It's time for a complete mental reset

I'm accustomed to it - I've had sessions where I've played 5-6 tables at a time. But being accustomed to it and playing equally well with more tables are two completely different things. Also, let's not forget that I'm 50 years old here. I don't know how old you are, but multi-tabling online poker is one of those things that gets tougher as you age. I also don't have a "professional" setup at home. My wife uses the home office for work so I play on a laptop with a single screen, and sometimes there are just life distractions. My son is home from university for the summer, I have two cats, that kind of thing. I'm trying to do what I can within the constraints of my life situation.

Right, which is why I didn't say anything about "equally well". I said "positively effect your bottom line"

I'm a little less than a decade younger, but I've been playing full time for 20 years so my experiences aren't the same as yours. I have not found myself to be in cognitive decline nor have I found my motor skills to be declining, so I have no problems 6-8 tabling. I don't assume that everyone can do that obviously, but 3-4 should be fairly easy to work up to, if you make it a goal, especially if you have experience with playing more tables. But of course if you are saying that you are failing mentally or physically, that's a whole different set of issues that's kind of bigger than online poker.

All things that have easy solutions if you want to find solutions. Your wife works on the weekend? Why not find a different day to play? You only have one PC for the house? Why not buy a 2nd? Prefer to grind on your laptop? Why not buy multiple monitors? You could very easily have a "professional" (ie a working computer with a working mouse and 1-2 working monitors) setup in like 45 minutes if you wanted to.

Yep, that's life. That's why you schedule your play around life. And none of that would/should affect how many tables you play.

Seem like you have a lot of excuses as to why you have to keep doing things the exact same way you always have. If that works for you, cool. If it doesn't, maybe try organizing things in a different/more efficient way. Also, maybe studying/getting better at the game would help?

And I explained that based on my experience, I don't think that playing 5-6 tables at a time positively affects my bottom line.

Your first sentence is kind of important. Your experience is very, very different from mine. It's important to keep that in mind when you're giving advice. I've told you that multi-tabling doesn't work for me and you're coming back at me with, "Well I can do it so you should be able to do it too." And I'm not "failing" mentally or physically. Aging is a fact of life, with that comes deterioration in certain faculties. We don't process information as quickly as we did when we were younger. We don't have the energy we had when we were younger. For example, one of the things that impacts my ability to play is that I simply don't have the energy to stay up until 3am playing poker like I used to. That means I have to be more selective about what I play and when.

Did you miss the part where I mentioned I work full time? And the part where I mentioned my wife uses the home office for work?

Not excuses, reality. We can't all just magically make our life circumstances different than they are. It's important to be realistic about our limitations. That's why my goals are very realistic. I'm not trying to turn pro or make a million dollars. I just want to have enough success to make a bit of money on the side. And I am studying. Remember we had a discussion earlier about using solvers?

Dude, I swear half your roadblock is your consistently argumentative and negative attitude. He’s not wrong that you are seeing all the reasons that something can’t happen instead of can.

Example: your wife uses the home office

Solution: use a different room. You literally only need a desk, the laptop you already own and monitors. It would cost you like $300-400 to upgrade your work station by 50+%.

Perhaps 2 tabling cash on work nights and 2 tabling MTTs on your day off would work better?

Take a David goggins approach and do something you don't like doing (playing cash).

I see where this is going. I disagree with you, and you use that as confirmation that I'm argumentative. It's a lose-lose for me. So I won't bother.

Can you play hyper turbos or turbos or week nights? Look around at other sites sites like CoinPoker etc I dunno what they have at higher stakes which your playing but you might be able to get in a bit more practice/volume.

Have you thought about playing live MTTs? Some places run them to midnight. Also you could look into breathe work/sleep hygiene and try and optimize that and get a quality 5-6 hours sleep during week nights if your playing MTTs until 12.30am.

I don't believe I could play until 1am and get up at 6.30am to go to work like you do and I'm younger. although if I go to work at 12.15pm and go to sleep at 6am I can manage that possibly 2 workdays a week and not in a row. Maybe if you can play 1-2 day during the week until 1-2am you might be able to manage that and catch up with sleep on days off.

