Just wondering what you guys do when you know you aren't playing your best. I don't mean you are sitting in a session and start to get tilted or distracted and need to just get up. What do you do when you realize you are playing your C or D game for multiple sessions in a row? Try to play through it, take a short break from poker altogether, simplify your game for a couple sessions, etc?

I havent been off my A game for a while, but you should read a poker book, and tighten up preflop. Try to play nothing that is unsuited other than AK (and PPs of course). this includes AQo and KQo most notably and all kinds of unsuited connectors people start playing when they are off their game. (not to say that there arent times to play them, just tightening up is a good cohnterstrat to playing poorly)

When I tilt, I have a policy of consciously playing like a nit. Being a nit isn't a profitable as my best game, but it's still profitable. If tilting causes you to play a negative EV game, getting up is really the only viable short term solution.

Having a specific plan in place for when tilt raises its ugly head gives me a little more control when it happens and helps me recover more quickly. YMMV. The long term solution, LDO, is to identify tilt as an irrational reaction and eliminate it.

Study. Study a lot.

Watch pokerbank & clp on youtube.

Go over my trouble hands with equilab &/or flopzilla.

Write down strategies for exploiting certain player profiles; nits, maniacs, etc.

Write a list of what I'll look for in players and table dynamics.

Physically write out a starting hand-chart for different positions & different table dynamics.

I'm not trying to be an ass, but why are you going into a session playing your C or D game?

What I would do is take whatever the one thing is that most signifies to you that you are playing your D game and stop doing it. All your focus at the table is to not do it. If it calling a river bet too much, fold on the turn, no matter how much you want to see the river card and hate the idea of being bluffed.

C game being average. Probably not the scale most people use, where they consider their A game as normal.

Your advice happens to go well with the other posts in terms if what I have been doing. I've definitely been too loose preflop so I think my plan is to nit it up a little bit for a few sessions.

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westwd, i fully support a bellcurve rating system, but you shouldnt use A-F you should use a 1-10 scale lol.

Also the reason I dont think a bellcurve rating system applies well to poker is that you should be able to play at the top of your game regularly. I dont have a higher gear than the one i nearly always play at.

also Venice I played a break even "C" game for a couple years, but i didnt know what was wrong with my game, so i couldnt fix it. I still dont exactly know (im much better now by adding tons of weapons to my playstyle, but i think my old self was as good as the typical meh ABC regs i run into). Im thinking bad love life seeped into my poker play thru a milllion micro errors where i was on the wrong side of every marginal decision. i also stopped studing or posting here much, and played less often.

i always take a break and replay whatever hands stood out to me whether i won or lost and thoroughly examine any incorrect plays, usually through discussion with other poker buddies and some introspection where possible.

create a solid game in general. the point is to keep playing the way you play despite the variance. there are times when people will suck out on you but a higher percentage of the time you'll be winning that.

master the game and then master yourself before thinking too much about individual hands

play better. dont play bad.

oh yeah i also forgot this; i always keep some money online so I can knock out a few thousand hands to reinforce good play. It's almost like a mental variance reduction. Even after a few years playing live it's easy to go on a bad run and just make poor adjustments and doubt your game. So take the runbad online where you can blast through the variance and recognize what you're doing right and wrong, if anything. Then I come back to live feeling fresh.

online not really an option in the US