hey twicet. I wondered if that was you at stars (twistedts i think?) I agree completely with how you described my play... I definitely have quite a few leaks postflop (a lot of which I've identified I think, although not necessarily fixed 
) I think my postflop game goes downhill as well sometimes when I'm in loosing periods so I have to be carefull with that as well.
Anyways, GL to you at the tables (I guess you need it less than i do for now 
)
Day 3/4: Sept 30/Oct 1
Played 2.9k hands in the past 2 days down 1BI. Despite another few days in the negative, I've very happy with my playing progression. I've switched from 8 to 6 tables and I'm reevaluating every little spot that I find myself in. It's encouraging and at the same time frustrating to find that there are many, many spots post flop that I just kind of 'took for granted' that I was making the right play...but in reality I was/am making errors. With this in mind I'm extremely motivated to play and continue to improve!
I find myself drifting off at work, thinking about poker hands...I think I'm an addict 
...but when I think about it I've been addicted to most things that I've ever put effort into in my life. I think it's just part of who I am. I'm rarely able to do something 'just for fun' and I always get very competitive. I guess this kind of mind set definitely has it's advantages and disadvantages.
Just yesterday night (or this morning?) I was drunk at a bar with my friends and we started playing foosball with some girls. I'm really not very good, but one of my friends is excellent, and the girls were better than me (I'm not sexist at all, but I mean common...guy's are almost always better at little games like this and it's hard on the ego getting beat by girls ♠_evil: ) . All I could think about with my half functioning brain was that I wanted to buy a foosball table to put in my appartement so that I could secretly practice and get really good then beat everyone at the bar 
. Maybe if I succeed this challenge I'll buy myself a table as a prize. Because of yesterday night I don't think I'll be playing too much this morning...
total: 8.4k hands -3.1 k
Foosbal is just the best game ever!
And BTW, in Foosball some girls are really strong and is hard to play against them, because they play with much more feeling than we do. It's like in poker when women have some advantages, especially in live play.
Originally posted by RahXephon1
EnjoyFoosbal is just the best game ever!
And BTW, in Foosball some girls are really strong and is hard to play against them, because they play with much more feeling than we do. It's like in poker when women have some advantages, especially in live play.
Are you trying to say us men cannot see past a lovely pair of jubblies???
Oh wait no we cant
:f_biggrin:
Thanks for the vid rahxephon1!...although you made me waste an hour of my life looking at every foosball vid on youtube. That's some sick stuff. I want to buy a table even more now...it would be so nice for parties.
Day 5/6: Oct 2/3
Played 2k hands in the past 2 days, mostly today. Yesterday I played about a half hour hungover and managed to drop 3.5 buy-ins... The first 2.5 BI I think I played ok (but not good because of fatigue), but then the last BI was just a completely stupid, tired monkey shove 
. Obviously this really frustrates me because so far I could say that I hadn't really tilted... I find that when I play while tired I can still play pretty well if I'm winning, but a couple bad beats/coolers later I'm totally tilted. When I'm feeling good and alert I normally have very little trouble just vocusing on my play and not thinking about my short term results.
Today I don't think I played well either. No big tilting, but just hand reading very poorly and playing too spewy in a lot of spots. That being said I ran amazing getting it all-in bad a couple of times and sucking out. (Which is why I can't get frustrated when I'm running bad like the start of yesterday because it all evens out!)
Anyways, the only positivie is that I did analyse my game quite a bit and watched a few video's. I'm very happy with a couple of post flop lines that I took today against regs. I feel that I'm starting to see the adjustments I need to be making playing better players and how to stay more balanced in a lot of spots against good players.
A winning day is comming ♠_cool:
total: 10.4k hands -3.35k
Day 7/8: Oct 4/5
Played 3.1k hands the past 2 days up 1BI. I'm happy with the way I'm analysing my game and improving when I'm on my game. Unfortunately I just made a really stupid play donating a whole buy-in to a fish for no apparent reason. I think that griding more than I did this summer is going to take better discipline than I'm achieving right now if I want to make profit! End of session errors add up really fast.
I was going to post a sad or angry little fish here...but I couldn't find any that suitably represent the feeling of self loathing I get when I do something especially stupid!
Oh well...I guess I'm leaving myself room to improve.
total 12.5k: -2.9k
Hey georgio, nice read! I recognize that feeling of self-loathing when you just do something really tilty and you thought you had much better tilt-control than that.
