2011, Life, Poker and All That Jazz

Well, it's a new year and I wanted some place to put my thoughts about a bunch of stuff I mean... That's what the internet is for right? So without further ado....

Warning: many of my posts may be long and opinionated rambling so if you want poker specific content it may not always be there but if it is I will put it at the end of every post so you can skip the rest if you want.

New Years Reflection.

It's always at the end of a year that I realize how interesting a concept time is. The year of 2010 seemed to go by extremely quickly and yet also dragged on forever. It reminds me that so many things and so many changes can be made in such a short time and that living in the moment is an extremely important concept to grasp. The fact is, there is a massive amount that you cannot control about the world and in the end – all we really can control is how we carry ourselves. Over the last few of years I have been in a constant struggle to find my own center and this has proved quite difficult when trying to balance the stresses of moving away from home, meeting new people at a new school, and feeling generally out of place for the first time in my life. I have always been a very optimistic person and so I treated these issues as just another character strengthening challenge that would not pose much of a problem in the long run.

However, I seem to have begun to ignore my upbringing to some extent and have noticeably fallen away from the carefree and happy high school kid I used to be. I now wake up almost every day with a slight sinking feeling of just how much I want to do and how I don't have both the time or the money to do everything. Even when I prioritize my dreams there are constant obstacles and for me failure is the absolute hardest thing to deal with. I'll admit that there are those days when I just wonder exactly what the point of doing anything is in our crazy world with billions of people filled with conflicting views and terrorized by war, sickness, poverty, and just a general lack of empathy for others. There's no denying it, the world we live in can be an extremely depressing place.

This is not to say that it is all bad! I have made a large amount of progress in examining myself over the last 6 months as I edge closer and closer to the end of my college career. I have built and maintained some incredible relationships with people and though at times my personal emotional state may be completely haywire I have begun to finally accept that I have a long way to go. I have begun to appreciate everyone that I meet much more and think that I may be at least somewhat coming out of my lone-wolf, me-against-the-world mentality. While I do feel that, at the end of the day, I am the only one I can truly depend on there is hope and benefit for us all when we band together. I have a new perspective on the importance of friends and family in my life especially after losing my physical roots in my hometown in Iowa and for that I am truly grateful.

Life is a very interesting thing and I have gained a new respect for the changes that inevitably come. I have always liked being in control and though I often have a laid back approach to things I still tend to ensure that I have my hands firmly on the reigns. It has become exceedingly clear to me this year in particular that these reigns are really just a fallacy. In the end life is going to happen as it happens and no amount of fighting to control most events is going to change the way that they come at you. What you do have control over is the way that you experience these events and learn from them. You can in this way gain the control of perspective and turn most bad situations into highly important learning ones.

It is weird and kind of cathartic for me to be writing this because I still am at a place emotionally where I am trying to fight for control despite having the mental understanding that I won't ever win my way. It does however, bring goals forward which I think are one of the more important things for those who want to see progress in their life. Working towards goals tends to give us purpose and purpose is a feeling that a lot of us lose at some point during our life. Purpose inspires us with the drive to work for something that we can control or at least guide our life's flow towards. I think that it is within finding a purpose that we are able to not only be happy and change ourselves but also facilitate change on a much more global scale. Once we are grounded in our own purpose it becomes much more easy to reach out to others and expand our purpose and their purpose and in doing so build a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship.

Alright so now I am rambling quite a bit so let's get down to business and find that purpose that I felt like I had lost for a while.

Goals for 2011:

1) Become financially more stable and able to not only support myself but also begin to pay off student loans and give back to my parents and friends, as well as giving me more freedom.
2) Continue to work towards my dreams and aspirations of what I want to do with my life without the fear or failure holding me back.
3) Also continue to examine myself and gain a better understanding of why I have become the person I am now and how to accept me for me without being so judgmental and hard.
4) Volunteer a large portion of my own time towards helping others – whether this be through charity work, being there for a friend, or educating myself about global issues that need to improve.
5) Graduate school and being “real-life”.
6) Meet and build new relationships with as many people as possible and always being willing to respect and help others.
7) Stay optimistic and ride along with the swingy nature of life instead of being pulled uncontrollably by it.
8) End the year satisfied with myself and my progress in all areas, whether this means attaining goals, working towards them, or revising them to better fit my abilities and time.

