Resilence. PLO & The Mental Game
Flow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psyc...)
Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone or locked in, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
Over the last few months I have become more and more interested in the state of flow. Not only in poker, but also in other activities, like swimming, or cooking / preparing food. But especially in poker. While in a state of flow, I feel like I can grind forever and joyously. Bad beats don't bother me, and my decision making is of the highest quality. Flow is really the secret to a happy and successful life.
Google AI describes 'how to get into flow state' thusly :
To get into a flow state, eliminate distractions, set clear goals, and find the right balance between the challenge of the task and your skills. You can also create a pre-flow ritual, focus intently on one task, and practice mindfulness to help your brain prepare and enter the zone.
That sounds right. So I have developed a pre session routine. I make a coffee. I list some goals. I think about poker. I 'rev myself up'. I listen to certain songs. I go over hands, and I think about poker. And I do some affirmations.
Then I play my session.
After the session I do an immediate post session recap. This is an important part of the process, as Tendler explains in Mental Game of Poker 2, because during a session you are uploading a ton of data to your brain, and immediately after you need to process that data. Writing about and thinking about the session are a good way to do that. I also like to go for a post session walk and think about the session and poker again for the purpose of clearing my buffer essentially.
With that in mind, I am going to go over the two sessions I had today. The first was an abortive PLO $25 session. It went fine, sort of. It lasted only 26 minutes or 169 hands. I lost two buyins, both were flips. My play was fine, but I was tired and actually had some micro sleep during my session. I also was not sufficiently 'aroused' (Tendlers term). There is a balance in energy between boredom and over stimulated you have to aim for. Because it was only 6 tables of PLO 4 .10/.25 blinds I was not super excited to be playing. Although I do believe I can enter flow state while doing so or playing even fewer tables, it did not happen in that session. Anyway I quit 26 minutes in. Which isn't a huge problem, because while volume is one of my many poker goals, it is not as high order as playin good. And like I said I was tired, in fact I did fall asleep not long after that while watching Crimson Tide.
Then my last session was much better. It was a very challenging session emotionally. I played almost entireply PLO $50 and PLO6 $50. I dropped 5 buyins right away and pretty much all of them the money went in good.
9 minutes in, I gii with AAQ4 with 73% vs KJ45 on 732 (I have bd nfd he has no other draws).
4 minutes after that, ok this hand I definitely ****ed up on flop:
PL 6 Card Omaha 0.50(BB)
BTN ($75.29) [VPIP: 35.6% | PFR: 16.8% | AGG: 29.2% | Hands: 1971]
SB ($50) [VPIP: 55% | PFR: 35.4% | AGG: 37.1% | Flop Agg: 33.9% | Turn Agg: 45.9% | River Agg: 53.3% | 3Bet: 28.6% | Fold to 3Bet: 11.1% | 4Bet: 0% | Hands: 209]
BB ($151.10) [VPIP: 86.4% | PFR: 16.7% | AGG: 20.1% | Hands: 224]
HJ ($163.94) [VPIP: 29% | PFR: 20.7% | AGG: 29.6% | Hands: 735]
HERO ($61.05) [VPIP: 29.9% | PFR: 16.4% | AGG: 21.4% | Flop Agg: 24.7% | Turn Agg: 22.1% | River Agg: 19.5% | 3Bet: 5% | 4Bet: 10.8% | Hands: 95511]
Dealt to Hero: 7♦ 8♣ 7♣ 8♥ J♦ 9♦
HJ Folds, HERO Raises To $1.75, BTN Folds, SB Raises To $5.75, BB Folds, HERO Calls $4
Hero SPR on Flop: [3.69 effective]
Flop ($12): 5♦ T♣ Q♠
SB Bets $11.40 (Rem. Stack: $32.85), HERO Calls $11.40 (Rem. Stack: $43.90)
Turn ($34.80): 5♦ T♣ Q♠ 9♥
SB Checks, HERO Bets $33.06 (Rem. Stack: $10.84), SB Calls $32.85 (allin)
River ($100.71): 5♦ T♣ Q♠ 9♥ K♦
Spoiler
SB shows: K♥ A♠ J♠ 5♥ A♦ 4♠
SB wins: $98.50
2:1 fav w/ AA nfd in four bet pot vs two pair that fills up
and some flips.
