Really excited for this.  We both started blogs on here at the same time.  They're very similar and very different all at the same time.  We can both push each other to improve, get better and enjoy the game more. Good luck! 

Alright I brainstormed some ideas together. First of all, I won't be playing any poker at all right now. I played roughly 300.000 hands this year, I think it is best to analyze my database. I bought Leakbuster years ago but never used it (obviously a really intelligent thing to do), so my idea was to learn how this tool works and then make the best of it.

Another thing I want to do is create a powerful HUD. Again, I bought Notecaddy last year, I even upgraded to Notecaddy Edge but I never used it because it was so overwhelmingly complicated. That obviously does not make me a better player, but it gives me more accurate information and in todays games probably 80% of the regulars are ahead of me in this regard anyways.

I'm still not sure what to do on weekends. My gut instinc is to lock myself up at home, turn off my phone and just don't go out. Yeah it sort of sucks a lot, but I feel like this is the only way. Me going out usually ends in me going out Thursday, Friday and obviously Saturday. Basically I'm destroyed till Sunday evening and I will not deliver good results. It's not that I would not work, it's that the quality of my work that is not sufficient enough. Also, I think I reached a point where I really should lock myself up and stop going out, at least until I made significant progress on my mental and tactical game. I just can't take it anymore. The status quo is driving me nuts.

I've always been a very maniacal person when it comes to how to do things. I really never understood and learned how to make it work with middleways. My thinking is either very black or very white. Obviously I understand that life has many more shades and is mostly greyish, but I keep failing continiously when trying to apply this concept for myself. Thankfully I made some progress in this area (believe it or not, I used to be even worse), but I do not expect myself to solve it all in one day. With that being said, to me it looks like, I either go out and spend 200-300 bucks in cocktails or I stay home and work on my career.

As for the passion and excitement about the game... well what can I say. I'm basically online here on RIO 18 hours a day and for no reason I'm totally amped up. I think I would describe myself as being happy. For the first time in a very long time I woke up this noon and I actually wanted to wake up. I had all those ideas of what I could do ect. It felt great. I will think a little bit about why that is and what actually makes me feel this way. Another thing I definitely want to do is figure out the patterns and clues when I was succeeding in the immediate past. I can remember very clearly that last year in May, in October and this year in Feburary I was really happy with my overall mental state, with how much volume I put in and how I felt overall.

I'm not sure how you can just conjure up love for the game when you seem to hate it and everything that goes with it. In 2014 if you don't enjoy working on your game at least a little you're not going to do very well. It takes a lot of work to be good now, even to beat SSNL. Less and less people are just punting buy ins (though plenty still do) and even the worst players have a general idea of what's going on. Enjoying the game isn't about winning or losing, it's about the process. 

You say you're willing to put in the time to improve, but what good is that if you hate what you're doing? What motivates you to improve? Is it to prove people wrong? I'm not sure that's enough to get you by. It just seems to me if poker makes you miserable than you need to leave it in the past. Nobody is going to think you failed. Sometimes we all have to move on. Is having to tell someone you failed a bigger deal than your happiness? There are plenty of jobs you could go get and be miserable at that guarantee a paycheck and don't require near the time poker does. You may even find something you enjoy..

Don't take my post as being negative, because I really hope you do improve and turn things around, but after reading your initial post it just doesn't seem to me you're in the right mindset to do so. Enjoying the game has to come first before you'll ever be able to improve enough to really make a difference. 

How are you going to force yourself to put in 20 hours of studying and working on your game a week if you hate doing it? What's going to happen when you do put in the time it takes and you still lose, be it variance or lack of skill, or some mental leak? From the outside looking in it seems like winning is the only thing that will bring back enjoyment for you and it has to be the other way around. Maybe it would be best for you to take an extended break and really figure out what it is you want out of poker and what it is you enjoy about it. Right now you're in a loveless relationship, separate and figure out how to get the passion back.

I wish you the best of luck on your journey and hope you don't take my post the wrong way. I pray you find happiness in whatever you choose to do because in life that's all you really have.

