438 hands

Bad session in that I played pretty poorly and by the end was steaming pretty badly, but a great session in that I'm kicking off Jared's system of warming up and shutting down and I feel just great overall.

Before I start a session, I read my newly desktop-linked txt file which reads:

1) Food/drinks/washroom/clear desk

2) Set goals on pad (hands, time, tilt, strategies)

3) Warm up poker brain

4) Bring important poker/mental skills or challenges to the front of your mind

5) Deep breathing for a minute
-Think about A game
-Think about C game
-Strategies to manage tilt

Also something that I simply can't just implement immediately and do every time, but by the end of the month I'll hopefully be doing something along these lines every session:

Warm-up:

1) Set goals
2) Review/warm up your poker brain
3) Deep breathing to get focused
4) Visualization and comparison of A game and C game

Ending a session:

1) Extract learning
2) Evaluating goals/progress
3) Reviewing my play

At the moment it honestly seems like a lot of semi-unnecessary crap to do, but I do understand all this will help tremendously. There's no big, easily-understood secret for curing my tilt. It's just going to take some serious work and understanding of what Jared teaches. To some this is all just voodoo bullshit, but for me it's essential.

My good friend is leaving for a working and/or fun trip to Vancouver for at least a month this wednsday. Already making excuses, I'm going to have to postpone some of that post-session analysis until tomorrow.

Some hands for your enjoyment:





'Meh' push against someone who started off as a maniac (not just raising lots of pots, but 3bet shoving $100 every other hand), but who tightened up to the point where I'm not sure shoving here is good.



A little over aggressive preflop vs a lag who folds often to 3bets, but postflop I think it's fine.



One of the hands that got me steaming. As Jared says, frustration is nothing but the lack of acceptance of reality - or something like that :). I fully undertstand I got outplayed here though. IIRC villain is funkeemunkee or something and is a complete nit at like 14/12. I'd been stealing tons and I often get the false feeling that they play back at me more than they do.



vs a fish. bleh.