Hi guys, I am planning to start a PG&C threat mostly to keep my self accountable and honest.

I started playing full time online NLHE cash since 2009 I believe. I transition to PLO about 4 years ago. I always fancy myself an arm chair psychologies, and have been trying to analyze myself. My poker career although long have been pretty average. I started playing 50NL and at the peak I play most of my volume at 200NL while playing some 400NL+ if its really good. Transition to PLO and make a huge mistake of not moving down stakes and took quite a beating. Now I am back playing 50PLO.

Unlike most poker story I never actually did go broke online. I started winning quite easily when I started. If you have read Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck I am what you would call someone that grew up with a fixed mindset. Although I have read that book many years ago I realize your brain is wired to react a certain way and it doesn’t matter if its irrational or not true. I took a lot of things for granted as I didn’t realize what it took to be a great poker player. At that time it would seem my “talent” would just carry me. But as time when by and the game got tougher my “talent” wasn’t enough because I was not improving much while everyone else is. First mistake.

If I look at the big 5 personality, I am pretty low on neuroticism. While I think this help me stay sane and get back to neutral during highly stress situations (huge swings), I think it is also the reason why I am unambitious. Or a more accurate way to say it is that I am easily content. I am not driven by ego to be the best (or to be seen as the best) nor I am driven to make more money. Enough is good enough. This make my progress really slow. When I am losing I don’t feel like putting in the hours because its painful or it confirms that I am not smart enough if I keep losing. When I am winning I don’t feel like putting in the hours because it threatens the same thing if I start losing and I already have enough, so why risk it. There is no pleasure to be gain by winning more but losing from this point is just too painful. This clearly is a poor mindset to have as a poker player. I will call this mistake number 2.

I am also 36 this year, I feel a deep sense of existential dread. I have been pretty good all my life at avoiding this dread by keeping myself busy. By playing games, probably why I was so drawn to poker in the first place. But in recent years, for the first time, poker was going down hill pretty fast and I find myself asking why the hell am I even doing this? When the thing that you do to avoid facing reality becomes a source of pain, it forces you look at reality and question everything. My mental health was never predisposed to depression, but at this low point I really had thoughts that its better to just end it all. That scares me.

Its weird because sometimes I feel like a passive observer, seeing myself being push and pull by this pain and pleasure dynamic that is ridden in fear. And every time that happens my strategy have always been the same – avoidance. Its also funny when I read psychology books; this seems to be quite textbook. Everyone react differently with the flight or fight or play dead mechanic, but I have master flight for sure.

So what is the “goal/challenge”? My personal life philosophy on being human is not one that conforms to our primitive wiring but one that thrive to overcome it. I want to live a more mindful and thoughtful life and stop avoiding everything. You can only avoid things for that long before it smacks you right in your face. And I will be damn if I find myself in the same situation 10 years from now.

At the very least I don’t want to have any regret. Michael Gervais, a sport psychology for the Seattle Seahawks always say that there are 3 things you can train, your body, your mind, and your craft. My craft is Poker. And I want to be great at it, I don’t see the point in being average in Poker. I want to push myself to the edge to see how far I can go. But to do that I need to train my mind, so I can catch myself when my avoidance behavior start to show and point myself in the right direction. And if I fail, I fail, that’s life. What I don’t want is to look back at the end of 2021 and see that I fail because I have given in to my avoidance mechanics.

I don’t know how often I plan to update this post, but I do think it will be more of a mental game PG&C threat rather than a result threat. So while I see a lot of threats posting hands and graph and $$ results I am probably going to shy away from that and post more on the mental game side of things. I will be making another post soon talking about my approach and thoughts on how do I even stop this avoidance behavior because this post is getting too long.

-Kit

Modern technology have allowed me to avoid working on my craft in many ways. Being spending a lot of time on twitch or playing other computer games. The trigger is clear, when I start to feel a level of anxiety when I think about playing poker. I would bury myself in twitch or computer games.

I also would rationalize that I needed a break and these are the activities I choose to do during my break. I have heard from Michael Gervais that top level athletes dont talk about hardwork but they talk about recovery because hardwork is a given. I am a huge believer in recovery. But the problem lies where I havent even put in any hardwork and also I am using "recovery" as an excuse. I will address this a little more later.

I have to learn to push through the anxiety. Learn to change my respond to pain or fear. But I dont believe in purely using will power. Firstly, that is the purpose of me writing these. Accountability is the first tool in my strategy. Secondly I think self talk is really important. Two people can go through the same experience but react very differently. I need to change the story I tell myself. If I do push through and see I come out the other side unscathed I need to reinforce that.

