This is exactly the post I've been meaning to make in my thread.. Thanks (and stealing it of course, lol)

Good post about live poker. I've struggled with many of these same issues myself.

At 2/5, keep in mind that most players aren't really focusing on live tells, acting on their reads, or skilled at even gaining any information from your physical tells. Even the better players in your game are unlikely to be any better than 50/50 or paying enough attention to figure out your tells. Get into a comfortable physical position when you're feeling anxious (leaning forward, looking downwards, with your arms surrounding your stack and covering your cards helps conceal some tells and keeps you focused on the game rather than the other players IMO), don't worry about anyone picking up any accurate tells on you because its just so rarely happening, and only think about the game. Even if you randomly twitch or something, don't even think about if anyone noticed or what they made of it, etc. They didnt

Anyway, I think as you get more comfortable playing live, you'll feel less anxious during hands and you'll be able to better focus on the game.

Is it possible that you are getting too excited when you know you're about to get into a big pot because you're used to being in those spots more frequently than you are in live poker?

For now, I'd recommend just verbalizing most of your actions, especially in big pots, and then physically making them after. I think you are too focused on all the "other stuff" that comes with live poker rather than playing the game.

I used to pull my chips out and start counting out my bet before I knew how much I was going to bet. Eventually, I decided it was better to figure out how much I wanted to bet in my head, and not touch my chips until I had my number firmly set. Then I'd cut out my chips and bet. This is better because when you do it the first way, you're more focused on the chips and how you're handling them, etc rather than you are focused on stuff like who's polarized, who's capped, who's on tilt and stationing 100% of his range, etc

In this same way, you should first know exactly what you're going to do from a technical aspect and then worry about the physical stuff afterwards. Pre-determining that you're going to verbalize all of your actions will help with this until you're more comfortable. It will be your instinct to reach for chips as soon as you know you're going to bet but I think that's one of the biggest things that takes your mind from thinking strategically to thinking about essentially nothing (like "i hope the flush doesnt come in")

Why do you care if a bunch of live reg-fish who would likely get destroyed on Bovada, where you make your living, don't think you're good at poker?

These guys, even a lot of the winning players, can't comprehend 90% of the thoughts that go through your head during a poker hand lol.

Any truly good player is going to look very tight to a recreational player in a full-ring 100bb game. However, a lot of that is just them being afraid of you. You're the guy who's like very tight but very aggressive - but aggressive enough where they know you don't always have it, but they don't know how often you're bluffing. I think that intimidates a lot of players because its super tough to play against and they basically know they just can't win money off you.

Yeah, paying attention is crucial. Live poker has so many different factors that you can use to narrow someone's range accurately and being in-tune with that can definitely significantly improve your win-rate.

But ya, just keep in mind live poker is super easy. These guys have huge, huge leaks... just pay attention to every hand/every detail if you can bear it and you'll notice a lot of stuff that is just outrageous. Like just look left before each hand... it has two benefits

1) You can see if someone is holding their cards out to muck

2) Its a nice little way to hit the "start button" on a hand and get focused. If you know, every single hand, you have to look left, you'll be more ready to play and more focused IMO.

Also remember that they are way way more afraid of you than you are of them.

Well said Duke!

Great post!

Yes, very nice post Duke, and thanks for the feedback!

I am going to start doing the verbalize my action thing. I think that is good advice for me for a couple reasons. First, like you said it will help me focus on arriving at the best decision to think it through first, and not be focusing on things like how I cut my chips while still deciding what to do. Second, I think just verbalizing everything will also just help keep me out of the "shell" a little bit more and keep me more engaged.

One other thing I wanted to write down. I messaged Duke on Skype and asked him to respond here. The first thing he asked me was if I felt generally uncomfortable in social situations. I said that I don't, as I am pretty good at making small talk and meeting new people and don't suffer from a lot of social anxiety in general (even though I am introverted on the whole). However, one thing that came to mind as I was replying to him is that I AM HOWEVER afraid of embarrassment in public situations. Being self aware of the implications of this will help me at live, and also help me delve more closely into the root cause of things.

For example, I golf recreationally in the summer a couple times per month. I'm not good, and don't strive to be good. I have a fun time playing with family or friends and enjoying the day, and don't beat myself up too badly if I have a bad outing. However, I do get intense first tee jitters when there is a crowded tee box area or there are people hanging around the clubhouse or what not. It's something only recently in life I've learned I can work on and improve at (as opposed to it being an unchangeable personality trait), and have been more OK with accepting and learning from my failures instead of feeling ashamed. Also I work on being more comfortable with the feeling of butterflies in my stomach being OK and normal as well - and many times that heightened anxiety/intensity state can actually be helpful as long it's not overwhelming.

