mental game accountability blog
Hello.
This will be focused solely on the mental/psychological aspect of grinding poker.
The plan for this blog is simple but radical: After every session I play, I post here about how the session was mentally/emotionally, including details of mental blunders or successes.
Why? I'm a poker pro fallen on tough times. I never thought I'd start a blog here, but had the idea that it might help for my mental game. Doing this would constitute accountability, supporting the building of stronger mental game.
Also, sharing it publicly will let it be something I'm consciously proud of and thus won't come to take for granted and then let slide. (That's how it goes in my experience: Once having made sufficient mental game improvements, one becomes less pro-active and it deteriorates, resulting in unexpected tilt and mental regression somewhere down the line.)
I will also share some specific mental aspects I'm grappling with. For example letting go of the need to play hands perfectly, avoiding even the slightest mistake. A need based in paranoia around other regs pouncing on my every weakness. Or: having the courage to play hands the way I want to play them, as opposed to how I think they should be played.
Some more detail:
Recently I've already been focused primarily on the mental side of grinding instead of focusing on exactly how I should play hands - and I think that this is the way forward. I think mental game is really the foundation required to confidently and freely improve ones technical game. And I don't want to be doing something many hours a week that is unpleasant, boring, painful. I want to be able to grind for hours pleasantly, relaxed, without mental and emotional exhaustion afterwards.
My relationship with poker has been patchy. I've gone through phases of very resilient mental game, but also very rough, painful phases and low-points, exploring the meaning of 'rock-bottom'. I've made promises to myself - for example that I will never again let myself feel so bad playing poker - so bad that, rationally, It really makes no sense for me to continue living off poker instead of getting a job. I've broken those promises, which that feels shameful and unsettling. I've gone through a period of a kind of burnout that wrecked my mental game thoroughly, after which I took a break from serious poker for a couple of years. Reluctantly returning to poker after not finding a good alternative income, I've been faced with painful experiences of really not being the player I remember being - missing the sharpness and the intuition that used to be part of what let me be a confident regular at mid-stakes.
So why am I even doing this - why stick with poker? Three months ago I seriously considered entering the job market after a stint of half-heartedly grinding in my local casino hit rock-bottom. Re-evaluatung my life the next day, I found new motivation to once again truly try to be good at online poker. Realising it would mean that I could stay in the very nice but slighty expensive appartment where I live and could have the time for the things I love in my life, especially rock-climbing -going out for a whole day whenever the weather conditions are good. Plus I realised that I'm curious poker would go if I actually did try again. I realised that the fear that I'm washed up, that I should admit that I just don't have what it takes anymore, really isn't based on anything, as I hadn't really tried yet, and of course if I don't really try I can't expect anything more than ****. So why not at least try and see what happens.
So since then it's been a combination of: on the one hand fresh motivation and indeed quite fast progress in how my game feels, and at the same time the impediments of the years emotional baggage and of the stresses of my really quite dire financial situation. I'm living as a poker pro in a western country with a net-worth hovering around €2-3k. That really would have sounded absurd to me in the past - but then again it may be freeing to find that it's possible to do this.
Saturday and sunday I tilted in a way I hadn't tilted in a long time. I feel guilty about how self-destructive I was.
To give you some idea of what I can do and how insecure I feel about poker and my bankroll afterwards, one of the worst hands involved me open-raising to 125bb with A5o, then when called I shoved the remaining 80bb on a random flop. (and got it in with 10% EQ)
medium session of 6tabling yesterday, pleasant, fairly good focus
medium session, 2 hours
mixed bag:
positive: no distractions, not even music, and quite engaged, making a lot of higher intensity decisions
negative: getting jittery/tense, and multitasking is failing to an extreme degree. This in particular is unsettling as I used to be very good at multitasking compared to bad grinders (i.e. not blanking out some action when you have 2+ important spots going on).
But I'm going to try to work on it, maybe with practice I can get the multitasking working again too.
also, maybe noteworthy that on my morning run today body felt somewhat tense/painful, which is unusual - could be related.
very long 2nd session, 2.1k hands in just under 6h,
happy with mental game, improving
medium long session, very good apart from some slight lapses in concentration, especially whilst ending the session. Played 6 instead of 8/9 tables and it seems to be much better for me atm. Surprising, but maybe makes sense.
yes, I'm sure stress plays a part. I'm not really in a position where I can chill rn though.
