Down a little bit, won't bother adding it all up. #ConsistencyIsKey
In fact, for now, as there isn't much movement bankroll-wise, I'll sum up some things that I've learned at the end of each week. Once I make a big splash at the tables that is going to change again and then I'll post some sorts of results again.

10.5 hours played. #UsefulStuffAddsUp

So here's that recap of what I've learned this week:

Man, I've banged my head against walls of my own making for far too long. I want to say: "Please stop.". Ages ago I played some plo against otb_redbaron and after he made a call and lost he wrote in chat: "I don't understand this game". That sentiment is one that grounds me when I realize that I feel that way quite often and it doesn't help to pretend that that feeling isn't there. There's always tension, not-knowing type tension, not-seeing-their-cards type tension and many other types probably, and that tension won't go away. When you stretch, there's tension. Does that make sense?

Anyway, that's part of a set of simple drills, some of them focused on technical aspects of the game, others focused on mental aspects. Mental yoga, maybe. Pull the same triggers hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of time and do it better and better and better. Hands have themes in my mind because I love music, and music has themes as well. Themes are useful as they make things easy to remember, and they can even be beautiful. A good theme is something that only a master can really appreciate, just like in chess we know now that grandmasters see few options, but the strongest ones. And on that path I want to repeat: "Don't be to hard on yourself." I'd like to say this to many people, and I wish I had heard it as a child, and that somebody had explained it to me. It helps to get enough sleep, naturally.

Do you sometimes feel that it's a miracle that you've achieved what you've achieved with what little you know? I've learned that about myself recently. The descriptions of things that I struggle with haven't changed over the years. Schedule. Routine. Discipline. Three bet. Think. The content has, but the patterns are always the same. It's mind-boggling.

And still, I get rewarded sometimes. Today somebody spazzed into me, which is so nice. I am so unwilling to succumb to my anxiety in fact that I can play just a few tables. That's how fed up I am. It's very fed up!

My thoughts go round and round in circles and it's like groundhog day. So let's be done for the day and the week.

But not before I'll invite you again to send me a PM in order to get a free mental game session worth 200 $. In that PM,
- tell me why I should award that free session to you out of all people.
- state your goal of that one session clearly and precisely.

Because people with clear and realistic goals are part of an elite club and it's an honor to work with them.

So talk to you next week, friends.

I've got to say, I am definitely pumped for a bit of a fresh start at the beginning of the new year. But I can't complain about what I've learned so far... I think the feedback that I am getting this year is pretty clean, maybe for the first time.

So here are some things that I've learned in the past couple of days:

Deciding whether to tighten up or loosen up preflop... wait, wasn't there this thing called gto, saying: "Doesn't matter, I'll open the perfect range anyways?" Well, it's not that simple. In fact, exploring exploitation is probably worthwhile, even if you can foresee that you won't always need to play that way once your game has progressed much further. There are many little riddles that you can think about in order to align your rational thoughts and your emotions. "What's the point of a three bet?" "What should I do when somebody bets a merged range?" Those aren't easy things to see through if you haven't already, in which case they're quite easy (Teach me!).
You can do several things at the same time when playing poker... I don't mean watching movies or adding two more tables. No, quite the opposite: I mean that you can play and think at the same time, and there's a pace that makes that possible for you. You can even play and work on your game at the same time when you know how. I've once read that you should sort out your messes one at a time and at a steady pace. It's good advice. Please don't wait even longer. Please start today. Even when your emotions are still in the way, it doesn't always have to be that way. You can sort those out, too, as long as you do it in slow motion. I don't mean therapy-slow-motion, I mean NLP-slow-motion. That's way slow enough. In fact, it can feel like an eternity. But it's a way to solidify useful states that you've already experienced, which is a good start to get better more quickly. Set a timer for useful things, for example, and do them every week if even for a few minutes. In this way, strategy and personal preference may align more quickly than you used to expect, but you'll expect differently soon enough so then it's going to feel just right and you'll just wonder why some people keep complaining about things that really don't have to be this way for them, which you know well, because they used to be like that for you, too. If you stop and think you'll know what I mean.

So talk to you soon, friends!

