A Truthful Conversation
Posted by Nick Howard
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Awesome video! Great work Nick.
Fuck this was amazing, it's crazy how a discussion about a hand of poker can go so deep.I don't mean to be cheesy or anything but this was truly touching, at least for me. I can also relate, both in a poker sense and in a larger sense.
brilliant
ty for this bryan :D
Poker Life of Flow
Simply awesome.
This video couldnt have come at a better time. Although I don't have this mental leak, I do have one similar that I am sure many others have
In trying to move up I play vastly different against good regs, not in the sense of adjusting to their tendencies, but playing just different through fear of getting beat/concerned they are better
Any advice on how I (and I am sure many others) can get over this?
@ASD...
Stop giving your power away!
Hi Nick
Are you able to expand on this? Several people liked my post so I assume they have similar issues.
I started reading around what you suggested and found the following all from one website, which appeared to be where you were going, is this the case? Is there anything else you can recommend?
We Look Outside vs Inside
We are bombarded with a deluge of information 24/7 and this can make trusting our judgement or decision-making challenging. Ultimately, all the answers we need are inside. This is not to say that on occasion we might need the help of an expert or the feedback from a mentor. But if you ask 5 people whether or not you should start a new business venture, you will get 5 different answers which will only add to your confusion. Enlist the services of a coach to help you find the answers within.
We Don’t Value Ourselves
Women get so many messages that we should be different than we are which can be part of the reason we don’t value ourselves. We also tend to greatly underrate our abilities and our talents. A lack of self-worth not only affects our self-confidence but it can affect what we charge for our products or services or what we get paid in the workplace. It can even affect how our time is valued and how we are treated in relationships.
Attached to the Outcome
When we set goals for ourselves such as becoming the CEO of a major corporation or generating a million dollars of sales in our 3rd year of business, it is definitely useful to put the time, energy and work into achieving those goals. However, if we become so attached to the achievement of those goals we will actually create a lot of fear around not achieving them. And that fear will prevent us from taking the risks that will be necessary to achieve those results.
@ Asd
When I say you're giving your power away, I mean that you're generating fear out of an assessment that they're actually better than you. Playing from that state causes a downward spiral of tilt.
If they actually are better than you, then the best way to reduce fear-tilt would be to become more technically sound, which would then result in less confusion and lead to more confidence. Overall I think progress in this department is a combination of
1) Trusting that you can accurately assess your own skill level at any one stage in your development
2) Being able to quantify your skill relative to your opponent
A lot of that process is about being honest with yourself about your doubts and insecurities. It becomes a balance between doing what it takes to get better at the game, and not tolerating disempowered belief systems in the process. At the end of the day, it's really your own self judgement your fighting against. It is possible to know and accept that certain players at your table are better than you without suffering from victim-tilt caused by the idea that you are "worse". It can help to reinforce that you are on your own journey, improving in the healthiest way that you can. But that requires you to stop comparing yourself in a way that reinforces a sense of unworthiness. It's a decision to look away from that whole paradigm.
I like this topic, feel free to post a followup.
high value content alert^^^
Crazy good stuff guys...Thx hero for sharing
Its often a thing of having several (subconscious) goals ur optimizing towards, that are cutting into each others EV, making ur total strategy EV suffer.
I have this goal of moving up in stakes but simultaneously trying to stay/fly under the radar in terms of tax due to the unclear legal status of poker over here.
It de-incentivizes me from growing my roll in terms of moving up and maximizing money and I guess growth period, cuz (incoming limiting belief:):
More money mo problems yooo. Succes leads to visibility. Visibility leads to legal problems.
Its not completely grabbed from the sky also, I've seen it upclose. I had a buddy of mine get completely fucked for 500k by the taxoffice. I also lost 30k in 24hrs from which I still suffer risk aversion.
I really like what u said:
You cant trick the mind perceiving benefit, it will always go in the direction of where it perceives the most benefit.
Additionally, there usually trade-offs in perceiving benefit:
intermittent reinforcement increases persistence
I guess Nick sums it up for me too:
"What u got is shit bro".
Ps. Thanks for doing this ArizonaBay.