I live in Ontario, Canada, where we have ring-fenced legal online poker, so I've only been playing on the two biggest regulated sites we have (Pokerstars and GG). I'm not actually sure what unregulated sites are available up here. But our banks can be really strict about funding gambling sites even when they're regulated, so I'm guessing it might be a pain in the ass to get money on and off one of the unregulated ones. I'll have a look around though. I might be able to sneak in some hyper-turbos during the week but I don't think that would necessarily be good for the quality of my game, nor my bottom line.

I don't play live very often because they're even worse schedule-wise than online tourneys. Definitely don't want to stay up to 2am and then drive 30 min home.

To be honest, the issue with the late hours isn't so much being tired the next day at work but that I simply can't stay up that late. I have sleep issues to begin with (another fun aspect of aging) so most of the time I'm up by 5-5:30 am. I get pretty tired by 10pm so that makes it very difficult to stay focused on poker for 3-5 hours beyond that. The schedule on the sites doesn't help either as the tournament offerings are pretty sparse before about 3pm. Even when they run a special series they won't start the first tournament of the series until 4pm on the weekends. They don't cater to customers like me at all.

I didn't read the entirety of this thread, but that's tournament poker.

I am in pretty much the exact situation as yourself, 56, married, work full time, nearest casino over an hr away, plus I have the added fact that I can only play on select weekends. I live in Ohio but have a cottage in PA, so I only play on the weekends I am in PA. My volume is extremely low.

My strategy has always been Helmuth like in just try to always get it in good. If I take the last 2 years and split them into 12 month periods, they are entirely different. From mid 2023 to mid 2024 I had I had six 4 figure scores playing $10-$50 tournaments with a few $100 tossed in. From mid 2024 to present, ZERO 4 figure cashes.

My last MTT was a $30 bounty, 5 from the money (not including the bounties, but if you know anything about bounties the real money don't start until you get to the money), I get AI with AA v AQ. I win, I am chip leader, I lose I'm out. I didn't win. Its pretty much been this way for the last year. It bothered me for about 7-8 months, then I was like, awww forget about it. Just a rec trying to score.

Thanks for dropping in.

Any thoughts on why your two years might be so different? Just variance, or did something change?

One of my comments from earlier in the thread was that I stopped playing PKOs because the variance was killing me. I've added in some lately, mostly because they're the most popular form of MTT online so it is really difficult to get any volume in without playing them.

Got me.
I am for sure just trying to argue with a stranger on the internet instead of giving my honest opinion on reading your posts for a few years now. It’s how I spend the majority of my time actually, looking to start pointless internet arguments for no reason.
Carry on.

Maybe you're not doing it intentionally, but that's exactly how the situation was unfolding.

I already explained why multi-tabling doesn't work for me, including that the quality of my play has increased since I decided to cut down on the number of tables I play, so I don't see why some of you are pushing the issue. I also resent it when complete strangers think they can make judgments about my personality based on a few posts on a discussion board. Disagreeing with the opinions of strangers on the internet doesn't make me "consistently argumentative and negative."

I’ve seen your posting elsewhere as well.
It’s beside the point, I’m less interested in engaging than you are so this works out well tbh. Just wanted to give my honest feedback at the time.
I mean, it is the title of your blog here. A mental reset suggests more about mindset than poker.

I’m curious what you actually like about tourneys? I read your OP then skimmed the thread so maybe you said but it seems like you’ve had no real success in tourneys in 20 years. I’m sure you’ve won some here or there but it sounds as if you’ve had 0 major scores in 20 years. You can correct me if that’s wrong but assuming that’s the case or at least close to it, what do you actually enjoy about tourneys?

Now conversely, what do you hate so much about cash as it seems you’ve never actually played that much of it?

You're absolutely right, the title of my blog related to the fact that I was feeling incredibly discouraged. That's the mental reset I was looking for. My lack of success is not due to me being "negative and argumentative."

Happy to explain. And I have played plenty of cash over the years.

There are several things I like about tournaments:

1) I prefer activities/games that have a defined objective and a feeling of progress towards that objective. I lose interest in things very quickly if I feel like I'm just doing and not working towards anything. Tournaments give me that feeling in a way that cash games can't. The goal is to win the tournament and you progress through phases to achieve that goal.

