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The [spoonitnow strategy] post for August 7 is here. This starts a new series where I'm going to focus on the performance psychology side of things.
http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/t...or-poker-18177
Basically, I'm going to show you all why you suck at life and how to fix it with poker.
I had quite a long think the other day about how I need to improve as a poker player and how to go about it (from one of your old strat posts ldo) and how I had been rushing so much in terms of trying to up my session lengths too much or play too many tables when in reality it was slowing down my progress as a player considerably.
One of the things I don't do, and I think it's a great thing to do and seems so obvious now you've said it, is come up with exercises to practice the mental faults in your game. I look forward to seeing some of the suggestions you give and will hopefully build from a few of them.
As for the homework, I'd say that I need to work on the following areas mostly
1) Routine - I recently realised that I was wasting so much of the day because I was having no routine. So I recently outlined myself a rough routine and have been sticking to it. What I need to do is to make sure that when I deviate from the routine through necessity (like today I have to go Doctors), or going out at the weekend I need to not allow it to ruin my routine. Being aware of this and having thought through it in advance means that when I start thinking bullshit reasons not to I can realise they are bullshit.
2) Tilt - Not so much the get really angry tilt, but the acceptance of reality. I don't do it anywhere near as much as I used to, but there are still points where I start thinking stuff like "ohh I wish I didn't fold that's an awesome flop". I combat this by everytime I realise that I'm thinking something along them lines I just use logic to explain to myself why it's a silly thing to think and that I made the right decision.
3) Concentration - As with anyone I imagine, I need to work on improving both the length of time that I can concentrate for and how strong my actual concentration is. I'm looking forward to what you have to say about this in your future articles, and since I set up my schedule with 3 one hour session spread through the day I have found concentrating much easier.
4) Work Ethic - Quite simply I don't review enough hands. You can know all the theory in the world, but if you aren't reviewing hands in detail you aren't going to be going anywhere fast. There's just no valid reason why I don't review at least two hands a day apart from laziness.
One of the toughest things to deal with regarding the game of poker is the inability to switch off and restart from day one when you aren't happy with your progress.
I agree with this. But I think we have to look at it like a recovery program. We have to admit there's a problem. My problem is/was I'm just not that good. Took me a while to realize this. But that admission alone helped tremendously with the restart. Whether we like to admit or not, many of us are so ego-driven with poker and probably a lot of other things. I am 100% certain that I'm ego-driven in many things in life. But with poker, the ego thing has pretty much left the building. Playing at 2NL is humbling. Relearning everything I thought I knew is humbling. Realizing there's a lot of work to do and a lot of time has been wasted is humbling. So in reference to Spoon's post, I'm hoping the way I've started to think and treat the game of poker trickles down to other parts of my life. Because outside of poker, my procrastination is awful, daily routine is non-existent, and I'm one of the most impatient, egocentric, ill-tempered dudes you'd probably ever meet.Quote:
Originally Posted by rong