Poker and life can be a tough balancing act. If I read your post right you're either "all in" with poker or you're "all in" with living. Is that a fair assessment? Do you have any sort of schedule? I had some similar issues and I had to just decide that on Tuesday for example I wouldn't do anything poker related at all. It was tough at first, but eventually on my planned days off I didn't even think about the game once. The freedom poker provides is one of the biggest draws yet we all become slaves to the game to an extent. Having a plan and set days to play/study and to social things helped me get over the burnt out feeling. I started getting more out of less days playing than I did before when I was playing more. I just had to realize it wasn't about the hours you put in, but the quality of them.

Very good thread. Subscribing and hoping that you get back to love poker, which is the only thing that will make you get back to your stakes. Doesn't matter how hard you are willing to work, if you don't love what you do, you will never make it consistently. 

GL!

I can recommend learning a new game. Coming from midstakes MTTs and learning PLO cash the last couple of months have really given me back the love of poker. You can probably start at PLO50 and be a winner immediately. Plenty of RIO-videos to choose from and strong support in the forums :-)

Alright I made a decision how to approach June. Learning and enjoying poker are my priorities, but I also like to get in a little bit of volume:

Until Thursday I will keep on working with leakbuster to work some more on my leaks. Fridays and Saturdays I will take off.

Starting from Sunday until Thursday I will put in each day four sessions, one 4-tabling session à 400 hands, one 10-tabling session à 1.000 hands, and two 6-tabling sessions à 700 hands. I'll be playing ~2.800 hands a day, ~14.000 hands a week and ~56.000 hands total in June. I should be playing ~5 hours of poker daily, plenty of time to review hands and work away from the tables.

Okay, today was a little bit harder than expected, lost motivation at times but kept going. It sounds counterintiutive, but I struggle because there are so many resources (Flopzilla, CREV, books, LB, Notecaddy, simple HH review, poker coaching sites, video series, ect). I'm confused as to where to begin and on what to focus on.

Reviewed a 10+ hands with LB and that alone took me 3h+. That was one filter and I have 300+ hands to go through haha. I'm not entirely sure how to find patterns to my leaks, it's a little bit overwhelming. I took lots of breaks today and mixed it up with reading. Bought Applications of No-Limit Holdem and I think it's a great book, but I got confused after two hours or so, unsure how I will turn this into practice.

Tomorrow I'll try to focus solely on leakbuster and if it's necessarly solely on one single filter. I'll try to make this as much fun as possible :), not sure how I'm going about this but that is the goal. Another thing I maybe want to do is list all the resources I have and clearly set priorities. I'd like to do a million things at once and I'm excited for all of these things, but I must set them in an order of priority, otherwise my head explodes soon.

I'll end this short update with a picture of how to lose money at NLHE =). I've always known that I'm a station, but I have no idea how I manage to lose that much money with TPs when instead I should be printing money. Well, good for me that I found something to work on. These are going to be fun days haha.

Not sure if I can x post from another forum, but here is a very good read that I think you'll find helpful. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/185/heads-up-sng/poobah-post-you-suck-poker-671391/

These last two days have been really tough. I struggled a ton. Woke up yesterday as always at noon, eat lunch and then started analyzing my database. This is such an overwhelming and depressing task, it was really hard to stay focused. I rewarded myself continuously for making progress, but it was damn hard. Looking at hands you played one, two or three months ago and
not even understanding what is wrong with them. Sure, I called down three fucking streets with TP and was beat, but where the fuck would I fold? I tried to make it fun. That task was sickening and difficult as well. How the hell am I supposed to make it fun? I tried to listen to music, but that would distract me too much.

In the past few years I got heavily into self-help, I had roughly 40 sessions with Jared Tendler, roughly 20 session with Bill Baker, a master coach from Tony Robbins Coaching. Over the years I amassed a boatload of audio recordings and books. Much of this material I studied in depth. I read books ten times and listened to various audio recordings about a billion times. I know this fucking shit, yet most of the time I cannot produce the results. I know what is driving me, I know why I do something and most of the time I even know what I'm going to do. It's all just a pattern.

that? Posted a few hands here in the forums and sort of felt bad, did not really wanted to spew so many hands in. Also, many seem so dumb that I even don't know if I should post them at all.

Let me try to explain this to you, here are my resources at hand:

Ah, and I forgot to mention, I got to play poker too -_-. I'm not even listing all the books I bought in
the last three months what fall under the category of mental health, self help etc.

