Hello friends.

As I am in the process of working on my game, I'll use this post to share three tentative take-aways on my new framework for improving your game quickly and efficiently:

# In the morning, both yesterday and today, I drifted off in the middle of working on a couple of specific spots multiple times and experienced a sort of relaxed state of thinking through what I had just realized and the sort of clarity (or lack thereof) that I had when it came to those spots which lasted for several minutes. Giving myself the time to experience this may turn into a bigger factor for my future work as it's new and even sort of exciting.

# As a sort of snapshot that I may delete from the photo-album of my mind, and looking back at how I used to do things, I can say that I didn't particularly like "taking it to the streets" or "getting down and dirty" as I call it when strategies get messy. However, it's on the streets and in the dirt where I see a lot of potential. As someone once said: "No mud, no lotus" which explains why the mental landscape of my poker game has been sort of barren in the past and what I need to do in order to make things grow.

# I've given myself this one week to create those resources that are going to help get me through tens of thousands of hands and increasingly more tough spots the more successful I am going to be. These are resources both in terms of processes and in terms of planned strategies plus plain knowledge about how to approach certain spots that I am gathering in order to recall and remember them imperfectly when it matters - and that's how the cookie crumbles. It's this week that counts in terms of doing that, and it's the next weeks and months that count in terms of sticking to my plans and generating good feedback for future Simon. The skills that I am teaching myself now are important, but there are other skills that I'll hone when I keep executing my (flawed) plans over and over again in order to generate good feedback, so the take-away is this: All of those skills matter equally.

Stay humble!

I congratulate myself on my first week ever of only working on my game for several hours a day. I ended up doing less work than I expected... this stuff is demanding! Tallying it up isn't all that straight-forward, but out of this week I certainly got...

... 12 hrs of pure game improvement work
... 21 take-away's ("I’ve realized that both players are getting down and dirty on this texture because hands are so double and triple edged. I don’t like getting down and dirty.")
... a break from playing poker
... more than 5 pages of notes
... a couple of hours of writing

And a new appreciation for working on my game, free of distractions.

See you at the tables next week!

So where am I at... It's the first ever week for me of only playing poker after just having only worked on my game for a week... and I like it. It's probably not as great as all that, but it's good progress and progress is what it's about if I want to reach my goals this year.

Concept of the day:

Synchronicity is when you think "He doesn't know what I've got though!" and the guy tanks, gives up and lets you win at showdown with your weak bluff catcher. The catcher in the dark but the bluffer in the dark, too, so that's something.

What else?... changed all my browsers (phone and computer) to monochrome after having watched Tristan Harris (1), processed what he said(2), started to make it more and more of a priority(3) and then finally decided to act on it(4)... and then went ahead and acted(5) which all in all took a couple of months... but I like it(6).

After 14.5 hours of poker, bankroll is at 362% (-1%).

In terms of stakes, I am slowly moving my way up. Mathematically, a month that pushes the bankroll to 450%+ is very possible and I'll keep grinding.

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

Just one small step at a time.

12 hrs of poker, bankroll around the same, no real reason to write it down in more detail.

As I missed my post on friday, one of you is going to get a free mental game session with me. Past sessions have been excellent, but as this isn't a blog where I advertise I haven't asked for reviews. The jury is still out when it comes to how much those sessions have actually helped people take action (because we did them pretty recently), but the sessions themselves have been powerful and that's something. So if you want to grab that free mental game session, all you have to do is send me a PM within a week starting today and tell me:

1) Why you want that free mental game session (could include: Would it be your first mental game session ever? Are you curious what a seasoned poker player(=me) has to offer in terms of mental game advice? Are you simply taking all the opportunities you can get, and this is one of them? etc)

2) What you hope to achieve from that one mental game session. (Examples of this are: Would this session be the beginning of something new? Are you on the right track and need help staying on it or aren't you and need help getting on it? Do you want to work on your C-game or on your A-game or both? Do you need routines and rituals in order to perform even better? etc)

Do that, and stay humble!

"A new evolution of my game is coming together." is what I thought today, not for the first time, but with a sense of joy.

