CANADIAN DREAM

Basically since Valentine's Day I've dropped about two grand and my nice start to February flip flopped into an ugly downswing. Even so, I feel great. For the most part it's because of Jared's videos and the small session I had with him. To reiterate what he wants me to work on:

-Tilt management (paying close attention to my emotional level in-game, keeping reference cards on-hand, etc)
-Training my brain to go through the process model (pre-session warm-up, post-session warm-down, evaluating my play and my progress with my tilt management, etc)
-Organize my life so I can have defined times to play poker, and defined times to do everything else.

So far, I've basically failed everything except watching my emotional level, but I really feel like that alone has reshaped my mental game.

I was doing the warmup/warmdown stuff for a good 5 days or so, but eventually I crept into the "fuck this, let's just play" mindset and haven't used that little record book since.

Nor have I done any organizing! My mom and I agreed that we should come up with a schedule for my work and for when she needs me for other stuff, but we still haven't decided on what that schedule will be. I haven't joined the gym, but I've started training my brain to wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier which will help with everything.

I figure my ideal schedule will be something like:

-Wake up at 10am.
-Eat, walk the dog, then be at the gym by 11am.
-Train until 12 or 1pm.
-Get back home, eat a snack, shower up, and play poker until 4 or 5pm
-If I feel good, keep playing, otherwise relax and do something other than poker.

Feeling pretty excited about slowly changing my habits; I've never been a very structured person, and this isn't just about poker.

So as Jared has suggested and I think I need to do, I should start setting some more daily/weekly/monthly goals. In the next few days:

-Decide on actual schedule
-Start doing the warmup/warmdown stuff again
-Rewatch Jared's video with the process model in it (FOAPP #4 I believe)
-Do more sweats with Fredrik! The videos have been a lot of fun and are great for everyone involved. Another one's on the way, just having some editing problems.

Some hands since my last post:



Against a maniac/fish who likes to raise some flops. I get lucky.



Against another aggro fish. Really set him up for that one, posted about it in the Feb chat thread.



I get lucky again.

Aside from that, those are really the only full stacks I've won since the 16th. Sad.



Against yet another aggro fish. Frustrating, but I think I could have layed down the turn.



One of the things I've been trying to do is experiment with more flatting. It's something I definitely don't have enough experience with. Got set up here completely obviously, but I think I played it fine aside from the dubious preflop call which I don't care about.



And about a half dozen coolers like the one above. Fun times.

Just gotta keep on pushing. I always remember thinking during the downswings "man, I wonder if I'll ever get that feeling of winning 10BB/100 over 20k hands again". Then when I'm on said upswing, it's "how the hell could I ever lose at this game? It's so easy." Then the cycle repeats itself. I'm nearing that "what's it feel like to win!?!?" point though :p