I would add "take a breath" to the top of each one. Part of the reason for that "fog" is because your brains logic centers are being over ridden by the emotion from the pressure of the situation. You kinda go into lizard brain mode. Taking a deep breath can help this (I read an article talking about the increase in oxygen also helping, but im dubious of that because it takes like 10 to 15 seconds or something for the air in your lungs to get to your brain, but Im not really clear enough on the biology of this to know one way or the other).

I think having a checklist like this is a really good thing tho to help keep you on the path of decision, and sorta provides you some rails to travel down when you mentally arent capable of steering yourself.

kind of a nitpick, but number 4 under betting I dont think is the best way to look at those situations from an EV standpoint, for either bluffing or value betting. Also id switch number 2 and 3, cuz you cant really know if you are bluffing or value betting until youve thought about what his range is. (and obviously its not always one or the other but sometimes both)

agree totally with the deep breath, emotions and lizard brain thing.

when you get emotional, your deep brain activates and your frontal lobes are inhibited, just like if you were getting in a fight with someone.

imagine your reaction if someone snatched that $100 out of your hand ! your brain would want you to react immediately and would activate fight-or-flight processes; the last thing you would do is wait around to make a logical decision while that villain is fleeing with your precious yankee dollars !

this process is the opposite of poker, and the reason why poker is so profitable to those who can condition themselves to minimise or otherwise avoid frontal lobe shutdown. i use humour personally - so long as i can laugh at a situation, my brain keeps working. when i stop laughing, i stop playing.

I'm going to crosslink my poker journal I just started here.  It will be full of shit similar to this thread.   I hope some people will follow along and learn with me.

Getting better at getting better

lolcall

Some additional thoughts from me:

PREFLOP CALLING
#1 How often do I dominate his hand
#2 Will I be able to outplay my opponent effectively enough? 
- how good is my hand for floating, x/r flop light etc.
#3 How well do I know my opponents tendencies? Do I know how to exploit them? 

TIP
To find out how often (approximately) your hand dominates hands from your opponents range you can use (FOR FREE!) ProPokerTools Poker Query Language. 
1. Go to: http://www.propokertools.com/pql 
2. Use following query:

select count(equity(hand1, flop) > 0.5) as decent_equity from game="holdem", hand1="YOUR HAND HERE", range1="OPPONENT'S RANGE HERE"

Example:

select count(equity(hand1, flop) > 0.5) as decent_equity from game="holdem", hand1="TT", range1="22+, Ax2x+, Kx6x, Qx8x, Jx8x, Tx7x, 9x7x, 8x6x, 7x6x, 6x5x, Ay9x, KyTx, QyTx, JyTx"

3. The output will tell you how often you flop more than 50% equity against given range

RAISING PREFLOP
#1 Will he 3bet/5bet light with good frequencies?
#2 Will he dominate your hand often enough to make your raise unprofitable?
- for example to make shoving 100% from button unprofitable, BB needs to call just with premium hands and fold all the rest
- as stack sizes go up domination becomes less important (because implied odds go up)

#3 Will he be making post-flop play difficault for you?

I think the hardest thing to do is to run through all of these things while in game. If your playing 6 tables let's say.  It's not easy to go over all this real quick in your head.  I would even go as far as saying unless you write this down and have it somewhere that you can see it while playing that you won't be able to get the results from this as you would.

I think this is a brilliant idea and one that if used correctly and diligently could be amazing for your game.  I am actually going to try and implement it into my game and post it next to my grinding station.   

Great idea and thanks for the good idea.  Can't wait to try it myself tonight.

Good luck to all.

Wade

For calling in a tough spot I always ask myself what is the best hand I can show up in this spot given how the hand played out and look how my real hand relates to this, aka "top of my range". 

Eg if I could possibly have a nutty type hand and Villain bets but I actually do only have a mediocre bluff catcher I tend to fold. 

On the other side if I NEVER could have the nuts and my best possible hand is lets say TP and I have TPTK I tend to call more. 

For betting I always ask myself whether I could pick up equity on the next card, ideally cards that dont add equity to Villain. 

Thanks everyone for the replies.   I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to getting what I wanted out of this thread.

