Good morning session, although I quit a bit early. My tables all happened to dry up about 15 minutes early and I was starting to lose focus anyways and I called it a wrap. Happy with my play and process overall, although at the very end I did make an overly tight preflop open fold because I was about to quit. I would have happened to smash the flop, which makes it more painful, but that's not the relevant part, the relevant part is that I passed up on a slightly +EV opportunity out of fear of losing a pot on my last hand which is a leak. Other than that minor misstep I'm happy with my performance.
VT: A-
PF: A
SP: A
GS: A
TG: A-

Subscribed. Gl in 2016.

Thanks!

rave reviews gained you another sub!

i look to emulate your action plans and focus, zeal in my own life

good luck my man

quick cliffs on notation please?

At the bottom of the post you quoted

Lovely read. Enjoyed your last thread. Looking forward to this one Best of luck

fml i can be dense at times

very good stuff, in!

thanks guys!

Good and bad session this morning. One leak that I seem to have and can work on, is that early in session sometimes when I'm getting involved in my first medium or large sized pots, I tend to try to force it through instead of giving up or slowing down appropriately. I think what is happening is that I don't want to start out the session stuck, so I am trying to avoid losing the medium sized pot early on, and by trying to force it in poor spots I actually make things worse by often losing a large pot with spewy aggression.

I did a good job of recognizing this, though, and getting back on track and playing well through the rest of session.
VT: A-
PF: A-
SP: A
GS: B+
TG: B+

I'm reading another personal growth book, and I got to the topic of the importance of tracking. One thing I've noticed, is that in many personal growth books, the same general concepts are presented from slightly different angles or with a bit of different material mixed in, but there are common themes that tend to come up time and again. It makes me feel like some of this stuff should be taught in schools, or there should be some other general education initiative out there about life skills.

Anyways, the book is talking about the importance of tracking when you want to make a change in an area of your life. When I set out to lose weight, I started writing down everything I ate in a little notebook, and recording the food name, calories, and protein for everything I ate. This made a big difference in helping me lose weight. First of all, you gain a much more accurate picture of the reality of what is occurring. Oftentimes without real measurements, we have a skewed view of reality without realizing it. Second, it makes you feel more accountable to yourself. If you are committed to tracking, there is no hiding from it or getting away with cheating. Third, it helps you stay in a mindset of striving towards your goal at all times. Simply getting that notebook out time and again helps keep in the forefront of your mind what you are trying to accomplish.

This same concepts can be used in any area of self improvement. Very commonly, people will do this with their spending, and after a couple months of writing down every penny they spend, they find they are being more effective with their spending and saving more money as a result of doing nothing more than tracking it diligently.

The reason I'm rambling about this is because I've been using this PGC thread to track the level of my poker play. It's no coincidence that I had gotten away from diligently tracking the level of my play, and my play deteriorating, and it's no coincidence that renewing my efforts towards tracking and being honest with myself has helped me do my best more often.

Doing my spew reviews, over roughly the first half of the month I found a total of about $3400 worth of spew. In the second half of the month, my total is about $450. It's no coincidence that this correlates to me getting serious about my PGC again, which correlates to me getting serious about working hard and putting forth EFFORT towards doing my best, and taking specific actionable steps towards improvement.



vs.



Some of this can be attributed to variance, but a lot of it is simply my quality of play, and my redline does a good job of illustrating that.

If you are trying to improve something in your life, getting serious about tracking every single choice you make regarding that topic all day every day makes a huge difference!

Speaking of books helpful to personal growth, here are some that I highly recommend:


--- Poker Related ---

The Mental Game of Poker
Jared Tendler
http://smile.amazon.com/The-Mental-G.../dp/0615436137
An absolute must-read for every poker player, providing a framework and specific strategies for improving your mental game.

The Mental Game of Poker 2
Jared Tendler
http://smile.amazon.com/Mental-Game-...dp/0983959757/
Not as good as the first one, but still good insight and a worthwhile read.

Applications of No-Limit Holdem
http://smile.amazon.com/Applications...dp/1880685558/
Really great introduction on unexploitable play and GTO strategies.



--- General ---

Notes from a Friend
Tony Robbins
http://smile.amazon.com/Notes-Friend...dp/068480056X/
If you are struggling in life and have never thought of reading a personal growth book, this is a great place to start. Short easy ready, really great for anyone having a hard time.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol Dweck
http://smile.amazon.com/Mindset-Psyc.../dp/0345472322
Understanding the difference between a growth mindset, where we truly believe we can improve any area of our life, as opposed to a fixed mindset, where we believe we simply are how we are, and how this difference in mindset affects our entire lives.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
http://smile.amazon.com/Outliers-Sto.../dp/0316017930
Not exactly a personal growth book, but the sections on the differences between typical rich vs poor kids and also the different successes of geniuses with similar intelligent but very different practical life skills really both resonated with me.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
http://smile.amazon.com/Blink-Power-.../dp/0316010669
Again not a personal growth book, but all poker players are familiar with that snap gut instinct of danger or suspicious they feel at the tables, and this helps shed some light on that.

No Excuses!: The Power of Self Discipline
Brian Tracy
http://smile.amazon.com/No-Excuses-S.../dp/1593156324
Exactly what it sounds like - teaching how to improve your self discipline and understand how it is so important to every area of your life.

The Now Habit
Niel Fiore
http://smile.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Ov.../dp/1585425524
Understanding the real root causes of procrastination, and how to overcome it. Very interesting read, and although it makes perfect sense after reading, the real causes of procrastination are not what they seem.

