Thanks again everyone. Really glad to hear that you guys are making it through the length lol.

Just to be clear, I am still working on a lot of this stuff myself. Understanding these topics comes very quickly, but truly changing your mindset takes much longer. I personally find it is just like the poker graph. Your "mindset" will improve, but then you will get tested to a larger extent than ever before, whether it is size of a downswing, number of beats in a row, etc, and it will eventually get to you again. Those are the moments when you have to step back from the game and take a break. The goal is to improve your mindset to the point that you can handle bigger and bigger "tests," as well as recognize when you have just slipped off your 'A' game. The better you get at this stuff the longer you will stay on your 'A' game.

Think of it this way, if suboptimal mindset causes you to "call when you know you shouldn't," or go on monkey tilt and spew off just one buy in every 10,000 hands. That is dropping your winrate by 0.5 ptbb/100. And that's just one buy in which is really doing pretty good.

Also, obviously I drew from a bunch of sources of inspiration for this post. I tried really hard to condense a bunch of material and then put my own spin on it and express it in a unique way.

For anyone looking to go deeper, here are some of the sources I've used in the last few months:

Poker Mindset, Matthew Higler and Ian Taylor - The first section of this book is great. It basically lays it out for you and says, this is what poker is all about. If you can't handle that, don't play. LOL. Thought that was great and so accurate. I would say that people should read the first few chapters of that book very early in their poker career to know what they are getting in to. I am still working my way through the rest of the book (about halfway). Definitely recommend the first few chapters, rest is meh so far.

Jared Tendler Videos on Stox - I have watched his foundations videos, his tilt control videos and dealing with fear and anxiety. The foundations videos felt LONG and were somewhat hard to stay focused on, but there was a decent amount of info in them that really got me thinking. He has more videos on playing your 'A' game that I will definitely watch. I get the impression he puts a decent amount of research into his work.

Ed Miller Videos on Stox - In some ways I can blame Ed Miller for losing me a bunch of money over my big downswing . Funnily enough, he has a video called the "Art of Misapplication" where he talks about how you are not going to mess up the concepts he is teaching, but it's all part of the process.

There are definitely a few more resources I plan to check out over the next few months. There are a few more books that are supposed to be good as well as the Tommy Angelo series on DC. Can't speak for them yet.

Also here is a post by split that is a good read:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...ferent-468918/

Pay special attention to how he talks about "working your your basement."

For everyone who is newer to poker reading this:

The quickest route to sucess in poker is to

1. Learn enough strategy to have a winning game. This is the basement that Split is talking about in his article. Meaning the situations that occur commonly. It is easy to get caught up in trying to figure out what is optimal in really thin decisions. If a decision is really thin, it doesn't matter too much. Plug your biggest leaks first.
2. Develop the mindset you need to apply that winning game consistently.

THEN

3. After you have succeeded at 1 and 2, begin the never ending voyage of improving various aspects of your game. This is what lets you climb higher in both stakes and win rate. This is where you start to worry about plugging smaller and smaller leaks and learning the fancier stuff. You really won't need anything fancy until you start getting to 50 and probably 100 (as the game are today anyway).

The OP and follow-up posts are so good they turned me from a lurker to a poster. Deep, concise, and worth re-reading.

Thanks, Equus!

Wow, awesome! Welcome.

I think a lot of people lurk - I did for a while before I started posting. So I can say from experience, it helps your game a ton to get involved a bit and network with other players.

I'm pretty good at poker but tilt/let emotions control me way too much, and this post was an AHA moment for me. In particular, the point about knowing I am going to make mistakes and am just learning (how the hell did I develop an ego beating NL10 and NL25?) and having to be satisfied with incomplete information. 80% of my bad calls have to be curiosity/he can't have it this time.

Thank you. Seriously, thank you.

+12321321

+12321322


i read this before every session, yet to have a losing one yet, sure i dump a few buyins through coolers suckouts etc etc, but now I have this new found ability to play through whereas before i'd of monkey spazz tilted another few buyins away.

