There will be no poker in this thread. This is about everything but poker.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little bit extreme. But, by far, the biggest obstacle that sabotages my success is a river that ebbs and flows underground - turbulent at times, anxiously calm at others. It's a dark, pulsating abyss that threatens to take me and swallow me whole.

It's the mental. Or, in other words, me.

Who am I?
My name is William. I'm a 20 year old guy living in the heart of Melbourne, Australia. I've been playing poker since I was 18, and I fell in love with the game almost instantly. I've devoured Janda, Tipton, Galfond, Sulsky, the works. I can confidently say that I have the technical skillset to beat my current game, 200NL Zone. I'm currently studying a Bachelor of Laws as well as a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Literature and Philosophy for the latter; although I've currently taken a break to pursue the dream. I currently tutor senior year English and Literature for a living. It's not stellar, but it pays the rent and food with pocket money to spare.

Yet the honest answer to that question is I don't know. Who really does when they're 20 and still green?

I want to introduce you to a guy named William James - one of the greatest psychologists and philosophers of the 19th century. He had been invited by the American Psychological Association to be a keynote speaker at their conference. Tens of thousands of people were going to attend. Thanks to his incredible reputation, people traveled from all across the nation to hear him deliver his speech, titled "Everything we've learned in the last 100 years of Psychological Research".


On the day, the audience was buzzing. The hype was unreal. When he finally ascended the podium, the MC spent half an hour introducing James, praising him for his numerous accolades and widespread acclaim. When the time finally came for James to speak, the room was utterly silent. He cleared his throat and said but one sentence.

He then said "thank you" and "goodnight" before turning and exiting the stage. Yet with the advance of modern neuropsychology, we now know that this man was eons ahead of his time. If our subconscious believes that we're a certain person, it will inevitably influence our conscious to act in ways which ultimately fulfill that image that we have of ourselves. It's for this reason that lottery winners always end up losing all their winnings. Deep down, they don't really believe that they deserve to be a $5 million dollar person. They will almost always end up pissing that money away, whether it's through buying junk or lending recklessly. For this reason, it's so important that we truly and genuinely believe that we are the type of person that we want to be.

So to answer the question for real this time. I am an open-minded and hard-working entrepreneur who will approach my goals with courage and resilience.

Focus of my journey
I will be focusing on the mental and the emotional. These are my most gaping areas of weakness. I have only very recently just punted away over a month's worth of profit from 200NL Zone in one night at 2,000NL. Admittedly, this pattern of self-sabotage has occurred repeatedly throughout my poker career. But I am done with being a mental game fish. I will also be focusing heavily on volume, as I often have difficulty sitting down and playing especially when I'm up money. I will be relentlessly pursuing solutions for my mental game leaks, whether this be meditation, affirmations, listening to speeches and podcasts, self-punishment, scheduling rigidly, playing piano regularly or eating clean and going to the gym (I'm 6 foot and weigh 55kg lol). My posts will mainly hone in on these techniques, and I will weigh in with tidbits that I hope will be hopeful for all readers. Monetary results is absolutely not my focus although I may post interesting hands now and then and an occasional balance update. Yes, all my hands are tracked and I will post graphs from time to time.

Current Bankroll $3,878 AUD = $2,977.53 USD as of April 8th, 2018
I'm aware that I'm currently underrolled but I have roughly another $3,000 behind in borrowed cash and tutoring generously covers my liferoll expenses

Goals

• Play at least 50 hours of 200NL Zone a week (10 hours per weekday). In other words, at a conservative estimate of 300 hands per hour, play at least 15,000 hands a week.
• Go to the gym three days a week; eat clean and well
• Meditate every single day for at least 10 minutes using the Headspace app
• Play piano for at least 5 hours a week
• Not a single drop of alcohol or drugs in 2018, including NYE!
• Be playing 3/6 and above by October 1, 2018

Thanks for reading. And welcome to my journey!

In! Gl son.

April 9, 2018
Today, before I started my session, I verbally repeated the following affirmation over and over again to train/reprogram my subconscious not to tilt. I will be doing this frequently over the next fortnight until it sinks in.

Quote:

By dedicating myself to mental game and volume, I completely lose sight of the short-term and become invincible to distortion; thereby becoming one of the deadliest diamonds in the pool.