I think this might strike to the core of some of my live issues. I feel good and am comfortable in most social situations, but if there is potential for me too look foolish in front of a group I do tend to clam up and have a strong emotional reaction to that. I know from practice that breathing and injecting logic are good techniques for dealing with this. I think playing my best live is related to developing the ability to hit it as well at the crowded tee box as I do on the warmup range, or working to lessen the sting of embarrassment I feel over minor social gaffes.

Hey,
very nice blog! It is not common that players would be journaling their study and mindset stuff here. I see that we have a lot of things in common (attitude about finance, study approach, care about mindset, discipline and self improvement). With big pleasure I am going to fallow this blog.

And... because we play in different sites, I think it is safe for me to wish you very best luck!

P.S.

I saw that you are making reminders with mobile phone. I tried that too. Found it to be distracting. I recommend you trying out Mindfulness Bell. I use this one, but there is plenty of those on the web: http://www.mindfulnessdc.org/bell/

Thanks. I've gotten accustomed to the phone, but that mindfulness bell seems to do the same trick.

I played live the other night, and feel like I played well. One thing that seemingly made a big difference was verbalizing all my actions before moving. I found that it benefited me in a couple ways. First, it did help me to keep my thought processes clear and focused on strategy and not focused on how I move or what not while deciding what to do, and second I think it kept me more connected to the game and helped me feel more comfortable. I think in the past I viewed verbalization as just another potential way to give away information via voice inflection or whatever, so in essence a negative freeroll. However, I felt I gained some real positives that would far outshadow any downswide, so I'm going to stick with this process. Thanks for that tip Duke!

Also, starting session with a warmup and using my timer during session and overall just trying to go in with a renewed purpose towards improvement also helped (as it usually does!). I feel good about setting a schedule and getting some improvement areas mapped out, and feel a bit more confident in the overall process as a result. One thing I did not do well is that I ended up playing a bit too long. The game was good and stacks were deep, but these guys often go from 730pm to 6am and that's not what I'm trying to do - I'm interested in 730 to roughly 1230. I have to recognize that its just usually going to be the case that the game is still good when I quit, just like online there are still fish but I want to dictate my schedule and play at my best and there is always tomorrow.

I switched how I'm tracking my live results going forward, and I don't want to lose record of the 40 hours of play before the switch, so I'm noting it here. We'll round it to 30 hours in March and 10 hours in April. That puts my hours played totals like this:

January: 106
February: 71.5
March: 96
April: 41

Total: 314.50/1000
31.45% complete

Pace: 290.4 hours

I'm going to be missing a solid week of grind time during WSOP, for a cruise in the fall, and then more around the holidays. So, I do need to stay out in front of my pace and try to extend on it further.

Some thoughts:

- I need to be very careful about letting myself get low on sleep. One night earlier this week I got very little sleep, and I really did pay for it for several days in terms of my ability to focus for periods of time and my overall energy and motivation levels. I can't be my best when I'm over tired, and I struggle to even want to try to do my best. Maybe it's getting older, maybe I'm just not as good as dealing with low sleep as others, whatever - either way it makes a BIG difference in my day to day life when I'm not well rested.

- I read some things recently about willpower and habit. The author conjectured that people who are thought of as having strong willpower or high self discipline actually spend less time and less mental effort on a daily basis resisting their urges than people with "low willpower". The reason for that is that they have developed much better habits. When something is a habit, you don't have to force yourself to do it, you just do it automatically. When we get tired and depleted, our willpower reserves are also depleted, and that is when we are most prone to go back to our habits. For me, I feel this in particular regarding late night snacking. Some days I'm good about it, and I cut off eating at a reasonable point and brush my teeth before bed. On days that I'm really tired, I tend to end up pigging out right before bed and heading to be without brushing my teeth. On the days that I still have some mental energy reserves left at the end of the day, I need to be extra mindful to reenforce the pattern of cutting off my night snacking and brushing my teeth and being done with food for the day. If I do this, eventually this will become the new habit and my new default, and it won't feel like as much of a mental struggle to make the healthy choice, since it won't really even be a choice it will just be me doing what I am used to doing.

Played a very good session last night.

I almost didn't play, as I was struggling with a bit of lethargy and lack of motivation. I haven't been grinding as much online, and it was tough to get mentally committed to playing. It's important to remember that I "WANT" to play poker for my own reasons, and it's not the case that I "SHOULD" play poker (as if based on some external force pushing me to do it).

I ran quite poorly in session. The combination of lots of negative variance and having pre session reservations in the past has caused me frustration and anxiety and tilt. Yesterday I did a very good job of remaining upbeat, and maintaining a quality grinding state regardless of results. I also felt very confident about my decision making at the tables, despite losing pot after pot - whereas often I end up second guessing myself quite a bit. I was able to win back a lot of it, and finished the session with a moderate loss. I also quit at a good time, and didn't stay on chasing a breakeven or better result on the day.