Vicktor Frankl says this in The Will to Meaning, ask not the meaning of life but what does life asked of you? This will be my north star, a question I have to constantly ask myself. Is it okay to take a break and recover now, or I should still keep going. What does life ask of me this very moment?

So what do I do about gaming and twitch? My first approach will be schedule my time. Under my grinding time if for whatever reason I dont feel like playing poker, I can take a break. But I am not allowed to watch twitch or play games. I can read a book, study poker, take a nap, go play sports, whatever it is, I am not allowed to do the things I have wired myself to do as a form of avoidance behavior. I need to rewire that habit.

I do want to play games or be able to watch twitch at some point. But for now I do think is best that I do a hard detox for a month. I want too see if my brain will be wired differently after a month.

I really like your though process here. I myself have used parties or meeting the opposite sex as a way to avoid the necessary work. It's about finding the delicate balance between hard work and moving forward as goal number 1 but also not neglecting everything else to the point where the work becomes pointless because you have lost everything.

Thanks. I think socializing is definite a good way to recovery mentally if youre extroverted as long as you dont start feeling the pressure or give in the FOMO (Fear of missing out). I am introverted though, so the things that mentally revitalize you drains me

INTENTION

There have been a lot of talk about mindfulness and meditation nowadays. It seems like everyone is doing it or talking about it, but why? Its weird to see such an ancient tradition that have been link to spiritually and enlightment being used as a high performance tool. But the research shows that it works as a high performance tool. Meditation and mindfulness taught nowadays have a lot to do with focusing attention. And the point of these focus attention is focusing your intention.

When something happens and we react, there is no intention, there is just reaction. When you wake up and go about your day without focusing your attention (being mindful), there is no intention, youre like a zombie walking through life. Thats why the cliche saying "Most ppl that are alive are not living".

I think its very important to know our intention, what we are doing and why we are doing it. To be more thoughtful of how you spend your time or how you react to things.

Today I call down with a straight flush on a pair board because I thought I only had a flush. The lack of attention is pretty tilting, I mess up. My first thought was I suck, I should stop playing. Maybe I am tired? Or maybe I am just not focus?

On the tables when we play multiple games and long hours we cant expect ourselves to be 100% attentive at all times. There is a difference in peak performance and optimum performance, I just heard a podcast by a navy seal and Rick Roll. The navy seal never comes out of the gate with 100% intensity, at their peak, because they dont know how long the mission is going to last and they need to conserve their energy for when **** hits the fan. I think poker is like that too, you strive for optimum performance, its like a marathon and hopefully within those long hours you will have a few peak performance moments.

So what happens when I *** up in the future? Well, that is sign/trigger to refocus. You dont have too be too hard on yourself, these mistakes are going to happen. Of cause it didnt help that we were 250bb deep and he had a boat. FML :~(

So I have been running pretty hot this couple of weeks and decided to take a shot at 100PLO. Unfortunately didnt ran good at 100PLO and drop about 4BI which is not that big of a deal. But I keep replaying hands I play poorly. It just keeps replaying in my mind and it frustrates me that I play those hand so badly, probably can save 2BI if I didnt mess up those hands.

The more I think about it I realize I have one weakness as a player. I find myself "out leveling" myself every time something like this happens. I need to get back to basics. Leveling is really not needed, I just need to play solid poker and make decisions base on my hand and not some "read" I have imagine up somewhere.

I have to keep that intent in mind. Every time I start a session. My intent must be clear that I am here to play solid poker and make solid decisions and not magical ones. This comes down to understanding how a solid poker player thought process is. The interesting about poker is in almost any argument, there is always "IFs" or BUTs". This IFs should be hugely ignore unless its back up by some relevant data. Too often I try to create this fictional stories in my head of why my opponent is doing X or Y without real justification to do so. But at the same time that what poker is to me, its like problem solving, but I need to start putting WAY more weight on problem solving using information I 100% know which is what 4 cards I have and what cards are on the board rather than putting much weight on the information I get from 1 showdown.

Lesson:

"Put ALOT more weight on information you know to be 100% true, your 4 cards and the cards on the board, Stack size, SPR, odds, MATH!! and not reads base on incomplete information"

So much we can learn from E-Sport high performance psychology. The long term goal is to keep improving not win in the short term. Every tournament is a playground where you can learn and grow. You got to push yourself outside your conform zone, test different lines and strategies, make creative plays, all for the sake of learning. Learn to have a different relationship and perspective on winning. If you are too fixated on winning, then losing is going to trigger your fight or flight, blood will rush to your head and adrenaline will take over your body. You are ready to physically fight, but poker is a intellectual game. The resources (energy) needed to intellectually figure out the answer to a poker puzzle is redirected to your body. That is when your head just feels numb and you can figure anything out and end up just clicking buttons randomly.

