How do you guys feel when you play live events ?
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Originally posted by HenriquinAK
How do you guys feel when you play live events ?
I generally feel that I am so poor at playing live that I might as well have my hand displayed on a neon sign above my head
I have never played live (apart from some drunken stud home games 40 years ago, where optimal strategy was never followed) 
I feel like I would be an open book because I'm not sure if I could mask sub-conscious reflex actions on checking hole cards and flop in particular. Now that restrictions are easing here in Tasmania, I expect the free pub leagues will restart, so I will need to test my theory.
I have a long range plan to play some side events at the Aussie Millions in January 2023, but nothing is set in stone yet.
DAY 14, 15 and 16
Back to my city, to my setup and to my routine β€οΈ
I back to the grind on Sunday and I was really excited about it, nothing better them the competition on online MTTs on Sunday.
Overall was a nice day, made some runs on big tournaments but nothing really interested at the end of the day but one sick thing happened in my life...
After my grind on Sunday I have a discussion with a person that I like and will not enter in many details because was in my personal life, but after this discussion I felt quite bad on Monday and played anyway, I was really demotivated to play because I know that was something that I need to fix, we end up the day break even, but after it I realize that I need to step back a little bit from Poker and all this others things like cellphones, internet and etc that suck our attention and block us for a deep look inside our feelings/emotions and I needed that.
So basically Tuesday to Thursday I pretty much didn't touch anything related to poker, was just giving time to understand my feelings. I realize that I was distressed and after talking with the person, accept and going deep on my sadness I was able to back in track!
I am not an specialist in feelings or relationships but I start to study and seek for help on the area of Emotion Intelligence and was really powerful!
If you have a problem you can't just ignore it, otherwise it will become so big that you won't be able to handle it and my problem was that I wasn't sure what I was feeling and how to deal with it, so the best thing that I did was to just say "**** off, I am going to 'enjoy' my current feeling and go deep on it" and after tackle it I was good again and back with full speed....
Usually I don't grind on Friday but because I didn't play at all on this week I decided to play, was really excited that I was able to grind the highest schedule on the team with a lot of juice tournaments, I made 3 FT, a lot of deep runs and won the 44 on GG, everything was on flow!
...
Does it ever happened to you guys ? Having to skip the grind to deal with conflits/emotions ? How does it feels ?
Day 17
Continuing in the full speed and confident mode Sunday was really nice, this Sunday happened a really an annual race on my city, it is a 18.5km racein a famous lake here in Belo Horizonte. I am not going to lie, this type of distance is not a challenging since I already run Marathons and etc, but when you are racing you can always make it challenging with you set a time goal!
So basically after 2 years w/o running any event and not running over 10km, I decided 2 months ago to train for this race and to make in less them 1 hour and 30 minutes, what would be an avg speed of 12km/hour, I started to train and 4 days before the race I run 13.1 km in 1 hour (on the mat) and was my biggest distance on the year, after it I felt ready for the race, but things got a bit tricky race day.
I know that running in a mat is different from running on the street and the biggest difference is that on the gym there is air conditional and there is no people in front of you.
The race started at 7 am, there was 6000 runners and was to crowed, so in the beginning of the race I had trouble in passing the crowd, was really HOT and I didn't have an watch to keep on my pace only my cellphone and because I was only running on the equipment before I didn't know how to setup a pace.
Long story short, my first 6km I was with a great pace, I made in with and avg speed of 13km but after it I started to decreasing because it was to strong, on km 9 I was exactly on my goal time but my lack of preparation got me tired and tired, specially because I start the race strong, in the end we made it 1 hour and 39m and finished in 848/4000 in the mans category, this race taught me a lot of lessons...
First you need to be humble, you can't just train for 13km in a 18km race and think that because of past you can do it (2 years ago I finished it on 1:26 minutes), second that fuck your past, it not didacts who you are, it is what it is, third the race doesn't tolerate mistakes... if you start in w/o a plan and run stronger in the beginning and lost energy in the middle you WONT finish in time! You can just catch up the lost time, it remembers something ?fourth you need to train for every situation, hot temperatures, cold, with a lot of people to surpass and others variability.
Thinking deep about it, a lot of this knowledge we can apply on Poker, you need to be ready for a lot of scenarios and different dynamics in poker, the cards doesn't tolerate big mistakes and if you are no ready for the buy in that you are playing you will be fucked in a long run!
It was an amazing race the environment was incredible a lot of people motivating you, people with 80 years +, people running pushing wheelchairs, the most inspiring for me was a running man without a leg (with a prototype) and an old man running in barefoot on hot asphalt , it got me thinking, what is you excuse to not execute and get what you want ?
I got really motivated in the end and gave my max, after the race my body was broken, I felt pain on my legs and neck, butthe job was done! I just went to a cold water latter to recovery for the Sunday grind, I made a really nice session, because I had spend a lot of energy before and gained resilience, my focus on the grind was really good and because I was afraid to mistake because my energy was low, I played better and super attentive, I played the most expensive Sunday of my life 3k buy ins + and made an early deep run, on kick off the field was hard, and I had to play it with + 11 tables, but I was able to enter into the flow and won it for 9k!