LOL, don't know if it deserves a giant epic flag, but it's greatly appreciated!

Y2Dennis: Glad it's helped so far. You will probably slip in and out of the old habits, since this is still a very recent "A Ha!" If you do, just remember, you are making good improvement, so stay positive and keep working on it.

Ego is definitely killer. Develop confidence, but don't let it over develop into arrogance. No matter how good you get, you are always going to get your clock cleaned sometimes and there is always that next level up...

Superabad: Glad you having an easier time grinding after some suckouts and coolers. That is really important to getting better at poker.

Also glad to hear you haven't had a losing session recently, but make sure you don't get stuck in the habit of grinding until even. Remember, even good poker players end up losing close to half their sessions in most cases. The key is having your average win be much bigger than your average loss.

If you are tired/mad/distracted whatever and you are down on the day, just quit. Don't worry about it. Tomorrow is another day. We really need to get into the habit of thinking of poker as one big session. Even our monthly graphs are somewhat bad, b/c we mentally chunk the time up into months. Remove as many of those mental chunks as possible, including sessions. When you pull up your graph and the last part is going down, just imagine another 500k hands on the end and how small that downward blip will look.

For an epic treatment of that topic, I will refer you to a classic post by a legendary poster:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69...stucko-215404/

thnx for the mention =) i saw a lot of parallels between our articles...albeit yours in much more on the psych side while mine is more broad and technical

No problem Yeah, there were a lot of sources of inspiration, that was definitely one, so I'm trying to give some shout-outs to good references as they come up.

much appreciated good sir

I really liked this post. However, today I found myself in the most monkey tilt I've ever been in, I absolutely went crazy (luckily I managed to quit pokerstars as soon as I realized this) I broke a stapler and a bin. After re-reading this post it really explains the exact things that happened. From thinking 'I'll call this shove with bottom set because X and Y' to 'OMG I'm being 3bet every time I raise without AA-JJ next time I'll just 4bet whatever the situation - 74s? weeeeeeee! Oops mega nit flats IP, oh well shove flop weeeeeeeee! OMG Snapped by KK? WHY WONT THEY RESPECT MY RAISES! RARR!'

It's amazing how much your ego can destroy your poker game.

I liked the part about comparing life to poker. A week ago I was donking around playing tetris and it really got me thinking about how similar tetris is to poker. This is also true of chess and any other skill related game and for someone like myself who is often comparing everything I do to poker. What differentiates poker and other games is the amount of luck, money and ego involved which is why some people can have very optimal strategies but never succeed the way they should. We've all heard Hellmuth whinge 'if it wasn't for luck, I'd win them all!' I think your post explains why this is a lazy, egotistical and sub-optimal way of viewing poker.

good post i like the money as an idea thing thats deep

Greta post, I really enjoyed it and linked to it in the beginner's tool box. I am going to have to read this a lot as to keep myself sane. I want on a great up-swing and am now on nasty downswing. I have had my AA/KK busted 7 times in a row (always by junk shoves preflop that made sets by the river or two or straights). But I think it will be time for an upswing again soon. It will balance itself out eventually, again thanks for the great post!

Awesome post. Really. Going through a little downswing myself at the moment I really enjoyed reading this. And from an observer's positions, the difference between knowing and feeling is just amazing. Eventhough I know I should be "emotionally neutral" when I'm playing I still get irritated by every beat. In the best case I just shrug it off and it doesn't influence my game, but anyhow it DOES affect me. Give me a few suck outs over a small period of time and I'll have trouble staying "emotionally neutral", eventhough I know I'm supposed to have those stretches every now and then.

Something else I realized: Whenever I'm feeling pumped for the game and ready to crush the opposition I usually end up playing bad, whereas when I'm just deciding to grind it out for a few hrs I play a lot better. Kinda the opposite you'd expect, but a "I'm gonna crush everybody right now" attitude leaves a lot of room for frustration in a game that is strongly influenced by chance over the short term.

