Thanks dude!

Quick note to all reading in here - some good news in the non-poker part of my life. Yesterday I found out I was accepted to a 10-week evening course at the London Film School entitled 'Continuing and Serial TV Drama: How It Works and How To Write It'. I'm really excited about this as it's going to be my first chance to actually get some guidance with my writing, and hopefully find out whether I'm actually any good at it along the way. It means I won't be able to play poker on any Tuesday evenings from October 8th until the end of the year, but since I don't play the Super Tuesday anyway and Tuesday tends to be a pretty reggy day of the week because of that tournament, I'm not missing out on too much. Life is good!

Yo with regards to the betsizing issue u address in ur videos where u mention u cant see it sometimes. Its seen plain as day at the bottom right under "Last action." Wanted to tell u long back but forgot and just remembered. You're welcome

Oh, haha. Can't believe I never noticed that. Thanks, and thanks for watching!

Can't call yourself a film buff until you have seen Withnail and I, such a cult classic

Hey guys,

Just dropping in to say I got back yesterday from the FPS Cannes event in France. I bricked all three events I played, but it was fun. I'll be posting a trip report on TPE hopefully tomorrow, so I'll link to that on here when I'm done. WCOOP is over as well so I'll cover that a little bit. GL all for October!

hi ginger,

i am following your thread whole year and i really like the way you go about playing and the distance you have - that is something i really struggled in last year or so. Anyway i wanted to ask you if you can get me in touch with people who are backing you, i want to see if they would be interested to back me as well, i only play on stars and my nickname is rosko58.

thanks and thanks for fantastic thread

good luck

Thanks for all the recent support guys. Really appreciate it. Got a lot of stuff on my mind though, so what follows is just gonna be a sort of stream-of-consciousness rant to help me get some of it out there.

'The Zone', both inside and outside of poker (tl;dr)

Lately I've been reading The Mental Game of Poker 2 (or rather, I've been sitting there and looking at the pages - not sure how much is going in) and thinking a lot about the idea of what it means to play your best, and how often I really do it. I've been having a lot of issues lately when it comes to playing my best, for a few reasons.

One of the main things that's been affecting me is simply playing too many tables. This might not be a very easy issue for others to understand or for me to explain, but I'll go ahead and try anyway. I think the gist of it is that most of my poker education came with me playing >16 tables, and feeling constantly taxed by all the decisions I was making. I always felt 'dialled in' when playing more tables, and even though I was entirely aware that I was misclicking, snapfolding in bad spots, and even doing extremely dumb stuff like not noticing I was OOP in a hand and accidentally donkbetting in a spot I would never normally do it, I was convincing myself that I was playing my best, simply as a result of the fact that a) I knew I was getting the most volume possible, and b) I was pretty much unable to focus on anything else while playing, so I knew I was concentrating pretty hard.

This year, however, I've been getting infinitely better results since dropping down the number of tables I play. I've been focused, I've been more relaxed, and generally playing better. It's a complete and total no-brainer that playing 8-12 tables is better for me than playing >12. Yet, despite this, I've had several instances where I've had 12 tables up and a good value MTT is starting, and because at that particular moment I feel like I'm not overly taxed by 12 tables, I load it up. This occasionally doubles up on itself, to the point where I get to 8pm and there's about four good value tourneys starting, and I convince myself I can fit them all in, and then suddenly I'm playing 14, 16 or even more tables, and convincing myself it's fine because soon enough I'll bust a few others and be back down to 12.

Now, I'm aware that this is a really weird problem, and is probably connected to some other issues. I'm pretty sure at this point that it's linked to my results, and when I haven't had a big result for a while I get antsy and start desperately trying to sneak in more volume. I also think it's linked to what I mentioned earlier about not feeling like I'm fully focused, or even not feeling like I'm working hard, if I'm not playing a taxing number of tables. I fear missing good value tournaments or even late registering them, because I might be missing out on a tournament that I could win. This is really dumb, because each time I add another table I'm reducing my chances of winning the tournaments I'm already in, and it's especially dumb because it's an approach that is entirely motivated by recent results. There's no reason at all why I should be playing more tables in a downswing than in an upswing - in fact, it's completely the opposite of what I should be doing. The fact that it's SCOOP makes it even more of a testing time to stick to the right number of tables, but again, if there's ever a time when I want to be playing my absolute best, it's during a major series.

This idea of being 'in the zone' - of playing one's best - is a very ethereal concept, but it's something that I can definitely put my finger on when it's happening. When I'm in the zone, I'm not tilting or results-oriented, and I'm taking my time over every decision. The problem, however, is that I have some sort of connection in my head between the idea of being 'in the zone', and the idea of playing a lot of tables, and when I am playing 'in the zone', I immediately feel like it's a good time to add more tables, which is the one thing which would take me out of the zone immediately. As soon as I get to the place I want to be, I stop doing the things that got me there.

