How to squeeze some EV out of your sessions

Since improving your performance in general isn't something that's touched on a lot here, I figured I'd throw in a few suggestions on how you can pick up some extra EV out of your sessions in hopes that other people will chime in as well.

1. Take a period of 5-10 minutes to sit and relax without doing anything before your sessions. This collects our focus, and is a useful habit to get into since it can help our performance in all sorts of activities.

2. Every 60-90 minutes or so stand up, stretch and evaluate how you're feeling and how "together" you are mentally. This brings us back into the present moment which is the cure for a lot of blunders that happen at the table.

3. All of your sessions have something in common: they have an end. Work on ending your sessions well, meaning that you don't wait until you're playing bad or feeling tired to stop -- you should quit a little while before either of these things happen to help avoid tilt-related mistakes.

On a more personal level, I find that talking to people while I play allows me to play longer without getting tired and makes me play better since I'm always throwing hands in the mix for immediate feedback. During my sessions I always have #flopturnriver, Skype, Ventrilo, and/or instant messengers going.

I don't applaud you enough, but it's mainly because most of the posts you make these days are complete. There may be more that could be said, but there aren't really any gaps in the points and observations you make.

To put a spin on this I'll say this: Know yourself.

Personally, and probably also because I'm learning, in a long session I go through several phases. First I'm impatient to win money (a form of tilt), which I counter by trying to fold everything and take many notes on people - look up hand histories for my present opponents and try to get some reads. As I relax into a session I tend to go more on autopilot - but after a while in a session things start clicking and I find myself grokking more and making better and better decisions and really getting into the groove of playing - and then one or other type of weariness tilt will gradually set in.

In view of your coverage there are several things wrong with my sessions - how can I swiftly fade into an autopilot mode? That's losing EV early in a session. How can I be gunshy in the first couple of orbits? That's losing EV early in a session. I could go on.

My point is - while your points are very true we all have to recognise where we stand and how we work (being truthful to ourselves) and shape our actions and reactions on that basis to put ourselves in +EV situations. Your notes here are a way of doing it that work particularly well for you, is worth considering for others and... then there's big flashing warning sign over the idea of talking to people. It can help you focus if it's the right people and you discuss the right topics at a pace that allows you to concentrate on poker - wrong people, wrong topic, taking too much of your concentration - and it hurts your EV.

If you are running well in a session is there any cut off for when you should close your tables. i.e. is there a point where you say, I am up X amount of buyins for the session, and then cash out?

I find that when I am up a certain amount, I start feeling too comfortable at the tables and invariably lose some of the money I have made.

Originally Posted by Biglines

If you are running well in a session is there any cut off for when you should close your tables. i.e. is there a point where you say, I am up X amount of buyins for the session, and then cash out?

I find that when I am up a certain amount, I start feeling too comfortable at the tables and invariably lose some of the money I have made.

If you're thinking this much about how much you're up or down then you aren't thinking enough about what you're actually doing. It would definitely be worth working on.

Spoon, your my hero. lol, jk, I just kinda wondered the same thing as big, but your exactly right. Just keep make'n +EV decisions. Got it.

3 is very important yet very hard to do.

If I'm up - I'll just play a little longer to win more.
If I'm down - I'll just play a little longer to get some back.

Neither is really a good place to be, unless the table(s) I'm on are so good I'd be a fool to quit.

Its not so much a case of thinking I have made X amount and then playing badly because of it - its more that you start feeling a bit too confident about your abilities over those of your opponents and so your play starts going downhill.

If we are talking about making +EV decisions and ending your session well, what should you be looking for as early warning signs that you might no longer be making +EV decisions and its time to take a break? (A list of things to look for would be very useful)

Another word for that feeling is invincibility tilt. I'm terribly results oriented and it is something I continue to work on - the basic idea is this:

In a vacuum you sit at a table and try to make the best decisions every time considering everything you know about the table and your opponent. There are two elements to this - the strictly mathematical facts and probabilities of the game and knowing your opponent and knowing how he is prone to act and react. What should not enter into any decision making process is whether you are in pain, enjoyed your lunch, had a fight with a friend or partner, whether you are up or down in your session etc - because then you make decisions based on what you want to happen rather than what is likely to happen. These are now no longer your best decisions.

In terms of catching weariness - like many things at the poker table this is something you catch on review and formulate a plan for which you then carry out in your next session.

When you do your session reviews pay special attention to the later hands played and try to identify the point at which you start making stupid decisions - make a note. Let's call it 100 minutes one day. Next day it may be 80 minutes and the one after that you do well for a solid 3 hours. First off this will teach you how long you can expect to be making solid decisions - then what you do is plan a session of a length that is short enough that you should be making only good decisions - plan in a break after that, but don't just spend the break at the computer looking at the tables waiting to be dealt in again - do some type of activity that is going to recharge your ability to concentrate (such as physical exercise, or meditation if that works for you).

And read some more of Spoon's threads on related topics (work ethics, lengthening sessions without losing focus etc).

Just a quick reference, Aokrongly's "emotional Master part 1" When you get a bad beat you if feel ANY emotional response, take the appropriate steps to bring yourself back to center, but he also says if you feel an overconfidence of any kind, take those same steps. I was thinking about this thread yesterday, when I was up on a couple tables. I left the tables, not because I was up and changed my decision making, but because I was holding about 2.5 times my Buyin, and I don't like having that much at one table. IE-max buy in is 10$, I go in w/ 6$ every time. I leave w/15-20$ because I don't like holding that much(unless I think I can really make more of somebody...) Anyway, That's just my beginner way of doing it right now.

Originally Posted by Biglines

Its not so much a case of thinking I have made X amount and then playing badly because of it - its more that you start feeling a bit too confident about your abilities over those of your opponents and so your play starts going downhill.

If we are talking about making +EV decisions and ending your session well, what should you be looking for as early warning signs that you might no longer be making +EV decisions and its time to take a break? (A list of things to look for would be very useful)

If you're playing good in terms of your ability and you're in a good mindset in terms of your ability, then no emotional responses can be +EV. The reason for this is simple: if you're playing and feeling your best, then you have no where to go but down during a single session. The idea is to take steps before your session to get in that best mindset (like I mentioned in OP) and to make sure you stay in that mindset until the very end of your session. If you start slipping, and can't get back to that mindset, then it's probably best to take a short break and relax and recover.

Two points, Biglines:

1. Strong, confident, aggressive, I'm-up-3-BI play can very easily slip into Hyper-SPEWTARD, agro-in-the-toilet play. Finding that break-point has been the best improvement to my game this month.

2. Solid, aggressive, fold-the-crap poker while on a cooler can very easily turn into weak-tight SPEW. Still searching for that break-point.

Spoon has it right. Mindset is key. The individual poker hands don't look all that different between strong +EV poker and SPEW, imo. It's how those hands fit with table conditions, stacks, position and so forth that really makes us profitable.