2) I also prefer activities when I have an idea of what I'm committing to. When I play a tournament I know it will take a maximum amount of time, whereas cash games are open-ended.

3) I prefer games/sports that involve strategy, and tournaments require more strategy than cash games.

4) I'm also not a gambler by nature. I got into poker as a game of strategy, not as a form of gambling. I don't enjoy risking lots of money, nor do I get a rush from playing massive pots. So I can easily get bullied at cash tables by players who aren't risk-averse. Tournaments level the playing field in that regard.

5) I like the dream of the big score, which cash doesn't provide.

Fair enough, I’ll just point out the major things I noticed from your last post as well as something you said in your OP here…

“I find cash poker boring and aimless. And too gambly. I’m quite risk-averse and enjoy the strategic aspect of poker, so I don’t find it enjoyable to play massive pots for cash.”

What you’ve done probably wo realizing it is you’ve created a psychological block for yourself that makes it hard to go deep in tournaments. Whether you’re consciously considering it or not I’m sure you understand that the deeper you get in a tourney each pot you play becomes “worth more cash”. Once you get to the final table every place you move up means each pot you play even for the same amount of bb’s has a bigger cash value…which means not only are you playing massive pots for cash but every place you move up as someone is eliminated the pots get bigger meaning it’s like moving up in stakes very very fast in a cash game. Like going to the casino to play 1/2nl and every 20-30 mins the whole table agrees to put more straddles on until a few hours later you’re playing 25/50nl.

Since you’re a seasoned poker player and you inherently realize this is true but you “don’t enjoy it” and you actively avoid it in cash games when you get deeper and deeper in a tournament you not only can’t avoid it but the very thing you’ve been avoiding is now growing exponentially. My guess is you’re not going deep, not closing when you do go deep, etc bc you hit the eject button and self sabotage with some punt before you go deep enough where the pots you’re playing become worth amounts you’re uncomfortable playing for

You seem to “like the dream of a big score” but not like the actuality of it. The actuality of a big score is you play small pots for small amounts of cash value that progressively get bigger as more players are eliminated and blinds go up until at the end the cash value of every pot you play gets to be massive and for bigger and bigger stakes

The solution is the same in all areas of life you want to achieve success in. You have to learn to enjoy doing things you’ve been telling yourself you don’t enjoy.

Don’t enjoy playing big pots? Well then you’re never gonna win a tournament or have any consistency in winning them/going deep until you learn to

Don’t enjoy studying mid and late game tourney strategy so you can go deeper? Of course you don’t, if you did you would be forced to play “massive pots for cash” at final tables regularly, which you don’t enjoy.

Notice any pattern there? The things you’re actively telling yourself you don’t enjoy you’re actively and subconsciously avoiding

Since your title says you’re READY for a complete mental reset I assume you’re ready to start opening up your perspective and doing things you’ve have been telling yourself you don’t enjoy with the only goal in mind being….to find the aspects of it which you DO enjoy and to put as much of your focus on enjoying it for longer and longer amounts of time. If you can do that all of your lack of success/results will take care of itself

Very astute observation, and it accurately describes the flaw that dominated my poker mental game for much of my "career." I spent years working on this exact issue and I can confidently say it isn't really a problem anymore, at least not in the games I regularly play. It does come back to bite me at times if I play in a tournament out of my bankroll, or a special event, which is why I don't do it very often. For example, last year I won an online satty into the WSOP-C Toronto Main Event, which was the first time I ever played in a tournament like that. There was a moment right before the dinner break where I made a weak fold because I knew this was a unique opportunity and I didn't want to go home right before dinner break.

The bad run that preceded this blog post wasn't due to fear or weak play late in tournaments, I can say that with high confidence. In fact, one of the leaks I discovered when I started studying again was that I had actually been too aggressive in many spots and shoving unnecessarily, greatly increasing my variance. So I think this bad run was partly due to bad fundamentals - I had stopped studying a while back and the quality of my game slipped over time.