Poker Specific Goals:

1) Continue to adapt to the game and work towards crushing higher levels and better competition.
2) Continue to reign in my tilt as I have over the last month so that only my work ethic holds me back and not my money burning temper.
3) Hit 100NL at some point during 2011 and possibly use this as a platform to shoot for SuperNova status on PokerStars.
4) Become comfortable with playing for more and more money while also being able to withdraw finances without it affecting my play.
5) Play more live and go to Vegas for the WSOP regardless of whether I decide to play any events or not.
6) Profit financially, mentally and emotionally while keeping poker from controlling these areas of my life as it has some times.


Sorry for this being super long and probably sort of boring and whiny at times. I plan to continue to blog my thoughts on not only poker but also personal development as I think the two can be quite closely related and I also just like to talk about that stuff haha. I hope that those who do read my entire posts can gain something from them and I welcome comments and discussion of anything that I write about.

Good luck and much love to all in 2011.

DC

LOL, I wrote this whole post on how failure and control are both good things but I failed to control the situation by not logging into ftr and erased it.

Cliffs:

Failure is good coz we learn more from it than if we succeed on the first try.

Control is the difference between followers and leaders, even tho we can never truely control a given situation.

Failure and control are 2 sides of the same coin, the trick is to not let failure have a negative impact on our emotions so we can regain what control we do have.

Good luck with your goals for the new year.

Peace.

Good luck DC!

Week 1 of the new year is in the books. Stuff that happened:

Moved back to college and started classes.
Played 11K hands at 7.2BB/100 for a solid hourly which continues to legitimize me not getting some stupid minimum wage job (yay for that!) Sustainable? We will see.
I have gotten on a pretty good schedule balancing working out, grinding, class and social time.

I have gotten myself into a pretty good place mentally and don't see any reason why I can't have a hugely profitable month. The biggest change for me has been learning to control my tilt (duh) and I have become somewhat of a control freak about making sure that I am doing everything I can to keep it that way. I know tilt is a huge issue for many players so I figured I'd write a mini-guide on tilt control (possibly I'll post that at the end of the next week.)

Also, because music is awesome and helps to put me in a good mood to grind I figured I'd start posting a few of my favorite tracks every week for you all to enjoy.

Track 1
YouTube - Flux Pavillion - Digital Controller

you seem to really be moving forward.

keep it up man

Tilt and Drift Are the Same Thing

Well after losing my entire month's profit in the last 3000 hands I feel that it's time to reflect again and to post a realization I had today.

For poker players arrogance is kind of necessary because you have to believe that your assessment of ranges and reads is correct if you want to play confidently and aggressively. However, it is possible to drift away from this positive arrogance into the negative kind. This is primarily the reason for my downswing. I admitted to myself that I was running extremely well when I was crushing but I was also playing very well.

Since then I started to autopilot because I was confident that I was amazingly better than everyone at 25NL. While that may be true, the only reason that I believe I am better than 99% of the people at this stake is because I was applying myself to every hand. I was playing ranges correctly and paying attention to every hand played while taking notes, color coding players, and legitimately outplaying people. This doesn't happen when you are only paying attention to 50% of what is going on and once your run good runs out so does your ability to beat the games with 50% focus. This drift is essentially the same thing as tilting because it makes you play less than your A or B games and often then leads to tilting because of the frustration of no longer winning.

The sad fact is, that I realized what I was doing this entire time but I continued to keep the TV on and stopped respecting poker as a job/competition. I became an egotisitcal donk just like everyone that I have been sucking money from up til this point. Just because I have a better control on my anger tilt during sessions doesn't mean that I can start taking the game lightly.

I am going to implement a rule that I am no longer allowed to be doing anything except listening to music while playing. No TV, no chatting, nothing. If I am ever to look at poker as more than just a hobby I need to treat is like it's a real job -- because it is.

Need some happy music after that session :P
YouTube - Katy Perry - Teenage Dream (Kaskade Club Remix)

Sounds like another big step forward to me which makes the unfortunate down swing not totally a loss! I think what you describe is pretty common with many of us who haven't developed the mental discipline at the tables. I know for me when I am playing my A game I seem to go through a list of questions in my head before making a move. Once I start really doing well that process seems to go away and as you say auto-pilot takes over. Then I also start getting "tricky" cuz well I'm crushing these donks etc.
I am now trying to continually ask myself is this what has made me successful up to this point? If the answer is no then I ask myself "Do I have a legitimate reason for making this move which is outside of what has been working. I then need to justify making the move, ie I have a read etc. If not then I shouldn't do it. Of course I've not mastered this but I am trying.

Keep up the hard work!

Proud of you! Even though I hear all your epiphanies on a daily basis its great to read your thoughts on how far you've come. You are def on the right track... Keep climbing!