Real talk/meditation about all-in EV
One of my biggest leaks is that I am generally indifferent to the result of flips, yet extremely sensitive to coolers where my equity is negligibly low or zero. Why is this? It's because with flips, I know that HEM2 will show how bad I am running, or how far under AIEV I am running. I feel comfort because I feel like the 'injustice' being done against me (that is, losing flips) has been recorded and will not be swept away with no evidence. It lets me feel sorry for myself, and allows me to self-victimise. Real talk now. I feel perpetually wronged by poker, and deep down I believe that the game is conspiring against to me to do everything it can to impede my success. Why do I feel wronged? Because I feel entitled as hell. I feel like the game owes me short-term success, because I am emotionally immature and I am a slave to instant gratification. So I will be making two substantial changes to my mindset from here on in.

1) I will disable all-in EV. Never look at it again. It no longer exists as a concept. I will do this to remind myself that I do not need the sympathy of an all-in EV graph to make me feel better about myself. Sympathy from a graph - that's pathetic. I must become confident in my own ability to play my A game over large volume, and place complete trust in the fact that my $ won will converge to expectation in the hyper long-term.

2) I will learn to love the game and embrace the swings. I must see poker not as my enemy, but as my ally, as a tool that will propel me towards success. I will embrace variance and love variance, and see it as a source of winrate that will allow me to gain a substantial edge against others through my mastery of superior mental game.

Meditation
I meditated too late during the day at about 10 AM. I had already started thinking about the day's schedule and was excited to play poker. As a result, my mind was jumping all over the place. Need to establish meditation much earlier in the day. However, we did get our 10 minutes in which is a positive!

Also ended up watching this TED talk, 'The Invisible Force - self-image – enables you to achieve great goals'. Super motivating stuff and it really helped to clarify exactly the kind of mindset that an aspiring poker pro needs.



Volume
Ended up splitting my play into 3 sessions of 2.5 hours in the morning, 4 hours in the evening at 1.5 hours at night = 8 hours of 200NL Zone played today. I definitely need to, for the time being, be playing no more than 3-4 hour sessions; especially as later on in sessions, I seem to suffer winner's tilt quite badly and often catch myself chasing my 'peak' despite being up.

Really well written, and inspiring to see how open-mindedly you approach your weaknesses. GL boss

#rignition

sugoiiiiii

Thanks so much for the support 6bet me, boaty and DLuo! It really means a lot and makes me feel a lot more accountable to someone other than myself

April 10, 2018
Meditation
Had a much better meditation session today (10 mins), as I pretty much did it first thing in the morning. But just before I had been casually scrolling through 2p2, which did end up affecting the quality of my meditation slightly. Another problem is that the hunger that I feel when I wake up is intensified heavily when I meditate to the point where it's distracting. What I'll do in future is eat breakfast the moment I wake up, but numb my mind so I don't think of anything while I eat. Then I'll meditate, hopefully distraction-free.

I felt incredibly calm and confident after I meditated today. It really helped to alleviate many of the fears and anxieties which often plague me deep down. I feel ready to tackle the world and solve each problem, one by one. In addition, it does feel like a bit of a 'win' every time I meditate; it's nice to know you're doing something every day to contribute to your mental wellbeing - and ultimately, winrate.

Affirmation
Repeated the affirmation at least 10 times before I started playing, which made me feel confident in my ability to play my A game at all times. I felt like I had extreme clarity and was pumped to start the session.

Volume
Played 8.5 hours today, scattered throughout three sessions. Did terrible - I ran pretty bad initially but then tilt set in and I started making some awful plays. Ended up punting off almost six buy-ins today. Tomorrow I will be implementing a one buy-in loss from any point. So if I fall one buy-in below my peak, I will have to take a one hour break away from the PC. As punishment, I will also be implementing pain therapy with an elastic band, where I will snap myself really hard every time my mind starts to wander in a tilted trajectory. Really disappointed in myself today

Pretty nasty spot that I was really keen to see the HH of

The general trajectory of how the day was going for me

By far the most challenging hand of the session, mentally. Mainly because deep down I knew exactly what was going to happen on the river. Just needed that ounce more of discipline - was really disappointed in myself for tilt calling as the time-bank was ticking down to 3 seconds remaining...

GL minus, I am 21 and am in a similar situation as you, still in college and grinding live 1/2. Excited to hear how this turns out for you!

dat double-breasted suit

Good luck sir! Love the thread title!!! I would recommend Super System by Doyle Brunson and The Mental Game of Poker 1 and 2 by Jared Tendler for reading.

