Yes this is very good advice mate! I will start categorizing when marking. I had 110 marked hands from last week and it was a bit overwhelming to go through. And then mark them as reviewed after I'm done with a spot. Thanks buddy

Thanks!

Love to hear that. Thanks man

Week 1: Satisfied with volume and quality. Got a lot of interesting spots to study and feel hyped about starting week 2. I need more structure if I'm going to grind on weekends because without proper preparation and knowing how much I'm gonna play I wont play my best.

Nice. Looks like one of those weeks where you're super happy to end up being down 2BI lol

Hehe. Actually didn't know results before looking on friday. I was way off.


I've played more than 20k hands total this month and week 2 has only started. Couldn't be more happy about this, and it looks like I can easily get more volume than I originally thought starting the year. My advice to anyone who has the same issues as me with finding motivation; build a nice and realistic routine and follow it. Make sure to give yourself enough free-time every day though. Be realistic and set achievable hour/volume goals. Good planning and routines free up a ton of hours in your days and you'll be happier. I'm waking up 4:30am every morning and going to sleep early. Every morning before 7am I have done my workout, cold shower, meditation and a poker session before work. Feels like the day is a success already when I open my work laptop. Usually I don't have many hands left for the afternoon to finish the daily volume, so I can do whatever for some hours before I'm tired and have to go to bed.

I seem to mostly find correct lines but working a lot on sizings right now. Sometimes I give too much weight to some concept that actually isn't the most important in a given spot, so I have to get better at identifying what is most important to our sizing decisions.

I'll post results every weekend.

Subscribed, glgl!

Gotta my respect

In. GL

Ty man

I'm somewhat used to early mornings. In my current and previous job I have the possibility to start my day very early and end it early if I want, and have always chosen the early start. This is about an hour earlier than I'm used to, but the most crucial part is going to bed early. I've noticed that I actually don't have to do anything after 9pm, and really want to save hours for the morning when I'm more productive.

Welcome back mate! Ty

I'm another early riser. I find the morning hours when noone else is awake are awesome for getting stuff done. They gyms are empty, people aren't emailing me stupid questions at work and getting to work is more relaxed. I get more done between 5am and 9am than I do the rest of the day most days.

It's nice isn't it! I like the thought of being one of very few awake and already hitting daily goals before most people wake up.

Btw I skimmed through your new posts again and missed that you wished me good luck for 2021! Thanks buddy, to you as well

#TeamSleepIn

Week 2: A pretty decent week. Still swingy but it feels easy to put in volume. Working a lot on my mental game now and really trying to get a grasp of my feelings during and outside sessions. There are some spots in-game where I do something I think is GTO but probably just bad vs pool, usually when I haven't prepared well enough before the session and in the wrong mindset.

So I mentioned I'm working more on mental game right now. A couple weeks ago I asked Ben Raven about how you can distance yourself to the swings and keep your focus on things you have control over. His answer to this was one of the more interesting things I've heard on the matter. So he basically says we should be curious and more attached to variance and emotions, not the other way around, and wallow in the felt sense to get to know our emotions and sensations better. So instead of taking distance, we should accept and face our feelings and sensations head on! Here is the response from his thread:

Ben was kind enough to open his PM's and I came to the conclusion that I should do mental game journaling, as a start. So right now I write down what I feel before, during and after my sessions and try to rationalize around those feelings after the sessions. Obviously this is very hard, and often times you can't rationalize around every feeling or sensation, but it's a good start. If I continue this long enough I will have a better and more "objective" view over what's happening in my head in poker and around poker. I've found it very helpful so far even if I haven't logged very much yet. It's much easier to go into the next session having a grasp of why my mental game was what it was in earlier sessions, and adjust a couple things based on that.

I've been talking with some poker friends about the topic of having good routines. For me good routines are vital to be happy in general and focused in poker. Poker hits you with an incredible amount of variance, and if you're unorganized and unprofessional in your approach everything falls apart when you face this aspect of poker that is inevitable. In poker we lose all pots in full when we lose, but only win a part of most pots when we win because of rake. It's very easy to start losing a lot when we start approaching our C-game and worse. The edges in poker are small in general, so we need to do everything we can to play our best, at all times. No wonder many pros invest in mental game coaches.