This really resonated with me and got me to take a good look at my negative background dialog.
there is a faint but constant voice in the back of your your mind that can be spewy = '' Ah f**k it gamble!"
or conservative = "No, No stay safe don't lose what we got"
both of which is is my mind short cutting TRUE analysis of the situation.
It remind me of an comment made by Ivey once when asked why he was so good, and he just said:
"I really don't care about the money when playing"
Maybe thats is one of his powers, true disassociation of gain and loss whilst at the felt and just processing to the best of your ability..
You're whole life is a fucking short time decision.
Great stuff man
Thank you very much for this video!
how do you have PT4 data from ignition? I thought that site had no tracking or anything.
It only works if you are in flow.
you can get a hand converter @ acepokersolution.com (im not sure if that URL is 100% but google ace poker solution you will find it)
GL!!
Thank you Nick this was awesome. I feel like I have many of the same self sabotaging traits as this player and it really resonated with me, although I don't think I've ever folded AK pre in a spot like that I think I would give up way too easily in many spots post flop at the end of good (or bad) sessions.
Gold dust... nice
I really appreciated the video, thank you!
Do you take on new students?
The guy you are teaching could really benefit from meditation and being mindful (Nick I am sure you know this.. really commenting for other RIOers).. He is so in his head about what he needs to do long term that it is totally affecting in the moment decision. It's all about being in the moment and making the optimal decision.. And keep repeating and eventually you will be out of the downswing. (Sounds much easier in theory than actual practice)
Thanks for all your content Nick.
hey nick, great video, i suffered this exact mental problem and i found an analogy that explains the core idea of what your saying that helped me a lot.
the road to our goals is seen by many like the climb of a mountain, and sometimes the fear of falling down off the mountain makes us take decisions that keep us at the same elevation point forever which feels more safe from a psychological point of view, because the summit is still closer to us than if we would fall down. this view of one mountain is wrong. the more correct way to see the road to our goals is to see it as a series of mountain peaks in an ascending order (exactly like the graph of a wining poker player) and the road goes up to a summit than in order to reach the next summit we should go down a little because that's how the road of variance is. when we are at one summit and we see the next summit sometimes the road in between is covered in fog (the fog of uncertainty that is) so we are afraid to go down that road because in a vertical sense we get further from the next summit, but in an horizontal sense we get closer because the bottom of the next summit is closer to it than the previous summit even if doesn't feel that way. because of the fog people avoid the road that reaches the next peak because of fear that this road is the wrong way. there is no way of avoiding variance, as there is no way of flying between the mountains, we must walk the ups and downs of the road to success. this view helped me a lot because when you see your next downswing as the road between two mountains you know that you get closer to your goals than if you keep staying breakeven forever.
Wow, nice metaphor!
@Datpkay
You can view my coaching options through my profile
First of all big thanks to the student for agreeing to share this very sensitive material. I think it will help a lot of people.
I've struggled with similar kinds of mental leaks, and when I look inward, what I find is this: alongside the part of my brain concerned with maximizing EV, there is another part concerned with minimizing pain. And the pain-minimizing part is making a calculation that the pain of making an incorrect fold and losing a small pot will be relatively minor and easy to forget or trivialize, whereas the pain of calling and losing a big pot will be much more severe and stay with me for a long time. So it's when that pain-minimizing function wins out over the EV-maximizing function that I make the fold.
cliff:
Nick makes grown man cry
But for real though, you inspire me to do what I always wanted to do.
Thank you
Great video. Thanks a lot to both you and the guy you were coaching for sharing it.
Excellent video, excellent comments. The metaphor of climbing up and down mountain peaks is brilliant.
Please continue with videos along these lines.
Also, incredibly happy to see hand reviews coming from anonymous games on RIO - there is an over abundance of videos and hand reviews featuring decisions made with extensive data on players. I love to see the 'in a vacuum' aka no information spots.. having SOME data, whether or not villian is a rec or a reg, but that's it. Would def appreciate more content along these lines.
How is the student doing right now after 9 months?
9 years where technical knowledge was good enough to win at a high rate, but a mental paradigm held me in place. In the last year I’ve pushed off... this video helps cutting the last strands of the cord. Thanks nick
Thank you
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