasks in the first possible time slot (whenever that is for you), you can check it off before your day gets too crazy."
That's exactly the same conclusion I came to yesterday. I will try to read more books on this matter. I think I can find a lot of stuff that I'm trying to "reinvent" myself, paying a high price in my own time and effort.
The success of the past day can be easily measured by the desire to write a summary at it's end. If you did well you usually want to write about it to consolidate the achievement and to plan for the next day. If you kinda "not in the mood to write" means that something went wrong, either you failed at something (which is not big deal if you learn something from it) or just didn't work hard enough, which is the problem.
Today I have very little time left, but I still wanted to write down the summary for the day.
First I didn't slack at the beginning of the day. I had that habit, cause usually I'm sleepy for the first hour or two, so usually I'm doing nothing, just watching something in the internets. Today I spent first hours away from the PC, and I have to say, I got much better first session due to this change.
I also repeated the group training with my friend, cause it definitely have some positive influence on my thinking abilities. I still left about an hour, cause I was too excited that my day is going well, so I have some troubles with concentrating. Fixed it though.
In the free time I found some old book (from 1980s) about Mastery. A predecessor of the books about deliberate practice. From first chapter it describes the practice with intention to get your skills from conscious competence level to unconscious competence. So it's the same concept but presented in different terms. Looks like I can dig in the past looking for some more literature about matters relative to practice.
When I will be able to continue to work in such pace without any distractions as I did today, I will restart my marathon.
The success of the past day can be easily measured by the desire to write a summary at it's end. If you did well you usually want to write about it to consolidate the achievement and to plan for the next day. If you kinda "not in the mood to write" means that something went wrong, either you failed at something (which is not big deal if you learn something from it) or just didn't work hard enough, which is the problem
Haha you are so right. Well done 
Today I continued the same practice routine, to get myself back into the game.
No procrastination in the morning, good start of the sessions in the middle of the day. I'm still loosing a 10mins here a 15mins there, but only because I still not optimized my overall schedule.
The make one mistake today. I totally forgot that on the next day after big fitness training I usually get sleepy around 8-9th hour of the day. And I was right in the middle of the session, which I had to stop immediately.
So it's only 3.5 sessions instead of 4.
Also I continued to read the book about mastery. And today it was chapter about types of practitioners. One type called The Obsessive.
"He or she knows results are what count, and it doesn't matter how you get them, just so you get them fast......His first spurt is just what he expected. But when he inevitably finds himself on the plateau, he simply won't accept it. He redoubles the effort. He pushes himself mercilessly..... he's tempted to take shortcuts for the sake of the immediate results."
That's exactly what what I turned into, when I started marathon having unrealistic expectations. From today perspective, the failure was imminent.
What I was doing, was not learning or practicing, it was trying to get somewhere higher as quick as possible, without digging deep enough, so all the problems I had before were still there, I just didn't want to see them.
Did nothing today cause I got food poisoning. And I got some temperature in the middle of the day. Hope I won't fall ill and loose time with my practice and fitness.
Well, what should I say, living healthy live style surely have lots of benefits.
2-3years ago, when I was sort of couch potato, I got the same scenario where I was weakened by food poisoning and I got hit hard by cold, which took me 10-12 days to recover from.
But now I was able to recover only in 1.5days. So being healthy and having strong immune system is definitely +EV.
I will continue my playing tomorrow.
Skipped two days of writing. As I said earlier this means problems. And I got some.
As Jared wrote in his book there is form of tilt where you got frustrated by things that are actually out of your control. He mainly wrote about fish suckouts, bad cards hitting the board, that kind of stuff. But I got the same type of tilt in other way. Since I was sick for two days, I didn't play. And this was out of my control. Nevertheless when I sat down and tried to start where I left. All my thought were only about getting the lost time back, so I wanted to play as much as possible disregarding the goals I made for myself. Basically putting in volume without purpose. It took me 2.5 days to actually stop thinking about the time I "lost" and concentrate on practicing where I left off the last week.
Good lesson, not to consider any time as lost if something out of your control happened and you have to postpone your planned activities.
ok day. I finally stopped tilting, returning to my normal practice.
Played 3 sessions, I couldn't squeeze another one, because of mediocre day planning
I have to mention the interesting thing with that tilt. I noticed that it doesn't only affect my play but also all thing in my life. Every time I'm behind the schedule, I try to compensate, and it usually costs me more, cause the quality of my work diminishes. Now when I found this bad trait of my character, I'll pay more attention to everything what I do when I'm low on time to prevent such behaviour.
I found very annoying leak in my learning process. I like to make summaries very much, about everything I read and watch. But I found that I very rare read what I've written.
For example today I suddenly found a perfect summary on some lectures about time management.
I totally forgot that I even studied any material on the subject.
"When you a making a plan or a to-do list the most common and costly mistake you can make is to forget to assign the priorities to all the tasks. A natural tendency of almost all people is to finish all the small tasks before starting something big, which is never a good idea. So you need to find what's most important in the list for you and do it first disregarding the size or difficulty of the task".
That's exactly what I needed to hear. Cause I spent first half of the day with my grandparents. And such situation where I have to start poker in the second part of day, often overwhelms me, I don't know what I have to do, I feel like I don't have enough time, and such confusion can end at not doing anything at all.
But after I make my priorities, I just started to do the most important things, eliminating everything else until I finish.
As a result even with only half of day available, I was able to play 3 sessions and make a coachinging session with my friend. Also I analyzed every session and even have some time left to make a plan for tomorrow.
This confirms the great value of prioritizing when planning.
Didn't write anything yesterday, cause I got really frustrated at the end of the day, almost monkey tilting.
I went the whole day almost perfectly according to my plan. Despite 3hour visit to the dentist and time spent with my friends, I started to play poker at the 2nd half of the day, made 3 good sessions, just to find that I miscalculated my schedule (it was off by 1 hour), so I'm not able to make 4th session (not without sacrificing sleep).
So today I have played the same 3 sessions. I payed additional attention to how I play overall, catching the moment I start compensating for yesterdays mistake, which I usually do by putting more hands but with less quality. Everything went ok, but such sub-optimal condition put additional strain. And I'm able to play less amount of time than usual.
Good day. I was able to pack 3 one hour sessions + 1.5 hour group training into 1 half of the day, cause I slept only 6 hours and was sure that I would not be able to play in the 2nd part of the day.
I looked back a couple of days, trying to find why I only able to make 3 sessions a day. The answer was simple, I make the breaks between the sessions too big. So I took a half a day and called it "work time". I played session after session with small 15-20 minutes breaks for snacks. In 5.5 hours of work period I was able to play full 4 one hour sessions.
Also in my time management lectures, there is a note about grouping of similar tasks. The more you do something similar within short period of time the better you become.
And this actually works, I found that I was more attentive in the 4th session than I was in the 1st or 2nd. Also this effect spread for the next hours or so after the sessions. I tried to watch a vod, I was paying much more attention to the action, than it the case of isolated vod watching in the other part of the day.