I'm going back to my WP site: http://stakemonster.wordpress.com/ It has become a bit too much of a pain to maintain mirror blogs and I prefer wordpress. I'll be posting more and more about poker than before.

I just had 2 winning sessions in a row, but I still feel like I am playing my C+ game. Between breaking even for 150k hands and smoking way too much weed I really felt down on poker. I went through 25 sessions where I didn't have a single day above +$1k, which is ridiculous for someone playing midstakes. I ran way below EV obviously but I also played rather badly in the last few months. I think that's what frustrates me the most. Running bad is whatever, it will turn around, but when I make bad plays it annoys me a lot because I know I know better.

I moved down in stakes and table selected a lot more than usual, trying to get some sort of winning period going, but to no avail. It's kinda hard to put into words how destructive it can be to just lose every big pot/brick everything for months, but eventually I let go of the frustration and stopped hitting my head on the wall trying to force winning. But it's still an uphill climb back to playing my A game. There's no doubt I will get back there now that my focus is better.

These days it's hard to just get by on your C game. Mental edges are where the real money can be made today. Players who can play their A game day in and day out and can maintain a high level of confidence throughout tough periods are probably the most successful ones, whereas 2 years ago, skill was enough to get by and crush the games.

In an attempt to slow things down and focus on my work ethic, I started to play full ring, which plays extremely different than HU in many ways (orly). At first, I'll be honest, I thought it would be easy money. I was wrong. I think FR players don't get nearly enough credit for their amount of skill and mostly dedication to the game. I underestimated them and I was quick to realize I had to adjust my strategy completely. Yes, they play very tight for the most part, but within much smaller ranges they have been able to navigate the games with patience, focus and an ability to exploit subtle leaks and nuances in player ranges. More credit to them!

What if PokerStars setup some weekly Charity matches between known/top players? The rake is not paid by the players - Stars would instead donate it to the charity of choice out of their own funds. A minimum of 10% of the winners' profits go to a pre-determined charity. This amount could be set to anything from 10% to even 100% if someone is feeling very generous that day, and while playing his/her charity is displayed either on the table itself, or in another window, along with how much money they have donated to their cause.

I'm sure something similar has been done on TV before but, as far as I know, never in online cash games. The games could be setup for heads up matches, where it would certainly increase the # of matches being played or in 6-max/FR games where the whole table would be contributing to a good cause. The idea could easily be applied to tournaments as well with an open field. And if they put a lot of exposure on the matches and the causes, similar to what they have done with the Isildur Showdown heads up games, it will attract a lot of attention and also railbirds who might want to donate money to the charity being played for as well, and maybe they'll want to play some poker too.

For Stars, it's great publicity, not only within the poker world itself but also to outsiders who do not play poker yet. And as the biggest and most respected poker site in the world, their voice is heard everywhere and I personally believe they have a duty to represent the poker world and its players in a positive and socially responsible manner. They have always been the cream of the crop when it comes to their professionalism and ethics, and by creating a recurring and consistent method of contributing to charities, it would further increase their positive image, and that of the industry as well.

For the community, it's a positive thing that a lot of players would be happy to back, and it is breath of fresh air within a world that has been hammered with bad news and drama since last year. Every time poker sites have created funds to help people in need in times of disaster, Haiti and Thailand come to mind, there was a huge amount of support and money given to them. Why stop there?

I would love to see Stars embrace the idea but, more importantly, hope they can use their influence and power to create more good for our society and its people. I think everyone involved would gain from these charity matches: It's good for the beneficiaries, good for business and good for the players and the game of poker in general. It sends a great message out to the world about us and the game we play. The poker world is not all bad, and there are a lot of great people involved in this industry who do a lot more than gambling, scamming and cheating. And in the end, I ask: why not do it? Why not set regular games on Stars where some of the money being played goes directly to charities? There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

What do you think?

My account on Stars has been locked for 2 days now due to a transfer I received from a 2p2 member I should have obviously not traded with. I traded money with him once for ~2k and it's very likely he broke the rules somewhere. Now, I am paying for his mistakes and PokerStars will not even tell me anything about the case or when I can expect to be able to play again. It's really irritating that their process involves so much secrecy and lack of communication. It's also frustrating to know I did absolutely nothing wrong and yet, it might be days or even weeks before I can play there again. I hope they get things right and that they don't make me wait too long.

Regardless, I question the practice of closing a player's account, especially with a substantial amount of money in it, and keeping him in the dark about what is actually going on, and why. This is not how a business should operate and definitely not how they should treat their customers. I am not pleased. But, there is a silver lining to all of this: perhaps I might be able to get a $50 reload bonus from them once my account is enabled again.