[x] played for 10.5 hours
[x] Bankroll stands at 360%.

It's been a 5-6 month break even stretch... which is a time of confusion, contemplation and small steps in the right direction. Which is what I really like to think, because the alternative wouldn't be good.

So here's some of what I've learned during my sessions this week:

There seems to be a connection between being overwhelmed and emotions being sort of riled up (who would have thought...) so that's been good to look at that more closely. The flipside is that being in a different state means that emotions calm down more quickly and that there's mental space for good things. Sometimes people say that they're really happy that they starting doing a certain thing... so that's what I am hoping to get out of this: To look back in 6 months, a year or even two years and be happy that I went through all this messiness.



"Or ronaldoness." said the helpful avocado.

There's an inner world. Future Simon, I've already figured this out: There's an inner world. Are you proud of me? I remember reading things that I wrote in my blog long ago and thinking: "Wow, he already figured that out. Well done!" The inner world is malleable and responds to creativity and imagination, so all you need is space. It is a world, after all. It's big.

The pace has slowed down, maybe that's because it's christmas time. That slower pace has lead to good things: I double floated! I made small bets! I constructed ranges! So if you're thinking "So why hasn't he done those things before?" then all I can say is: "I am happy that I am doing them now!"

So talk to you next week, friends.

My guiding question nowadays is this:

What would be useful to future Simon?

In the past, I would write for an audience. Now I am writing for my future self. And if you think: "Well, it's pretty clear which one was more entertaining..." then I'd like to point out that we're still in the middle of everything. Let's see where this thing goes...

I'll take a break 'til the 3rd of January, so you'll hear from me on the 5th. I wish you all a happy christmas!

And here's what you came for...
here's what I've learned:

Overall, as a sort of overarching theme, there's that kind of confusion that I want to call a plateau. So future Simon, when you read this, being successful and getting great feedback and all: I dealt with this plateau for you!

Every now and again, I walk down and end up in the thick of things. That's when I deal with a business partner who's somewhere between hilarious and outrageous. Not a good combination!

There are little hills that I climb, and the sunlight is beautiful there. This, of course, refers to stretches of good play and good results.

I walk at a slow and steady pace, and it started out being very rewarding. Now it's boring and frustrating. My processes in a nutshell: Really promising and really rewarding turns into boring and frustrating, even painful. You think that's life, or is it me?

When you run good that's a perfect time to play few tables. That's something, at least. Been there, done that! Thank god!

And emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace. If I haven't mentioned this before then make sure to write it down 10 times.

Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.
Emotions can be dealt with more effectively at a slow pace.

Oh, future Simon, just in case you forgot:
Sometimes your hand does the work for you, sometimes your range does, and sometimes you have to do it.

Talk to you soon, friends!

Hey future Simon.

There's a resource, if you still use that word, which is that you used to deal with anxiety by going for 1-2 hour long walks. Which made you feel really good. So it's good that you've got that in you, don't you think?



Your poker game consists of many things: Strategies, mental states and thoughts, to name just three. And the patterns of your thoughts should (as in: It would be useful in order to achieve your goals) help you play to the best of your ability. They could help you in surprising ways: By helping you notice a detail, for example, or a piece of information that you just recalled when it mattered. By making you feel better in a spot so that you've got access to deeper levels of intelligence. Or by keeping you engaged. Your thoughts don't need to be easily articulated, and you don't even need to be aware of them or the pattern that they create. They don't need to be conscious, and there's no particular frequency or order in which they need to occur. But, generally speaking, your thoughts interface with your perception of your game and your own play, and as such they can play an important role in playing a little better each time. Your thoughts hint at your poker philosophy and each of them has a small impact in distracting you or doing the opposite, in making you feel worse or feel better. I've just sort of started focusing on this and I am still pretty excited. It's still pretty new.

There's also a sort of connection between perspectives, which help shape your responses to events in your life, and your thoughts, which put perception into words, images, sounds or feelings. It's your poker philosophy that helps determine your perspectives (It's my job to get my avatar into good spots) that determine your thoughts ("Wow, good job! This was a GOOD spot!") that influence your emotions (I feel good about my play which helps me move on quickly). It's a circle of goodness.



