Quote:
Originally Posted by CBorders
I personally believe most full-time online grinders don't take enough breaks. And by break I don't mean playing live tournaments or whatever, I mean getting away from the game as much as possible. It's really really hard to take consecutive days off, especially now that we have a ton of tournaments to choose from and prize pools are larger than ever before. When you work a 9-5 for someone else its easy to get away because it likely doesn't consume you. Poker consumes most grinders. Think about a time in real life where you calculated the EV of a situation, calculated the probability of an event and then made a decision. You basically create a PokerStove for many situations in real life, in your head. And when you're not using things you learned from poker in real life, you might be reading poker literature, watching a training video, browsing poker forums, talking about poker with friends online, viewing some sort of poker media, or you're thinking about field sizes for that days tournaments and calculating your expectation for the day if you were playing. You spend the rest of your time, which isn't much, thinking about pussy. So much for getting away. The 9-5 doesn't make you think 100% of the time, and you can do a crappy job and not only stay employed but move up in the company if you do it right. There's not much motivation to be consumed with that job, for me anyway.
I think that when we get into deep or prolonged downswings we try to make things happen. We play more hours, increase our number of sessions and we're a little frustrated and angsty. A little more gamble, a few more plays made out of spite that are breakeven at best. Losing money even for a few days is a bad thing, especially if poker is our job, to everyone in the world who does not play poker. If your non-poker friends ask you how you're doing this week, it stings a little when you tell them you're down $4k and they look at you with the "what a degen" eyes. You know what I'm talking about, that look. Even though we know that it's standard, those little bits of social pressure make you want to win more. If we just get away for a short while, we cool off. Instead of feeling that "have to" feeling, it becomes more of a "want to". You feel a desire to improve your game so after getting away from it completely for a bit you read/post in strat forums more, work with Stove or Wiz and do a bunch of math, watch videos, basically become a better player who is also refreshed and focused on playing well - a great thing to become.
I've said it before and I'll say it again...Tournament poker is a mindfk.
I wrote this while sitting in traffic on my phone so hopefully it makes sense.
WOW.. that's just the most 'making sense reply' I've ever seen. Everything you said is completely true, especially the part about the social pressure.
The 'degen-eyes' hahahaha, that is SOOOOO true.
The gamble part. I noticed myself, I was just hoping that hard on luckboxing some turbo tourney to just break even, eventhough there were like 500 ppl left.
What you're saying about your mind being on poker 24/7, in one way or another is completely true. You just don't realize that every day..
I'm definitely taking a break for a week. After that I'll select my games better and put some time into FTP.
Dude (or sir).. this is some valuable stuff. Best reply EVER.. You made my day/week lol. THANKS !