I am writing this post to discuss poker variance and how holding a narrow perspective regarding results affected me in the last months.

Since October of last year, I've been having the most annoying and demanding variance roller coaster I've faced in poker. It has been characterized by a lot of small winning days and lots of small losing days. I haven't been able to get any sort of "upswing" going. The most important month out of this period has been October itself. This losing month, my biggest ever, came at pretty much the nut worse time ever since I wasn't going to play at all in November. I wasn't getting the chance to quickly "solve" the issues that come with losing a significant amount. I had to sit on it for the next month.

I had to pay for a wedding overseas as well. That didn't help my perceived financial downswing as, to me, it suddenly made my "losses" in October twice as big. Then, I would also, wisely, add two month's worth of expenses on top of what I lost at poker. My "downswing" became enhanced to stories I had only heard about on 2p2 or on Skype. You could say one would be so lucky as to only experience one big losing month in 4 years of playing, and you would be right. I knew it wasn't the actual end of the world, but rather a storm inside a glass. Still, all I could see in my mind when I thought about poker was "Lost a lot of money". I wasn't concerned about my finances or if I could get the money back. The amount would not change a thing. I was annoyed at the losing. Losing is something I could easily go without. I must admit, I am very competitive but I also do not deal well with losing. You can blame my glasshouse for that. I'm too sensitive to negativity.

When I came back to play in December, it became an uphill battle against rustiness and having this perception that I had been financially molested by the previous 2 months. Instead of having the positive and constructive attitudes usually related to "success" and "winning", I chose to let the perceived immensity of my losses hover above my head. I was worried about losing more and that is never a good thing when you're exchanging money in a game filled with high variance. Thankfully, I managed to not lose anything in December, but I also did not win anything either. Chalk up another month of "failure" to my narrow perspective.

January was pretty much exactly the same as December. At that point, "4 months" and "failure" is all I could relate to poker. The fact a sizable % of pots I was losing were completely standard or just back luck, didn't matter. It didn't matter that the sample size of hands wasn't indicative of anything significant. It didn't matter that I was actually playing decently well. It didn't even matter that it was actually just 3 months of poker results. I was highly annoyed and lacked confidence not because I had actually failed at anything for 4 months or needed to make money, but rather because the negative feedback given to me from poker was going against all presets I had established in previous months and years. I was not used to losing and breaking even becomes increasingly annoying as I subconsciously feel like poker owes me something for my efforts.

Everything we do in poker can be broken down to a very small number: profits. It is how we define ourselves and how we define our months. It is how we define other players. We break down our lives month by month, session by session and hand by hand. We often directly relate how our month has been with how much money we've lost or gained. If we won money, everything is rosy. If we lost some, we feel shitty. Every day is a new opportunity to be contented, or disappointed, depending on our final profits or losses. Real life events and situations, what truly matters, can easily be discarded in times filled with negative results. To the person holding a narrow perspective and self-image this can be a very destructive way of approaching poker. I'm guilty of this, and I am also guilty of letting misconceptions and unreasonable expectations shape my days and thoughts in negative and nonconstructive ways. I let my narrow perspective guide my thoughts and level of confidence. I have been weak-minded, and I realize this now, thanks to poker.. and Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino. What a boss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Tpw1ICJEc&feature=related

Black Friday was probably the most terrifying day of my life. This is, of course, a great thing, as I wasn't afflicted with some uncurable disease or found out I was impotent for life. That's a lot worse. But I had around $50k stuck on the blocked sites and, on that day, I was really scared about my future and our well-being as a family going forward. I was imagining myself the worse scenarios possible. Like having to work 9 to 5... something I had sworn never to do again.

On that day, we went out to a shitty diner and had shitty food. I was moping the whole time not only about having a good % of my bankroll stuck, and possibly gone, but also about the shittiest pizza I had ever eaten. My wife had wanted to try the diner out for months, claiming it had gotten some good reviews online. Of course I told her that there is no such thing as a restaurant like this that is any good. I just had a feeling.

Turns out, I was right.. AND on top of the mediocre food, it turns out that the owner of the place is a Boston Bruins fans and was proudly displaying one of their jerseys on the wall. UGh. What a day.

After dinner I went back home to practice my F5 pushing skills once more. The apocalypse was here and I needed to feed my addiction to speculations. It's all we really had at this point... and sharing our shock and fear together. The hornet nest had been disturbed and now everyone converged onto NVG to know what the hell was going on.

