Defeating Poker Demons: Ego, Entitlement, and Discipline

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting on the forums - I'm glad to be here.

I decided to start this blog because my girlfriend suggested I keep a "poker journal" to help me track my progress as a player. I was originally just going to do this in a word document on my PC but decided this format would better serve me, as I can combine the cathartic benefits of journaling about my grind with some (hopefully) connection with the poker community and maybe some feedback on some hands as well. I expect this first post to be kind of long, giving some background information and detail about my journey so far, and I'm uncertain about the format of subsequent posts - I guess I'll figure that out as we go.

So, on to the background. I began playing online poker in 2022 during what was honestly a deep depression in my life. I was (and still am) in my mid 20s and was working a very demanding corporate job, and discovered poker when I decided to take a month off work to try to recharge myself after a couple of brutal years of burnout during COVID. In the previous year I had developed an obsession with online chess, a game which really reignited both my desire to be competitive and general love of games. When I noticed a couple of my favorite chess streamers also intermittently streaming poker, I downloaded Ignition casino and decided to give it a try myself. I started as an MTT player, and had almost no idea what I was doing. I quickly learned the very basic concepts of open raise sizes, ranges, and some ICM concepts, but in reality I was purely gambling. Despite my freshness, I managed to reach final tables in several tournaments and within the first two months was up about $5K in MTTs. I don’t attribute any of this success to anything but luck…but at the time I thought I was a poker god.

There were a couple things that came out of my early MTT wins though, both good and bad, with the first being an absolute obsession with the game. I fell in love with poker. It perfectly scratched the competitive itch for me. I pretty much immediately began thinking about how I could replace my corporate grind with a poker grind. Looking back on that time now, I had NO IDEA how unbelievably naive I was in thinking that would be a quick or easy process. I was falling into the trap that I’m sure some of you have experienced as well - positive variance right at the start driving a massive overestimation of natural talent and a massive lack of respect for the game and its intricacies.

This led to the second outcome from my first few months in poker: a massively inflated EGO. Basically, I thought I was the ****. At a time where I was feeling extremely jaded, underappreciated, and demoralized in my career, along with serious loneliness and depression due to moving my entire life across the country for work right before the US shut down for COVID, I latched on to poker as mechanism with which to coddle my insecurities about my future and distaste with my current position in life. If you’re saying to yourself “wow, that sounds really unhealthy”, you would be correct in that assessment.

It didn’t take but for a few more months for me to burn through all of the winnings from my early success and then some. I am lucky in my position to have a stable career and disposable income, but after losing all of my winnings and a couple thousand more at my MTT endeavors, all while completely ignoring any semblance of consistent study, it was clear by the end of 2022 that I needed to either quit playing or try something drastically new. So, I hung up my MTT cap, purchased a GTO Wizard subscription, and started grinding micros. The beginning of 2023 consisted of study and 25NL 6max tables on Ignition, pretty much any time I wasn’t working. I consumed some of Pete Clark’s materials, did the Run It Once “From the Ground Up” course, and basically learned to play a very tight, fit or fold style that worked pretty well at 25NL on Ignition. I wasn’t a massive winner but I was winning and truly felt like I was improving and starting to understand the game.

About halfway through 2023, I decided to try to move up to 50NL and hire a coach, in an attempt to move up in stakes and further my understanding of the game. As soon as I moved up to 50NL and started working a couple times a month with the coach, I went on another massive upswing of positive variance. I ended 2023 up about $4K total at 25 and 50NL, but more than $2K of that was over EV. Below are my 2023 results at 50 NL.

Despite my success in 2023, I still have a variety of poker demons, namely Ego, Lack of Focus, and Entitlement. At the end of 23, I decided to shot take 100NL, at the same time that the positive variance came to an end. Through December of 23, and January and February of 24, I lost 20 buy-ins at 100NL and another 25 buy-ins after deciding to move back down to 50NL. I was continuing to work with my coach and study regularly, but kept running into the same problems: when I wasn’t running well, I could not lay down hands. I felt SO entitled to win. After all, I was studying, paying for coaching, and was passionate about the game, right? I deserved to win, right? Well, you all know the real answer to those questions, and I’m sure plenty of you understand how destructive those feelings can be.

I’ve realized over the last 4-5 months that losing is extremely difficult for me emotionally. It is not unusual for me to call down when my entire being is SCREAMING at me to fold, just because I had a strong hand preflop vs. a fish and “deserve” to win the hand. It is not unusual for me to claim that I take poker seriously, while continuously watching movies on the side or even smoking a joint while I play, massively deteriorating my focus and concentration.

Poker demands respect and discipline, and I really struggle to abide. I have poured so much time and energy into poker over the last two years, and despite improving as a player technically, I have very little to show for it, primarily due to tilt and entitlement. I certainly understand that I have massive technical problems with my game as well, but I have a much easier time accepting that because I know I can use study and hard work to overcome those obstacles.

To overcome my ego, lack of discipline, and tilt problems, I need to work on myself, my emotional and psychological issues, and my personal shortcomings that can’t be studied or coached away. This, in my experience, has been much harder to accept. So that’s why I’m starting this blog. I want to discuss my experience as I work on my mental game and continue on my journey. I plan to use these posts as a way to hold myself accountable to performing well. Ideally, I’ll have a little write up about each session that evaluates my mental and emotional state. I want to be honest with myself about my mental game shortcomings and post about them openly, because I know I can’t be the only one experiencing these things!
I want to clarify - I know I’m not a great player. I actually struggle a lot to understand and interpret the solver. It takes me longer to grasp concepts than some of my study partners. I make tons of mistakes. I plan to post hand histories here and honestly, I’m terrified to do so, because I know my game is full of leaks. That being said, I don’t want to kid myself about my ability, and I think honest and open feedback from other players will be humbling and helpful for me.

My goal is to continue to play 100NL this year, and document my journey as I go on this page. I don’t consider myself to be a disciplined person. I don’t consider myself to be particularly talented or smart. So my goal is to improve my discipline, and with that, improve my talent through hard work, honesty, and effort! So, for now, I’m going to focus on a few different things:
Posting about my efforts to plug my mental game leaks, and discuss my feelings as I try to improve and move up as a player
Post hand histories and session results

I appreciate you reading and look forward to talking with y’all more!