I think the best way to study poker is right before you start a session. Spent time going over a hand history or hands you've marked. Possibly just spend some time thinking about the weakest parts of your game. That way your mistakes are fresh in your mind and you can identify them while you play. There is also merit to studying while you are playing (which requires cutting down on tables) which is what I would advocate for someone learning turbo poker or sngs where 'mathable' spots come up every hand.

On Focus, Pt 2:

So I tried an experiment this week. I played a maximum of four tables at a time and I'd use the extra time to make sure I played my A game and didn't miss any spots. I tried to limit distractions to a minimum ie. 2p2 and skype.

Results: I played looser, but not significantly. Most of the benefit was early levels where I picked up more pots on steals, splashed around in a few more pots with the table fish, and overall built up more stacks then I had been in January. All of this showed up in a database review I did last night.

That was well and good, but I doubt the increase in EV early on was enough to overcome the loss of EV from tournaments I skipped. I even feel like I could play as well as I did with 6 to 9 tables as long as my focus is sharp. Long term 4 tabling doesn't seem like a reasonable choice.

Doing this experiment did allow to me figure out the real problem, and reading my post from a few months ago, the problem isn't any different than I thought it was then. Sustaining the level of focus to play my A game for 12 hours, hell even 2 hours straight, seems nigh impossible. And that makes sense; I doubt many people at any profession can have their brain working at 100% all day and not tire out or lose focus.

So the question becomes: What can I do to focus as well as I can for as long as I can? I thought of a few options.

1) Continue to work at it. This might not be an option per say, just a point of emphasis that I need spend time every session being conscience of the plays I make and avoid environments that will cause me to play poorly.

2) Play while standing. I'm not suggesting to play a whole session on your feet, but moving to a standing position for an hour when you are struggling to stay awake or on your game makes it tough for your mind to wander. Just the sub-conscience reminder that "Hey I am standing up over my laptop, must mean I'm here for poker" goes a long way to keeping your mind in the game. Also, I've never managed to fall asleep standing up.

This is the best band-aid solution I've used this week, but it obviously would only work for a laptop user, and I couldn't imagine playing on your feet for hour and hours per day.

3) Programs that prevent me from wandering. That script I posted that prevents firefox from opening new windows has been a great help. It has stopped many many random attempts at using the internet. It's probably one of those problems you can only develop from years of bad habits, so it will take time to fix.

4) Shorter sessions. So this seems like an ideal solution, but it obviously is difficult for an MTT player. I could play a short 2-3 hour registration session once or twice a day, but it would seriously eat into my potential profits. What would I do with the extra 8-10 hours in the day? This seems like an ideal option if I were back in college, but with the whole legal climate that seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

I've pondered spending a few hours a day studying fields that interest me so that I can get through the rest of undergrad quickly and easily when I go back. I'm not sure if I'm organized enough to ever actually pull that off, and I'd need to get into a better financial spot before I'd be OK with playing less poker. Being able to tackle multiple items per day is a personal issue that I'd like to improve at so this might be something I come back to in the fall or next year.

5) Drugs. Drugs are magic but I still don't want to rely on them. I am not really interested in being on them all day every day. This might actually work out well coinciding with playing shorter sessions. I could pop a Ritalin in the morning while loading up 20 tables, ride that session down as I lose the drugs' intensity, and spend evening working on whatever project that interests me.

Fair play with the score mate keep up will be watch this

Currently working on:

This is a segment I want to revisit many times over the next years. I feel you should always have some goal to improve whatever you are doing, and I always find it best to work on one specific part of the game at a time. It's very difficult to build multiple quality habits at the same time. So with that...

I'm currently working on staying present in every hand. What does that mean? What I mean by that is that every hand I make a conscious decision on the best action to take. That means no clicking buttons without thinking about why. Doing this for 12 hours a day is not easy at all, but it is one tool I can hopefully use to keep my focus strong. The goal is to be able to do this for an entire session without going crazy.

One of the most basic way to stay present in every hand is to make a video recording of your play as if you were recording for cardrunners and annotate every play you make.

well said need to do this gl

March 5th Update:

Playing great and just riding a bunch of close calls and general runbad. March is going to be a huge month for me poker wise with or lose. #tothetop

Good luck bro! I believe you actually have the mantality to hit ur goal cause once you find out you need and out other than poker n learn to take breaks n not have poker 24/7 getting burnt out or bored with the game that is half the battle when becoming a fulltime poker player.. Well thats my opinion anyway it worked wornders for me

Gl dude. Sure you'll crush this. Subbed and following along.

idk how i wasnt subbed for this before

glgl

Hey sicko chill on dat a game

How good can I really play?

I talk a lot about this, but now I want to live it. And I'll do it here for everyone to see.

I've had some good success in the last few weeks. I've been crushing the highest stakes that I am allowed, and I've been disciplined in playing everyday. But have I played my best poker?... I don't really think so. Looking through HM2 tells the story of solid but not spectacular poker, of winning money but not as much as I could have. I'm not satisfied; I long for the satisfaction of playing my best.

So what does my average game look like? What does my elite game look like? Over the next few days I'm going to put maximum effort into producing a sample of my best play and we can compare it to my play over the last month.

Of course this brings the question of "why the **** don't you just always play your best?" but that is a long answer for many many postings.

Here is what 50% ROI mid stakes play looks like:

just started following. best of luck.

wow, youre a nit, perhaps thats really the way to go

gl dude, i remember you struggled before BF and then came the hammer, nice to see you run good for a change

My technical game is very strong and that helps me a lot over other bad nits, but I wouldn't say that's the way to go at all. I mean, playing tight means you avoid making mistakes, but it also means you leave equity on the table - Spots to steal, Spots to 3b, Spots to play a pot vs the table fish. I go on stretches of playing my best and my evbb/100 goes through the roof, and the number of legit stacks I get per day is a noticeable increase. I just struggle staying in that zone for a multiple days or even a whole day at a time.

Also, stats are filtered to effective BB greater than 12 for more consistent results.

I thought you were more like 24/21/7 on Merge :/

I'm pretty proud of my play on Merge esp after having 6 months off from online poker. I probably had some of my longest stretches of great play there in Nov/December, but there is a big difference from Merge to Stars as more players defend, more players 3 bet, more players open over here.

After talking with some friends and thinking it over, I'm going to drop euro sites from my grind for the duration of this test and focus only playing Stars. I'll only begin playing Euros when I'm playing my best every day and not just occasionally. It could be a week from now, it could be next year, who knows.

Without getting into to many words on why, I just feel like I'm playing so much better on Stars and that I'm missing something when it comes to the other sites. There's plenty of action on Stars so I won't be losing out on much EV by doing so.

Ok, going to use the next 3 days as my sample to compare. Time to start being my best.

gl bro. you can do it.

After a decent but not exceptional day I posted 15evbb/100 15.8/13.1/5.5 . I should be able to get vpip up to about 18-19 and still feel comfortable in my game.

On to tomorrow.

I dont think you mean favorite in 10k lives, I think you mean +EV.

Gl in your goals.

Also when analyzing your play, try to break it down in terms of late game(post ante, but more so post money so on average like 800 BB or so), and then pre ante. Easier for me at least ot find leaks in my own game. Also it takes out rebuy gambling I have been known to do.

March 19th Update:

I have some more thoughts about playing my best but just a graph for now.

What was your big score on Merge?

Waiting anxiously for your next post on playing one's best!

Pretty sure it was the maximus high roller, which I bubbled the FT. #paperthinlyveiledbrag

Got 5th in the $215 maximus on Sunday. Was 1/7 but kinda imploded :/