It was an incredible day!
The work that I am putting is helping me a lot on this deep runs and every time that I got one, I gain more confidence because there is a lot of thing to learn from it, feeling inspired lately guys! Feels like is just the beginning...
Old guy inspiration
Me and the medal
Race Time
Day 18
After a few sessions I start to recognize that I am getting really unmotivated to play on Monday, the main reason for this the 'lack' of action, on Sunday we play a lot of this majors with 10k+ up to top and on Monday we have only 1 or 2 tournament with this prize, I know that I am supposed to change my belief system, think about ROI and that Monday is a soft Day, but for some reason I am struggling with motivation on this Day, I talked with William and another fellows as well and they same share this feeling. I will work with Steve to solve this, not sure what too do, maybe putting more tables ? Change my motivation system ? Don't know...
Overall was a fine session, nothing really interesting happened, I tried to get in a audio with a few friend for a voice call, but doesn't work that great, so will stop doing this.
Day 19
Started the day early today, woke up at 6:30 AM and went to an Yoga class, them I prepared and gave a class about how to apply the SLs on a deep run. After it I lunch with my father and jump in the grind, really good session, the content that I gave was fresh on my head and we made 3 FTs and won a small $109 tournament on PP, things went on our favor, its really good to study for teaching, because you need to learn 2 or 3 times more them an average student and this really pay offs, as I said before, every time that I am getting into a deep run I am gaining more and more confident, I made a sick call on the GG 52 Major, with 3 pair and lost it, but after it I just want to learn from the hand and immediately post on HH and call Diego to have his opinion, gained, more resilience and knowledge on how to apply the strategies on major final tables.
I am also gaining a different type of confidence because is becoming "normal" to do this Final table I am not getting tense anymore, I just sit down and play the game and after watching some people playing this FTs I realize that there is a lot of run to exploit it, because people get really afraid on this spots
Extra Day
Insights from a MindSet course
Module 1 - Can't Fix What You Can't See π
The first thing we do here is align our expectations to the course.
Basically why I am doing this course is because:
I want to take the pain out of Poker ( I still stress with some spots)
* End unnecessary suffering
* Benefits everyone around you
* This benefits people who will know you. -> Transcend your ego, its not only about you.
Increase our EV
* Quality of time is precious optimize your EV, this way you can save a lot of time.
Better quality of life
* You need to mastery your emotions, because if they control you it surpass your intelligent mind. Your mind is emotional, think properly.
So basically this things are related on this way:
Take the pain out of poker - > Increase Ev - > Better quality of Life ->
Poker is insane, you work on your body/mind and you win more money, its really win win.
Do the work!
The first thing that touched me on this course was that All suffering is mind created, suffering is created after the pain and you can surpass it, the suffering comes from an ego attachment from an history. So lets supposed that you had a bad relationship with your partner and them you create an history that being in a relationship = bad feelings, you will keep closing yourself to next person who comes and this will crate more and more suffering, the key to solve this is to change the perspective, reframe the situation to: I understand that this type of person doesn't fit well with me, so the next person that I will look after needs to be x,y or z. And you rise from it
You can choose to not suffering, is up to it, its fucking mind created.
Basically what we are going to do is to get in the moment where emotional is creating suffering and surpass it.
Ego and Attachment
Ego create separation because is only about, me, me, me, mineeeeee.
Usually when we say something about 'me' or mine is usually the ego and people lose their mind to Ego.
And the best thing that you can do on this situation is to take an step back, understand that the world is bigger them you and think:
What is the best thing to think on this difficult situation ? Be optimal, flexible, choose to attach and detach, are you super connected to yourself ?
Be aware of some commons thoughts like why I can't win a big flip on deep run and bla bla bla, because first nobody really cares about it, second that you are surrendering to you ego and third when you do that you pass on the responsibility for your problems and the mind believes it has no way of solving it, so maybe the game is not for you.
And how to solve it ?
When you start to be less selfish you erase the ego, humans need love to survive, when you focus on other people, helping/serving them, it kills the ego, when you get happy because other person is happy, them things that happen to you its not that bad because doesn't happens to other people
if something bad happens to you is can't be the worst thing in the world, because only happen in your life and not in whole world, when you break the idea that you are the world everything change, it get more smooth, you need to take the "severity" of your problem,
everyone has problem and if you solve one will happen other, the problems doesn't need to change, you just need to be a GTO ninja, on solve how to deal with this problem, you need to solve it with quality.
And how to solve problems with high quality (on a GTO WAY), we can't avoid problem this is a fact, so you need to get flexibility, How can I solve this ? Should I read a book, talk to a coach, how my best self can solve this ?
The world is not falling, you are just attached to your ego, inflexibility
More Connection -> less ego, because you disconnect with yourself.
THERE IS NO PAIN THAT I am going to create in my life
Ego creates separation, we have preferences, but the preferences can didactic us.
What is best for the world on a charity tournament ? Charity wins, or you are ego driven ? that I beat this person ? bla bla bla more ego, more unhappy, think collective
More ego = MORE upset if we lose a HU and LESS happy when you win, we don't get satisfaction when you win, because nobody cares, it doesn't change anything, happiness in your life requires love and connection, on ego stay we connect less to people and don't get supper happy.