You seem to put in pretty sick volume considering that you work full-time aswell? How many hours a day do you think you average? I mean, I'm supposed to be a full-time player and I don't put in nearly as much volume
thanks Fongie! You're blog is a good read as well. For me to achieve my goal I'd have to play like 3ish hours a day on average (2k hands 6-8 tabling). I don't play every day (because of my job and girlfriend) but I do have enough free time that 3hours on average could definitely be doable.
I can't play at all today, Tuesday's is my only day that I basically have no free time.
I had a long break at work today and started thinking about why some players make so much more than others even though they often have most of the same skillsets/aptitudes and are both intelligent individuals. This turned into a monster post and I don’t expect anyone to read it all, but I find that writing helps me formulate my own thoughts so here we go:
Being a winning poker player means a lot of things. It means you’ve studied the theoretical aspect of the game and are constantly trying to improve your understanding of how to best exploit every individual opponent. It also means that you are realistic with yourself and are able to pretty accurately assess whether on not you’re playing in a +EV game, and also that there are no better EV games out there (good table selection). It also means that you’ve developed good discipline and have established a bankroll management that works for you. In other words, you’re never playing a game that you can’t afford to lose on the short term. Last, and most important of all as far as I’m concerned, is that you play as close to you’re best game possible every minute that you’re sitting at the table.
Obviously I’m not perfect in any of these areas, but I’d say I’ve put a lot of effort into all of them in order to improve myself over the past year. I believe that on the whole I have really improved a lot (to the point that I’m quite good at) all of the aspects listed above EXCEPT for the last one. As much as I’ve thought about it and worked on it, I think there are big differences in between my A game and my B game so to speak, and that doesn’t even include the rare (but very costly) serious tilting.
I need to put my ego aside and be realistic with myself in admitting that I’m playing my B game way more often than I think and that my B game isn’t half as good as I think. Ego and self-confidence are essential to playing poker because they help you survive variance when things aren’t going your way. On the other hand they can be detrimental to improvement because they block your ability to analyze yourself from an unbiased point of view and realize areas that need improvement. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that 99% of poker player thinks that they’re better than they actually are. If you ask anyone if they’re a winner in the game their playing they’ll undoubtedly answer yes, but the real answer is probably more like: Yes, when I’m playing my A game. In my opinion the biggest difference between the big winners and the break-even regulars (especially the higher the limit you play) is simply how often they’re on their game, or the difference in quality between their A game and their B game.
I’m going to make a checklist of all the small questions that I should ask myself on a daily basis to improve the quality of my game and make good decisions. It’s making the wrong ‘little’ decision that leads me to tilting or playing B game poker. To achieve a solid winrate it’s not enough to identify that your tilting and stop playing once it’s already started, because you’ve probably already lost way too much!
1) When starting a session, do I feel like playing poker because I want to think about strategy, work through tough spots and improve my game? Or do I want to play poker because I want money. There is a bit of a contraction here because money can definitely be a motivator to learn and improve, but when I’m playing a session it should be out of my head (because I’m so focused on the game itself).
I think that a good way to think about this (Something like this is explained in a Phil Galfond video, so you can thank him!) is to imagine you’re average winrate that you think is achievable when you’re playing well and evaluate if it’s worth playing. Let’s say I’ve lost 1k in my 2 hour morning session, and I now get home from work and have 2 hours to play poker. I don’t really feel like it, but I really want to erase my negative session from this morning, and I know that it’s very possible to do this if I run good. Maybe my winrate with rakeback and everything is between 50-100$/hour. In reality, all I can really hope for is to play the best I can for that 2 hour period and expect to have made on average 100-200$ (just like I hypothetically made in my morning session, even though I lost on the short term). I can’t even imagine the number of times I’ve started a session thinking this. The worst part is that in reality you’re winrate might not even be positive at all (and is almost certainly less than your optimal winrate) when you’re playing with this mindset because it’s hard to play close to you’re A game when you’re thinking about other things.
2) How is this session going to affect my ‘happiness EV’? (This is also from the same Galfond video I think) There are times when I feel like I should play poker for whatever reason, but I’d be much happier doing something else. Not only is it hard to play well when you’re not into it, but if I play a few sessions that I don’t feel like playing, it can result in me taking a week off afterwards or feeling burnt out. This is a life balance thing, and I actually end up playing more if I’m only playing when I feel like it. This is pretty important for me, considering I’m challenging myself to play more than usual for the next few months.