On the whole I was quite pleased with my session even though I lost, and it was one of my the better played losing sessions that I've had.

Pretty good grinding lately. Saturday I got stuck a few thousand early, and was able to keep going and play reasonably well. My technical game was B, but my mental game and structure and processes were A level in the face of tough variance, so my B technical game is about as good as I'm capable of doing under those conditions. I was able to win back some of the loss, and also was able to feel okay with just ending the day with a loser.

Played live on Monday and Tuesday night. I wasn't planning on doubling up, but I had technical issues Tuesday so I decided to just play live instead. I am feeling much more comfortable in the game recently. I'm playing well on the whole and not feeling as much anxiety or fear of losing. However, tonight I started to get a bit too comfortable and wasn't on point with my processes or game at the end of the night, so I need to watch that and stay professional in my approach. I played too late Monday, which has been a tendency for me at live. Tonight I quite more appropriately, but even still it was probably about 30 minutes too late. I'll need to place a strong emphasis on quitting earlier when I play next week.

On the whole my results aren't great this month, but I feel like I'm in a pretty good groove.

So a couple note to myself about live:

1) It's good to feel comfortable, but I need to keep in mind the point of playing poker is to EARN MONEY and not to socialize. It's easy to get caught up too intently in various conversations. It does help address my basic human needs of significance and connection to have people want to talk to me and value my opinion, but I really need to remember it's not a social club and I'm not there to feel cool or well liked. I can still make small talk and participate in conversations, but that needs to remain SECONDARY at all times to staying present and focused regarding gameplay.

2) Also, I need to be mindful to not get too loose/passive preflop. When the game is playing such that there is a lot of limping going on, it's tempting to see flops with almost anything. The reality is I'm actually getting raised off my overlimps enough and postflop SPRs get so out of whack that some of my weak overlimps are -EV. It's a balancing act, because I do want to see lots of flops with loose players, but towards the end of my last session I could feel myself taking it too far.

You have a good thread going here, thanks for taking the time to do it.

You said you sometimes worry that you're playing too tight? If you aren't worried about that, you aren't playing tight enough.

And about willpower: I don't think there's any point in thinking of things in that way. It isn't "willpower" that gets things done, it's proper focus. For example, if you want to stop eating tasty but unhealthy food, don't focus on "man, I want ice cream, but I can't let myself ..." focus on "Damn, that stuff is so bad for you, and the fun of eating it passes so quickly."

In poker terms, don't think of playing tight as taking willpower. Instead, remember that playing loose takes childish self-indulgence and fear of passing up a chance to get lucky.

Good luck.

Thanks for the thoughts.

As far as the bolded, for me it would be the opposite. My natural inclination is play tighter than optimal, so playing tight doesn't take any will power or effort. It would be more of a fear of losing preventing me from pushing the thin high variance edges.

Tighter than optimal, in lower stakes live, is probably almost not possible. I have many, many times gone home from a session wishing I'd played tighter; I've almost never gone home wishing I'd played looser.

Admittedly I don't know how tight you actually play. But in 30 some years of live play, I don't think I've ever seen anyone play too tight. I'd have to be sitting over their shoulder watching what they muck to know for sure, but even "tight" live players show non-tight cards sometimes.

However, maybe you mostly mean post-flop action tightness? Not bluffing enough, not hero-calling enough, not value-betting slim enough? Bluffing, or bluff catching, feels so good when they succeed that people do them partly for the "fun EV" of it because ... it's fun when it succeeds. But do they make money?


Only being too tight with value-bets should be a concern for a good live player, I think.

Good luck.

I think we just look at poker a lot differently from a theoretical standpoint OMC. It's true that far more players, especially recreational players, tend to play looser than optimal as opposed to tighter than optimal. However, to say that no one plays tighter than optimal is illogical. You can definitely play too tight and too conservatively both live and online, and bluffing and bluff catching both have their place.

I doubt that we look at it that differently at all. I think you're just a little afraid that you've been playing too tight pre and too conservatively post (that's what you've been saying, right?)

I think you're probably wrong to think that and you're just second guessing yourself or expressing a fear common to live players, which is that you should be playing faster and looser because guys who do are so admired by everyone and because it's so much fun to play that way (when you're running good).

Absolutely bluffing and bluff catching have their place. I'm saying that the difference between doing those things X% of the time and deciding to kick it up to 1.2X% because you're afraid you're playing too tight is more likely to cost you than help you.

But I will stand by my view that in lower live games almost no one is playing too tight, in that there's almost no one who wouldn't earn more if they lowered their VPIP. There are people playing wrongly tight, but that's not the same thing.