I would call it amazing that I kept going. For the vast majority of you guys this seems obviously
exaggerated, but now I'm happy. I used to quit very often in the past in the face of adversity and this would be one of these situations. Somehow I kept on going. Eat dinner at my grandparents and after that went out for a beer. Obviously, one beer turned into three beers. Interestingly enough, going home was not even all that difficult, but getting myself to do something when I got home was horror. It took me almost two hours to start reviewing hands again and I had to take a nap because I felt so tired and lazy. At one point I did not know what to look for anymore in my database, I mean cmoan, I got it, I suck with TP. Now let my try to fix that. So I played a 30 minute session, exclusively focusing on pots where I have TP. Turns out you don't really have TP all that often -_-.

Anyhow, went to bet roughly 4.30ish in the morning and was somewhat disappointed and frustrated. What I was focusing on was the fact that I struggle so much. The fact that I had to reward myself all the time and the fact that I drank three beer. I focused on eating too much and then I focused that I'm never going to have a sixpack if I keep eating bullshit all the time life sucks. Obviously, bad focus -> bad physiology -> bad emotions. Bad emotions -> seeking for simple certainty. Certainty -> eating. It's a vicious cycle. Thankfully I went to bed.

Today I woke up feeling really badly. Haven't slept good at all. Lunch and after I simply could not get
myself to take action. Took a nap and things got a little bit better. Not much though. At one point I exploded. I was furious that I would not control me state. I was really pissed off. I mean I know all this fucking shit, why on §$%”§$ do I keep bashing my head against the wall?! Finally, at one point I started doing some incantations. Essentially, those are affirmations that you drill into your body
with emotion. It's not just that you say “I love working on my game”, it's that you use your entire body. You create the certainty of a true statement and you repeat this over and over again.

This was the last hand of the session of course and I just could not fold. Villain ended up showing me 65 and I was served. Good thing that after that I went rock climbing and had some fun with friends.

started a session. I figured that I really should just focus on getting better when I hold TP, so I wanted to play some hands. I'm two tabling 100NL zoom, netting roughly 400 hands an hour. It's
unbelievable boring but whatever. Shortly after midnight I was to do about something really stupid. I noticed that I was actually quite exhausted (running 6mi Monday, rock-climbing Tuesday, running 7mi
Wednesday, rock-climbing today) so I decided to take a break. I don't know why, but I decided to visit a friend at his bar. He owns the best cocktail bar in town and Thursday is always live music. On
half way I realized how dumb this actually was, there is like 0% chance I'm getting home sober so I turned around and got home. To be totally honest, that was not the reason why I turned around. I unconsciously changed my submodalities. Submodalities is a NLP term and they describe a experience. I changed mine and I made it look worse. I saw myself going out, none of my
friends being with me and not really lots of girls. Now it felt totally dumb going out. I turned around. I'm totally aware that I simply ran good. How does something like this happen? It's intangible
compentece (check out Jared Tendlers TMGP2). In that case I knew that I actually had no intrest in drinking or going out, but I was obviously not aware of that. For me it was automatic, I did not
realize for a second that it actually was a dumb idea to not go out. Thankfully my unconscious broke my unconscious pattern. Then played some more, got soul crushed some more and yeah, here I am.

Hopefully I'll be in a better mood when I come back Sunday. For those who made it to the end, thanks for reading this. Good night fellas

HI,

i have the same issues as you, with the difference, that i stuck at the micros. What keeps me to continue?? I love the game, and i changed a lot of things. At first, i am in a actor group. IT´s a lot of fun, and it helps me to think about other things than poker the hole week! The other thing is, that meanwhile, i don´t give a shit, which limit i play. I play poker, and thats it. And the most important factor is, that i don´t care how much i won or lost. I care now about playertypes, boardtextures, ranges and frequences.The Hand in your post: I would 4bet/fold this Hand as a bluff. If he shoves instanly, i would tighten up my raisingrange, and loosen up my get it in range: 77+AQ+. KTs is a hand, that i would call, but not KTo. Did you make a note of that guy?? The next time, you can call AJ-A9, A5s-A2s, and raise A high boards for value. Against this guy you have to bet and raise for value. Just my thoughts, how to think about counterstrategies.