In the next weeks, things became a bit clearer and some of us got lucky and were able to play again online. It was really fishy for the first month and the games were really good. The situation, after all, wasn't that bad I thought. I felt very lucky for myself but also really pained to see my American friends unable to play and stripped out of their freedoms. It was brutal for them and I really hope the situation gets better in 2012.

Anyway, over the next months I got really depressed about poker and what I was doing for a living. The games seemed bad everywhere with very few fish and lots of good players around. My problem there was that while I do not mind playing really good players, I was never a high volume player and thus with smaller edges I tend to just avoid the games as I seem unable to grind for hours and on numerous tables. It's a leak of mine and I am quite upfront about when people ask me to play 3-4 tables.

The relatively dry games led to a very poor work ethic and a black cloud hovering around my mind. The new reality of poker had the opposite of a desired effect. I got lazy about my game, about studying, about everything. I had lost my desire to crush and instead just wanted to get by with the minimum amount of effort. Coincidentally, I had my lowest volume of hands in the last 2 years during last summer.

I was still doing well results wise so, at the time, nothing seemed to be wrong to me. I was down on poker without really admitting it to myself. But, money was still good and I was still winning, so no problem, right? Well, not so much. It had a couple of very negative effects, and the main one was the huge gap between the positive feedback I was getting from my results and the negative factors I was ignoring because it was comforting to me. These included having a very poor work ethic, low desire to succeed, having goals and being confident in my game. All very important things to long-term success.

In October, I had my first really big losing month with poker. I ran really bad and, of course, I blamed it on variance. However, in retrospect, I can see how Black Friday eventually led to my demise, not only psychologically but in a bigger and far-reaching way. The way I handled myself in the face of adversity was poor, at best.

In the end, after 8 months, I am very thankful Black Friday happened, and this, of course, on a personal level only.

In the last few years, I have been able to notice silver linings much better than before, where negative was negative, and that was the end of it. Black Friday forcefed me a couple of very positive realisations:

1. I was lazy and depressed because things looked bad to me. In these situations, being down about the way things are does only one thing: it makes them worse. How can someone achieve anything when negative thoughts have built a camping site in your head? In the last month I have regrouped myself and I have been working harder than ever before. Not only with poker but also I have approached the whole situation with the idea that indeed, pressure can create diamonds, but only when you have the right mindset: a positive, constructive and hopeful one.

2. This year has taught me that the way I approach EVERYTHING in my life is how I will approach my work. So now instead of half-assing something simple like folding clean clothes, I do it well and do my best to be on top of the chore. It showed me that if I want to perform at my best in poker, I need to do my best in every aspect of my life, instead of being one of those people that focuses entirely on one thing and fails miserably at everything else.

3. It humbled me. Past success is not a guarantee of future success. What I do right now, in this moment, is the only thing that matters, the only thing I control and if I want to be successful at poker, my actions need to stay in line with this goal. As a result, I've cut out almost all of my video gaming time. It was fun, but I'd rather focus on more important things now like writing, reviewing hands and studying.

A few months ago I would have never written any of this, but I realize now that every single time I have faced adversity or negativity in my life, it has taught me something extremely valuable. The perspective I take on the situation can be the difference between the apocalypse and an enriching and positive experience. Since I *do* have a choice and can control this, I now choose to take option B. I choose to make the best lemon juice I can make.

In the end, is there a better way to better yourself and know more about who you are, and what you could be?

I'm not a religious person, but Christmas is always a special time of the year. For me, it serves as a reminder to appreciate all the good things I have in my life, as small as they might be. While we should strive to do this every day, sometimes things get in the way.

It's good to remind ourselves that if we are healthy and have a roof under our head, and food to eat, that we were a dealt a premium hand.

I wish you all a great holiday season and all the best in 2012.

I'm going to try to write shorter blog posts. I've been getting carried away with mini novels and I feel like the point gets a bit lost. Plus we're all lazy poker players and we don't like reading without tl;dr notes at the end.

3 very important things I have learned in the last 14 months as I have embarked on a journey to master myself when it comes to poker induced emotions, but also just life in general. Obviously, there's a lot more to it, but I'd like to share some of the main things I have learned about playing for a living and doing it in a healthy way.


1. Think positive: Probably the most important factor in anyone's success in life. The classic self-help guide "Psycho-Cybernetics" describes this the best. There's a reason why this book is still as relevant and powerful as it is today. Buy it today, even if you hate reading books. I guarantee it will change your outlook on life.

Anyway, thinking positive is even more important to a poker player than the average person. Every day we have to deal with losing and since it involves money it usually hurts more. Being a positive person can have an immense impact on not only how you deal with loss but also how well you perform in every single thing you do.

Once again, keeping it short: buy the book. Change your perspective. Profit.