This is a problem that manifests itself in life, as well - when I'm 'in the zone' in life, I'm eating well, sleeping well, working out all the time, and keeping myself tidy and organised. When I'm not 'in the zone' in life, I'm eating badly and getting takeaways all the time during poker sessions, my apartment is a mess, I'm not shaving, I'm not taking time to meditate or write, and I'm getting lazy about working out too. What I'm trying to discern at the moment is, where is the link between my being 'in the zone' poker-wise, and 'in the zone' life-wise? What is it that causes me to be so self-destructive?

When I'm behaving healthily in life - particularly when I'm losing weight - my first instinct is to drop whatever positive behaviours I've picked up as soon as they aren't 'necessary' any more, or as soon as I have an excuse for not following through. I lose a few pounds, and I feel like I can afford to take a day off from working out, or order a pizza instead of making a salad. I make a deep run and stay up really late for it, lose a few hours' sleep, and all of a sudden I'm telling myself I'm too tired to even work out for half an hour at home. Then, a little while later, I get pissed off with myself for slacking off, and re-dedicate myself to the process, only to repeat the whole thing all over again, which is what I'm doing right now - writing this big long post to berate myself for playing too many tables the last few days, not playing my best, ordering takeout food three nights in a row, barely sleeping, not going to the gym, and just generally being a terrible human.

I want to know what it is that creates this weird cyclicality in my life. I want to know why I get caught up in this endless process of self-improvement and self-destruction. If I added up all the times I've knowingly made decisions that decrease the quality of my life, just because I'm the only person who's accountable for them, I wonder how much better off I could be without those decisions. Similarly, I wonder how much better off I'd be without all the times I've knowingly made decisions that negatively impact my ROI at the tables.

I've tried goal-setting and self-tracking, and that's another thing that tends to get lost after a few days. I'll write a schedule for the week or a bunch of weekly goals on the whiteboard in my apartment, and then two days later I find a reason to ignore it. I'll record all the calories I eat for two days on MyFitnessPal or FitDay, and then after that I won't bother. I'll do a full, two-hour workout one day at the gym, and then the next day I feel like I can afford to go home after half an hour because I did enough yesterday. It's like my whole life revolves around doing things with minimal effort. I have so little self-discipline - and yet, I am 100% certain of how much better my life is when I do make the effort to do all the things that I tell myself I don't have to. It's like on some level, there's a part of me that wants to just sit around all day, do nothing, eat terrible food and mindlessly autopilot my poker sessions, while the other part of me wants to eat well, sleep well, work out, meditate, and play great poker. I want this post to be the beginning of the time when I start consciously deciding to be the latter person, and get rid of the former. I don't expect the change to happen overnight, but I do hope that consciously acknowledging these behaviours might help me to get rid of them.

I have some Tony Robbins tapes I want to listen to again. Haven't listened to them for a while, but I know they cover some pretty interesting stuff. I feel like the time is right to revisit them, as I'm definitely coming into a new phase of my life at the moment. I'm moving to a new apartment in a month or so, changing my legal name to use my mother's last name (as soon as I'm sure I won't need my passport for a while), and for the first time probably ever, I have a really clear perspective on where I'm going career-wise. The missing ingredient is being able to follow through on all the things I know would make me better off. If I put half as much effort into that as I do at getting better at poker, I'd probably be a lot closer to achieving it.

I might end today by reading some more TMGP2 and maybe meditating a little before bed. Looking forward to tomorrow's SCOOPs (the shootout will be great) so here's hoping I can put it all together tomorrow, stick to 8 tables or so, and crush the heck out of it.

GL all and thanks if you kept reading this far!
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Old 05-18-2013, 02:03 AM #615
theginger45
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: The corridor of uncertainty
Posts: 5,850
Re: F*** goals, it's time to crush some MTTs!


Another thing I probably should have mentioned is that I have some sort of objection to reviewing my own game. I just can never bring myself to do it. I guess it's because I usually take criticism very hard, and it knocks my confidence to see myself make mistakes. I still have yet to determine whether the confidence I gain from not reviewing my game outweighs the improvement I would make if I reviewed more often. I'm pretty sure it doesn't.


man, i must have missed this- it is sooooo me. i've been struggling with playing way tooo many tables, setting up goals and after week or two just start to find excuses not to do things. funny thing is it only starts when i start slowly see improvements in whatever i've been doing - so it is def. some sort of destruction in our mental psyche - some sort of program that lunch it self as soon we do something to improve our life/poker. i know it has to sound ridiculous to most of readers but i do feel exactly what you talking about to the point that it is bit scary that you have the exact same problem. not to mention "some sort of objection to reviewing my own game", INSANE again can not even put it in words, just can not force my self to do it. anyone who did achieve anything in poker says 2 things 1) bankroll management - sack at it completely, that is one of the reasons i asked you about your backers - if u check me out you see i have had decent results in past 12-14 month like, 2th in sunday kick off, 5th in sunday 500, 5th twice in big 109, 4th in 162 etc, still my roll as of now is about 5 dollars. and 2) review you hands - just can not force my self - did see about 10 turneys in last 12 months.

with the review your hands is almost def. related to ego problem...

anyway good luck and remember been able to see and acknowledge you problems is 50% of the solution, it is by far the hardest thing to do.....

good luck and keep it up...