With this exciting idea I am back at it. Here's to a good 2021!

First week of 2021, and it's been a rocky start also due to being in another lockdown... well, there's work that needs to be done is what I tell myself, so I plan to keep working on my inner game and play poker five days a week. From that perspective this week was ok.

[x] played for 7 hours
[x] Bankroll stands a little lower than last week.

So what's been good, and what is there to look forward to?

A new sort of procedure opened up that I was able to practice quite a bit today that's somewhat promising and pretty sound strategically, so I'll do that. Here's a bit of an intro to that without saying too much for a reason that I'll explain too:

I remember talking with a friend about what thoughts to think while playing almost a year ago for the first time and quite extensively at that... it's such an interesting question. Thoughts can have a pretty big impact in many areas of our lives, and useful thoughts can really make a difference for the better. If you're guided by questions like: "What thoughts do you think while playing?" then you're probably getting some interesting new ideas, and you can probably see some impact on your game right away.

At least the way I used to look at poker, there was a big focus on practicing your conscious competence off the tables in certain ways and using your unconscious competence at the tables, so working on thinking useful thoughts in useful ways at the tables is quite new for me, and I only quite recently acquired all the tools that I need in order to work on that in a useful way... so that's what I've been doing. I know, I am not going into too much detail (yet), but that's because I don't know how well it works yet, so I'll describe it in more detail when I've gotten some feedback that makes me believe that this is a good idea to focus on for me and maybe even for you. Maybe give it a few weeks.

Describing this new focus makes me feel weird... anytime I focus on any new aspect of my outer our inner game for the first time, or even for the first time in a long time, I realize that there's still such a long way to go and that really makes me feel like a beginner every time which has its upsides, but it also has its downsides.



...and I am happy that little books like this one are there to help. So see you back at the tables next week, and talk to you soon friends!

Tony Robbins likes to point out that when you want to deal with a problem, it's all about being resourceful. Resources in my life have revolved around...

...being able to grasp things quickly and burn through new stuff like a bright flame for a while, or even a long while. To generate motivation so intense that it hurts day after day, week after week, month after month, even year after year.

...being self sufficient in my learning and making sense of things.

...putting up an agreeable front and being less harmless only intellectually, and only when it was clearly allowed (for the most part. Mistakes did happen).

...making good friends and keeping them for at least a long while.

...being patient until things get better for hours and even days.

I'd really need to sort through a lot of this, deal with my past, so to speak.

In order to turn this into... something good.

In a world close-by, Simon puts a lot of work into this with tenacity and determination. It takes him a long time, but it's worth every minute of it. Through doing this work, he learns many of the lessons that he wishes he had learned years ago.

In this world, Simon puts this aside for now to consider picking it up later.

Hey Simon what happened?
Last thing i remember about you:
You did coaching for profitshare with me and some other dudes. Not everyone had success but I moved up quickly from 100NL to 400NL. You were on the top of the coaching business and you knew more about gametheory than almost everybody else. In our coaching sessions in 2015 we were figuring out concepts that other people didn't know about without having access to PIO and those concepts became kind of the new standard in NLH. I don't know why we stopped, I really don't remember anymore. You told me that you were coaching €uropean and spending a lot of time learning about the stock market. Then you just disappeared. I thought maybe Patrick L's pokermafia had no longer use for you and it was in their best interest to keep the secrets of gametheory hidden from their competitors.
Anyways, I met zaza 2019 in Macau and he also said you disappeared. So I thought if you're still alive you probably did quit poker and used your brain power to figure out that tesla, amazon and BTC are going to the moon.

