Paul Erdos was a prolific mathematician. The guy lived out of a suitcase and did math problems until the day he died. He traveling around the world to collaborate on mathematical problems. He was known for walking into a room and declaring "My mind is open!".

We should ask this question when sitting down to think about poker. Whether it be watching a video, read forums, review hands, or play. New information is filtered through our mental models and abstractions. Abstractions are helpful because they simplify analysis and give us a structure to interpret new knowledge. In poker there are a few standard ways to analyze hands, and we incorporate new info into these hand analysis models.

However pre-existing models can hinder growth. Out of the box thinking is often fruitful. The ansky-aejones video we a great example. They both have some specific ideas about the game. If the best players often don't agree on spots, the rest of us should certainly open our brains. Existing models facilitate integration of knowledge, opening your brain facilitates expansion of models.

Vegas is booked. Arriving on the 30th. Rental car booked for $350 for 2 weeks. Gonna crank out 1-2 more videos before. And possibly make some dual video action. Looking forward to the Leggo party, 2p2 meetup, summer league, hanging at the house, and mostly just relaxing like an actual vacation.

Mentioned last time I was reading Peace is Every Step. It's a small simple book with bits of wisdom based around the Buddhist philosophy of mindfulness. The main message is that we can only truly experience life in the present. Dwelling on the past and worrying about the future prevents feeling true happiness. Meditation and awareness keep us firmly planted in the present.

I think this is pretty relevant to poker. We play a game where the long run never quite arrives. Goal setting is not inherently bad, but often we worry too much about results and getting from point A to B. Remember Mike in Rounders saying he felt alive at a poker game. We should take more small breaks like that and just enjoy being in the game. Appreciate that we are living, playing a game we love, and in the middle of something that is important to us.

Here's an exercise I've adapted from the book. Chrches, temples have bells. Bells are wonderful because they give us a chance to come back to ourselves. It's a time to reflect and realize that we are alive and well. The exercise requires a stop watch/timer. Set the time to run for 1 hour (or whatever time works for you). When it goes of, stop playing. Take a breath. Reflect a bit. Take a break? The timer is great because it's automatic.



Poker

Often players categorize themselves as "feel" players. There are many successful players that don't rely on much math and theoretical principles. The game is much more intuitive. They develop the ability to judge frequencies, evaluate equity, determine optimal lines over thousands of hours at the tables. aejones for example, has described this approach as a key component of his success.

It appears that science backs up this theory of learning. There are two main ways we perform explicit learning in poker. Research and pattern recognition development. Examples of research are pokerstove analysis, theory study. Examples of pattern recognition development is learning to identify the correct play. Watching videos, studying hands are ways to develop the ability to make the correct play.

Implicit learning on the other hand is very different. Implicit learning occurs subconsciously and unintentionally. Learning occurs over many many trials. The learner knows the "answer", but has difficulty even verbalizing how they arrive at the answer. It seems impossible to reverse engineer the underlying principles from the knowledge. Psychology studies have shown people can learn games with very complex math underlying it (math they don't even understand) implicitly over many trials.

I guess the moral of all this is that there is definite validity to simply putting in hands. The old motto study/play/study/play is a valid one.

Reference
http://www.brettsteenbarger.com/Lear...to%20Trade.doc

I wrote about being "in the zone" a few days ago. To recall, it's that state of enhanced concentration and awareness at the table. The brain is fully alert, picking up every piece of useful information and processing it cleanly. It's an interesting concept, but more importantly how do we improve our concentration? In my initial research, I've found that the teachings of Buddhism may hold the key. I haven't even scratched the surface in this area (books are on the way wee!) yet.

But here's an exercise I've started doing every morning. It's called the mindfulness exercise. Find a quite spot, sit up right, close eyes (optional). Don't focus on any specific thing. Let random thoughts come to your mind. Don't evaluate the thoughts. Simply acknowledge the thought, then "release" it from your mind. I can go about 20 minutes now. It really helps with clearing your mind. If a certain thought keeps coming up, you probably need to address it in real life.

Perhaps meditation has real potential. I really like my routine the last 2 weeks. Wake up, eat, go to park to run, shower, meditate, study hands, and then play. Like most poker players, I have no sense of routine. But this new routine puts me in a very calm and balanced mindset. I don't feel as greedy, discouraged, frustrated, fearful when I sit down to play..

