Some Mental Adjustments...

Cross Posted [http://www.houstontexaspoker.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35502]

Since I struck for nearly $1400 back on the 3rd of November, I've increased my playing pretty drastically. Things have been going really great. Not superb, but I'm happy. I've played in about 70 tournaments or so and have cashed in nearly 25% of them. It sounds nice, but I'm not crazy about this because I haven't made it back to a final table. Really, that is what its all about to me. I can't tell you how livid I get with consistent min-cashing. And I suppose the silver-lining is that I'm keeping my head above water until that next big score comes. Ultimately, it does become frustrating to make multiple deep runs and flame out. That is the nature of tournaments though and I'm at peace with that.

I've made a lot of adjustments to my game routine and wanted to share a few of my thoughts. I don't feel like its my play that has changed as much as it is my mental approach to the game... although I suppose that mentality does change the way you play.

Anyways, I find myself scribbling notes to myself on this little notepad next to me while I play. Its all just pep-talk stuff. I started it really late one night in an attempt to keep myself awake, and have kept up with it since then, even during normal hours. I just continually talk to myself in it and psyche myself up and remind myself of things that I may forget in the middle of a long session. Its short little sentences in random spurts. If you read back at them though as a paragraph, it flows together. I write in it after losing a big hand and remind myself that I'm one of the better players at the table but only if I am level-headed. I remind myself of whats at stake, money-wise. I make note of which players I feel are becoming tired of me. I tell myself to stop spewing chips if I become a spewzilla over a few hands. Just, lots of small things but I feel like it allows me to take a step back and look at my game without emotion, which really is absolutely huge in my opinion.

That is another subject I wanted to talk about. Emotion. And in particular, bad beats and the insuring tilt. What it boils down to is: there is a bad beat coming your way. That is irrefutable. The absolute only variable is how are you going to react to it? I feel like what makes bad beats so bad is that they happen so unexpectedly. They just hit you out of the blue. And, is it just me, or are we just more sensitive to losing after we've been doing well? So, I feel that if you know they're coming, you will have nothing to be pissed about. Just, always expect it. Know its going to happen, no matter how good you play. And the more you care and the better you play, the more it'll suck. But the way to overcome the ensuing tilt after a bad beat, is to assume the bad beat is inevitable in the first place.