Ninja's Poker Blog

Starting from scratch again on NL10, doing pretty good so far.. with the deposit bonus helping me out alot. Up 17 buyins so far from about one week play. (10-15,000 hands)

Basically 6 and 8 tabling while watching movies. I wish I had two screens for this. And sometimes I also try to play with all my focus.

Looking back on my past hand histories from last year I'm probably a lot more predisposed to play solid poker than I used to be.

As I'm much more disciplined, focused, healthy and 'data-driven' in general as these are qualities I consciously developed to allow myself to build and grow my business I've been working on for the past few months.

Of the things I now do and didn't a year ago that have made the most profound impact on myself as a person (and consequently also as a part-time, casual poker player)

I quit smoking almost 6 months ago (used to smoke a pack a day), I run every day as I'm preparing to run a 30k marathon in September, I medidate almost every day for an hour and also keep my brain healthy by reading regularly, eating more balanced meals with lots of vegetables, no more soda's or junk food (completely)... (Watch 'Super Size Me' the documentary) and I also took the habit to drink 3 liters of water a day as dehydration can cause a decline in cognitive abilities.

Remember, I took up these habits not for poker but to give myself the energy that was needed to grow my business as it's extremely demanding on my system.

I've read from a book (I fgot the source) that dehydration can cause a significant decline in cognitive performance.

Needless to say these habits have completely transformed my attitude and outlook on life in the short couple of months that I stuck with them, as a person first and foremost but, and as it so happens... when I play poker now, it feels like I am bringing a whole new game to the table.

And I can tell the difference, it is significant.

From the little disciplines I've cultivated from daily exercise, meditation and the rest, I now have the discipline to play solid poker with a clear-headedness that I never used to have before.

I have extremely high levels of energy but one of the most important thing is that I don't tilt like I used to. Which was one of the biggest cause of why I quit a year ago.

Without the emotion and my ego to cloud my judgement, it's allowed my game to improve DRAMATICALLY.

It's allowed me to differentiate from whenever I made a mistake in my play from when I did make a good play but got beat from a favorite position wheras before, I tended to blame it a lot on bad luck, now I see the folly of my ways and can immediately and consciously apply myself to start correcting it.

Poker for me now is like a gymnasium to exercise my brain cells to keep myself sharp.

We'll see how it goes.

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