Cardio like long jogging is unhealthy
Try short high intensity intervall training
Long zone 2 cardio causes heart-hypertrophy
That's why marathon runners die like bodybuilders
Dont eat plants, they are trying to kill you
Oxalates, lektins, Phytin etc etc
Dont eat fruits, it's genetically modified candy
Fructose is poison for the liver, same as alcohol
Just eat ruminant meat, eggs and fish (maybe dairy)
Thank me later
Cardio like long jogging is unhealthy
Try short high intensity intervall training
Long zone 2 cardio causes heart-hypertrophy
That's why marathon runners die like bodybuilders
Dont eat plants, they are trying to kill you
Oxalates, lektins, Phytin etc etc
Dont eat fruits, it's genetically modified candy
Fructose is poison for the liver, same as alcohol
Just eat ruminant meat, eggs and fish (maybe dairy)
Thank me later
Plants, bad. Animals that eat plants, good. Fruits are gmo, bad. Cows, chickens and pigs that have been selectively bred and are by enlarge factory farmed, good. Got it.
Try googling all the words you obviously dont understand, lol.
fairly long session,
fairly happy: again no distractions, fairly good focus, and was able to be OK when a lot of hands went south.
how do i do multi quotes here?
@GetCreative: more like 80BI. I don't think I'd say it's impressive, more like.
@Parasense: I can't say I find any of that remotely reasonable. But I suppose it's nice to have confidence in ones views.
correction: looking through the hands and I actually had a micro-tilt during a rough patch, made a play that should be easily avoidable.
medium-long session,
good, things are going in the right direction: relatively good focus. feeling more comfortable and enjoying play more.
especially the last 2 points are hard to unentangle from technical aspects: as you get better at playing a spot, you feel more comfortable in it and more often play it in a way that is enjoyable because a) it feel right/fitting/elegant and b) you maximise the EV.
medium session, aggravating stretch of everything going wrong. Seems hard to stay detached from results atm. Stayed disciplined this time and quit at some point when I just wasn't enjoying it at all.
1k hands in 2.5h before breakfast, quite good mentally despite a doomswitch stretch, feel fresh afterwards. Maybe pre-breakfast sessions are good.
long session - 2.2k in 5 hours.
success overal. After 3 hours or so I realized I had been slipping into a zombie mode, my body shutting down so that I was missing action, losing attention. At first disheartening and I considered just ending the session, but instead I decided to try to continue. The way I do this is I give myself one more chance: I will continue until I make another focus mistake. And it worked - it brought my mind back into the game, constantly putting in effort to keep track of things, and after 5 minutes or so I was happy with how my focus had improved. From there I allowed a minor mistake every 5-10 minutes, and my focus was good enough. This felt like a significant success considering how finished I was feeling at the lowpoint.
3rd session, medium length, played mainly fine but extreme fatigue set in the moment I decided to blind out, and then I made some big mistakes whilst blinding out... Seems like a leak.
1.5 hour session for leaderboard, bit fatigued from suboptimal sleep schedule, oh well. Next time could plan the day better.
first session of the grind day after morning run - 1.4k hands in 3 hours 20.
overal OK, although feel that my focus was below what it should be, suspect some bad auto-piloting. not sure why, will try to improve that next session.
2nd session, 1.4k in 3 hours. fairly good most of the time, although there were some moments where things were going too fast for me and in at least one of those moments I failed to keep a handle on my decision process and situation suddenly got out of control. I managed not to let it tilt me though, and the session continued well after that.
3rd session, just under 3 hours i think. tired and stiff, felt like i played badly. Didn't tilt or get too unhappy though.
morning session before breakfast, 550 hands in 1:25.
Played much better than yesterday, almost feels how it should - fresher, clearer, more balanced and more creative. And this despite not sleeping as long as I'd like and kind of badly. Maybe the optimum is before breakfast and without going for a run...
played a long session before breakfast, probably too long. on the one hand it looked like I was playing OK, was stable mentally, and wasn't losing too much energy, but on the other hand I just didn't find confidence or rhythm and after breakfast felt exhausted and crashed. Maybe abandoning this grind day.