I definitely think everyone's "checklist" should be different and tweaked to their strengths and weaknesses.  I also think we should all just have a default checklist that we can fall back on when things get tough. 

My revised checklist (1.1) had 2 different lists for both calling and raising but I think it's better if you can narrow it down to a universal list.  This makes it easier to remember and you don't become overwhelmed.  Your super detailed list might look amazing and thorough but it's useless if you can't actually use it or remember it in real time. 

I revised mine quite a bit over the last month.  I added in the R.E.M. process from PNLHE. Let me know what you guys think.  Remember this is tweaked for live poker. 

1.) Take a deep breath & remember you can take your time.

2.) Remove yourself emotionally from the hand. 

3.) What is your opponents range?

4.) What's our equity vs. that range?

5.) Maximize. 

6.) What's my plan for the rest of the hand?

This is a very good topic. Here are my 2cents.

In poker since no spot is the same getting confused is always going to exist. I think for some people their emotion levels spike when they get put in certain marginal situations. Their head gets foggy or their brain races and they may not look at the broad picture and instead be caught up in the wrong details. They end up making a decision and then cursing themselves out 2 minutes later wondering what the hell happened.   As referenced in Tendlers Mental game of poker, with a heightened state of emotions it shuts off higher brain functions that you rely on when making sound poker decisions.

Things that should help:

1)Being confident in your poker game (so you are more confident in decision making process)               2) Working on your mental game (so you are not wasting energy stressing over the wrong variables)    3) Study the spot you got confused...clear up the confusion...so you can cut down on these potential spots.

 I think taking a deep breath and thinking it over and just make sure your mind is at ease and you are thinking about the right things.  If it happens to be live poker, do not be nervous, do not rush the decision and freeze up.  

'OMGomg I've been raised like thirty times this session I am so sick of this expletive' may cross your mind but you need to work on making sure its not part of your decision process.

Good thread, good to work on all those aspects of the game: basically self-management of analytical powers and emotional motions.

I would say that it's easy to get carried away, emotionally speaking, when in the middle of a hand. Having a set routine of what factors you should think of ingame is a good thing. This said, as Panda pointed out, there are times where you focus on the wrong details.

My point is that it's very easy, when stressed for example (big pots, unusual situations, tough sessions), to actually 'think too much', and wrongly so. It happened to me billions of time. Every time my emotions were overwhelming, making my mind go 'blank' (but still hyper-active, which is a weird state: you're processing a lot, but it's like you're running in circle inside, nothing good arises from it).

Now that I'm more experienced and confident in my game, I still think A LOT about the game, but I don't let the thinking go crazy when I play. Rather, when playing, I try to minimize the thinking as much as possible, I approach it as I approach kung fu: empty the mind, shut up the inner agitation, and receive what's out there. It sometimes lead to absolute moments of clairvoyance, and in general to way way less tilt episodes / overloading ingame. Basically the key for me is to let it go, trust my subconscious knowledge, not being too caught up with the fluctuations (of myself, and of the game).

So as I improve I have less and less 'thought process' while playing. It requires a certain amount of confidence and trust, but the results for me are pretty spectacular, both in poker succes and detachment from the fluctuations (therefore, more contentment / happiness as regards to poker).

To get there, the training is the observation of the body-mind, therefore meditation (zazen for me), and martial arts (kung fu).

I like where you are headed with this. I think that everyone would greatly benefit from organizing a check list in some way, shape or form that they can utilize. I think it is definitely very effective live, where you can make good use of the slower pace of the game, whereas online things may be moving at too fast a pace to mentally work through the steps. 

My personal approach in the live setting is to take a breath before each hand is dealt, and begin mentally verbalizing the most important factors that I want to consider before I'm even dealt my cards, and carry that pattern throughout the hand as more and more variables come up. I've noticed that the momentum stays with you throughout the entire hand, and you remain very cognizant of what you should be considering, and it greatly reduces the chance of you getting lost or mentally freezing up. 

It can be as simple just verbalizing to yourself "Two fish are in the blinds, and I have a row of tight/straightforward players to my left, so I can get away with opening a wide range even from EP", and then carry that pattern with every changing action that comes up. 

This also has the benefit of anticipating future action, which should decrease the chance of surprise, leading to mentally freezing up.