Is there still money to be made in online poker? Everybody seems to be a coach now, right? Poker used to be a hobby for lone wolves, now it is all stables and shared bankrolls everywhere. This is so bad for the poker economy. I have been playing live poker only for 3 years and looking at online poker now so much has changed. Pokerstars is maybe the softest site now for cashgames, even though all the regs are russian. Btw, I had huge motivation issues last year. Why grind when I can maybe make more money by investing my bankroll? Why even bother to make money when there was nothing to do in Germany that you can spend money on anyways? So in 2020 I more or less did what you did for 6 months. You know, play games and stuff. Watch youtube and Seinfeld. Seinfeld is for sure the best show if you want to do nothing. It gives you the right vibe, nothing ever happens so you begin to think maybe that's a viable option in life.
Then I got bored of doing nothing so i thought, If I play lowstakes fullring 50-100NL thats the closest I can get to the live poker meta game and I realized there's plenty of fish so I can crush these games. Is it even possible to make a living at those stakes? I don't know I have not been able to put in one serious month of fulltime volume. Because, in October Pokerstars already changed the rules for germans and you cannot table select anymore or join waiting lists. So I thought I found my niche and i found some motivation to grind again but no. It's never that easy. Last week I moved to Peru to change my location. Are you still in Germany, just zooming?

You know what Simon? We have something in common. We are not very talented poker players but we had some success playing poker. What is a talented poker player? You actually don't need to understand why you do something. A lot of it comes down to: He's weak? Ok I bluff. Or: I think he might be bluffing here, therefore I call. If you can identify the situation like this often enough, then you already have an edge.
The two most talented players that I know are
1. Masherdog(he likes to stay anonymous, sorry for typo) and
2. Julien Martini
Who is the most talented player that you know?

I don't wanna ruin your business but is nobody interested in game theory oriented coaching anymore? That used to be your specialty. It was something nobody could do as good as you. Maybe sauce can but who can afford to get coached by sauce? Honestly I would be interested in looking at Pio sims with you, but I don't think poker is my future. I will try to become a recreational/ weekend poker player after the next live poker boom(which could happen directly after everybody has the vaccine.)

I'm just reading between the lines... Congratulations. Boy or girl?

Wow. Hello there, stranger! This is the kind of stuff that sort of creeps me out and makes me smile at the same time... these kinds of messages... thank you for that.

I think I outlined a lot of what happened in my first post man... I decided to leave the poker world and travel through the real world. Little planning, many intuitive decisions, finding myself not on Skype for months and then years. That's what happened.

Yes, there is.

Looks a bit like what I did for sure. I wonder how much you liked doing that? Most of what it did for me is give me bad habits.

Sort of, yes.

I agree that I am not a talented poker player.

Of those who I had contact with personally probably Donger Kim.

Don't worry. And the long and short of it is that I am not interested in game theory oriented coaching for poker players anymore. Funny side note is that I have worked with a company on game theoretical models for the software that they're building, that was quite intense and a lot of fun.

Thank you. Girl

And really, thinking back to the guys I've worked with, all the best to you man. You're one of the amazing people who I've had the privilege to work with. Poker (or something else, depending who you are and what your goals are... but for me it has been poker because the feedback has always been so honest and so so painful) can crush you or grind you down, but it can also lift you up. Put in hard work and you'll discover a good part of yourself that's likeable and resilient. That's what I've found, forgotten, and then found again. And yes, it ****ing hurts too.

Anyways, free Mental Game Session up for grabs as I missed my friday post. Let me know:

1) What you want to achieve from a Mental Game session? What do you even need to improve on, genius? Aren't you the one who doesn't need coaching?
2) Why now? Why me? Why did you finally decide to reach out?

Have a good week friends!

[x] 22 hours of poker
[x] 1 hr of coaching

...and good results.

Here's some of what I learned this week:
There are times when there's pain, maybe something as simple as a headache. New pain, or old pain, or recurring pain. And that's when things look rather differently from where you are right now... Look at a memory that's just normal: It looks much better from here. Remember a time when your body felt so light that you even spent moments forgetting about it: A functioning body is appreciated more than usual. And even the world feels like a different place, because suddenly the pain is at the center of many things. If you take meds every time, you forgo the chance of seeing the world from that perspective.

You can do what you know generates EV pretty often. You can remember to do what you know generates EV pretty often. In that sense, you can play a tight game according to your own standards. It's important not to forget that your standards matter, because you're paying the price when you don't meet them. As such, making sure to meet your own standards when it comes to hand selection and finding a good approach more often (not even much more often... because nobody is even close to perfect) is good and it can make you feel good after some sessions.