But I held strong and my play didn't suffer and I managed to recover. Unfortunately I did have to quit at the 1 hour mark, but that's fine.
Overall it was a successful session.
Goals / Plans
Move up in limits safely.
Work on my mental game. Monitor my mental game.
Be able to put in more volume without being stuck or without sacrificing the quality of my play.
Develop a daily routine.
Engage in other mental activity.
Limit social media time.
Swim and walk.
Results from last month (top) and this month
2 Replies
pardon me, I meant to post this in personal goals and challenges
yesterday ended up pretty decent.
4300 hands.
$420 rake paid.
$410 table profit.
I track rake since I get 20-25% rakeback.
Today we are off to a good start as one. Just one session in the books, $80 rake, 1:22 minutes, 844 hands and +$133.
definitely not an easy session but i felt my mental game was more or less strong. not the most challenging session either. guess i ran pretty good based on EV adjusted BB/100.
mostly because of this hand.
Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD and Database Software
PL 6 Card Omaha 0.5(BB)
BTN ($138.16) [VPIP: 77.3% | PFR: 31.8% | AGG: 12.5% | Flop Agg: 25% | Turn Agg: 9.1% | River Agg: 0% | 3Bet: 18.2% | Fold to 3Bet: 0% | 4Bet: 0% | Hands: 23]
HERO ($64.33) [VPIP: 33.6% | PFR: 16.6% | AGG: 21% | Flop Agg: 23.8% | Turn Agg: 21.6% | River Agg: 18.9% | 3Bet: 4.8% | 4Bet: 14.5% | Cold Call: 26.4% | Hands: 31605]
BB ($19.88) [VPIP: 62.2% | PFR: 17.6% | AGG: 31.3% | Flop Agg: 37.8% | Turn Agg: 35.4% | River Agg: 30.2% | 3Bet: 8.6% | 4Bet: 11.1% | Cold Call: 57.3% | Hands: 223]
CO ($90.61) [VPIP: 54% | PFR: 30.8% | AGG: 30.8% | Flop Agg: 31.2% | Turn Agg: 35.5% | River Agg: 34.4% | 3Bet: 7.6% | 4Bet: 16.7% | Fold to 4Bet: 0% | Hands: 455]
Dealt to Hero: K♦ 8♥ K♣ J♥ T♠ 9♥
CO Raises To $1.75, BTN Raises To $6, HERO Calls $5.75, BB Calls $5.50, CO Raises To $30, BTN Calls $24, HERO Calls $24, BB Calls $13.88 (allin)
Hero SPR on Flop: [0 effective]
Flop ($109.88): J♠ 9♣ 6♠
HERO Bets $34.33 (allin), CO Raises To $60.61 (allin), BTN Folds
Turn ($204.82): J♠ 9♣ 6♠ Q♥
River ($204.82): J♠ 9♣ 6♠ Q♥ 2♣
Spoiler
BB shows: 5♣ 7♠ Q♣ T♦ 6♣ 9♠
CO shows: J♦ T♣ 2♠ A♠ 3♠ A♦
HERO wins: $176.04
So kind of an interesting hand I guess. We start off with a cold call in the SB, which is a pretty odd play. Our hand is pretty strong, and these are all loose players so I don't mind it. We're not really strong enough to want to four bet. But we can smash some flops pretty hard and we're going to play fine multiway because our hand is so concentrated (only one gap). We face four bet which doesn't really bother us, it isn't ideal but getting odds and our hand isn't really negatively affected by the four bet which is very likely ds aces because we're not playing for flush anyway. on the flop we don't need much at this spr, top two + double gutty is more than enough.
