Okay, so here is one thing i've come to learn from live poker and my epic downswing, and something i've been teaching people to pay attention to. Mental presence at the table.

In his book Bobo says that once you stop paying attention to the blinds and no longer focus on winning them, you should just quit the game. And it makes a lot of sense (hello d2themfi and your nl400 vid hu on preflop edge). But there is another side to this concept. You should always keep your THOUGHTS attached to the table, rather than blinds alone, meaning that it's very easy to lose track of what's going on when playing 9 or 12 tables and your thoughts start randomly flying around all tables you have open at the moment. And that's bad. Like, really bad - you start missing some very +EV spots, and so-called "autopilot" comes into play. Very intuitive so far, right?

Now the tricky part. Even when playing 4 to 6 tables it's relatively easy to get lazy and lose your mental presence at the table and stop looking at every situation in-depth. How to avoid that? I know you've been running into this mental state for months now and couldn't get your mind working again, couldn't get it to stay sharp. So you've been making breaks or quitting some very profitable games because you couldn't focus anymore etc. But there is a solution. In fact, there are many ways to get your mind working again, but i won't tell you all of them right now after all, i'm still making some money by teaching this.

One way to do that would be to cut down the number of tables you're playing to 4-7 (with 8 or 9 it becomes slightly more challenging, and you'll need a pretty big monitor, so that tables won't overlap and will still have relatively big fonts) and do a very simple thing nobody has ever thought of - uncheck "Auto Rebuy" box. How can it help, I hear you ask? It's easy, really - it makes you keep a close eye on every table, in order to start every orbit with a full stack. In other words, you maintain a very strong mental presence at all tables and along the way start noticing interesting dynamics or discovering minor leaks in other ppl's games, paying more attention to hands you've had a glimpse of, but otherwise wouldn't have noticed. It also motivates you to keep track of every table - when you get AA with 85bb and stack a fish, you'll definitely blame yourself for being so sloppy. I hope you see the point.

This won't work in HU, though, simply because your mind HAS to stay sharp to play this game, while in 6max or FR games it's insanely easy for your mind to get lazy and start missing some very +EV spots.

That's all for now.