It is said that we don't experience reality, instead our perceptions are filtered through our beliefs and bias'. Our belief system is the set of principles that we use to perceive everything in our lives. I was recently reading about how the US army used to train snipers. They found the two best snipers in the world. The approach was to study the beliefs of these snipers, and train others to think similarly. The best sniper believed that

- Shooting well is important to my survival
- Hunting is fun
- Mental rehearsal is important to successful performance
- If I miss a shot, it has something to do with my performance

Compare that to most of the recuits who believed things like

- Guns are evil, they kill people
- Shooting too much might make me deal
- If I miss a shot, the gun is probably misaligned.

Similarly, in poker some negative beliefs include

- Poker is easy money
- I only play for the money
- I'm smarter than most players
- Grinding is tedious
- Poker is boring
- I run bad
- I can't beat higher stakes

Compare that someone who thinks

- Poker is a tough today
- Poker is a fun complex game
- I enjoy competing and outplaying my opponents
- I can always improve my thought process
- Money is nice, but it's secondary to enjoyment
- I can make a nice fortune by grinding
- I'm responsible for my results

About a month ago I reviewed my existing beliefs about poker after encouragement from an article. I realized that I shared several of the negative beliefs. I rethought about my beliefs, wrote down some positive (and realistic) beliefs. I think my game and outlook has been better since. I still don't plan to play this crazy game forever, but I'm happy doing it at the moment.

Many people talk about changing and self-improvement. In fact it's a multi million dollar business. Although there ARE good reasons to change certain aspects of our lives (like healthier lifestyles, not being a douche etc), in reality it is pretty difficult to change character traits.

Instead of attempting to correct our weaknesses, why not focus on our strengths? Do more of what you do well. Structure aspects of your life to suit your strengths. This is a newer approach in the field of psychology. The so called "psychology for sane people". It's a vast subject and has applications to our whole lifestyle, but I'll discuss a few ways relating to poker.

Find an approach/plan for poker suiting your personality
There are many personality tests out there, and most people have a good idea of their character strengths and weaknesses. Reflecting back on my poker career, there have been times when I was playing a form of poker, style, that didn't suit my personality. If you hate variance don't play HU PLO. Of course you COULD try to improve your tolerance for variance, but that can be hard. Just avoid the game because it doesn't suit you. Same goes for finding a playing style, level of bankroll that suits you. Maybe you hit a wall with poker because you aren't getting the maximum from your strengths in the particular game/stakes/mental approach/theoretical approach.

Don't review hands you lost!
Most players review hands they lost. This approach has good intentions. We want to correct mistakes and not lose money in the future. However, I think focusing ONLY on losing hands gives only negative feedback. Often people review hands after a downswing. But you can also learn a lot from hands you win. Next time you have a downswing try this exercise.

Review ONLY the winnings hands > 25bb. Take notes on
- What lines worked as bluffs
- What lines worked for value
- "Good" things you did. Stuff like losing minimum when behind, thin valuebets, reading someone's range correctly, picked good 3 barrel spots etc.

For the next 10k hands, focus on the good things you did during the downswing. Don't add any crazy/fancy new plays to your game. Go back to the bread and butter plays that have a proven history of being +EV. As confidence increases then slowing add new plays. As a general note, you should understand fundamentally why/how certain aspects of your strategy make money. This exercise re-enforces that point.

We've all had sessions where everything seems to click. You read your opponents correctly over and over, make correct calls/folds, are in complete sync with game flow. But it's more than simply making correct plays. It is making these plays naturally, effortlessly, and in harmony. I know that I would be much richer if 90% of my sessions were in the zone. Currently I'd guess maybe 20% of my sessions go this way. Maybe 50% where I play normal/average. 20% slightly off and 10% terrible.

But why can't we be "in the zone" more often? We don't intentionally play bad. There are some complex issues at work that I don't fully understand. "Trying harder" only seems to worsen things.

This article gives some insight into this phenomenon.
http://www.brettsteenbarger.com/Find%20the%20Zone.doc

Essentially, the zone is a heightened sense of awareness.

- The front brain (responsible for complex thinking) is operating at full capacity
- Our trained/natural instincts are fully accessible
- Inherent enjoyment of the activity is necessary
- Clear defined goals
- Proper level of challenge
- Immediate feedback

I suspect two issues with sustaining the zone in poker is that we often don't play at a level/opponents that properly challenge us, and the feedback mechanism in poker is very fuzzy in the short term.

Keeping a journal is one way to monitor your mental state regarding poker. The drawback is that the written words can't quite convey exactly how you are thinking/feeling during a session. Here's an exercise that might help anytime you've been playing poorly, or just struggling with poker. I tried this yesterday after a couple of bad sessions, and it seemed to help.

All you need is the free version of http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, and a $10 microphone.

