Dear RIO,

My name is RG, and I have been a poker player for 3 years now.

I recently picked up the book "The Chimp Paradox" from Steve Peters, it is a book about mind management. It uses the paradox as a way to oversimplify the way the brain works, but gives a way to manage it. It is related to the old emotional thinking (the chimp) vs. rational thinking (the human), but it gives some perspective and a way of dealing with it. 

I have been trying hard to become a non-emotional poker player for some time, to become an analytical machine and supress my emotions. In the book it says you can't overpower your Chimp, your emotional thinking with will-power, as your chimp is five times stronger as you the human. For the sake of possible answers I am just assuming this is all real and true.

Anyways my career has been the following, three years of ups and downs, bad bankroll management, tilt, rake-back grinding the ipoker field, periods of studying and amazing results, followed by overconfidence and grinding my bankroll backwards to breakeven again, only to be saved by bonuses and rakeback. 

Through reading the book I have realized one thing, I am playing poker mainly with the wrong part of my brain (for me), my chimp part, my emotional part, the "limbic" part of the brain. I have developed a chimp with some potential for sure, my gut therefore got amazingly accurate on the NL25/50 zoom for example. The problem is tho, I play really well when running good, but when losing, running break-even, or running terribad to worse my play deteriorates, which makes sense because my chimp's only tools are emotional thinking, and not winning does not produce any positive emotions to thrive on. My chimp is also amazingly comfortable in the victim zone, "I want this so bad, when am I going to catch a break!", blablablablabla.......

Obviously not the most amazing ingredients for the perfect poker player, yet I am a perfectionist who's never satisfied with himself really, but is very good in putting himself down. I often wait for some higher power to let reality kick in, so comfortable is the victim role, ONE DAY I WILL WAKE UP AND BE DIFFERENT, BE PROFESSIONAL!

So the conclusion is my poker player is a chimp, who can beat the game at zoom NL50 for example, but is an emotional rollercoaster and not a very reliable source of income. How did I become such a chimp? Well before I started playing poker I used to play video games, a lot, a lot, and spend so much time behind the pc, that at this point I have developed an amazing skill at killing time hanging in front of the computer, clicking buttons. 

I wish this was the last bad habit, it is not! My life so far also gave me an inner believe that "everything will turn out fine financially anyway", I believe this to the core, but I do not want to, it holds me back from working hard and being disciplined. I have never been rich, nore has my family been, but we have always been just fine, and I have always been just fine, and taken care of by others. 

Ok well thats it for the victim stuff, the history, the emotional blabla, I just wanted to get it out there and start a journal here, become invested in the community, because I am committed to change, need some accountability and YOU GUYS are it!

The goal is to become a professional poker player, who analyzes hands and does not rely on emotion but knows when to seek the help of his chimp gut (because it is amazingly profitable at times). There is only one way of achieving this, and that is by creating a new habit, and not settling for less. From now on, I will analyze poker hands every single day for atleast 10minutes, you gotto start with something achievable right, start small get some small wins in built momentum off I go. I will not settle for getting drawn into grinding it out clicking buttons (even if its quite profitable when I am emotionally stable), I am going to become an analyzing machine, and y'all can witness it, or not obviously.

Alright so it is time to get the blood flowing in the right direction, frontal lobe you are about to receive some oxygen high blood cells, use em well!

Nice to meet y'all!