The Mental Side

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k2o4 United States. Jan 30 2009 02:20. Posts 4803

I've really forgotten about the mental side of poker lately. When I first started playing poker I was at a retreat about buddhisim and science where grad students were presenting research projects about how meditation affected the brain. It was actually a great environment to start in, full of calm, intelligent insightful people, meditation sessions and reports about how to use my brain better. I remember thinking that I could have a huge edge in the long run if I applied the things I was learning here since poker was such a mental game and it's all about making good decisions all the time.

For the first 6 months of playing poker I actually had created a pre-session routine that included 5 minutes of meditation before I played along with doing some mantras saying stuff like "I am a good disciplined poker player" and "I will not tilt, and if I think I will tilt I will leave" and "I will make perfect decisions". I got lazy on it though, I guess cause I wasn't making much money grinding micro stakes limit cash games. At that point it was more important to learn how to play than to have a perfect mental mind state... but that's not so true, cause a good mental mind state is always +ev in poker.

Anyway after listening to the thing rnbsalsa posted it got me thinking about this again. It was funny to listen to the guy just lay out all the strategies I'd actually put together right at the beginning of my poker career. I realize that I have hit a point where I know the right decision to make at least 90% of the time, but when I'm losing it's usually cause I'm only making the right decision about 80% of the time. Not cause I don't know it, but because I'm not in the right mental state.

The last thing I wanna mention is that I had a minor downswing yesterday. Played 4 sessions and lost a small amount in every session. Today played 1 session and sat into a heater that was killed by back to back coolers vs regs, then re-initiated. Ended up losing 3 big hands as coolers (1 200bb deep) but still coming out with a 4 BI win.

hopefully I have a good friday. Haven't had one of those in a long while.

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Baalim Mexico. Jan 30 2009 02:32. Posts 34262

about your last blog post

L4D was built for Versus online mode, anything else isnt remotely as fun.

The game becomes very strategical as Infected, while as survivor its just another FPS, its about your reflexes, aim and experience in them and being fast, but as infected is about well timed ambush and good team comunication, it gets really good.

(btw about not dying easily on single player, try playing on expert and u will see you will die very fast).

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capaneo Canada. Jan 30 2009 03:43. Posts 8465

im actually wondeing if I should buy L4D or not. Baal do you think it worth it?

Also my GF only play Wii game with me as far as computer games go.

I tried to get her play Manhunt with me but she didnt like it. But I played BioShock and she didnt like it but she was interested in the story and kept asking me what happened next.
BioShock is defenetly the best game Ive played in a LOOOOOOOOONG time.

In US everyone is happy as long as all the prices are rising. Unless its crude oil - Marc Faber