I struggle with low self-esteem at times and poker triggers feelings related to that very often. Poker is very good training for me because I will feel those emotions more often than I would normally, so I get to "wallow in the felt sense" more than enough to get myself to work hard on becoming better at handling and understanding my emotions.

Big thanks to Ben for opening my eyes. Not sure if I interpreted everything Ben told me correctly, but from how I understood it, it has been helpful so far and I feel optimistic about how I'm approaching my mental game going forward.

Interesting approach. I think Ginge said on a recent youtube video that you have to learn to enjoy downswings.

My interpretation of this is to be confident enough in one's decisions and overall superior skill level that downswings don't even exist anymore. So you can literally enjoy variance for what it is, profit.

If journaling and studying your honest reaction to the green line rollercoaster gets you to that point I'm all in favour. But I'm not completely convinced by all this CBT thinking doing the rounds these days. It sounds crafty on paper but I think you often get to the same place much more quickly by incentivizing the opposite emotion; allowing and encouraging new perspectives to flourish rather than giving the thing you want to avoid (in this case, pain) too much oxygen/validation.

Think how often you've been able to endure genuine physical or psychological pain in life. It's usually because you were distracted or having too good of a day regardless of the affliction. Something will have taken your mind off it, some greater meaning, and you stopped caring. We should accept pain-- of course, fighting just fuels the fire--but we should maybe not respect it so much or we could get attached and may never grow around it.

That said, self-reflection and acceptance can't be bad and everybody will have different methods that fit them best. Sometimes I go over a hand for hours in my head after a session and I think of that as my brain's natural and healthy way of *filing the mistake*.

Hey Ship! Interesting thoughts about downswings.

I recently was struggling with my own pervasive form of "tilt" so to speak. It wasn't the typical tilt, where you get angry and play bad when people suckout or things go awry. Instead, I struggled to make folds with made hands or big PPs, when I know based on everything (pool reads, line, HUD stats) that villain has it 99% of the time here. This was killing me for a while, and I kept punting off stacks making calls I knew were losing, but I just couldn't fold.

What really helped me was Elliot Roe's A game masterclass. I found it very helpful, and a lot of the things he talks about you've already mentioned. A big one is routines, and having a structured presession and postsession routine has helped me a lot. Also, meditation, I find it helps a ton both on and off the table, and I find it has made a big difference in my game.

I have my mental game under control a lot better, and while it is no means perfect and I still have bumps along the way, I find I am much more focused and in a better state of mind when I am playing. I am able to cut through dissonances and human bias much more in my decision making.

One thing I think that you should ensure you keep in mind is that your mental game will never be perfect. After I did my mental game work, and things went great, the first time I encountered mental game issues on the table, I panicked and thought I had failed. However, upon thinking I recognized that this was just a small setback, a mental game downswing so to speak, and I approached it the same way I would an on the table downswing, by recognizing that I am a winner and I shouldn't alter my processes because of some variance. Ultimately, I realized that this setback wasn't a mental game failure, but rather I had put in my highest hands in a month, and had been grinding incredibly hard for the exclusive poker 40% rakeback challenges on stars, and was simply burnt out. Your mental game will improve, but don't expect perfection from yourself.

Thanks for the post!

I think the main point is that before we can start improving our mental game we should research ourselves and not just jump into forcing opposite emotions that variance causes. I've been trying this "enjoy downswings" thing, but it just doesn't work for me, even if I feel I'm playing well. Tilt affects my play (not very much, but it does), and so does it for most people if not everyone.

I think in general it's good to reflect over your feelings and try to understand why you feel a certain way. In poker you can just say "well ok I lost that's why I felt frustrated", but it's harder to say why you let it affect your game, or to even know if it affected your game or not.

My reason for working on my mental game is not to accept and give space to negative feelings. It's mainly about getting better control over my emotions and understand them better. It actually feels a little like how you can work on a romantic relationship. If your partner makes you feel sad or angry, it's always easy to blame your partner and not actually think about why it made you sad or angry and just let it build up to something worse. It's really difficult to admit that you got angry or sad because it hit a weak spot in you as a person, and that reaction might stem from something else than your partner.

Thanks man!

I have similar routines myself before a session. Actually listen to Elliot Roes Cash game warmup and another one on anxiety before my sessions! It really helps.

I'm not looking for perfection at all. I just think it's healthy to address my emotions and try to understand myself better.