Love it Wliu Best of luck and remember to keep some life balance too, that's a ton of volume you're looking at! Every MHS degen knows that you've easily got what it takes, keep at it man.

Thanks for all the support, guys! Really do appreciate every comment. Currently in the grips of a morbid downswing... It hurts so bad when you watch your profits slowly ascend as the day progresses, then lose it all in one or two massive coolers. Then the night falls and you felt like you've achieved nothing all day The volume goal keeps me going though, and makes it feel less empty when you finish BE/down for the day.

And thanks for the recommendation; I'll start reading Super System and Mental Game now

April 11, 2018
Meditation and Affirmation
Meditation worked out a bit better but we need to start even earlier before thoughts of poker flow into our head. One way is to make sure we don't play poker the hour or so before bed, as this causes our subconscious to fixate on it and disturbs the meditation next morning.

Even though it looks a little bit embarrassing, I repeated the affirmation with dramatic actions and hand gestures today with a determined posture. Which really helped the affirmation sink in. I could really feel my subconscious believing that this is who I was.

Volume
Today I resisted the urge to start playing as soon as I woke up. Forced myself to go grocery shopping while listening to a couple of Elliot Roe's Mindset Advantage podcasts. Was really happy that decision, as I usually wake up in a 'fervour' ready to play hands which leads to tilt. I also implemented the elastic band, which really hurt! Every time I tried to count my stacks to see whether I was up or down, I would snap myself really hard and chant the affirmation. It worked really well though; I could sense my subconscious completely repressing the $ figure eventually to avoid the intense pain. And resulted in me playing a lot better as well. Overall I was actually really happy with how I played today, despite ending up down over 7.5 hours.

Fun hand of the day - everyone was ~300bb deep (apologies for the hand format; the 2p2 converter won't accept my hands)

HAHAHAHA I lol'd at that last vid.

Keep grinding!! Keep us posted, this is v entertaining (:

Played 1 hour of short handed 200z and punted off a good couple of buyins...

Note to self for tomorrow before I do the tilted crash of shame to bed:
STOP ****ING SELF SABOTAGING YOU ABSOLUTE ****ING SPASTIC

https://d3pz8y41wq4xyo.cloudfront.ne...2/sabotage.pdf

Obsession with perfectionism and anxiety is your Achilles's Heel. You're not supposed to go from 0 to 10 just by setting some super ambitious goals. It's incremental, and failures are part of the journey. DO NOT use the failures to tell yourself that you will never make it. The pain is good. Embrace the ****ing pain.



Already past the honeymoon period. Deep in the fight-thru now >:|

Someone came into a twitch stream last night talking about this hand, I believe it was the guy who 3b said he had AA and saw a $1.2k pot where JQs flopped the nuts vs 99 flopped set who got it in on turn made quads on the river. Very unlucky. Gross spot but obv. nothing you can do.

April 12, 2018
Pre-game routine
Meditated early in the morning today - mind was a lot clearer. Although hunger is still an issue. Perhaps have a fuller dinner and go to bed immediately to fix this. (10 mins achieved) Also repeated the affirmation a dozen times, which is becoming more ingrained into my psyche now.

One thing I found really helped is running errands for an hour (e.g. groceries, laundry, cleaning room) in the morning before I play. REAL TALK now - the REAL reason I often want to instantly jump online is because my lizard brain wants to gamble. It's the degenerate dopamine-seeking neurons in my brain wanting to be titillated; this is obviously the wrong place to approach a session from. Don't get me wrong, I am fascinated by poker and love learning about the game, but that excitement that gets me firing up the tables first thing in the morning is not passion. It's gambling addiction. After resisting play for an hour, that 'gambling' mentality subsides. I calm down and I actually start looking forward to playing objective poker and achieving my goals.

Mental game study
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and videos of late about self-improvement and mindset enhancement. In particular, Elliot Roe's A-Game Advantage podcast and his Mindset Advantage podcast have been incredibly helpful. Neuropsychology tells us that the brain learns best through osmosis. That is, we soak up everything that's going on in our environment and integrate it into our subconscious so much more than we realise. This is the reason why you start to pick up your friends' habits and start talking like them without realising it. By the same token though, we can force very deep learning in ourselves by just constantly having beneficial podcasts/talks being played in our ears even if we aren't consciously listening. Because our subconscious always is. So definitely something I'm going to be implementing much more both in-session and during the day while I'm grocery shopping etc.

