Quote:
Originally Posted by PtMx
Awesome Pooh-Bah post. In terms of my own poker "journey", I'd place myself somewhere near what you were describing in the middle of your post. Consciously, I've realized that I suck at poker; despite having a decent mind for poker and playing over 200k hands throughout my life, I'm still just barely breaking even. Even with the awareness that I suck at poker and that my losses are probably my own fault, my ego still chalks my losses up to bad luck. When I lose, I become furious with the fact that the simp who beat me is probably grinning smugly on the other end thinking he's a better player than me. If I'm in the middle of a particularly brutal session, the unfairness of it all makes me play indefinitely until I break even or pass out, regardless of how poorly I'm playing.
At least for me, this applies to more than poker -- your post resonates so strongly with me because I've also never had any trouble with school and have coasted through life without any serious setbacks. But my math degree isn't coming easily to me. In large part, this is because my easily-gotten success in the past has cemented some really bad habits -- making it to even half of my lectures (hell, even 25%) is a major struggle and I usually don't even get most of the assignments done. I won't bother with any of it, acting on the (false) principle that I'll always be able to cram for a few days before the exams and pull through just fine. I find myself in a situation analogous to that in my poker life: I've come to the conscious realization that I'm intellectually unremarkable. Yet when I don't understand a concept instantly, I become frustrated and come up with an excuse to do something else -- the reality that it's too difficult for me to immediately understand is too painful for my ego to accept. The peculiar reward system in my brain would rather have me fail than accept that I'm not as brilliant as I think.
The conscious awareness of my leaks helps, though. My realization came a couple of months ago, and my results have improved dramatically since then. My win rate still isn't half of what it ought to be if I really had a handle on things, but I'm working on it. I think I'm going to adopt your policy of not looking at the cashier during sessions and I'll do my best to thoroughly review the "frustrating" hands from my sessions. Hell, maybe I'll make some minor changes to that letter and force myself to read it before every session. In any case, your OP perfectly captured what is probably my biggest leak in the game, and I'm happy to hear you've gotten through it.
Hahaha! your post really resonates with me!
My school was a lot harder than it needed to be for me looking back, and I've always looked for the easy way to do things, even if it is way more complicated than the original issue. Even as a baby, I was one of those kids that never really learned how to crawl. I learned to roll and just rolled where ever i needed to go until I learned to walk.
Reading over your post I realize I often do that in poker. I sometimes look for more complicated solutions to beat a weak opponent... Sometimes the most profitable, is also the easiest.
So thanks, I really got a little something from this.
