4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 3,068
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Gobbatino
I've been thinking a lot about iopq's Impulse Control, Willpower, Ego and the article he based his OP on. It never really sunk in how important these things are, even after reading and re-reading that article, it took weeks of mulling it over for it to start to sink in. The funny part is the article actually says just that, and if it weren't for the sentence saying something around the lines of "in fact, most people that read this article won't do anything about it," I probably would have forgotten it in a day. But it kept nipping back at me and recently I've made some (not nearly enough) changes in day to day life to sort of prove to myself that I have the willpower to do so.
Anyways, I feel those changes reflected in my play style lately. I'm more humble, not letting my ego get the best of me. That was part of my tiltage. Mustering up the willpower to play mathematically correct poker (or as close as I can to it), and finally thinking of my decisions more clearly, taking my time and basing my decision on specific reasons = impulse control. Also been running well, so that helps, too.
Anyways, random blurb + BR update, I cashed in some Ultimate Points for 10$ and had another short but nice session yesterday.
BR: 515$
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I like this post a lot. I think a lot of us go through that stage early on when we're just learning to win. Poker is a decision-making battle, and the guy who uses his brain most effectively wins most often. Emotions, fatigue, booze, anger at wife/girlfriend, distraction by TV - anything that impairs mental sharpness kills our poker decisions. Call it tilt or w/e, controlling it is the most important thing.
After developing the correct mindset at the table, the next step is developing a mindset away from the tables that can handle the grind, day in and day out, upswongs and downswongs, through move-ups, stop-losses and all the hard work studying. This is where Wonderland got hung up, I think, and I've seen tons of guys who were winning overall but quit poker or took huge layoffs. I find it sad, because they're some of the maybe 20% of FTR noobies that actually win something and move up, then they don't find the satisfaction with poker to stick with it long term. The other 80% would give anything to swap places and not be losing. So my advice is start developing a productive poker mindset away from the table, too.
Good luck, tino. See ya at 200nl some day.
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