What i´ve done sometimes, is to find spots, where i can fold. IT´s a good feeling, and you are going to learn again, where that foldbutton is! I think you have to bring your game to a solid ABC Game again, to feel comfortable again. That means, no hit, no bet or call, or if Villain 3barrels, than a TP is not good any more, and things like that. It sounds maybe stupid and funny, but i think, you have lost the hole picture of the game. And the most important puzzle of this picture is patience, that relates to everything: Waiting for good spots with the right oponents and practice and studiing!! So, don´t be so hard with you! You play NL100, come on man, i play NL10 :-D ! I am the since 2 Years, because i hadn´t one thing, and that is patience. But i am working on that issue.

Sorry for my bad english, but it´s no my native language-

So GL and don´t be a pussy! You have to do, what a Man has to do :-D

Thanks for encouraging me. Why is it that you love the game? What about it excites you? I read it a lot that people say they love the game, yet I'm not sure to what they are refering to. Maybe understanding what makes other people love it could benefet me as well

Do you consider having a routine for your working days ? 

Of course staying a long period of time reviewing hands is boring, but if you have a schedule which you balance your play/study it gets easier. I know that poker players don't want a routine but if you are not very disciplined (dunno if is really your case) it is a starting point. 

I have been all over place in my 22 years. Played indoor soccer for a while in one good youth club (brazil in da house), basketball in the best state team, worked in the financial sector, studied computer science and worked with machine learning, as a teaching assistant in economics, graduated in it, started my master degree in a great university this year.

I have never been so challenged in my mind as I have at the poker table. I don't have many hands played as most of you guys but I just can't stop looking into the forums, videos, articles, books. I love to learn and poker is where I found myself more challenged to learn, since none problem at poker has a right way to think or a right way to solve. I have been into deep mathematical studies in my life and even the best fit I can find from mathematics of decision to poker is not enough to make the game look easy. 

I love how the game challenges myself on thinking. That is it :D

No, I don't have a schedule. My plan is to to something poker related every time I have time. I may take up to 3 hours of freetime a day and I can plan them how I want to and I can be flexible. I do not cound sports as freetime, that's just general health and something I want to do.

I'm not really sure if a schedule is something for me. I trired to use them in the past but I ended up making them so rigid that I after a couple of days I had to quit them. Or I would make them sort of okay, but then felt bad because I achieved so little. The way I have it right now I often work up to 12 hours a day. It's hard to schedule 12 hours in advance (at least for me). It immediately creates pressure and I want to free myself from this burden.

I could try to make a schedule for next week and see how that goes. And if I want to add in work in my freetime I'm free to do so. Mhmm, not sure thought. I really would like to use all of my time for poker. I wouldn't want to start watching TV or doing random crap just because "I already worked my hours". I want to go the extra mile.

I love to learn too, especially psychology. I really enjoy it. I read tons of books and I admire the people who continiously produce outstanding results. Those who peak perform most of the time and are simply exceptional human beings. I want to be so badly one of these badasses but I struggle with the simplest of tasks. I often can't myself get to do something as simple as playing poker. It sucks.

Generally speaking, I love thinking about poker hands. It's challenging and fun. But then I'm ruining it somehow and it gets painful.

Today I'm running quite good. Despite being my free day I actually wanted to do something. No procrastinating, no excuses, nothing. Started to read Expert HU NLHE and I'm really excited about this. After that I reviewed some hands and the past two hours I've been online here on RIO. I actually even enjoy what I'm doing and I'm having fun. Time flew by the past two hours like it was nothing. This is how I want it to be all the time... To me it seems like that when I set myself a goal I immediately don't want to do it anymore because I have to do something toward. When I do not set it as a goal, but rather when I like to do it I just do it. Meeh.

You sound like someone with an addictive personality or potentially a low impact manic-depressive.  Have you ever seen a psychiatrist? (note: NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST!  AND CERTAINLY NOT ONE OF THESE SELF PROCLAIMED MENTAL HEALTH GURUS!!!) 

A psychiatrist is a physician that is actually medically trained to analyze and treat mental health problems.  Much of your issues concerning emotional instability, lack of focus, and depression could be due to relatively common mental health issues.  The diagnosis and treatment of such issues needs to be done by a trained and competent doctor.  Not by you or someone on a forum.  

You also might want to consider quitting poker at least for a period of time as it certainly doesn't seem to be improving your quality of life.  Playing while you're trying to figure out how to maximize your quality of life for the future seems like a minus ev plan.

Scheduling your time will help with a lot of this. On days I play it goes something like this.

