I've asked this question before, but now that I have more experience and a better mental game I'm hoping I'll be better able to process the responses.

One thing I still struggle when I play live is, I sit down at the table and the whole session becomes a blur. I mean I'm paying attention to the table and making (what I hope are) good decisions, but then when I get up 3 to 5 hours later I don't remember a single hand, with the possible exception of the big hands I won or lost.

Maybe I'm spoiled coming from the online world where my whole session is automatically in PokerTracker for me, but my concern is I want to keep getting better at playing live and I'm finding it difficult to review my live sessions and learn from them.

Suggestions?

Hope the post made sense.

It's entirely possible that all of your decisions were standard, while your opponents played exactly the way you expected them to. For me, the hands that stick out in my mind are the decisions that I have to take more than five seconds for, and when my opponents do something that most players wouldn't. The standard hands just get thrown in the pile with the rest of the standard hands that I've played in my life. When my opponents do something that is neither loose nor passive, then I usually remember.

Try to recreate the table by describing each player and I bet some hands will come back to you.

Whenever a new player shows up that I've never played against, I take a long look at his or her face. I think this helps me by giving me a frame of reference so the memories have someplace to be stored that coincides with that specific opponent. If you're not a visual thinker, then this approach may not suit you.

Try not to care about how much money you've won or lost. Instead, play for the enjoyment of the game. That way, instead of remembering the huge pots won, or the brutal suckouts, you are focused on the decisions that you made. Some of those decisions are probably a lot more interesting than others, and if that is your focus, you might be able to remember those decisions/hands easier.

I know this sounds difficult - it can be very hard to ignore your results. I used to be so distracted by how I'm doing that I only remembered the big hands won or lost. So I've started stacking my chips in uneven piles so I can only estimate if I'm up or down and by how much. Since I don't know exactly where I stand, I just focus on playing my best. And now the hands that stick out and the ones where I'm not sure I made the right play.

Maybe you could work on gathering up the hooks you need to remember during the hand. Working theory is that you're auto-piloting hands and thus have nothing to remember.

Preflop to flop: While playing, do you know exactly how many villains are in the hand? The dealer often says "6 to the flop". Still, do you pay attention to exactly how many people are in? There are 3 of us, UTG+1, CO, me OTB, and the BB. Have that thought in your head. One, it helps play later. and Two, you'll need to know it for your hand history. You're concentrating on fixing details.

Flop: Are you thinking hand ranges for each villain's actions? You're sitting live and have forever (compared to online) for each decision.

Guy playing 60/2 limps in EP, he donks medium strong and lolslowplays monsters. He limp calls your BTN raise preflop. Flop, he looks at the board carefully and considered a move to his chips (clearly subconscious, not Hollywood). It checks to you, you bet and only he calls. You narrow his range to...

Later in the hand: Since you're paying attention to ranges of your villains and editing them, let's hope you have some hooks to remember stuff. You put CO on mid or top pair, but he folded a blank river etc.

In the end, there shouldn't be very many memorable hands. You're playing better cards than most. You're flopping top pair and bet/bet/bet to win with your better kicker or lose to a silly 2PR that missed a value raise.

Two other suggestions. Both are easier to start when you're not playing a hand:

• Count the pot. Old school guys (often blackjack players) hammer this home. Count the pot all the time. Be able to correct the dealer when he/she screws it up. Know down to the $1 how much should be and is in the pot. Pay attention down to each dollar coming out for rake. Use this as a way to stay in the poker game and not watching NCAA game.
• Try to watch interesting hands when you're not playing and work on reads. The 60/2 guy raises and a nit cold calls. Hey, that's odd. Let's work on our range reading ability. Put them on ranges all the way through. Try to read the other people in the pot. Get to where keeping track of the accuracy of your reads is 2nd nature. Think about what jon_locke is going to ask you when you post this hand.

tl;dr to say, work on paying attention at the table and not auto-HUD botting. Even if you get 0 more posting hands, it might improve your game.

Bob148: You've given me that *exact* advice before, probably more than once, and my hypothesis is confirmed - I "get it" now. I guess I just needed to hear it more than once and have a little more experience.

The thing I worry a little bit about is that my definition of "standard" might need a few tweaks. I pretty much use SSHE as the definition of "standard" when the table is clearly the type of table described in the book.

daveopie: I think I have that down pat now. What I do is I look at each hand individually and think ahead, not just to anticipate what I'll do when certain cards come but to prepare myself for the potential suckout. For a simple example if I'm on the button with KQs after 5 limpers that's one of the easiest raises in the world. If I flop a K or a Q I'm betting it knowing full well it's the correct play but that I might get sucked out on (or already be behind). If I flop a straight and/or flush draw and get the right odds (which is almost always in a 6-way pot) I'm calling down (or perhaps even raising if the table and pot conditions are right) knowing full well I could completely miss. When a villain has the one hand I don't want to see I just say "Nice hand". An even simpler example is if I raise KK and flop an A, or raise QQ and flop an A and a K. I'm ready for it before the flop cards are even dealt. It really helps.

I also used to get the living *$#@ tilted out of me when villains would make crazy calls either before the flop or after it drawing to 4 outs, catch one of them and drag a huge pot, or watch someone do that 3 or 4 times in an hour. I have to admit, last night a villain caught his FIFTH four-outer in a 2 hour period and I "felt it". I turned to the guy next to me (who had also been complaining) and said, "This is starting to defy the laws of mathematics". He just sighed. I caught myself suspecting he was bribing the dealer (seriously). After a minute or two I was like, "WAIT!!!! I'm not that dumb anymore, remember???" and got over it.

When I look back at a session and feel like I made the right DECISION on every hand I don't feel bad anymore. Obviously I prefer to win rather than lose, but I'm more concerned about decisions.

This is really more about just making sure I'm playing the standard hands correctly, i.e. are there times I'm folding when I should be calling or raising, calling when I should be folding etc.

if you have a situation you're not sure about, just write it down or type it into your phone. that way you can examine it later.