If you want to succeed in Poker, you need to change your relationship with winning and losing. The poker table is your playground.

https://youtu.be/GzBW0TG0h04

The YT video above doesnt seem to be working, this is the link.

You have to person of equal intelligence starting poker at the same time with the same bankroll management. In 12 months time player 1 pulls away moving up one stake at a time until they reach highstakes while the other player did okay but got stuck at the lower stake. What separates this two players? (ignoring variance)

Poker is a game of tiny edges (or big if you are playing a whale). These edges add up and determines your winrate. The edges stems from two place. Firstly, is information. In information there is knowledge (knowing the info) and understanding (knowing what to do with the info). And the second place is performance, which is putting that information to practice.

Thus what separate them is the ability to obtain information, analyze the information and implement them to their game.

Today, information is abundant. Anyone with some money can buy a solver, learn how to use it and run solutions. Understanding of information while a little more scarce is still abundant with the amount of online poker training sites and online communities that would be happy to talk poker. But what I feel is lacking in poker training is structure.

Many of these training sites have "coaches". But coaches in poker is very different than coaches in other industries. There are many reason that players turn to be coaches, but I have not seen someone that turn to coaching because thats their vocation. At the end of the day, poker is their vocation and coaching is a side gig. To me these coaches might as well be called mentors, they are not really coaches.

In other high performance industry the coaches study coaching. They learn and hone their coaching skills. Its not just teaching, its coaching. There is a very specific goal, you want to take your student from A to B. The failure of the student is the failure of the coach. In poker if the student fail, its the students fault. That is not coaching.

Most coaches dont even have a plan of attack. Its more lets just go through your database, analyze some HH and ask some questions. Most of the time the student have to bring the "PLAN" to the coach.

Its hard to blame the coaches too, because they are not professional coaches, they are professional poker players and there is no linear way of improving in poker. Poker improvement is not a staircase, its like a big tree. A BIG ASS TREE.

Where the theoretical foundation is the root/bark and there are many branches you can go too. But that doesnt mean you shld just jump around branches and coach/learn randomly. I visualize the branches of the tree to start of pretty thick. Some bigger than others. This is EV. Not everything will give a similar return on EV for your time. So the goal is to tackle studying the more relevant and bigger branches of the tree first.

I also imagine the tree branches going thinner as it goes higher. So while there is no linear progression, you still can learn structurally from the ground up. If there are 10 levels to the trees height, before you move to learning things in level 2 from level 1, you should at least tackle 70-80% of level 1. And as you are leveling things in level 2 you are also improving your level 1. So by the time you start digging into level 3 your level 1 is at 90% level 2 is at 70%.

No coach or mentor is going to do this for you. You have to create your own tree. You alone are responsible for constantly improving. Remember the rate at which you gain information (which is knowledge that is understood) and learn to implement them is what separates you from others. The difference between making it to the top or staying at the bottom.

BUILD YOUR DAMN TREE

The Art of Impossible.

Been reading through Steven Kotler's new book, the Art of Impossible. I love reading books about peak/high performance. If you are not familiar with Steven Kotler, he wrote the book The Rise of Superman which is about building your life around the idea of flow (peak experience).

He quotes Havard psychologies William James "the human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject-but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us, it is only an inveterate habit-the habit of inferiority to our full self-that is bad."

That is bad indeed. I do frequently feel that I am performing way below my potential as a human being. My lack of motivation and drive to excel seems to be at the heart of it, I am easily satisficed. Which might not be a bad thing on it self, but the more I think about it the more it feel like a waste. If we only life once (which I believe so), then why not life bravely, and push yourself to the edge?

While this seem obvious to many, to me I always revert to avoidance, because its comfortable. But as I get older, I realize how wrong I am. Life is discomfort, it is about confronting these discomfort.

The first step in the Art of Impossible is MOTIVATION, which is broken down to Drive, Grit and Goals. Once again this is about the Mental Game, peak performance. Which means I see motivation as a skill. I can dive deep into these aspect, break it down and work on it like any other skill.

Gotta get good at Motivation.

External Drive (Financial Security)

If you learn about the psychology of motivation before, there is always this debate on external and internal drives and most research shows internal drive beats out external drive in most situations.

External drive being money, fame, sex while internal drive being curiosity, passion or love.

Money does increase wellbeing and happiness but only until a certain point. The Art of Impossible says research shows $75k/year. Its probably bias towards America, I am from South East Asia so that value is probably going to be much lower.