Money: Master the Game
Tony Robbins
http://smile.amazon.com/MONEY-Master.../dp/1476757801
A good primer on retirement investment strategies, along with a bunch of the typical Tony Robbins be-your-best stuff mixed in.

The Four Agreements
Don Miguel Ruiz
http://smile.amazon.com/Four-Agreeme.../dp/1878424319
This one is more about emotions, how people interact, how to not take things personally, and how to feel more at peace with yourself and others.


Every single one of these books has directly benefited my life. It's amazing how much common sense, basic life strategy I was lacking, and so many other competent functioning adults also lack. Everyone wants to be their best, but sometimes it's an overwhelming or daunting proposition to consider doing something about it - but taking one step forward and reading a book and learning a new skill you can apply to your life is the best thing you can do for yourself. I hope some of you guys check some of these out!

Also, if you don't know about Amazon Smile, you should. Basically 1% of everything you buy gets donated to a charity of your choice for no additional cost to you. All you have to do is visit smile.amazon.com instead of www.amazon.com. It takes seconds to pick your charity, you only have to do it once, and that's it.

If you use Google Chrome, there is an add-on that always redirects you to smile.amazon.com automatically so you don't need to even think about it or do anything.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...ebgfjmbf?hl=en

1% of everything I buy goes to Bedford Research Foundation, a stem cell research institution, and I literally don't have to do anything extra at all, not even one extra click. You can pick from a huge list of suggested charities, or put any charity of your own choosing in.

There is also an Amazon Prime Store card that gives you 5% cashback on everything you buy from Amazon, and it is automatically applied as a statement credit each month. The APR is jacked up, but if you pay it off every month it's a free 5% off everything on Amazon. I personally use Amazon all the time, and I know lots of other people do to, so make sure you and people you know are giving the free money to charity and getting the free 5% off with the Prime Store card (assuming of course you pay your credit card balances down to zero each month).

fwiw it's only 0.5% but I have been doing it for a year or two myself.

Finished a high quality session that I feel very happy with. I was running poorly early on, and stuck a fair amount. I was playing well and in a good zone, and I felt very unaffected by the variance and didn't get frustrated with the situation. I am happy with my response to the situation. I kept playing at a high level, and ended up playing a longer session. I was honest with myself about my focus and mental state, and felt confident I was not chasing a loss but making a professional choice to keep playing while I had soft tables up and was in a good zone and playing well. I took good inventory of my mental state each mindfulness bell and moved around physically a bit to stay fresh, and was fortunate to run well down the stretch and ended up booking a win. The main thing is I tolerated the negative variance very well, and was smart about my session length and grinding process and wasn't in any sort of loss chasing mode.
VT: A+
PF: A-
SP: A
GS: A
TG: A

Nice comeback! For some reason I imagined that the DS you were talking about was a lot bigger

GL in 2016, with your work habit I have no doubt it will be a great year for you

Well I was 15k in makeup at one point this month. Dating back to losses at the end of last month the total downswing was 25+. I don't have graphs of my live losses in Vegas or here back home, nor my WSOP.com losses while in vegas, which both added a bunch to the downswing. I've been running well and playing well at lively lately and booking some nice wins recently, which is fortunate.

Really enjoying reading through this thread. Best of luck, sir!

Thanks

Tough morning session. One of those sessions where I lost most all of the pots I played, and I felt rattled by the end. I imagine I'll find some misplays looking back through the hands, but I feel I was doing a good job of thinking it through and playing my game and not spewing or forcing action as a result of the negative variance. I didn't play too long chasing a loss, and I didn't stay in bad games trying to chase a loss, so in that regard I'm happy. I was almost out of makeup, and I think I really emotionally wanted a win, so that made it tougher to cope with the losing, but I think I did a pretty good job of handling it over all, and I'll be curious to see what my spew review of the hands looks like later.
VT: B+
PF: A-
SP: A-
GS: A-
TG: B+

Played another session and did pretty well. I'm happy I was able to come back and play well and not chase a result total and just try to do my best. I did get off track in one hand vs a shortstack spazzer where I got it in too light (even vs a shortstack spazzer, it was kind of out of spite), but I regrouped and finished well.
VT: A-
PF: B+
SP: B+
GS: A
TG: B+

You've never given a score lower than B-?

Nice timing, because today I played pretty poorly and deserve some C grades. Over the recent few weeks I've been playing well and have been generally on top of my game, and didn't feel I deserved any C grades (although during my downswing earlier in the month I did).

Today I ran quite poorly, but I also did a poor job of handling the variance. My session lengths were too long, and I ended up spewing in a few different spots. I got back on track after the spew a few times, but ended up continuing to slip and should have just ended session much earlier.

I'm disappointed with myself, but that's reality and that's life. I don't get to magically erase the downswing with a couple weeks of good play, and I don't get to magically become immune to runbad. One other thing that hurt me today is that I didn't fully commit to the grinding process. I wasn't totally in the mood to play, and had some ideas that I might put in one short session and do other stuff today. That was a bad mindset to be in, as I went in HOPING for a quick win, instead of going in striving to do my best and accept whatever variance came. Somehow if I booked an early win, that was going to make not playing later "OK" in my mind somehow. If I wanted some time off, I'm certainly entitled to that, and should have simply done what I wanted to do instead of half assedly committing to the grinding process.

Live and learn, I'm at stoploss for the day so I'm not playing more tonight and I'll regroup and try again tomorrow.
VT: C
PF: A-
SP: C
GS: B
TG: C