-Wake up, shower, breakfast, coffee, the norm (usually around 10-11 AM)

-Go over some hands from the last session I played, may be for 30 minutes, may be for 2 hours. 

-If it was a short review put on a training video or read some articles for 30 minutes to an hour, I also start sitting tables towards the end.

-Play 2-3 hours, sometimes 4-5 if I'm feeling good and playing good. Force myself to at least 2 no matter what.

-Go run and/ or work out, shower, make dinner and then catch up with friends or family and get some errands done. Just do SOMETHING non poker related for a little bit.

-Start my evening session around 8-9 PM depending on when I finish the previous stuff and grind for 3-4 hours. If things are going bad and I'm not feeling good about playing I cut the session short and spend the last hour or two reviewing my play.

-Smoke lots of weed and go to bed

When I started having a pretty precise (though everything is loosely schedule) routine it helped me immensely. The hours I was putting in were much more efficient and I didn't feel the burn out I did before. Nobody can sit through 5 hours of reviewing hands and enjoy it on a regular basis. Break it up into short stints. You don't have to do the same things everyday, but have a plan for what you're doing.

"And god all those idiots who would ask me every single year if you still play poker for a living hoping that you had quit, I simply cannot grant them this satisfaction of me "failing". "

I'd really try to use this for motivation

This post is really great. 

Or I've also seen people say that because they are in the middle of a
downswing they need to take some time off. Yeah, I'm sure that not
working is the solution to your problems.What you really need to do is
toughen up and continue to put in the hours.

I see it like this, I'm not going to take time off because I'm tilted with poker. I don't need a vacation. I've been on "vacation" for my entire life.

I've never seen a psychatrist and I don't think I ever will. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying that I might have mental problems. I'm just not big on getting drugged. I rather deal with my problems myself and/or by talking to coaches and psychologists. Also, I really think I'm not manic depressive or have any severe disfunction. I'm just very good in changing my state very quick and I do make things really important. I'm a "believer", I hold myself very often to unbelievably high standards, I very often set goals that are extremly high. I'm an optimist and an idealist. To fail or for things to go wrong is very easy for me and I think this is where I must make progress.

Today was sort of me, really low energy day. Woke up hung over from two days of party. Had a shower and started clicking buttons. Started the day with a cool mindset. I realized that it will take me quite a bit to learn this game, because noone really knows how to learn it and that is where edge is to be gained. It really does not matter how quickly I learn, all that matters is being consistent. It matters that I like it. Pretty happy with the quality of my play and my emotional stability. A few times I was unmotivated and I rather would have watched TV but I kept on going. Had a cool upswing of 11 stacks in just 2k hands.

Going to watch a movie and then to bed. Tomorrow I'll be rock-climbing if the weather is good, so I guess I'm going to put in volume evening and night. Probably going to fail my goal of 2.800 hands again. The fantastic thing is that I'm not tilted or anything. Usually I'd be pretty mad at myself and I'd be beating myself up. Instead I'm thinking for solutions and how to make it better.

Yesterday was sort kind of rough, I paralized myself by asking too many (dumb) questions. Regulary I question the decisions I made and that never really worked out too well for me. I was out rock-climbing till 5pm and then I had friends over for a few beers.

I'm not too particulary happy about that, I actually wanted to start doing something right away. Got in a really bad mood, wanted to go out the evening, however managed to stay home and put in a few hands. I quit at one point what really put me in a bad state. That made everything worse, I drank a few beers and was really upset for that too. Went to bed at 5am after watching a terrible movie.

Today really did not have the energy to get up at all, I hated it. Around 3pm I could not take it anymore and got up. I don't know, but somehow I saw this video here. Felt immediately better. I put on my shoes and went for a 7mi run. Came back really exhausted but happy. Reviewed ~45m hands, then dinner and after that I put in roughly 4 hours of play. I decided that after midnight I'm free. Really happy with how today went considering the state of mind I woke up with.

I'm a little bit ashamed because I really drank way too much Saturday. Probably hit on 50+ girls in conditions that I rather don't elaborate here. Aside from that, the entire weekend cost me millions of course -_-. I'm considering an alcohol abstinence for 4-8 weeks to do something good for my body. I know that I'm mildly addicted to alcohol and that my body has not got much rest lately, so I thought this might be a good time to quit it for a while. 