I am happy with what I've built knowing that it's destined to be torn down in a few months.

The biggest thing about this new evolution of my game is the mental aspect of it. There's a new sense of enjoyment and calm that I can't remember being there before. Proportions are different: Some branches of the game tree are much bigger, others much smaller. With that, a lot of noise has faded into the distance. And no, I can't describe it much better, it's not like anybody ever describes these things. How did you think it would sound if somebody actually tried to articulate what it's like to suddenly perform much better and what it's like to be mentally more stable and experience a sort of calm focus? After months of talking about it and writing about it, what did you think it would look like (in writing) or sound like (in my sexy voice) when I'd actually begin to experience some of it more regularly? I want to call this stability. And it feels good.

Goooooood.

After 11 hours of poker, bankroll is at 419% (+57%).

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

I am not sure when or how I learned what it's like to work with discipline. First things first, I guess: What is discipline? It seems to me that discipline is when you do something despite some inner resistance, but do it anyway.

I've wondered when I made sure to learn to do things patiently. Patience, I believe, is an inner state of calm when continuing on a path.

Have I ever begun to cultivate an attitude of grit? Grit is some sort of perseverance despite obstacles.

Did I pick up sensory acuity as a child? Sensory acuity is when you pay attention instead of hallucinating things that aren't there. It's clear that all of us did this early in our lives, what's not so clear is when we stopped doing it.

When did I make sure to practice getting good feedback consistently? Certainly when I prepared to play the piano on stage, because the feedback that you get from simply listening to yourself closely is at least as good as your listening.

Can you be a good poker player without discipline, patience, grit, sensory acuity and making sure to get good feedback? I don't think so.

I am going to excuse myself from updating this for 1.5 weeks.

That said, there's something to do in the next 14 days, and here's how you can benefit from doing it:

I am interested in taking a player under my wing and coaching his or her mental game so that he or she can move up quickly within 2 months, which is the scope of the project. So if you...

...haven't worked with me before
...play at least nl25 or pl25
...are a winning player
...who plays full-time
...are willing to give your mental game, your in-game processes, your structures around your game, your learning routines and your setup your full attention for 2 months
...are willing to take me on as a coach for those 2 months and write a detailed review after that time frame (which earns you 2 months of mental game coaching for the price of a review)

then send me a PM within 2 weeks. Have a good one!

Hey friends.
Just a friendly reminder: Be sure to send those PM's by Wednesday (see previous post if you don't know what I am talking about).

Gogogo! I'll pick a winner by early next week.

After 21 hours of poker, bankroll is at 336% (-83%).

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

After 9 more hours of poker, bankroll is at 361% (+25%).

That said, I missed my post on Tuesday as I had really high temperature (up to 39.8°C) which is no excuse not to offer another free mental game session!

All you have to do is send me a PM within a week starting today and tell me:

1) Why you want that free mental game session (could include: Would it be your first mental game session ever? Are you curious what a seasoned poker player(=me) has to offer in terms of mental game advice? Are you simply taking all the opportunities you can get, and this is one of them? etc)

2) What you hope to achieve from that one mental game session (Examples of this are: Would this session be the beginning of something new? Are you on the right track and need help staying on it or aren't you and need help getting on it? Do you want to work on your C-game or on your A-game or both? Do you need routines and rituals in order to perform even better? etc)

Past sessions have been like a good cup of fresh coffee for me making me feel alert, refreshed and sort of spiritually nourished (granted, not even Kopi Luak has done this for me, but it's like a type of coffee that hasn't been invented yet or that includes some ingredients that are hard to get and don't have anything to do with coffee beans...) and if I had to describe what a session with me might be like for you then I'd say this

(now I almost spilled my coffee into my computer because I hit enter with such a flourish... that's dangerous man!):

You'll get that good strong cup of coffee that makes you feel alert and refreshed, but that we'll drop a sort of pill in there that's just right for you and that is going to open up your mind to some new ways of doing what's important to that part of you that wants to grow and get more and more competent as quickly as you can manage.