Another interesting realization was that I psychologically respond to bad runs differently than I think is typical. Bad runs usually make people more cautious to avoid the risk of busting and extending the bad run. But I actually discovered the opposite, that bad runs actually make me more careless. For example, one of the things that was really frustrating me about this bad run was that I seemed to frequently run into big hands. But what I noticed when I reviewed my hands was that I was making bad calls. I can remember those moments at the time thinking, "Here we go again, I'm going to run into another big hand," but I would make the call anyway and then say to myself, "See, I run so bad - I just keep running into big hands." I was making calls knowing I would probably lose so that I could confirm it was bad luck, not consciously realizing that I was only running into bad hands so frequently because I was making bad calls.

Having spent years working on the issue doesn’t mean it’s not still there. The fact you know it creeps back up in bigger buy in tourneys means it also does in tourneys that are at the upper limits of your BR and even as you go deep in medium sized buy in tourneys I’m guessing. I could be wrong but since your post is about your lack of good results this issue probably runs very deep

Also this is exactly what I meant when I said you’re actively and subconsciously doing things to avoid going deep

“The bad run that preceded this blog post wasn't due to fear or weak play late in tournaments, I can say that with high confidence. In fact, one of the leaks I discovered when I started studying again was that I had actually been too aggressive in many spots and shoving unnecessarily, greatly increasing my variance. So I think this bad run was partly due to bad fundamentals - I had stopped studying a while back and the quality of my game slipped over time.“

Fear of going deep doesn’t have to just be weak play. It can be over aggressive punting and then knowing you need to be more disciplined at the table as well as off and study more so that you can stop doing it but then telling yourself that you don’t like studying and not doing it

Idk if you know who Joseph Campbell is, he’s the guy behind the concept of “The hero’s journey” and he has a great quote that basically sums all this up…

“The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek”

Year one my hands held up, year two they didn't. Its that simple.

I don't understand this game sometimes. It's experiences like this that make me seriously question whether the value of study is overblown.

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't played poker at all in over a month. I'm usually distracted with other stuff to do during the summer, especially during August because of fantasy football prep. So I just haven't had much time to play, and when I did have time I wasn't feeling it. I took more than a month off poker completely - didn't play at all, didn't study at all, didn't even listen to strategy pods. Until yesterday.

First Sunday of the NFL season, my son has gone back to university, so I decided to fire up a few MTTs while I watched football. I was actually a bit concerned I would be rusty and considered delaying my return to the virtual felt until I had a chance to review some stuff. But I figured I might as well just jump back on the bike and see what happens.

I played three tourneys and cashed all three, including two final tables and a second-place finish. Made about $600 on $76 in entries. Best session in a long time.

Played another very small session yesterday while watching football. Was planning to play a full session but I was feeling a bit tired and didn't want to get stuck playing late into the night. No study over the past 2 weeks.

Played a satty and busted on a bad beat. The other tourney was a $30 PKO on Stars, which was the craziest rollercoaster of pure luck.

I ran like G-d early. Hit some huge hands and had no difficult decisions. Twice I got my money in way ahead, got cracked on the flop, then rivered the winner. Cruised through the tourney and was among the chip and bounty leaders until the final two tables.

Targeted another bounty with AK and got in against his QQ. Flopped AKx. Turn a Q. Lose a big pot and down to about 4bb.

Start running good again and spin it back up over 30bb. Get to the final table. Deck went cold at that point so I was sitting something like 6/8. Get all in with QQ against 66 and he cracks me, down to 4bb. Very next hand I shove QT in the SB and the same guy wakes up with AJ and he holds. Not a bad return with the bounties, but this tournament was one big roulette wheel - I either ran really hot and the chips just got thrown at me, or I suffered bad beats and threw the chips back.

Mentally I feel very similar to the way I felt when I stopped studying years ago and suddenly found some success. It's like this weird weight off my shoulders where instead of feeling like I'm entitled to succeed because I'm studying, which caused the bad run to really affect me, now I feel kind of, "Meh, whatever happens happens." I seem to be experiencing a kind of negative reinforcement - instead of seeing the connection between study and results, I'm seeing the opposite.

It seems like you're settling into the mindset of being a weak-tight breakeven rec player, which I think is a really good thing for you. Poker is fun and your lifestyle and mindset makes it so that it's never going to be a full time or serious grind for you, so you should play what you want, when you want and maximize your enjoyment of the game.

Not sure why you would say "weak-tight" - I'm actually very happy with the way I'm playing - but I agree with the rest of what you said.