Exercise:
Simply talk freely about anything that pops into your mind during a session. Go over your thought process, how you feel, plan of attack against different opponents etc. Remember, nobody else will hear the recording, and it's not intended to teach others. It's simply a verbalized version of your thinking process. Think of it as a casual conversion with yourself about poker. Listen to the recording later, and you might make some interesting observations. How does your tone sound like? Did you gloss over hands lazily? Did your emotions change? Did you berate yourself?

I found the exercise liberating. We will have a relationship with ourselves forever, so why not verbalize it once in a while? It could clear up issues.

Go ahead and post obligatory sex jokes before reading the rest.

Was reading more of Steenbarger's psychology articles (http://www.brettsteenbarger.com/articles.htm). In observing over 100 traders, he determined that performance anxiety was the #1 deterrent to making profits in the markets. Performance anxiety in our context is any emotional, physical, or mental reaction that hinders the front brain's ability to perform logical and analytic thinking. This manifests itself usually in worrying about results, but that's not the only cause.

Some poker examples would be

- Worrying about protecting a winning session
- Getting unstuck
- Getting money back from fish who stacked you
- Worrying about being exploited (Yes. If you are worried about being outplayed that hinders objective thought).
- Worrying about being bluffed too much.
- Running bad
- Having a bluff called and worrying about our image

The result is that it's near impossible to think through a hand objectively. It seems like a lot of what we think of as tilt/bad play is performance anxiety. Steenbarger recommends 7 things to minimize performance anxiety.

1) Set process oriented goals - $ goals in poker are probably a bad idea. Even hand goals may not go far enough. I'm finding it helpful to break down my goals into individual sessions. Things like play 1k hands solid and re-evaluate my mood and quality of play. I think it could be helpful to break down poker into the process of doing. Like each day study for this block of time, think about your mental state/mediate (I'm getting into meditation, will write more in future), play quality hands. Focus your goals on the process, and results should come right?

2) Gradual controlled risk taking - In poker, common good advice is don't move up too fast. Perhaps our brains have to gradually get acclimated to higher stakes/higher swings. Same goes for game selection (esp HU). Don't play a super aggro monkey when taking a shot, even though the edge is there. You can find better edges and maintain an steady/confident mental state.

3) and 4) Prepare and Mentally rehearse threatening situations - In poker, this means hand reviews. However, instead of simply reviewing a tough spot, mentally put yourself in the state during the hand. The key is to spot flaws/misjudgments in your thought process and correct it. Visualization can help here. For example, think of a hand when villain did something unexpected (like c/r the river). It probably shook you up. That's an example of a threatening situation. Now picture yourself in the same situation, but this time you are calm and composed. Imagine thinking through the hand, and making a better/more clear decision next time.

5) Take a step back - It's very hard to objectively judge how well we're playing. It's easy to fool ourselves and keep playing a C game. What I've started doing is getting up from my chair, walk 10 feet away, and imagine myself still playing. It's stepping outside ourselves to make an objective judgment. It's a bit weird, but try it sometime!

6) Mental checklist - Haven't thought about this much yet. But one idea I have is taking a quick quiz of your emotional state before a session. For each emotion, rate yourself. Happy, alert, nervous, tired, excited, discouraged, optimistic.

7) Get a life - There is of course more to life than poker. Sometimes I find it really hard to step away from a good game when running bad. The usual story is I play bad, dig a bigger hole, and feel like a retard for the rest of the day.

Here is a really good resource for psychology related to poker. http://www.brettsteenbarger.com/articles.htm

Check out link 2, "A personality questionnaire for traders". I think the quiz is at least worth thinking about. Summary is that

- We experience positive and negative emotions associated with poker
- It's very hard to excel at anything if the negative emotions dominate
- High degree of positive emotions lead to immersion in one's subject. See aejones' "The Obsession" article for a prime example.
- Happiness and well being are a result of 1) autonomous goals 2) goals that we intrinsically value 3)feeling of competence 4) valuing relationships more than money and material things

I think points 1-2 is the main reason many of us prefer self-directed endeavors like poker. It's pretty soul crushing even achieving goals that others set for us. And even reaching goals we set aren't satisfying unless the accomplishment is meaningful. I've had months where I reach some monetary goal by grinding a ton, but I don't think it made me any happier. Where as reaching modest goal like exercising regularly has improved the quality of my life. This may sound contradictory to my last post where I stated 50k hand goal, however I don't think this is the case. I'm slowly rediscovering my enjoyment for poker. Immersion and enjoyment should lead to much success. I have to get out of the mindset that poker is easy money and a trivial job. This is effecting my whole belief system, and I'll go more into that subject in a future post.