Choosing to Win!

I am in charge of whether I win or lose at poker, 

and at life for that matter, me and only me. 

I can't control the cards, only the decisions I make.

I choose to stay positive and I choose to make good decisions. 

The road of negativity, frustration and blame is a dead-end. 

I will turn around and make winning happen!

Making this change from negativity to staying positive isn't easy and it takes constant work. I've had a pretty good 3 weeks since the coaching sessions and I've had 26 cashes. I've made 9 final tables and 5 were top 3 finishes and one of those was my first win in awhile. It felt so good to win one but for the first time in a long time I think had I finished 2nd instead of 1st I would have been okay with it. I played well, made good decisions and that is all I can do. As I say above the way the cards fall are out of our control. 

I'm getting much less frustrated late game and I'm letting the action happen as it will instead of trying to push it. I've stopped feeling like I have win every big pot and when beats happen and I lose a large chunk on my stack instead of going on major tilt I just get to work to try and build my stack back. Of course it doesn't always happen and when it doesn't I move on. 

A couple of things the guy I had the coaching sessions with said that have really stuck with me is 1. When we choose to play tournament poker we have to accept that most nights we go to bed a loser. 2. You know who cares about your bad beats? NO ONE! 3. It's all about choices, we choose to make the right decisions and play well or we don't, we choose to stay focused or we don't. 

I learned that I have nothing to prove to anyone and I don't care what anyone thinks of my game, except my backer of course, how I play is no one's business but mine. The goal is to play winning poker and how I manage it is my business and my business only! 

Tonight I saw a really good player make what at the time I considered a really bad play. I mentioned this play to some people in chat and they agreed it did sound like a bad play. This play was against me and he hit his card and because of the SPR I had to pay him off when he jammed the flop over my c-bet. So the play, even though it seemed bad and may not be a play one should make that often and it may actually be a losing play over a large sample, it got him doubled up. The more I talked about it the more I understood that just because the majority of players and even poker theory consider something fundamentally wrong doesn't mean you can't ever do it. With the small edge we have sometimes doing the most unexpected awards the greatest result. 

So all that said.....

Life is good today! 

Inches and Edges...

"We are in hell right now, gentlemen believe me and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light."

We can climb out of hell.

One inch, at a time.

The movie clip and quote above are From Any Given Sunday. The quote below is also but I'm changing it around as it pertains to the game of poker. 

Life is just a game of edges.
So is poker.
Because in either game
life or poker
the margin for error is so small.
I mean one missed hand, 

one distraction at the wrong time.

One decision made a second too fast
can mean the difference in winning or losing.
The edges are so small that we can't 

afford to miss one single spot.
The edges are in every break of the game
every minute, every second.

We fight for every edge
We tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that edge.
We CLAW with our finger nails for that edge.
Cause we know when we add up all those edges 

(no matter how small)
that's going to make the difference
between WINNING and LOSING
between LIVING and DYING.

I watch this clip often before I play. Choosing to play poker seriously isn't for the faint of heart. You have to love it and you have to want to win as much as you want to breathe (I heard that somewhere too, just don't remember where). 

As for the edges, poker gets tougher and tougher and edges get smaller and smaller. If you're an online player and you think you can watch T.V., talk to people on Skype and surf all over internet and still play your A game, I have news for you, you are wrong. All of these things are taking your attention away from your game. With the edges being so small you can't afford to miss one single spot in any game you're playing. If you're playing a lot of tables it is even more important that you remove the distractions around you and put all your focus on the game. 

I've been as guilty as anyone else in the past of doing all of the above. Even trying to look back at your PokerTracker or Holdem Manager to go through some hand you just lost is a distraction. Unless you need to look at it quickly for information on someone at the table or make a quick note, you should be marking questionable hands and going over them later. I've be guilty so many times of posting hands in Skype chat and trying to discuss them with someone while I was playing and this is a huge distraction and it's something that can be done later, not while you're playing.

I've recently had a couple of coaching sessions my backer set up. The first session started out a bit rocky. My ego got in the way and I got overly sensitive about a couple of things he said. I'm not good at not speaking my mind so unfortunately I felt the need to say something. At first I thought this was a huge mistake and afterwards I felt terrible for saying anything, after-all my backer was kind enough and cared enough to set this up and the coach was good enough to do the sessions with me. I left him a message on Skype to apologize yet one more time for what I had said. Today when I got online I had a scathing message from him that definitely put me in place. I went through various stages of processing this. Slightly angry, very hurt and then just plain depressed then to the realization that he was right. Harsh realizations are just that, harsh. 

I've always liked to think I didn't have ego problems so to be told my ego was a problem and that I think that I'm a better player than I actually am was not an easy thing to hear. He didn't exactly stop there either, I was pretty much raked over the coals but it was honestly stuff I needed to hear. So bottom-line I'm glad I said what I said and I'm glad that I had to suffer through the berating I took because it brought me down a quite a few pegs and brought me back to reality. 

The funny thing is just a few weeks ago I wrote this blog REALIZATION: You probably aren't as good as you think and here I was being accused of the same thing I accused others of. 

We spent some time talking more today and finished the hand history session we started last night and I learned a lot. He made some technical game improvement suggestions but mostly mental game and attitude things. I really think these things are going to help me with my game quite a bit. Just the harsh realization of where I really am with my game is so important. I know I said it in the above linked blog but I don't think I believed it. I think my ego still wanted to believe I was better than that. I think at the time I wrote that blog I did believe it but the devil on my shoulder kept trying to convince me I was better than that. So even though at the time of writing that blog I'd accepted it, as the Baptist here in the south say "I back slid". 

So as of now I'm totally sticking with mid-stakes except for the occasional satted into Sunday major and work hard to start actually crushing those stakes and stop blaming all my problems on runbad. I'm going to stop putting the cart before the horse by trying to play games I'm not ready to be playing. I'm turning off anything that can be a distraction and I'm just going to play. That even includes the "I'm a the final table of so so" brags and letting people rail me on Teamviewer etc. And absolutely zero chatting on Skype or the phone or anything else while any game is running. It's time to get serious and stop letting distractions, stress or any outside issues cause me to make unnecessary mistakes. 

The guy I got the coaching from told me when I sit down to play look at everything as a choice, a choice to play, a choice to win, a choice to play my A game, a choice to focus and a choice to make the best possible decisions. This is what I'm going to do, it is all I can do if I want to win at this game. 

I'm climbing out of this hell.

One edge, one good decision and 

one choice at a time!