Playing fewer tables can help you relax a bit more.

Have a good weekend friends!

As you've probably figured out by now, when I write posts I use metaphors and other means of telling white lies, so to speak, that can give you a little nudge towards dealing with your issues, shall I say, more creatively.
When I wrote the above passage a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't talking about an actual business partner... I was talking about an imaginary person. Let's call him Mr Poker!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Market

The same way that Mr Market has helped countless investors over the years, Mr Poker can be a useful way of dealing with swings and variance. After all, Mr Poker may underpay you, he may offer you way too many terrible spots or terrible runouts, but he may also do the opposite (as long as you keep playing). And one day, without fail, he'll pay you much much more in every conceivable way than you should have made that day! Or that week! Or that month!

Or even that year!

[x] 9.5 hours of poker
[x] 45 minutes of coaching

...and great results in the range of +30ish %.

Here's some of what I learned this week:
If you know the enemy but not yourself you're going to lose many battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy then you're going to lose half the battles. But if you know yourself and know the enemy then you don't need to be afraid of 1000 battles. As such, you can build a sort of defensive strategy, like a martial art that you use against an enemy that's also a friend. But you'll need to look for patterns in his fighting, too. And you can never stop. Inspiration, some say, is going to arise if you simply keep doing this. That's why it's called a practice. You're not just building a realization, but also an awareness. Because of this, "Do what you know is +EV" is either alive and well, or dead and really the opposite of useful. Any kind of structure is dead unless revivified over and over again by the living as if you breathed life even into your mental structures. And if you stop breathing, they'll die, which (to clarify this) is fine, but it's not always useful.

Courage is to shoot 100,000 volts into Frankenstein's monster because it's only in hindsight that you know your monsters, only once you took the risk can you know what you created and there'll be some regret if you're human. "But make it worth it more often you should" said Yoda.

Wait, what?

Have a good weekend friends!

Never thought of poker in terms of the Mr. Market analogy - nice one.

Glad to hear Mr. Poker is in a good mood!

So what I am reading is that you can use it for yourself, which makes me glad too.

Some things I've learned so far this week:

Know the enemy. That's a goal. What's a goal, anyway? Even if it's to get some sort of ball into some sort of net... what's a goal? If you were some sort of alien species, how would you explain that to yourself? What's a goal to you, and what's a goal to others? Maybe most importantly: What's a goal to you?

Yes, you read that right, there's some repetition in there.

There's a better version of everything somewhere in your mind, and you can access it (1) and practice accessing it (2) in order to feel better (3), save time (4) and do something that's more productive (5) instead in order to get closer to your goals (6). So what's a goal?

Do what you know is +EV quite often. And if you could have any poker game, what game would it be? There's that state of contemplating what game you'd want to have and you can stay there sometimes in order to realize what you want to achieve not post game (turn around, look, woooosh, here it is: ) but in game. Maybe take half an hour and explore that... set a timer... lie down... breathe more deeply... and relax just a bit more.

Have a good week friends.

In!

Glad to have you on board!

[x] 12 hours of poker
[x] 5 hours of various coachings

...and great results again. In fact, it's time for a bankroll update: We're sitting at 431% which, finally, is the highest it's ever been. Way to go!

Here's some of what I've learned this week:

Thanks to a good conversation that I've had, I've learned something about pressure. There are ways to turn pressure on, and ways to turn it off (tense up - relax). Your muscles are good at this. The five second cycle of this can be done by everybody, say with the muscles in your arm: Tense up - relax. The one minute cycle can be experienced if you do some planking: Tense up - relax. A ten minute cycle would be a short, fast run: Tense up - relax. Notice that the longer the "tense"-phase, the more there's a mental strain, too. You won't have many thoughts about flexing the muscles in your arm, but you may well dwell on how out of shape you are after you're gasping for breath after that 10 minute run. If you dwell on it for 5 minutes, then that tension won't have been there for 10 minutes, but for 10+5 minutes: That's 15 minutes of tension. Now zoom way out and move on to bigger and, in some way, better things: What if the tension sticks around after a long and hard year of poker? What's your way of noticing that it's there (1), that it isn't leaving your body in the normal ways (through sleeping, taking a day off, or having sex) (2) of taking steps to release it (3) and of making it a habit to regularly release the tension (4), as a sort of mental hygiene?
You've acquired some coping mechanisms throughout your life that may still work, or that can at least point you in the right direction: You know how it feels to release even long held tension. In school, you get into a habit of taking a long holiday to release the tension that comes with doing a lot of school work for weeks on end. Everybody does, but already, it works better for some and worse for others. Of course it depends what that holiday means for you, and what you do with your free time. Take a moment to notice that it already matters when you're a child, which means that you may have developed really good, or not so good relaxing habits for years, or even decades. And when it comes to the recipe, you're the cook: What works for you probably won't work for me, but what works for you definitely works for you, that's why it's so important to keep doing it once you made sure to find what works for you to relax, to release the tension, to get some balance in your life. First get your head straight, then turn good strategies into good habits, otherwise you've focused on the wrong things. I am confident that everybody who's worked hard for a long time has found a way to turn off the pressure regularly in order to recharge their batteries, even if they don't know it consciously. Then it's just a matter of doing more of that. I certainly have, and I've even had help doing it more often lately. No, not that that kind of help. Pervert!

Going through my notes, even before aforementioned conversation the habit of releasing tension was on my mind, and I was practicing it during my sessions. Here's what I wrote:

"In between hands it’s as if everything goes dark for a brief moment of deep relaxation"

I wrote this because when I cut down on the number of tables that I played, I experienced more of these moments.

I'll leave you with this rhapsody of thoughts and nudges for the week, because as somebody wise once said: "You can choose what you eat when you see it, but you can't choose what enters your brain once you've seen it. " And when good things enter your brain, good things tend to start happening.

Have a good weekend friends!

I've learned that I get cocky in certain spots, and I can imagine that you can embrace your cockiness for better results.

"What is this?" you may ask, when you're curious and more open minded than usual, because you're learning that you can redefine certain things that you thought you knew well. What is this twoplustwo? What is this post? What is this community? What is this poker to you? When you were a child, things were what people told you they were, but when you consider that you can update your understanding now, for example: A computer is much more today than it used to be, and it's been consistently updated in my mind, because I needed to use it well in order to get closer to my goals. Whereas other things are what they used to be, if you're not careful, but then, wait: Remember that your world grows with you. Once you get a driver's license, what used to be vast gets much smaller. There's a connection there between some really good things, like ice cream and cappuccino, because ice cream probably isn't what it used to be (it works both ways, as you can see now), but cappuccino may be much more when the day comes that you can meet people again at a cafe once that lockdown is over. And while you're learning this, you can learn something else to, because learning goes well with learning:

There once was a boy who played ball.
Which they now call ADHD.
Oh surprise: That boy was me.
Which settles it once and for all.

But sadly not everything that rhymes is true.
Which sort of touches me in all the right places. Not those places, pig!

Have a good week friends!

Before something becomes a collective hallucination (like what a range is in poker), it can be worked on privately. Hallucinations, figments of our imagination, whatever you call them - First, you think new thoughts privately.

I've learned not to share new ideas too early.
Some say that you wouldn't want advance praise, and there's an entire strategy behind that. Others would point out that until you've thought something through, sharing it before what you've got is solid and can withstand some heat may simply suck all the life out of it, which is what I believe.
Original thoughts are flimsy, and there are big question marks behind them.

In fact, I believe that thinking up something new isn't enough, and doing it with a bad strategy behind it can even be unhealthy. So I would recommend following a six step process that starts with the new thought and ends with being able to apply a new strategy at your normal speed. From start to finish, this can take as little as 20 hours taking you from focusing on your hand to refocusing on your range, from focusing on outs to refocusing on (reverse) implied odds, from focusing on defending based on the naive minimal defense frequency to refocusing on what sort of hands need to realize their equity by getting to showdown and (drumroll!) which don't, to name just a few examples.

"20 hours each", you may think to yourself, "that's pretty quick".