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

- When regs make me uncomfortable, it’s been hard to stay tight today. I want to practise this so that it gets easier.
- I’ve made some basic wishful thinking type postflop mistakes today, like stacking off 3 way with a bare wrap on a fd board, and that’s something that I can improve on.
- I’ve been paying special attention to the bet-check lines in 3bet pots out of position, and that’s something that is going to bear fruit if I keep doing it.

- I still dislike getting raised and I am exploring whether that’s a function of people being too tight, too likely to follow through and too depolarized once they raise, which would make sense to feel pressure against that.

- It’s about being emotionally detached, not about having no emotions

- A guy who I had tagged as a reg showed on 889xx in a 3b pot that he’ll stab any pair w weak fd and follow through on good cards for him which I exploited well. I can use this to sprinkle in some confident calls on a flop like that with hands that are a bit weaker and get into those turn spots and be sticky as long as something didn’t get there.
- I’ve got a sort of open and concentrated state versus those regs that have given me trouble today and I can cultivate that by remembering that once somebody is in that category, I need to favor hands towards the top of my range for calling, even when they only beat a bluff. That’s the obstacle that I’ll grapple with more and more, because it’s got its drawbacks, too.

- A break, namely the weekend, really muted my emotions and attachments so that I could play freely today, which I can use in the future - Monday is a good day for high intensity sessions, and even playing higher.
- I faced two bluffs today, which I caught, that looked tough and threatening, but they were bets, not raises. It’s much easier and cheaper to make a threatening looking bet into a checking range, and I need to practice playing accordingly.

- A tight game preflop with clear plans vers three bets. Like today, in many spots I wasn’t going to fold a single hand versus one players three bets.
- Checking back the nuts versus very weak ranges that can, and are going to, put in a bet with a high frequency is very helpful, because a large part of betting the nuts is protection, and versus some ranges we’ve got 100% equity.
- Tight, tight, tight, so that a lot of the concentration and brain power is being used preflop, where it belongs when you want to play hands with a clear plan.

- I’ve got the distinct instinct (read that again) that I play much tigher vs bets and raises than most of the population, which gives me an edge.
- A spot today, where I raised repping quads, made me sweat. There are those spots that really make me sweat in which I need the emotional distance of an archetypal warrior because I believe in my play but my emotions, to which I want to get distance, go crazy.

After 17 more hours of poker, bankroll is at 352% (-9%).

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

- Getting barreled. Getting barreled, and getting barreled, and getting barreled. It's those mediocre hands that really make the difference for you if you're good, and they really make a difference for you if you play them badly. Thus, "practice getting barreled!" is a thought that popped into my mind, and I believed it. Once I believed it I took action, which is how it's supposed to go (but only if you've got the right idea of what a belief is, and how you spot one), and then I hit a roadblock immediately, because I don't want to practice getting barreled. That's now.

Results have been rocky, but progress has been good. I am still not tired of printing EV. That's good.

I am still struggling with getting up early. That's bad, and I don't have a plan.

I introduced some breathing techniques into my days based on Wim Hof. That's good.

I drink two cups of good coffee a day, which is good.

I'll give away another free Mental Game session. PM! I'll pick a lucky winner next week on Tuesday, and I'll contact you once I've done that. These free sessions have been good, and that's really good. It's a way of giving back and of getting practice, and you may get even more out of it - Win Win Win.

After 14 more hours of poker, bankroll is at 343% (-9%).

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

Hey, I feel too cool to post in pm. And it feels like a no brainer that I should win, considering we have not talked in a long time and that u got me into coaching w elliot and u also used to coach me in NL ages ago. Is that enough to win?

ps, i dont often go on 2+2, so text me somewhere else if so

Alright mystery man, I'll try my best to guess who you may be and send some PM's around elsewhere because you have indeed won.

As far as the week goes: It's been an ok pace and I've got a good game going, but the results aren't there. Back to the grind...

After 9.5 more hours of poker, bankroll is at 377% (+34%).

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

Once upon a time…

“Being at the desk, waiting for motivation/inspiration/the urge to play/social media fatigue to kick in/… (this urge is something external in this description, like a car or a friend who’s going to drop by or not)” is part of most poker player’s job description. Because there’s so much freedom in it: Be your own boss.