Less ego = lose pain, suffering AND ALSO experience magnitude of happiness when you win, you can inspire, its better to the community, a simple example would you be happier if a guy that is going to donate 10% of his prize win or if a selfish person win ?
Another great insight that touched me was this one...
Its not the lack of achieving goals that let people unhappy, what is missing is sense of connection which is indispensable from humans to feel fulfilled.
If we can relax the severity of our ego and our attachments, we will dramatically reduce the severity of our anger, frustrations and results orientated thinking
Podcast link
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1eCcpdpCFcQu9EYyAx3fz7?si=t5S2ivX9TE-uBO_lErDMMQ&utm_source=whatsapp
Day 20 and 21
"Self-esteem it your own reputation that you keep with yourself"
I want to start my journal with this quote because it really touched me, the idea is quite simple, if you have an imagine of yourself of a super player that study a lot and do all the stuff but in reality you don't live this lifestyle your self-esteem will be low and you eventually will be disappointed because you are living an incoherent live and this happened to me...
Finally I discover why I didn't enjoy BSOP so much, was simple because I was expecting high performance habits/lifestyle to be executed there but in reality this didn't happened, so my reputation with myself was low and this got me frustrated.
So I decided to "match" where I am now with my self-imagine, to align things.
So the first thing that I did was to be honest and think what time I spending in each of this tasks
And now I am seeing what is happened in reality, because I am tracking down my day, to quantify where I am compared to my expectations and them I will start to working on my best version
So my Sunday was like this
I am excited to track down my week and see where I can improve.
Now talking about the session...
It was the most expensive of my life and we perform quite well, w/o many expectation we just went to the field and execute the strategy, finally I lost the fear the to make big bluffs on expensive tournaments because I am getting more intimacy with them, didn't tilt at all during the session and this was great.
On Monday nothing really happened, was more motivated to play because I tried to gamify my strategy, focusing on execute my strategy perfectly
Day 22 - 26
Here comes the madness
Usually I take Tuesday as a day off, because I play Sun, Mon and jump to Wednesday but because my GF and Yoga teachers had travelled I was with a bunch of free time, so I decided to play in the last minute on Tuesday, it wasn't a good idea at all, my body was feeling tired specially because I was playing higher and higher tournaments since this is the best time of the year to play and this high buy in was getting me tense, not sure why tbh. 2 hours after I start the session I realize that the best thing to do was to just stop registering and play less tables, I did so. At least we learn from it, don't try to push yourself to a grind day if you energy is not on peak.
On Wednesday to Sunday the field was really soft and Rok allowed us to play more higher,
and as uncle Ben said "with great power comes great responsibility" and because I was up from 15k U$D on the beginning of the month I decided to jump with all in this higher buy in, I didn't know what expect from it but things didn't work really well and here are the reasons:
1) I am not used to this money swings and it left me unconsciously tense, even thought we have a great year, losing 3k in a day is something complete new for me, specially because on the beginning of the year I was on T3 (spending 600-800 dollars in a day of buy in) and I never played so high in my life.
2 I create a expectation on this Christmas grind, so I decided to push me harder with more tables and because the result weren't coming I was getting more and more frustrating.
3) The compound effect of the above two points, the frustrating + swings led me to a combined effect that caught me in a negative spiral of insecurity, luckily I had been doing a mindset course for some time now and managed to catch myself in these patterns. I also took a time to analyze my game to see if this was getting me to play wrong and luckily my core stats were good, exception for one, but it nothing criminal.
Side Note: On Poker Detox we have a methology to study, we basically review our stats such as VPIP, 3BET, Cbet IP, Cbet OOP and other 30 to see if we are in track with our winning strategy and everything was great
4) Variance ? Nah, its really easy to blame other stuff and don't be accountable for your life and Performance, even thought Variance could be a thing it does not matter/help us to get better in life. All this feelings/emotions/physicals state that I am living in this moment is not caused by it, its caused by an inability to deal with life situation and that great! Because I know were I can improve now!
And if we think deeply about it, me, you or any professional are not their results in Poker, it not define them, it should not change our mood/happiness because this is just a transacting thing and if we assimilate our results as part of us, as a history/identity we are f*cked we will never going to be happy because we always going to depend on external things.
I am really grateful that I am in this path of focusing more on my daily actions and optimizing my mind/scheduling and focusing less on results.
I am not going to lie, I had a plan to post my results on the year here but I them I just got the awareness that they are not me and what would be the point from it ? I mean, I am super grateful for all that Ivan and PD community made for me this year and the results are a good indication that we are in the right path, but it shouldn't define my as good or a bad person, so instead of it I am going to focus on my actions for the team this year (later).
This end of the year was amazing for my growth as a person and for my path to detached from my Ego/results, it was an great opportunity for me to know myself better when I am losing and to see how much potential I have to develop as a player/person.
Really excited for the new year path!
Gl and lets go!
All the best in 2022!
18K run is pretty good.
At the beginning of 2020 I could walk 10km easily, now I doubt I could do 5km at all.
Keep on keeping on!