Thanks for reading. I can tell you right now that my backers (or any others, probably) won't be interested if you don't go through the proper channels, which involves going to the 2p2 marketplace and submitting an application. The fact that you're a new poster is going to count against you, though.
I'm a poker player, of course I have an ego problem, haha. Seriously though, you're probably right. I alternate between thinking I suck and thinking I'm ****ing brilliant. The reality is always somewhere in the middle. Since I started working for TPE I have to spend a lot more time looking at my own game, so I feel like that problem has been addressed to some extent. Thanks for your thoughts, though.

My latest TPE blog: http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/w...cannes-update/

thanx for quick replay and keep crushing,

def. will keep on following

u mentioned few times that you played a lot 180 man sng, was it turbo or non-turbo you played most???

Turbos. I was never that good at them, though!

Just shipped myself a seat to UKIPT Isle of Man tonight, in the first satty I played haha. Pretty excited, first major live event I've played in the UK. Need to sort out travel and hotel ASAP. If anyone else reading this is heading to PokerStars Island for the event, let me know - would be happy to meet people for beers and chitchat.

I should also mention, I'm looking to take on a few students for private coaching over the next few weeks. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to discuss it - my work with TPE has given me the coaching bug!

might be interested, what do you offer and whats $/hour?

PMing you to discuss it.

Interested too, loved your vids and am ready to make another step in my game... let's exchange skype and talk

PMing you too.

Hey guys,

Really sorry I haven't posted much in here lately. I've been really busy since I started my course up in London, and I've been doing a bunch of TPE stuff as well. I've just finished recording my second video series for them, and I'll be penning another couple of articles very soon. I'm also actually on around a $30k downswing right now, so I hope that once we get into November I'll be able to really get back on the grind. I could use the money.

Right now I'm in the Isle of Man for the UKIPT - already after less than 24 hours I've met a bunch of guys I know from online including klauskraft and ozzieowen from the #TeamFoldto2nd stable, mement_mori, OMGClayDol, firaldo87, ProdigyXII, thehempy (who apparently recognised me on the plane over here, which made me laugh) and probably some more I wasn't even aware of. It's been really cool to actually get to know some real-life poker people. If there's anyone reading this thread who's currently in IOM, tweet at me (@theginger45) and we can grab a beer sometime.

I'll post a full trip report to TPE once I get home on Monday, and I'll link to it here. In the meantime I'll be tweeting a fair amount so feel free to hit me up on there for updates.

#gotime #empirebusiness

Good luck!

Hey guys,

New blog post is up on TPE: http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/u...report-update/

Plus my new video series, a review of the Saturday Night Live tournament from Stars.fr, has just started. I'll also be posting a couple of articles in the next week or two, and there's a chance I might get to write something for an even bigger site than TPE. I can't say exactly what it is yet, but I'll keep you guys posted on that one.

Online grind still pretty withered, in about $35k of makeup at the moment. Not stressing me out too much but obviously it's not ideal. Going to make sure I put in some solid volume throughout the rest of the year and grind myself out of it. With any luck I'll bink a bunch of stuff this weekend and it'll all be gravy.

EDIT: As an example of how withered the online grind is right now, last week I played the FTP Multi-Fifty 5 times. I got a 2nd, a 7th, a 7th, a 14th and a brick. Sigh.

following ginger!

Thanks!

Did some reviewing today with guys from the stable, got butchered a little for submitting a hand where I made an awful limp/shove with QTo on the button lol. Still not convinced my game is at 100% these days but powering through this downswing nonetheless. No doubt I'm still playing highly profitable poker.

I might be putting up a coaching listing in the TwoPlusTwo coaches section soon as I'm looking to keep pursuing individual coaching. I enjoy it and it's a good way to keep my game sharp. If there's anyone out there who's interested (and who hasn't already talked to me about it the last 2/3 times I plugged it in here, lol) before I even put the ad up, feel free to PM me for rates etc.

Argh, OP just busted me deep in Le Triomphe on lol.fr, but atleast my chips didn't go to some crazy frenchie. Good luck Ginger, take it down!

Thanks, but I got 17th. So far this month has been one of those months that makes me regret ever becoming an MTT player. It's inspiration for me to further pursue my screenwriting career, because at this point with my professional career about to hit the 2 year mark, I've probably only enjoyed about 25% of it so far. Stupid game.

Obviously moaning in the hope that I'll bink one of the 5 tourneys I'm left in, but I'm not holding out much hope.

EDIT: Moaners gonna moan obviously but sometimes I just need to vent. The more I get into a groove of feeling like I'm playing well, the more it feels like I'm wasting my time. These downswings make me seriously consider how long I want to continue playing MTTs full-time.

Mtts are a bitch. glgl Ginger, hope you catch some heat soon!