We definitely look at it differently. Your advice is somewhat reasonable for a novice learning the ropes for the first time, but it's not applicable to an advanced player. Let's not debate it further.

That may have came across a little harsher than intended, just didn't want to derail on that strategy point any further.

Taxing mental game session tonight. I was planning on going to play live, but the table had filled just before I got there and I didn't get a seat so came home and decided to play a session of online. I really was not feeling it, but I decided it was important to get some hours in so I sat down to play a session. Early in session I got up, and was struggling with thoughts of just booking the win. I ended up losing back my winnings as I was approaching quitting time, and I was overly aware of that fact and having to actively refocus my mental state towards doing my best as opposed to receiving a certain result. I had to make a big pot bluffcatch at the end, and often times in this mental state I get too weak tight because I don't WANT to lose, and this time I thought it through and accepted that it's OK if I lose and end up minus 1k on the session and decided to call. It's possible it was partially a frustration call since I had lost a few pots and I'm giving myself too much credit, but I don't think so and I feel good about my thought processest. I happened to win the pot this time, which is nice to book a win, but I am more glad I went ahead and pulled the trigger and also steeled myself to accept the loss prior to clicking call. These types of sessions have often been a point of weakness so I'm getting a little better at performing well more consistently across a wider spectrum of conditions.

Hey BB. I feel like I can relate to a lot of what you're talking about re: live, as in worried about playing too tight preflop, giving off physical tells, and the ego wanting to validate itself. PM me if you feel like talking about that stuff more in depth.

Id say willpower and focus almost run hand and hand..... For me focus helps me access and achieve my willpower..... And I need will power to focus in certain spots.....
Great read Dan 😎

Very little play over the last week. I got hit with a nasty illness and have been in no shape to grind. I'm still not out of the woods, but I think I'm at least getting to the tail end of it (I hope). On top of that, things have been very busy with the stable lately - lots of stuff going on. I'm behind my pace now, and I will need to try to work hard the rest of this month in order to catch up. Going to try to put in some grinding later tonight.

Here's an updated graph for you guys:

1000 Hours

January: 106.0
February: 71.5
March: 66.0
April: 65.25
May: 1.5

Total: 310.25

Obviously I'm trending downward with my effort output in regards to hours played. The end of April and beginning of May I have a legit reason for not playing (illness), but on the whole I think the downward trend of hours played is a result of running well and being complacent with the results I received. This ends up with me not striving to be my best. It's very lucky I happened to run well over the last couple months, as I'm above expectation on the year given my effort output.

keep killin it dan

Just lost almost 5k in one session, that's the most I've ever lost. It was mostly all at 5/10, so it's not an insane amount of BIs, but I'm still a bit rattled. Considering I'm venturing into new territory, on the whole I think I'm in a reasonably good mental state. I'm going to take a break for an hour or two, and try to put in a quality session a bit later.

I ran badly to lose so much, but I definitely overplayed a few hands as well, I think out of frustration from running bad. For example, I got overly aggressive with a pair+draw hand, which is something that I am currently working on getting into my unconscious competence. Clearly it is not quite there yet, as when my mental armor was broken down today that manifested itself. I suspect when I review the session I will find a few turn calls that were too thin as well, followed by river folds, where I won't really like my line looking back on it.

Sitting here thinking it through, I think this is why I responded poorly to the variance today: My hours played and effort output this month have been VERY low. Mostly this is due to fighting through an illness (that I think I'm just about finished with), but some of it has honestly been laziness and complacency. I was up 2.5kish on the month before today, and when I got stuck around 2k early having the month's profits evaporate got me frustrated more than it normally should have. The reason for that is that I've been running very hot this month, so I felt like I was "getting away with it" in terms of run good "making up" for my hours played being so low. I have not being doing my best, and recent run good has served as a band-aid and as a mask to cover up my lack of recent strong effort. Getting stuck a bunch early today ripped that band-aid off, and as a result I reacted not just in frustration to the variance at hand, which I could have managed on its own, but instead I was also reacting negatively to myself and the feeling that I have not been doing my very best, and that meta self frustration led to a breakdown in my mental armor and subsequent self sabotage (tilt). I'm sure the hands will be reasonable enough looking and somewhat justifiable, but I'm sure I'll also see spots where I can clearly discern an alternative line that would have been higher EV.

I've said before that in order to get stronger, you need resistance to push back against. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call, and I can leverage this into positive motivation. Even if I happen to lose in subsequent sessions, as long as I do my best and put in real quality effort in adverse conditions, in the long run it will serve to strengthen my overall game and increase my expectation.

Writing this all out was a healthy and necessary cooldown process. I can feel a release of tension and negative energy already from the time I started writing this post. It's a bit of a draining process, but facing the issue head on right away and getting mental closure is definitely for the best for me.

Back to it a bit later.