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The Mental Game of Poker
VBlue:
I played a few MTTs last night - a freeroll I qualify for with an iPops Main Event seat for 1st and other iPops events for 2nd-4th. I also played a small $1k GP I won a couple of weeks ago and have other cashes in and the daily $3k GP and $5k GP.
I uncovered a mental game mistake I made last night and believe that had I heeded some advice, or been alert enough to remember it, I could have made an OK night (from ROI point of view) into a great night from a $ point of view.
I like playing 4 tables as I want to increase volume and I managed this pretty welll all night.
It was when I got to the business end - last 27 in the $5k and took the chip lead and then hung around the top 5 spots. It was close to midnight and 4.5 hours in to my session. Spots started to dry up, hole cards were mainly poor, and aggression was being ramped up by others. I lost focus, started to find some different tunes online I wanted to listen to, engaged in a little chat with a railer on Facebook, and stopped concentrating and allowed some frustration to tilt me a little - I ended up bluffing my stack off in 12th with 22 on a 567 board after villain had check-called the flop and I shoved turn. He had a set of 6s.
I think it was at this point that I needed to do something Jared Tendler calls Injecting Goals - where I took just a minute or two to look again at my Session Goals and my Short Term & Longer Term Goals to refocus me on the game.
Very annoyed with myself as I had my eyes on a nearly $1k payday and ended up nearer $70 returned.
I think I am going to print out some reminders and stick them near my laptop so I can learn from this and try to savalage the situation in future when I feel tired, lose focus, and my concentration wanes.
VBlue:
To revive this thread, I am going to be working on getting through The Mental Game of Poker by the end of June 2013. There is just so much interesting stuff to discuss and there have been some great contributions on this forum so far.
I plan to put in some time every fortnight and work my way through the eight chapters. It is not necessary to read the book chronologically, so I will focus on my own immediate issues.
We did talk in the other thread I started about the Process Model. I may branch of into seperate threads if I feel a particular subject calls for it and use this one to hold the flow together. Depends if people thinks that makes sense or whether I should keep everything here.
I have a blog to finish, called "I Wish" by the end of this week and another coaching session to catch up on. I should be ready to sit down for a couple of hours with TMGOP book again next week.
GL in 2013 all.
VBlue:
Very apt post on this subject. Just a "bonus material" type link - http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/blog/making-new-years-resolutions-stick/
VBlue:
OK - I"m going to have a go at getting this thread to work in the way I set out on Page 1. The difficulty is that there is sooooo much good stuff in each chapter, on each page, that it hard to summarise, but also I do not want to just plagiarise the whole text.
The process I go through when working on things like this in my game is to read the chapter, then go back through it taking notes, and then I work from those notes working concepts into my game. Sounds a little long-winded but it works for me.
Chapter One
Is an Introduction to Mental Game. To sum it up in the most succinct way I can - mental game is much like your poker game. You can work on your deficiencies if you can address what they are and get the right information. Luckily for us, Jared Tendler & Barry Carter are the right information. I will quote two lines from this opening chapter which illustrate this point and an other big message in the opening chapter:
"Tilt, fear, motivation, and confidence do not happen for random, illogical, or irrational reasons. If you think that you simply lack the skill to see how it"s predictable and rational".
"Actions, thoughts, and emotions lead you to play your best or worst." - I will come on to this second message further in the next chapter where we discuss something called The Process Model.
There is a list of Mental Game fish traits - thankfully I don"t do any of these (any more). A classic mistake would be "reading a poker book cover to cover and think you know everything in it". A classic tilt "get frustrated when a bad player plays badly and even educate them as to why they are bad".
There is also a dispelling of myths, which I think many people will have believed at some point, such as "emotions are a problem and need to be blocked out at all times", or "you should always quit if you think you are about to tilt".
The close is a "How To Use This Book". Of course, it takes time to achieve mental game growth so you must work systematically and methodically as I have set out to do ITT. Look at the quick fix smaller issues first so you can make some progress quickly, then work through most cost, most frequent, and those that cause the most emotional turmoil. The most important tip I took was to do what works; we are all different.
I"ll be back in a week or two with the first few pieces of work we can do to improve our mental game:
The Adult Learning Model - how we learn new skills to a competent level
Inchworm - an approach to improving our poker game
The Process Model - the stages we follow pre-game, in-game, and post-game
Of course, anyone who wants to follow this journey should buy the book or get the audio free from Jared"s website will the offer remains.
Please join in now with any comments, queries, or questions.
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