3) When starting a session, am I ready to lose the whole time, but not care because I know that I’m playing to the best of my ability? Or am I conscious that I’m too emotional for whatever reason and should just do something else. Sometimes for no apparent reason, I can tell that swings are going to affect my quality of play because I’m too emotionally involved. Even when I realize this I often either say to myself: fuck it, this is the only 2 hour period I have to play in the next 2 days. Or: I’m mentally tough and I’ll push through it if things aren’t going well. The second point is simply my ego getting in the way and I need to be able to tell in the first 5-10min of a session whether or not I’m playing without emotion.
4) During a session do I feel rushed/stressed/pressured? This sometimes happens when I’m multitabling and is definitely an early sign of either B game play or tilt. Some days I can easily play 8 tables really thinking hard about every spot, whereas other days (if I’m hungover for instance) I can barely think through 4 tables.
5) During a session am I seeing small technical errors in my game that I don’t normally make? Every one in a while I find myself making some weird out of position float, or check/raising a flop for no apparent reason. Although a lot of these little things on their own aren’t so bad, it’s a sign that I’m not playing my best anymore. At this point I need to be either improving my focus or taking a break.
6) During a session do I notice that I’m no longer thinking ahead to later streets and/or just kind of cruising? This happens relatively often, and it’s an obvious sign that it’s break time (even just for 30min or whatever)
7) At the end of a session, did I make mistakes in the big pots that I played? I’m trying to look back on every pot where I end up all in at the end of sessions to see if I think I played them optimally. It’s easy to just call a hand a cooler, or whatever without even really making sure that you couldn’t have folded at some point against your opponents range. I also find that when I win a pot after getting my money in bad (flushdraw vs set is a common scenario) I often completely forget about it, and don’t analyze weather or not there was a better way to play my draw against the entire range of that specific opponent.
8) At the end of a session, did I honestly evaluate myself on questions 1-7 throughout the session? If so then I’m the best I can be!..the other 100% of the time there’s something I need to improve
I’m going to print this checklist and put it beside my computer. If I can go quickly ask myself these question and honestly answer them then I have no doubt that I’ll improve a lot in the self control department! (I know, I know…easier said than done) This is why I love poker! There are always tones of things you could be doing better so it stays interesting and challenging.
If anyone actually got this far…I’m impressed!..and hopefully you enjoyed ♠_biggrin:
Really nice self-evaluation. You surely gave me something to think about considering my own play with your checklist. When I play my B game I make a ton of mistakes you mentioned above... It is all about constant improving 
Originally posted by gggeorgio
I was going to post a sad or angry little fish here...but I couldn't find any that suitably represent the feeling of self loathing I get when I do something especially stupid!
♠_evil: IMO.
At least I would hate myself using the angry pink shark to represent anything I posted - at least without appropriate annotation (ie except red with gold lightening bolts down the side).
Truly a piece of art man, keep it up, i'm a fan. I hope i can also take the next step soon (get away from nl100/200).
Originally posted by travoltaJOHNy
Originally posted by Kruppe
really good stuff in that long post+1 loved it.
+2 
your post is very true.
gl at the tables sir.
Thanks a lot for the possitive comments about my long post guys! I'd be happy to hear some other peoples point of view/experiences about how to improve discipline/winrate.
Day 9-12 / Oct 6-9
Overall I played 5.5k hands is the past 3 days down another 2.5BI. Overall I have mixed feeling about it. I had a couple sessions where I felt like I played very well and had excellent discipline. On the other hand, I didn't succeed in following all my discipline rules that I posted in the long post. (although I did a lot better than I had been doing beforehand)
As a whole I guess I'm pretty happy with my state of mind while playing even though the results aren't there yet. I'm well aware that 10BI is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of variance, so I just need to keep on playing my best and see where that takes me.
I'm going to be gone all weekend including most of Monday so I won't be updating for a while...I've been thinking a ton about poker lately and I definitely have a couple more long post brewing in my head regarding how to improve my psychological approach
Also, I'm going to be way behind on my goal of about 2k hands a day when I get back (I'm already way behind now). This doesn't really matter to me (although I'm still going to try hard to reach that goal) because the point of me challenging myself like this was so that I think/play more poker, which has definitely worked out well.
total 18k hands: -4k
Very nice blogs both of them. What happened why did you stop?
Well done on your successes and if you still play gl.
