SUBBED.

Welcome.

Happy with my structure and processes today.

By spending that extra time working through my cooldown yesterday, I was able to more effectively put the session to rest than I have at times in the past. I slept well, and wasn't fighting the urge to get back to the tables to try to "fix things" last night or when I woke up today. Nonetheless, I made sure to take some time this morning handling some stable administration stuff before putting in a session, to make sure I wasn't going into session with a mindset of rushing to get unstuck.

During session, I made it a point to cut my tables a bit to again make sure that I was taking steps to combat the common mental leak of trying to force action or hope for a double up to stop the bleeding of the downswing. I also set a 15 minute timer on my phone and kept resetting it every 15 minutes. When it went off, I forced myself to take a quick journal note about my mental state, reminding myself to comment on the situation as a detached third party observer, and also reminded myself of my short term learning focuses. By playing fewer tables, I had more time to actively be extra self aware about my mental state and the quality of my play and focus.

I only got in 1.5 hours before study group today, but I played well and I feel like I'm increasing my overall stable confidence in my ability to handle negative variance. I'm taking actionable steps to try to address the situation, instead of trying to just grind through it with unhealthy undertones of desperation and hoping for rungood.

16.5/1000 Hours
1.65% complete

You seem to have developed some thoughtful and effective methods to counter-act negative variance; keep up the good work.

Subbed gl

Good luck man. You've definitely got one of the most solid approaches to mental game of anyone I've seen. That'll pay dividends.

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks, I sure hope so!

Played an additional 3.5 hours today over two additional sessions. I didn't happen to run very well today, but I broke even overall on the day so I guess I must not have run that poorly either. I kept up with the timer and the journaling. I got a little unfocused and distracted at times today, but I reigned it back in well and did a good job of staying on top of my mental state. I'm trying to put in the work and effort at not just playing but also improving, and I feel like it's bound to pay off.

19/1000 Hours
1.9% Complete

GL subbed

Thanks!

Well, I'm continuing to get beat up at the tables. Deeper in makeup than I've ever been. I feel like I'm doing all the right things to give myself my best chance to play my A-game as much as possible, and feel good about my structure and processes and overall grind. I've been sticking with the structured session length, warmup and cooldown, playing a table or two less, and staying on top of the 15 minute timer for self evaluation. I suppose that if I was instead running hot this month, I probably wouldn't be putting as much effort into strengthening my processes, so in that way the downswing is beneficial.

I don't feel much anxiety about being stuck a lot, and I think that is good. My stable confidence is still high, and I feel good about what I'm doing each day. I'm going to stay on top of reviewing my own play, since I don't want to blindly assume I'm playing well, but so far in my self review my spew has been limited. Just keep swimming.

We have had several new guys join the stable in the past couple weeks, which is exciting but also a bit time consuming. I might get a short afternoon session in today before group coaching, but I don't think I will play tonight. I was up late last night, and had to wake up much earlier than I would have liked today because I had to take delivery on a new couch early this morning. Generally being low on sleep is a tilt trigger for me, so if I do play today I should be mindful to keep the session short as my focus will be short lived and my mental armor is worn down when I'm tired.

24/1000 Hours
2.4% complete

THIS! This is the reason you will succeed in poker and anything in general. A+ mindset.

So here are some short term goals I have for myself. After our seminar with Jared Tendler, I wanted to clean up some short term goals of mine into a bit stronger language and add some actionable process steps to the end result goals.
---

Schedule/Process Goals:

1) Find optimal daily routine
- log quality of games at various times throughout the day
- log how alert and focused I feel at different times that I play througout the day
- play some more morning or early after noon sessions and record how I feel
- record any feelings of burnout when they arise to try find the optimal days on/off pattern
- after collecting data for a month, parse it and look for patterns

2) Stick to structured grinding sessions
- set target session length and estimated breaks in journal at start of session
- use 15 minute timer to prompt review of learning focuses


Technical Game Goals:
1) Avoid under repping and then hero folding the top of my range
- use 15 minute timer to remind this learning focus

Mental Game Goals:

1) Stay more focused and present and self aware during sessions
- put phone in airplane mode while at the tables
- use 15 minute timer as prompt to journal about mental state as a detached observer
- do not play with the cat during session even if he is whining. Ignore him and squirt him away if needed. If I give him regular play with his toys downstairs, he won't use my grinding time as his cue for playtime.

---

(regarding the cat thing I have a kitten that is 6 months old and I haven't owned a cat before. Sometimes he will come sit in the doorway of my office and stare at me and keep whining until I give him some attention, and his crying is distressing and hard to focus through. The last statement there is logic for me to inject in the moment so I don't feel guilty about ignoring him or shooing him away when I'm trying to focus)

In, GL

thanks

thanks

A Quick Study in Confirmation Bias

Lately it has felt like everytime I raise broadways out of position against a limper, that the flop comes all low cards. I learned in Matthew Janda's book (great book) that the flop comes 8-high or lower only 15% of the time. It has felt like it has been occurring a LOT more often than that, to the point where I wanted to go to my HM and check things out. Ideas such as the site's RNG being shifted or the author making a mistake in his calculations crossed me mind as seemingly plausible explanations. Even though these ideas seem outlandish, when something just doesn't "feel right" our brains tend to grasp for explanations.