It is, if you follow the process properly and away from the tables. You see, there's a sort of internal representation of how you approach poker, and that internal representation needs that work, and it needs a slow pace. Beat the snail, as Elon Musk would say, but we're not in the tunnel-digging business, we're in the poker business. So one-up the snail: Practice new mental processes even more slowly for an hour, two hours, five hours if you can. Doing good things in slow motion is something that you'll be happy you tried, even though the bad news is that you may get hooked instantly (https://yogainmyschool.com/mandarin-meditation/).

You can do the math yourself: 20 hours of grueling mental work may take you 2 weeks. Wait, why didn't I say 4 weeks? "2 hours a day of practicing a new mental technique that you want to apply for months and even years?" You might ask. Yes, if you're tenacious. You didn't start with 2 hours of theory work per day, you started with a few minutes, maybe half an hour. 2 hours of learning something new is challenging in the beginning. It's exhausting. But it's worth it: Within 2 months, you could upgrade your mental representations of the most important concepts in poker and use them better in order to generate higher EV, regardless of where you are in your journey. If you don't go back to playing the way you used to, that is. If you don't fall back into old patterns. If you find that disciplined part of yourself and allow that part to take over for those twenty hours. Doing that, you could...

• Move from "hand" to "range"
• Move from "pot" to "EV" (which even many pro's haven't done emotionally, just logically. That's how powerful this edge can be for you)
• Move from "balance" to "maximum EV"
• Move as many profitable processes from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, or from logic to intuition, and learn to trust yourself more often

Just stop and think about it. And then have a great weekend, and take a day off for crying out loud.

So I am still in the lab. What's good about that is that it's a chance to get better, to build my game. A wise man once said that as a poker player, your game is your most valuable asset. That's why you should not focus on your bankroll of real dollars, but on your real bankroll: The EV that you've racked up.

If you think about EV in new ways, you'll learn that there's more to EV than you thought. Your accumulated EV over a certain period of time is a good measure of your discipline AND of how good your game is. That's a double whammy.

Feedback is another thing... when you're in the lab, you get good feedback. You can slowmo a lot of lines (or connections in your mind, really) and test whether you could execute them slowly(1), at a decent pace(2) or quickly(3).

Sometimes I wish I could just stay in the lab forever, which means that it's really a good change of pace. That for me at least time in the lab balances out time spent at the tables. And as a poker player, balance is on my mind more often than I'd like. In fact, I'd really like to perform a sort of paradigm shift away from balance and towards better things. Greener pastures. Great vistas. Visions of abundance. Peace on earth. And a perfect universe.

I am still mostly building something in the lab and playing just a bit to test what I am building. "I am slow" is what I'm thinking, and then I wonder what that actually means. Can I remember being very disciplined in the last few weeks? Not very often. More or less disciplined than the months before? Less disciplined than say 15 months ago, but more disciplined than towards the end of 2020 for sure, so probably right in the middle. Let's take a step back. I am curious about whether this sort of vehicle that I am building for my game is going to take me where I want to go. It's good to know something about the destination: It's fun there, and it's a place that you've got to earn, which makes it even sweeter. On the other hand, it doesn't look like it's that easy to get there. I've told people before that you should play for a few weeks or months, and then work on your game for a few weeks or months.

You can work your way up from the least powerful concept to the most powerful one:

• Card
• Hand
• Relative hand compared to my range
• Range
• Villain's range
• Range vs Range

• Pot
• Hand-EV
• Range-EV

• "Can I do this?" (probably terrible)
• "Can I do this profitably?" (probably terrible but sometimes ok... even though you really don't know why.)
• "Can my hand help me do this more profitably?" (probably bad... but sometimes ok because at least your hand is helping your cause AND you're implicitly thinking about villain's hand, which matters a LOT.)
• "Can my range do this for good EV?" (probably ok... but sometimes pretty good because now you can make it work on several levels: It could be good exploitively, or it could be good fundamentally. Or both!)
• "Can my range do this for higher EV than the alternative AND does this hand fit into that range?" (Probably fine... but the sky is the limit.)

It's the same with mental game of course, and many ways work. Here's an example of where to start and where you could go from there (From feeling to state to habit):

• How do I feel right now?
• How do I feel right now AND can I do something to improve my state right now?
• Can I improve my state more often?
• Can I improve my state during most sessions?
• Can I improve my state in every session?
• Is there another habit that I could build around my sessions, just like I built this one?