The freedom to browse youtube or instagram or even twoplustwo instead of playing poker - either daily, or every two days or even every five days and for a good amount of time. It may be part of many schedules of people who are self-employed and increasingly even be found in corporate settings when people can’t stop looking at their phones or need to keep checking for messages or updates on social media which makes it ok. Everybody’s doing it, after all.

Let’s fast forward a couple of weeks, months or years: You’ve used that time to get a world-class mindset. “What is a world-class mindset?” you’ve been asked many times, and you can explain it well.

Titles of youtube videos: “How to develop a world class mindset with emotional agility”. “How we can all embrace a world class mentality”. “Mindset - Middle class vs World class mentality”. …

How do you know when you’ve got a world class mindset?

Preparation - Execution - Cool down. Be warmed up for what you’re about to do, be focused on what you’re doing and relax from having done it. These three steps may take a minute or two, ten minutes or a half hour and even a full work day.

I was waiting for my daughter today and I considered checking my phone which would have put me into a totally different mind space. Parts of my mind would have activated and stayed active that I don’t need with her, that are even in the way of having a meaningful human interaction. When I check my phone, I need to cool down.

I’ve had the privilege to work with world class poker players both as a team and as a coach and most poker players have the same issues. There’s so much noise and it’s hard to get good feedback.

The one thing that I do that most Mental Game Coaches don’t do is play daily, and things often look differently from the inside than from the outside, so I’ve got my own issues:

How can I play more or How can I be more productive is the biggest one for me because I don’t have good habits yet. This means that I know how to get good feedback and I know how to deal with the noise. I am getting better at being patient day by day. But I want to be more productive. So what to do?

What’s so great about playing poker? You see, I like the mechanics of it. I like identifying the spots that make me money and to drill them again and again and again. It’s great that I can practise this skill while playing poker. But it also means that I hate spots where I don’t feel that I am making a huge profit or any profit at all, even though strategically I still might want to put some chips into the pot 20 percent of the time, 40 percent of the time or even 60 percent of the time. You must accept even those aspects of poker that you don’t like - or suffer needlessly.

You know that you can only have this mindset of drilling all aspects of the game again and again now. You may not accept how poorly you deal with some noise, but you can accept your resistance to accept it which is a step in the right direction. Whether you’ve got a week, a month or a year: Trust your judgement and get good feedback that way. Double down on what you’re doing until you begin to realize what’s wrong with it - what’s really wrong with it. If you keep drilling, the noise calms down and you can hear your inner voice more clearly. Until that day, keep drilling. It’s worth it.

Send me a PM to apply for that free mental game session - I'll contact the winner by Wednesday next week.

…because when your world class mindset grows, it makes you grow with it.

Everybody has got a routine that they are used to - you get to do things routinely, even if you don’t enjoy them because it’s a much bigger thing to want things than to enjoy them. Procrastinate or make a bad call… it’s all the same in that regard. Don’t accept this too easily - fight the acceptance in vain and do it thoroughly. That’s how you have a break through this week, next week or even in a year.

It’s one of those insights that are going to change your trajectory: You want things much more than you enjoy things. What sucks about it is that you’ll stop asking pointless questions about why you do what you do and do more important things instead. It might even lead to peace of mind… And more importantly: You may find yourself pursuing your goals more easily, especially in the morning. The really bad news is that you may look back at this day with a frown that you realized that you’re in control of what you want because you’re in control of your own mind if you stop fighting the resistance (That’s right… deep breath!) and it’ll be clear that the success that you probably hadn’t mapped out this way but that was right for you started right here right now because you simply learned easy things in a new way: One plus one equals two and your mind is good, and probably getting better, at wanting what it wants.