It's posts like this that demonstrate to me that 2+2 is stronger than ever. GJ.

While reading it I found myself thinking about an observation Trebek once made. In one of the chat threads he wondered why all the hand threads have the Hero losing the pot. Why do people just assume that a loss equals failure and a mistake he wondered? It was an 'AHA' moment for me and I spend more time looking at winnning hands ever since.

good read, i cant ever recall seeing you on the micro forums though

Thanks again everyone.

Sharkscope... unfortunately I have spent more time in the FTP regs thread and monthy chat threads than the strat posts. I also rarely end up posting my own hands... probably why my post is on mindset and not a sweet strat theory.

I have networked with some players for the forum for discussing HH, which has helped immensely to get instant back and forth feedback.

Magodeoz84: I definitely think the killer instict you talk about of "I'm gonna crush these donks" works for us and against us. Obviously, we are poker players, so we are super competitive. When we sit down with a drooler, we basically feel like their stack is pretty much ours. So we get frustrated when that doesn't happen, even though we know it's not gonna happen a decent amount of the time. Also, we may end up pushing the action too much trying to make it happen (bluffing a fish that doesn't fold for example). Definitely have to strike a balance between attacking weakness and pushing too many spots.

Pretty good post, glad it was x-posted in forums I read. I "knew" most of the stuff here but have a ways to go with a lot of it and it was definitely helpful to read and reinforce some things. The one notable thing I did see missing was the concept of separating from winning results too. If you fistpump or get super happy when you win a flip, have the +15 buy-in day, or stuff like that you're obviously attached to results and going to be upset when you lose the flip or have the -15 buy-in day.

Also I have a friend who claims to have a mindset where he looks forward to downswings because they're the challenge for him. He says he knows they'll happen, he knows he can win when he's running hot, so his indication of if he's doing well is if he can play well during the downswings. I've tried to think about that and be able to think like that but so far I've failed and I have my doubts he actually thinks like that. But if he can do it that's great, and it makes perfect sense. Like I personally look forward to being put in tough spots sometimes. Anyone can 3-bet AA and get it in against KK but it's the hands where you take the non-standard lines and they work that is fun. Honestly and with the spirit of this note sometimes it will fail. But the hands where you CRAI 2nd pair for value and get the call from 3rd pair you wanted, THOSE are the fun hands. And those spots that make you think like that are the fun part of poker. Because they're challenging and we get to see our hard work pay off. So why don't we think like that with regards to running good/bad? Because we don't get to see our hard work pay off. Sure after the downswing's over you can see the hard work that paid off, and that's what we need to separate ourselves from, being right. If we can just focus on the hard work and realize the downswing is where we really shine anyway, we would all be much better poker players. That's what I'm working to overcome anyway.

This one's for you, then

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=506

Hey Zachvac,

You definitely added some great points. I was watching an MBolt vid on stox and he mentioned that he was worked really hard to get to the point that winning and losing sessions feel pretty much the same. I was definitely taken aback and then realized there was a lot of wisdom to that. I don't think we need to actively make ourselves not feel happy when we win, but rather focus on not feeling bad when we lose if we played well.

Interesting perspective from your friend. If he truly feels that way, good for him. I do think downswings are a "challenge" to us. A challenge to play our best when it is the hardest to do so. I think there is a ton of truth to this statement you made: "If we can just focus on the hard work and realize the downswing is where we really shine anyway, we would all be much better poker players." Pretty much sums it up. I think it might not be too realistic for most of us to get to the point where we actually look forward to being tested by a downswing, but we do need to get to the point where we are really motivated to shine during them.

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awesome post, awesome tread

took me half a bottle of wine to read it, but now i feel really really good

Wow thanks for bumping this thread I missed it the first time around. Amazing post OP, about 2 hours ago I dropped like 2 buyins on sick beats, then proceeded to drop another 3 on super tilt. This was the perfect read at the perfect time. +EV and + life EV reading this.

You did´nt read the Oct digest

I Rusty

bumpy bumpy bump bump