2. Breathing: Breathing is pretty cool, try it once in a while, it will relieve your stress and re-focus your energy. Breathe in, count to 5, release and exhale for another 5 seconds. Do that before, during and after sessions and I promise it will help you tilt less and play better.

3. Make time for yourself: Being a professional poker should involve a lot of work and effort, but not to the expense of your time. Time that could be used for exercise, stretching, eating and fresh air, should be fully used. It's not only good for you but it will make you feel better inside and outside and as a result you'll play better. Instant profit in the wallet and also life expectancy. Pretty good thing to strive for.

Short and sweet.

gl

This year has been a very interesting one for me. If I could categorize it with one word I would call it polarized. I've had some excellent high points but also some difficult times. This is probably similar to everyone else's situation, since life always promises us new surprises and that is what makes it the great thing that it is. However, all these swings have pivot points to them that will decide if these ups and downs will be positive or negative for you, and we all control where it will go, up or down.

To me, perspective is what creates these pivot points. For every single experience or situation we face, we have a choice on how we approach it. Will it be positive or negative? This choice will greatly define not only the kind of lives we live but also what kind of person we are and will be. How we approach everything on very general and broad terms will always spread to the smaller every day situations that we encounter. In the end, it's these every day things that will end up defining what tomorrow will be like.

Just think of your perspective as a megaphone that shouts marching orders to you, consciously or not.

While this basic concept applies to pretty much everything we do or think, from the food we like to the kind of career we choose, I would like to talk about how it relates to things we face in poker every day.

Let me give you a very basic example of a pivot point in poker. You lose a big pot because villain made a very bad play but won the hand anyway. The pivot point would offer us two choices: to get pissed off because we lost the hand, or we remind ourselves that we played the hand well, take note of what villain did and move on, still focused and still positive about future hands.

Another example.. Mr. Bob has been crushing the games for 2 years now with a huge sample size to back it up. On the 3rd year he breaks even for a long time and starts to doubt himself. This is a very important pivot point since it might define his poker results for the next year, or more. Will he wallow in his "misery" and feel bad for himself or will his perspective be a constructive one where effort and a positive outlook are kings?

These crossroads happen dozens of times each day in all areas of our lives. How do you approach them? You can see how the way we approach them might have huge impacts on our lives and, specifically to poker: how much success we will have playing it.

All this sounds very simplistic because it is.

Despite all the confusions and uncertainties in our lives, our perspectives can be manipulated to our liking and with it, we can achieve anything. All it takes is the right mindset and the right approach. It can sometimes takes a lot of energy but, in the end, it really is just like flicking a light switch. The rest of the work will take care of itself because once we open a light, it spreads to everything else around it naturally.

Once this happens, anything is possible. Even the slightest change in how we approach something can set off a chain reaction in our lives that might positively affect so many things in the long run that we will have completely forgotten how it all started. These a-ha moments where we can see where our perspectives have been negative or wrong are extremely valuable because once the seed has been planted, our minds will organically seek ways to reach those new and more positive outlooks and ways of living and thinking.

Some lights might be harder to switch on but that is only because we have been programmed since childhood to think certain things. Maybe you were always picked last in gym class and now you feel like you can't possibly be great anything. Perhaps you won a marathon when you were 16 and you believe you're able to do anything and be the best... the older the perspective the harder it is usually to change it but also, to recognize it.

We often believe that things have been set for us and that we're just living out the course of our lives, but there is a lot more control to it than we think. And this includes control over our poker results. Luck is just an illusion. It's what we do that really ends up defining how well we do and if all the right perspectives are aligned the same way, then great results can be achieved regardless of natural skill level, bankroll or stakes.

The amount of work we put in and the discipline we have with poker are all results of having a constructive and positive approach to what we do. If we start to feel negative about it, how can we possibly reach our full potential? By letting negativity creep up into our minds, we just invite it to taint everything we touch, off and on the tables. What else in our minds could we tweak to achieve our goals with poker and in life?

In the end, every single thing we do is connected together. Everything. And if your goal is to become a better poker player then I would invite you to look at every part of your mental game and seeing where your perspectives might conflict with your end goals. Are you able to face adversity in a positive and constructive way? Do you understand and accept variance? Are you managing your time well? Are you living a healthy lifestyle? All of these are greatly affected by if your outlook is positive or negative.

Everything is worth looking into, as you might learn a thing or two about yourself along the way.

gl

I was away for about a month but I decided to start coaching again. I'll be taking new students @ $100/hr only instead of the usual $175.

This will be a very limited offer to help me get back into coaching quicker.

PM me here or on skype: pascal_kl

thanks