Upon listening to quite a few self-improvement sources, I've also decided that re-defining my goals for every quarter (3 months) is a more intelligent way of approaching progress. Research shows this is the best time period for goal-setting in order to maximise chances of success. You want it to be long enough so you have something to aim towards, but not too long that you lose sight and consequently, motivation. So, to make my goals more concrete and also so I can feel a sense of reward/achievement (which is apparently important to maintain long-term discipline )...

• Average at least 50 hours of 200NL Zone a week between April 9, 2018 and July 9, 2018
• Go to the gym three days a week over the next 3 months
• Meditate every single day for at least 10 minutes of the next 3 months
• Play piano for at least 5 hours a week over the next 3 months
• Not a single drop of alcohol or drugs for the next 3 months
• Be playing 2/4 and above by July 11, 2018

Volume
Finally caught some heat today and clawed back the last few day's losses! Bankroll is pretty much back to square one now. Obviously positive variance is temporary but one of the awesome bits of advice I got from the podcasts is to take advantage of when things are going well to set up systems to get you through the dark times. I'm sure you've all experienced that sense of gusto and motivation after a great session. I need to be taking hold of the good days and on these days, get the ball rolling on good habits (e.g. session limits and stoplosses) and strict schedules. Despite today's monetary results, I played all my volume in one 8 hour session, where towards the end I was "chasing my peak". Which is clearly unsustainable and poorly disciplined. Also had trouble sticking to my stoploss, losing 2.5 BI's from peak at one point. So I will be implementing a 3 hour session cap and focusing complete attention on these systems (stoploss and time cap) over the coming days. Faced the painful wrath of the elastic band a few times today, but brain seems to have figured out looking at $ = bad already :')

I guess from now on I'll also be posting HH's from the day before, as I have to wait 24 hours to get them from the site. Also gives me some time to stew over them before I record them in this journal. Here's one from yesterday that I wasn't too happy with. I probably could've gotten away but my state of mind at the time was poor in all honesty.

This is a good habit to get into. Having a morning ritual where you don't touch your computer or do anything intensive for the first 2hrs of waking up will help a lot imo. Like maybe shower first, breakfast second, dishes third, laundry fourth, cleaning room fifth, hanging up clothes sixth, daily errands like a bank run seventh, grocery shopping eighth, then productive but intensive stuff like work, study and poker comes ninth. Just an example.

When I say intensive I mean mentally intensive like work/study/poker. It's fine to go for a run or a gym sesh when you first wake up because you can actually passively meditate as you do exercise.

April 13, 2018
I'm writing this so I can see how much pain I'm in when my head clears and I wake up. So I don't forget what the pain of self-sabotage is like. It's ****ing soul-wrenching. It's this pounding ache in your head, this incredible pressure that saps every ounce of hope out of me. The only fleeting relief is to snap myself really hard with the band again and again. And again. My wrist is welting now (but dw, the band doesn't scar or anything). It stings so ****ing much, but it's in these moments that I actually understand why people self-harm. The physical pain is nothing compared to this deep existential anguish that numbs me right now. I actually feel this weird sense of relief every time I snap myself. It's like I'm relieved that I'm being punished for my behaviour. All I want to do is to fall asleep instantly right now but my mind is in the twilight zone.

This is what happens when you don't stick to your session cap. Or your stoploss. You spew 10 buyins in a day.

This is what happens. It's not even about the money. You know that deep down. You can live and survive and pay rent. It's about that tortured flame inside you that wants to succeed and make something of himself. And you keep smothering it over, and over, and over again. Why? Why are you doing this? Look back at this every single ****ing time. Look at this **** every ****ing day. It's the truth, and you mustn't ever look away. It's the only thing that'll keep you on track.

Volume: 10 hours

Originally didn't want to post graphs too regularly (maybe every fortnight or so). But this is ****ing necessary to remind myself every time I think I'm above stoplosses or I'm above session limits because I'm winning. Or when I think I'm fine, when I'm not. Or I won't be, anyway, in a few minutes time. By the time I've tilted, I can no longer quit. I need to remember that. By the time I've tilted, I can no longer quit. I NEED TO QUIT BEFORE I TILT

Second session of the day (dumped 6 buyins in the first session):

Gl. U seem smart.

**** man I'm so sorry to hear. At least you stopped though before busting your entire roll.

How badly were you playing? Were they genuine coolers with maybe a few tilt bluffs inbetween, or were you playing completely spewy like a whale/maniac?

Subbed. Gl man.