I'll be updating this at the latest of Friday with a graph of me running hot =). Take care guys

haha no, I don't remember anything. just hearing the stories

Uuuh, I'm inconsitent as usual damn it. It sort of pisses me off a lot that I got to play lots of 2-tabling and 4-tabling zoom. I feel like I'm not making any volume and it's so sickening boring. Yeah I could focus on million other spots but darn! I want specifically focus on spots where I hold TP or OP and actually, these spots are rather rare.

I'm going to change my routine and add a few more hours. I'm still going to play some sessions 2-tabling zoom, some sessions 4-tabling zoom and some sessions I'll simply masstable. At the end, I got to learn to perform under pressure too anyways.

I'm fairly happy with how I played this week with exception of my volume. I was really focused most of the time and I think that is visible in my redline. Obviously ran hotter than the sun, but I really felt like I made some good folds these days.

Tomorrow I guess I'm going to play a little, Saturday is definitely off. I liked playing poker pretty much all the time :-). Next week I'd like to make progress in liking to do handreviews and stuff, this week it was somewhat a pain in the ass. I also like to build up more patience, I sometimes just don't realize that learning takes time and I'm not going to play good just because I know what the problem is. I still got to learn the corrections and they need to be conditioned so that these skills show up under pressure!

Have a nice weekend guys, take care!

A little update:

Tried to play masstable and in hindsight I probably could not have had a dumber idea haha. It's funny how I forget that I actually am not good at this game and I can't handle the additional pressure. I tilt quickly and it also frustrates me that I cannot think decisions through.

This is me masstabling for an hour:

Yeah sure variance and blah, but honestly, I could saved myself likely two stacks in SD value and most likely would not have lost as much NSD if I just 4-table zoom 100NL. Well, after tilting of my head weekend was here, lots of party, lots of rock-climbing. I really enjoyed it. This week I started w/ 4-tabling zoom and reviewing lots of hands and reading on RIO. Mostly enjoyed it until yesterday. I saw this thread and I got really frustrated. I felt helpless and pretty quickly depressed. I have so many similar hands like this where I'm absolutely lost and I have no fucking clue what to do.

As if that was not enough I started drinking and going out. Well, I guess if there is one good thing in all of it, I tried really hard to keep my shit together and I successfully did so for a few more hours. I also came back home before midnight (wohooo, big success haha) and I went to bed pretty quickly. Slept 13 hours because I could not get myself out of bed. All in all, my mental C-Game was much better than it could have been. Not saying I'm happy with yesterday, but given how far I could have fallen this was pretty decent.

Today I wrote down the various flaws and leaks in my mindset and developed a few strategies how to solve those problems. First of all, there are more problematic patterns to it, not just one. It's one thing that I get frustrated and helpless, the other thing that I feel so much pain that I have to escape from it.

So, the first thing I did was to install a warmup for learning where I focus on my mental flaws. I get my mind ready for learning. I inject logic such as "learning take time and I need to be patient", but I also inject some powerful beliefs such as "I will make progress every day". Lastly, I get myself associated that I'm acutally pretty fortunate to have a job such as poker. I do that by asking myself questions such as "how fantastic do I feel that I actually have the opportunity to work on my dreams?" or "how do I feel that I am sitting here, learning a beautiful game, while other have to work 8 hours a day in an office for someone else?".

Then I tried to make myself understand in which part I'm in the learning process of learning how to play poker and enjoy it and truth be told, I'm pretty much consciously incompetent. It's expected that I do not know how to learn and that I feel overwhelmed at times. There is on reason to be tilting when I realize that I actually do not know how.

Also played a little bit today and reviewed some hands. I wasn't in the zone like I was a few days ago, but I'm definitely happy with my performance today!

Here is my graph this month so far. I'm "failing" quite bit in terms of putting in the hours, but realizing that I actually never learned how to put in the hours makes me feel not so bad. Don't get me wrong, this is no excuse, but really, for the person that I'm, it's okay right now. Of course I'd like to change it. Just think of someone lifting weights and he suddenly wants to lift 50% more than he is capable. He will fail miserable. It's similar for me. I cruised through life never doing much at all. Life used to be a breeze for me.

Will update these next few days, have a few other things I'd like to share with you guys :-). Going out for beers now, I'll be watching the first football world champion ship match!

:D

Why did you got frustrated? I actually foldet the hand on the river and I am pretty shure that it wasn´t to bad (maby the best play). I defently feel like you when it comes to making folds at the river.