Point being is, when I started poker more than 10 years ago. Hitting that Money Threshold for wellbeing wasnt hard. I was younger (which require less money due to less responsibilities) and the games was easy. Now as I am older and having to move down stakes when switching to PLO (I play 50PLO, although I have the BR to play 100PLO. I use to play up until 400NL), I am below this threshold.

Living below this threshold creates a lot of uncertainty which is stressful and anxiety driven. You life in fear. Normally you would think this will drive me to play more since this is an external drive. But I think due to the nature of poker it works against you, because playing more also means you risk losing. If I will make 100% of the time, then I will be motivated greatly to play more, but because of the double edge variance it paralysis me when I am on a downswing.

I need to overcome this with good bankroll management (life and poker). And more importantly I need to see progress not it $$ terms but in hours spend learning/playing and the quality of those hours spend (I am in flow or not).

But with that all said, I still need to raise my hourly to this threshold, and for a poker player which is uncertain to begin which, I think we need a higher threshold. Initially I was thinking $36k/yr for SEA is good enough; but i need more leeway as poker is so uncertain and $60/yr or $5k/month seems like a better Goal. I know many mental game gurus will advice against setting a monetary goal. But this is different, the goal is not to make x amount a month but to be financially secure, the amount is just a measurement to know that I have achieve that.

Why is that important? it frees up mental space to think about other things, to take more risk, to play (mess around with poker), to start different project, and most importantly to not get paralyze by financial stress.

Oddly enough whether I have this goal or not, my more personal goal of Self Mastery to Mastery of Craft is not affected. My approach and process shouldnt be affected neither. Just that now I am clarity of the risk and type of bankroll management I should apply. And also I know at which point I should take a step back and recalibrate all my processes. Increasing hourly and moving up is the priority now but after achieving "Financial Security" my priority might shift to Mastery (playing tougher games) or community.

This also doubles as a PURPOSE which increases MOTIVATION which I mention in my previous post.

PAIN

Been listening to Alexi Pappas interview on Rich Roll Podcast. She is many things, and also make it to the Olympics. Its a great interview, I suggest you look it up on youtube if you are interested.

She is a runner, and she jokes that her friends find it surprising when she says she feels the same pain as them when we goes for a run. The only difference is her relationship with pain.

The rule of a third. She says that when you are chasing your dreams or doing something youre passionate about, there is a rule. 1/3 of the time you will feel great, 1/3 of the time you will feel okay, and 1/3 of the time its going to be ****** painful.

What is your relationship with pain? What is your relationship with downswings? with badbeats? set ups? misclicks? the stress and frustration poker brings when things doesnt go your way?

If you have read my earlier post, you will know I AVOID. I AVOID pain. Thus, this really speaks to me. The answer is simple, you cant avoid pain if you want to be great at anything in life, but you can change your relationship with pain.

I definitely need to ponder more on this and be more aware to how I react to painful emotions and experience. If I can put on foot infront of the other despite the pain or even better, if I can use that pain to motivate me to move. I dont have to like pain, but pain is part of pursuing greatness, its definitely part of poker. Learn to change your relationship with pain and who knows what you might achieve.

Just wanted to spend some time thinking about these two months and what I can improve on:

Energy management. I usually play 2 sessions a/day 5-6 times a/week. My sessions are usually 2-3hrs long. I find myself being frequently tired and auto piloting during my 2nd sessions. Also after my 2nd session is usually my schedule study sessions, but I am usually too tired at this point to study. My plans:
1. Test different schedules and see how that affect my energy level. The goal at the end is to play 30hours/week.
2. incorporate naps in-between sessions to see if that increase energy level.
3. eat a better low carb diet to see if energy level improve.
4. Also maybe go search the internet for health reasons why energy levels might be low, like lack of certain mineral or vitamin.

Studying. Still need to improve a lot on my Poker Tree. I need to be more consistent. The idea is I start by studying topic 1, as I move to topic 2 I will continue to quiz myself on topic 1 and as I move to topic 3 I will quiz myself on topic 1 (less than before) and topic 2. This is to ensure I remember the lessons I learn. This strategy have been proven to work best by scientist researching studying. The problem is I often drop the ball somewhere and I feel I forget a lot of the lessons I learn, and I have to start again which destroys any progress I made. My plan:
1. Schedule and plan out study progress and stick to it. The minimum is to ALWAYS compete quiz task. That way you at the very least dont forget what you have learned.
2. Take one day off every week to do some deep dive. I could use this time to plan my study for the week too.
3. FOCUS. I find myself wanting to look at too many things, there are too many questions. I should focus my effort on certain topic and progress somewhat linearly rather than try to look at too many different spots at the same time. I just dont remember anything when I do that.

I am excited at what I can achieve if I put my mind to it. Lets GO!!