Thanks for the support guys

Initially they were genuine coolers, but weird ones like I felt like I could get away from. Like the session started off with pretty much AA v TT versus this massive whale, he flops a set and we get it in. Standard. But then it kind of seeped into my mindset and I started self-sabotaging. e.g. Not long after, UTG would open, I would 3bet the BB with AA. Flop comes J53tt and I have BDFD. My gut starts wrenching because I "know" he has JJ (irrational, I know). Then I would block my range, and he would min-raise me. We GII on turn/river and sure enough, he has JJ. After the hand my internal dialogue will be like "Why the **** did you block when you knew he had JJ? You had a fine combo to check anyway. Phuckwit." Which then sent me on higher and higher levels of spaz where I started to justify -EV bluffs etc. So yeah basically it was whaley and unacceptable behaviour.

Bought some of Elliot Roe's mental game material today though, so really looking forward to that one. Although won't be putting in much volume at all, as I'm tutoring students for a good 8-9 hours today. Also looking forward to a sweat session tonight with a friend who's crushing the limit consistently!

most ive ever tilt punted off in a session was 8 buy-ins. 10 is an accomplishment congrats! just gotta be ok with folding the best hand sometimes i guess, good luck buddy.

How goes the grind? More downswings or making a recovery?

Why online and not live?

April 16, 2018
Sorry for the slight hiatus! I tutor students for almost 25 hours over Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays so I don't really have time on weekends to grind or post. But it was a much-needed break. It gave me some time to really sit back and reflect on the poor week that's passed. I also thought a fair bit about what kind of a poker player or person I wanted to become, and what exactly I needed to do to get there. Why do I want to succeed? I can survive and live a damn good life for a uni student by just tutoring three days a week, so there shouldn't really be an urgency to want to win as much as I can ASAP. Yet why do I feel this urgency?

I think, like you mentioned in your thread, 6bet me, that deep down it comes from wanting to prove myself to others - especially those who don't think I can make it or those who declare that I'm chasing a pointless endeavour. Whether that be friends, family or even randoms. **** that. I need to really want to succeed from my core, for myself. I need to be be patient and I need to be emotionally mature. I've started to realise that this isn't really a journey to make a lot of money. This is a transformation from boyhood to manhood. A boy tilts and blames variance for his failure because he lacks humility. A boy jumps stakes from 200NL to 2kNL because he is emotionally immature and reckless. A boy focuses myopically on session-to-session results because he lacks vision. A boy doesn't go to the gym and doesn't meditate because he is undisciplined. A boy fails to savour the journey and honour the struggle; he fails to honour the pain and love the pain. Instead he chases the monetary destination like a puppy because he wants to impress his mates or get laid.

It's time for me to grow up. To become a man. That's what this challenge is really about.

Mindset work
This week I've been looking into hypnotherapy a fair bit. Ended up buying some content from Elliot Roe - his pre-game routine MP3's are the absolute nuts. I felt unbelievably calm and confident in-session after listening to his MP3. It's the first time I've ever bought any of his stuff; I actually doubted the ability of 'hypnosis' to do anything especially because I suffer from aphantasia - that is, my mind's eye is quite literally blind and I cannot visualise or imagine imagery. Yet I think it's been the single most helpful thing I've ever done for my mental game. I feel unbelievably calm and invincible - god-like - in sessions where I've listened to his hypnosis tape as a warm up. The first session I played with the MP3 I actually lost money, but post-session I felt so euphoric and confident with how I played and who I was. I have now resolved to listen to his MP3s before every single session I play from here on in. Also had a chat with a random Uber driver who turned out to be a hypnotherapist, so I've booked a session with him for this Thursday as well. Pretty expensive ($200 for one session) but considering the sheer amount of $ I've donked off, it's worth a shot.

Volume
Had to tutor 5 students in the evening, so I played only 3 hours today and lost a little bit. But as I mentioned above, I felt really good about myself because I stuck to my time limit and played pretty well despite losing a few flips. Kept up the 10 minutes of meditation today - haven't missed a day since the challenge began! Really proud of myself for sticking it out.

The week in review (April 9 to April 15)
Volume: 42 hours out of 50 hours
Meditation: 7 days out of 7 days
Gym: 0 days out of 3 days
Piano: 0 hours out of 5 hours
Alcohol/drugs consumed: None

Pumped for a new week! Let's smash those goals!

@Trumps hit live poker is awful here in Melbourne. $1/$3 gets raked at 10% of the pot with a $15 cap lol