When I call and they have the nuts I get really tilted, because I feel bad about my game, my performance and feel kind of helpless.

When I fold it is ok, but if I do those folds 3 times in 30 min I get really tilted too, because I think everyone outplays me, owns me, I can´t have an edge in this game bla bla

I guess the most important thing here is to get confidence and work on your mindset. Seems pretty obv. but I defently tilt less in spots where I have more confidence then in others and loosing in both the same amount of money.

A big problem for me is just loosing money without knowing if I did a mistake. But given the ATs hand for example, I feel like that both plays are not huge -EV or huge +EV. So it is probably not a big deal, but without posting the hand I would not get in the situation of knowing this and would feel shit about my play, regardless if I called or foldet.

So what I want to say is, if you work constantly on a spot where you have this problems of feeling helpless/depressed/frustraded etc. you get more confidence and automatically tilt less if you loose money.

And I am pretty shure every pokerplayer who is not crushing the midstakes has this problem ;)

Geep up posting

You honestly sound bi-polar or something. But if you're not willing to let experienced people look into you (psychologist), and yet do the same thing every day expecting different results, then I can only see this cycle perpetuating.

I can't understand why people keep playing if it causes so much grief. It makes even less sense that said people who likely have emotional difficulties keep playing. It's such a cold game, if you're not an extremely level-headed individual I can't see how playing a game like this for a living can be good for your life.

I still hold playing this game for a living as a small dream at the back of my mind. I'm a logical, even tempered person, but in reality I'm stuck two tabling in the micros and have been for a while now. I realise there's a huge world out there to be explored with limitless possibilities, and I will very likely find myself doing some sort of 9-5, steady income job. That will probably mean I'll end up with less money than I could playing as a poker pro, but with greater life EV. 

I hope you don't just gloss over my post, as it wasn't really in line with what everyone else is saying. I'm not trying to put you down, but I think seeing someone pronto about improving your situation is very important.

Peace.

Sorry for the delay these days, I'm not playing much at all, god damn world cup. Also spend quite a bit of time with a nice girl and that's sort of a problem when you want to play nights :-). Add rock-climbing, chilling at pools and BBQs and you have your recipe for playing rarely.

This week I want to be a more consequent than the last week and my goal is to play tons starting from today till Thursday. Thursday probably going out, watch football and get drunk a little. Friday play some more hours and then I'm off.

If I had to guess why I would get frustrated I'd say it's because the status quo drives me nuts. Also, I think it's pretty obvious that I have mindset problems when I don't even know that I beat the games. I mean yeah, I feel like I do but what do I know. There is certainly a little uncertainty there.

Playing poker and learning the game does not cause me grief, very often I like to do that a lot. What causes me grief is when I do not play poker and I fail to live up to my expecations. I get down when I violate my standards and do not meet my goals. I feel like a piece of shit when I drank one more beer then I wanted to. I get pissed off when my energy level is low and I don't perform at my best.

It might be better for me in the short-term to quit poker but I seriously think that's not the issue here. I must learn how to deal with it, otherwise I will never achieve anything meaningful in my life ever and that is certainly not what I want for myself. It just takes me a little bit longer than everybody else, but what the hell.

Anyhow, despite some setbacks I feel like I'm moving in the right direction. I really feel good about my progress, sure far away from ideal but I believe that I will get there. I'm also trying out something new, Paraliminals. Now if until up now someone did not think that I wasn't crazy, this is going to do it for you. Essentially I'm listening to hypnosis recordings to stimulate learning.

A year ago I spend around $700 to $800 for an entire series to what I never listened to. One of my tipical attempts to change something with a quick fix. Anyhow, I got really annoyed after the first time and never really started listening to them until a two weeks ago. I've read an independent article the other day and I decided to give it another shot. I was really sceptical at the beginning (and I still am), but as for right now I like how I feel. I don't want to be to hopeful about this, but I'll continue with this program and I'll keep everyone updated! Worst thing that could potentially happen is that I "waste" 20-30 minutes napping each day and I feel good afterwards :-).

Hey guys,

At the beginning of the summer I knew that this was going to be a summer with lots of alcohol
and parties, but I was sort of hoping that it wouldn't be that extreme. Anyhow, that's the past. I'll be participating in the community starting from now on and updating I want to update this
blog regularly.