PROBLEMS MOVING UP
I think it's fair to say if you want to make a living playing poker, and not grind your face off for 60 hours a week, you need to be playing 2/5 or something similar where you can make $30- $50/ hr.
In the past, I've mostly taken shots at bigger games, but never played them day in and day out.
But if I ever want to get better and make money, I won't get there being fearful.
So I committed this entire month to play bigger. And I am playing awful.
I'm doing things I know are wrong, things I learned a long time ago, and I do it anyway.
I think this is the most frustrating thing about poker for me.
There isn't a single course, book, or coach in the world who can help you execute.
All coaching / studying does it makes you more knowledgeable, but how do you execute in game?
I will just have these "brain farts" where I can't think and I don't know what to do in a very basic spot.
How do you stop that?
I don't think there is a solution.
I want to be the best poker player I can be, but while I've watched everyone around me move up, I'm still stuck in the kiddie game because I just can do the right thing often enough especially in big pots.
Maybe I just need more reps, but at what expense?
I don't even like poker anymore. I've been playing forever, and its either play, do nothing, or start panhandling.
If I actually won and crushed, it might actually be fun again.
Even though I am educated, none of that matters.
I can barely get a $15/hr job, and I pretty sure the guy with the sign on the street corner is doing better than that.
I'm frusterated and fearful of losing more money. Money that could go to better use than to someone who has a job and doesn't need it.
I really have no idea why I am on this earth, and there is nothing anyone can say or do to fix it.
I hope I'm wrong, but I am sick and tired of who I am as I know it.
6 Replies
Except I never said that tilt was caused by a lack of skill. What I said is that tilt is usually caused by a lack of knowledge which means that your brain can't understand why certain events at the poker table happen (to you). This is different from what you're saying.
Elaborate please.
LOL, really?
You made a claim, I asked for more information. You then try to use this as a chance to sell a book?
Nevermind. If you don't want to support your argument with actual examples, I'll live.
LOL, really?
You made a claim, I asked for more information. You then try to use this as a chance to sell a book?
Nevermind. If you don't want to support your argument with actual examples, I'll live.
I’ve posted many excerpts from the book on this website. So, I suggest before you make statements about things I never said, you find some of what I posted here.
Mason
You say that my explanation of how I solved my tilt issues is consistent with what you've written, elaborate.
Help me see the connection between me working on my core beliefs, (which stemmed from childhood events) and your book.
There's a reg I've gotten to know in my local room, who committed himself to what he dubbed "$10k May" - he wanted to make $10k in profit playing, but more challenging, he set a goal for himself to play 300 hours that month.
To me, that doesn't sound like a smart goal. Anyone can sit at a table for 300 hours. If 150 of those hours are winning using dumb luck, it's just reinforcing/rewarding dumb play. Trying to meet that goal might result in the same problem I had with trying to make my winning sessions goal.
This might only be a me thing, but I realized I had to change my goal setting. As an extremely goal focused biz consultant, everything I do in biz has goals attached to it. I literally coach small biz founders on how to set goals.
Sometimes, I've had to back up and realize that some of my poker goals aren't the right goals.
Bad goal for me: I was trying to break my record of 12 >$200 winning sessions in a row. It took me way to long to realize that's a stupid goal *for me* bc I'll get to 6 or 8 consecutive wins and then run into a bad luck, bad table, or bad me day and go on stupid tilt. To continue the streak, I would start breaking the rules of my strategy.
Like my rule is to only set mine with stacks that are 15X the bet. But if I was tilting bc I needed to get the win, I was breaking the rule. My thinking was that if I hit my magical set of ducks I could call it a winning day and go home. That just made me lose more trying to eek out a win that was only significant to my streak. If I was tired, I should just rack up and go, record be damned.