I know I'm a winner and I handle swings pretty well in general. But that doesn't mean I don't have to work on my mental game. And it's not only about poker, I have other issues aswell that will improve if I give my feelings some more attention and try to research them more.

I wanted to chime in because the 'homework' stuff i suggested was coupled with a strong disclaimer to work with a professional alongside said work. The irony is that my training is entirely integrative and doesn't even incorporate CBT!

I 100% agree with your sentiment fwiw but i have come to realise that the notion of open-ended, non-guided therapy (which i mainly practice) is actually rather threatening/unappealing to a lot of people, particularly the demographic of poker players (young men). Therefore, having some hands-on work can really help build comfort before really delving into unconscious/subconscious processes.

I appreciate that what you're saying is this is a multi-faceted topic and there certainly isn't a one-size-fits-all approach

Fair play gents, you're probably on another (higher) level tbh. My mental strat right now is disassociation, but it's very much a work in progress and absolutely unproven at this juncture.

I also really enjoyed Bens post and one of the realisations I came to was that I have low self esteem too. I honestly never even realised until I explored my emotions over the last couple of days. His post has sent me on to a crazy deep dive but I think its incredible and I think its great that you're doing the same.

In for 2021!

Really loving this thread so far, your approach to poker seems excellent and is something I'm using as a framework for myself. Especially the mental game stuff, my mental game is dogshit and needs a lot more focus. That message from Ben that you shared was incredibly eye-opening. I've always had the attitude of just trying to tolerate the emotions rather than actually embracing them

I'm also curious, when do you eat your first meal of the day? I've been trying to get workouts in early in my day like you, but I can't decide if I should eat before and after, or just eat after

Cool. I've had low self-esteem for a long time which leads to social anxiety and whatnot. So I haven't gotten any realizations myself yet, only having a little better grasp of how stuff around poker affects my mindset in-game. Good preparation is one crucial thing for me, and I have to know how long I'm gonna play etc.

Welcome back mate! Good to have you here. I've found that a more professional approach brings more emotional rewards. I think you can't rely on being rewarded solely on $ results. So I'm trying to build my routine in a way that I can be happy at the end of the day even without looking at results.

I'm really bad at eating routines. Sometimes I don't eat before afternoon, sometimes I eat a nice breakfast. Something I need to work on and really don't have any good advice on the matter. But I never eat before my morning workout because it's the first thing I do when I wake up.

Another good thread Ship.

With regard to self esteem, I think its partly inherited in your DNA and influenced by experiences in your formative years. Thats what I found, it usually comes along with intelligence, depression, anxiety and shyness.
I'm an older guy and can tell you not a lot changes as you age.
It helps to have a look around you and you will find your low self esteem is not based on any logic, its largely inbuilt.

Tilt has also been mentioned in the thread, I find I tilt more because of the mistakes I make rather than the variance.
Variance is out of your control as is a lot of other happenings in your life, concentrate on and get better at what you can control.

Villain said in chat that flop raise is not GTO and requested I post the solve here. Obviously posting only because it's solver approved. I don't post mistakes, okay?

PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.25/$0.50 - 6 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG (Hero): $66.11 (132 bb)
MP: $72.73 (145 bb)
CO: $46.43 (93 bb)
BU: $53.19 (106 bb)
SB: $50.00 (100 bb)
BB: $55.11 (110 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with K♠ A♣
Hero raises to $1.25, MP 3-bets to $4, 4 players fold, Hero calls $2.75

Flop: ($8.75) 2♠ J♣ Q♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $2.74, Hero raises to $9.50, MP folds

Total pot: $14.23 (Rake: $0.71)
UTG (Hero) wins $13.52


Just a quick solve 100bb deep and 35% pot flop raise sizing.



To be honest I wasn't sure if it was a thing but as my Location states: Spew, then review.

Haha I got this all the time when playing OOP and check raising in 3bet pots as the PFC. I guess at lower stakes there is still the "old school" mentality of being very passive as the PFC OOP, especially on broadway boards where it was a no-go to check raise few years ago and you would play your whole range as a check/call or check/fold.

Obviously most of the guys have never spent a second in a solver. In a lot of these spots depending from position/ranges you will see that check/raising > folding > calling.

Also don´t educate them for free and let them mark you as a whale

Gold for free