Here is what I found in my database running a quick filter:



A - 123
K - 92
Q - 101
J - 57
T - 63
9 - 46
8 - 42
7 - 20
6 - 17
5 - 12
4 - 5
3 - 1
2 - 0

8 or lower occurred 97 times = 16.6%

(the above frequencies are roughly what they "should" be btw)

I notice that my non showdown winnings took a hit over the last 100-150 samples. I think this likely means that over that sample, I happened to run into situations where I had to x/f flops more often that normally occurs. After enough of these, some frustration started to accumulate, and I was probably looking for spots to "prove" that this kept happening more than it "should".

The point of this is to help me see how variance can undermine even things I know as poker truths, and to be mindful of the fact that the negative variance I am experiencing can bleed over similarly to other areas of my game. For example, today I almost checked back a clear river value bet because I felt like they've just had it so often lately. I ended up thinking it through and making the correct play, but I need to be extra self aware that my brain is searching for instances to "prove" I'm running bad. I have to resist the urge to change sound strategies just because I feel like I need to do SOMETHING different to turn my results around. It will be easy to get a run of unsuccessful cbets, for example, and start wanting to check too many flops - in the same way that I have been tempted to just complete the SB with clear raising hands vs BTN open limps lately.

I've experienced this. Wanted to throw out Janda's book lol. Just variance kicking in and I'm constantly reminding myself to make the correct play.

I have very similar mental game issues as yours. Thought I was the only one going crazy, haha. Awesome thread.

Thanks!

although I don't think it's crazy

It's bewildering how we can regularly lose faith in the science of probability due to negative variance. I always keep in mind Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness; even though the author held a PhD in mathematics, with a speciality in probability, he was still subject to irrational responses to variance, when he worked in the stock market (e.g., would become superstitious and wear the same tie to work if running good). Let's just say that your study in "confirmation bias" is an excellent long-term investment strategy!

Cool post. gl Dan. From what little I've heard and read your technical and mental thought process seems solid and if you keep doing what you're doing I'm sure the downswing won't last too long.

Nice, I might check that out. I'm sure we have all related to the tie thing at one time or another.

Thanks!

Starting to dig out of the hole a bit. Got over 7k into makeup at the worst of it, and have trimmed it down to 4k at this point. Good chance I will be out of makeup before the end of the month if I keep doing the right things.

Some random thoughts:

- I don't like telling myself "DON'T". I don't think that helps people. Instead of telling myself something I shouldn't do, I should tell myself something I should do. For something as simple as "don't play marathon sessions", what is more helpful is to say "make sure to stick to structured session lengths". The words I choose are important. Even something like "don't eat snacks at night" vs "be more mindful of your night time snacking" I think makes a difference for me. When I have concrete actionable steps I find it easier to actually do the things I want to do, and likewise if I give myself some steps to take to avoid a behavior that is more helpful than just saying "don't do it".

- I played a short session the other day. I knew I didn't have a lot of time to play, and "deadline" sessions have been something I have been working on over time. I can tell that I have made progress, but I also noticed that when I got up early I had to inject logic and battle feelings of wanting to just quit, and then when I lost a big pot at the end I had to battle feelings that I should have just booked the win (even though I played well). I did a good job of handling the unhealthy thought processes, though, and sticking to my structure.

- Overall I can tell I've come a long way with my mental game, and feel proud of how I've been handling the downswing. I need to keep mindful of the fact, though, that what is benefiting me is the EFFORT and the structure and processes I'm adhering to, and that even when the downswing "ends" I need to keep up the effort level and make the processes I'm following now my grinding norm for the rest of the year.

We are on a similar arc (BI wise for the month). It's been a drag other than the fact that it has reached deep down inside me and found a bit of attachment to results that I thought I had bypassed. Humbled is the word I'm looking for to describe what the first half of this month has done to me.

And I'm grateful for it because I know I'm coming out of the other side even stronger.

Enjoyed the thoughtful post, as always.

Today was a day of inchworming my C-game. About halfway through session I made two calldowns in close succession that were clear turn calls and debatable on the river. I got stacked at 5/10 in both pots, and felt very frustrated. I took a break, and was able to gather and regroup and ready myself to play well before too long - probably about 10-15 minutes. I lost my seat at a couple good tables in doing so, but for me sometimes that is part of the process of detaching from my results. Towards the end of session I overbet 3bet shoved JJ vs a 70bb fish which was OKish but a normal 3bet would have been definitely been better, and I think I kind of just wanted to win a big pot vs a fish.

I got distracted by my phone a couple times during session, and got a bit lazy with my 15 minute timer a few times. On the whole though I was kind of aware that I wasn't on my A-game throughout most of the day today, and think I did a pretty good job of plugging away and improving the quality of my C-game a bit.

I need to limit my sessions to 2.5 hours. If I want to play 3-4 hours in a day, it needs to have an extended break in the middle. If I want to play 6 hours, it needs to be 3 sessions with two extended breaks. That is what works for me. Sometimes I have time to play about 3-4 hours, but not the 5 hour total window required to play 2 separate 2 hour sessions. So, I end up stretching my 2.5 hour session to 3.5 hours and I think the dropoff in quality is too much. It's good to push it sometimes to build up endurance, but I also have a pretty good understanding of what patterns work best for me. If that means playing 2.5 hours and not putting in that third horu at that time, then that's fine I'll get the hour in somewhere else along the way.

42.5/1000 hours
4.25% complete

Wanted to publicly thank you for the HH review yesterday. I felt much more in control during the session I put in afterwards. Just much more clarity.