Dream Bigger!

Have a good weekend friends!

Subbed. I thought I'm the only one in this forum who knew sadhguru and tolle. Thanks for the read, I didn't read all yet itt but will. Looks like we had a similar journey. Have a great weekend!

Welcome aboard!

"Man I lost so many pots that I should have won?"

"What do you mean?"

"I was a favorite and I lost them."

"I still don't get what you mean. What do you mean: Lost them?"

"Dude, what? I mean they were shipped to an opponent instead of me. I mean that..."

"Wait. What do you mean they were shipped to an opponent?"

"Are you stupid?"

"Better than you being stupid, right? Anyways, none of this makes any sense. Did you play well?"

"What? Yea I guess. Mostly, then I played a bit worse for a while but caught myself in time to play well again."

"Right. So it sounds like you made a bunch of real money, which is EV."

"Well, .... yea,... but variance was brutal."

"Alright, slow down. I think you're talking about something that is sort of irrelevant... would you agree that real things can't contradict each other? So for example: If you've lost money, then you can't have won money at the same time, because then it wouldn't be real. Do you agree?"

"I guess..."

"Right. So either you've made a bunch of EV, which is real money because it's what counts, or you've lost a bunch of money. Which one is it?"

"Well.... when you put it like that... I've never thought about it that way."

"Well, stop and think about it now. Which is the real money at the end of the day? Is it your EV or those pots that go back and forth quickly on the tables that you see, creating the illusion of being real?

"I mean... once you put it like that you know that there's only one possible answer."

"Right, but think about it: Is there a problem here? Revisit your earlier statement: You talked about those pots as if they were real. What has changed in your mind now?"

"Well... what has changed is that I guess they don't seem as real... so they aren't real, I guess."

"Right. And what does that mean that they aren't real?"

"Well... it means that they sort of matter less. Yea... pretty cool."

"Right. So what's real?"

"Well... EV is real as long as I don't run terribly for a loooong time, right?"

"Right, let's think about that. What's real if you run terribly for a long time?"

"Well, I might get into real trouble if I can't pay my rent anymore, for example."

"Yes. Even if you'd have to cut down on your living expenses, that's a big issue, people underestimate that. So on the one hand you've got all that EV, and on the other hand you've got the fact that you've got to buy cheaper food, can't eat out that often, that sort of thing. So what's real?"

"The lack of money is real."

"And the EV?"

"Well, that wouldn't be real then."

"So let's slow down even more. Do you remember what I said earlier? That things that are real can't contradict each other?"

"Yea."

"So let's focus on that: Does that pile of EV contradict the fact that you don't have much money to spend?"

"Hm... I guess not... but kind of... it feels like it does."

"So where's the difference to, say, having 500k in some sort of investment that you can only access in five years?"

"Hmmm.... yea I guess it's like that."

"Right. So let's orientate on that: What's real?"

"Well... I guess now it looks like both are real. But that means that I've never thought about EV the right way. Like..."

"...like an investment that you can only access after a few years. Let me ask you this: Can you access your EV within a year?"

"Not necessarily, no."

"Two years?"

"Well, probably some of it, yes, very likely."

"What about five years?"

"Yea, I mean if I put in any sort of decent volume I'd say that I can access a good chunk of it within give years, yes. At least 50% of it."

"And what about 10 years?"

"Well yea, I mean that's where I am pretty clear: If I keep putting in the effort for 10 years and generate a lot of EV then I'll have improved my game so much and I'll have tried all sorts of things and I'll have built at least a few skills, maybe many skills or a LOT of skill in a few key areas, so there's that which is worth a lot, and then I'll be able to access at least a huge chunk of that dollar amount too, I mean 10 years those are millions of hands, so yes, after 10 years I can access it and if I can only access, say 70% of it which would be pretty ridiculous then I am probably a wizard in, like, the Mental Game and strategically too cause I made sooo much EV consistently.

"Right. So that sounds like it's pretty real to me..."

"Yea."

"Good." (smile)