It may even be much better at it than you are… How can you tell? Because you do what you want, and I bet that over the years you’ve done more of it rather than less, even when it sucked at times. This is true for gambling addicts and even for heroin users that the real kick is the realization that you’re about to get what you want. You may as well stop arguing with it but you don’t have to. Why the frown? Because there’s that stupid question again that turns into a whine the more you ask it: If it was this easy, why didn’t I do it earlier? You can keep asking pointless questions and the more you ask them the more distracted you become from what matters:

“Why do I want this, I don’t even enjoy it?” “Why do I do that, it’s not even much fun?” Which is good because then you can look back at your life and it’s all grey in the sense that you never stopped asking stupid questions (Be reliable in that way?). Just joking, of course that's not good at all. So, and this is best said in a whisper, stop second guessing your habits and instead focus on what you can do about beginning to see yourself in a new light: You may find that you look great when you learn to accept that kind of focus that’s always there in going after what you want, even when it may not serve you. You’re in charge of your mind, after all. There’s real freedom in that and freedom is what allows you to imagine things, to be creative and even to be playful:

What new things could you try today? There’s real sense in that even if you don’t quite put together the pieces yet. That’s when patience may help but whether it’s the kind of patience that feels like patience or the kind that feels like you’re just accepting your impatience… nobody is going to know but you, and you never have to tell anybody anyway. You know that moment when you learned something new and you can breathe more easily? Have one of those now. What’s stopping you?



12 more hours of poker, I'll update the results next week. Was a crap week though.

Have a good weekend and stay humble!

Even compared to your former self, you probably perform poorly from time to time. I play less hours per week right now than I did a few months ago (which you can easily see in my blog), I do less writing and my results are worse right now as well. So compared to my former self, I perform worse in many aspects, right? On the plus side, I show up week after week after week and I moved up several times this year.


“Everything starts with showing up”

...is what goes through my mind at times, and no matter who I ask, they believe it too. And for many people it’s showing up that’s often the problem. It’s starting the session or beginning to write, putting on your running shoes or sitting down to meditate that you probably don’t do on your bad days. “I didn’t have time to meditate yesterday” then begs the question: “Didn’t you have time to sit down to mediate?” because you likely did except when light blue aliens abducted you right at 9 AM in the morning while you were in the process of starting your work day by sitting down to meditate for thirty seconds (But not at 9:05 AM, when you had enough time to do five, six, seven, even ten such meditations) to shoot orange light up your behind. So maybe you perform better in one department than your former self did: In the “showing up” department. Maybe you show up much more consistently than you did months ago, or even more consistently than ever. That’s what learning discipline looks like:

Beginning to show up more and more often because consistency is key.

This is certainly true for me. I started three sessions today and I wish that number was five. Two times I got fed up with playing quickly and I quit much sooner than I would like, but you could also say that I showed up at the tables three times. Sitting down to play is what I am working on right now because every great session starts with me playing the first hand instead of, well, not playing it. So I want to identify two potential problems with getting better and better: The first one is not showing up. The second is is showing up but failing to notice that you’re showing up day after day.

If you don’t notice progress there’s no progress because it all happens in your mind.

When people were given pain killers secretly in a controlled study, the pain barely diminished or didn’t diminish at all because… well, the more I focus on this one the more confused I get so even if I am not meant to know yet what the placebo effect is and how vast it is in my day to day experience even when it comes to little things I can still acknowledge that it’s as real as a small, round red pill that you can feel in your hand before you notice it sliding down your throat to have a great effect on your sense of well being. And we all know that it makes a world of difference whether it’s a blue or a red pill, too….

So welcome to the rabbit hole and consider yourself hooked.

I think exposure is a really important concept, and it's effectively what people mean when they say the harder they work, the luckier they get. Increasing positive exposure is what I am continuously working on in all areas of my life.

Sometimes when I feel I am struggling with playing poker, I use my 1-hand-rule. All I have to do is play a single hand, and I can quit after that. This forces me to do some basic session prep (a simple breathing exercise, and going over pre-session notes) and to play a hand.
Obviously I never play just one hand, but it puts me in spots sometimes where I end up playing for 2-3 hours where I maybe wouldn't have played at all. I expose myself to some downside, maybe losing 1-2 buy-ins, but also to a lot of upside if I feel that the momentum is in my favour, and the game conditions are right. I think this is something I picked up from Phil Ivey, because he used to do this regularly at high stakes back in the day.