So I played two sessions today and finished up two buy-ins. Nothing fantastic but it sure beats a swift kick to the shorts. Mainly, I continued getting standarly coolered which is expected since it felt like I've been running pretty decent over the last few months. I'm not mad about it or anything, just stating the facts.
Basically, these two hands prevented me from coming away from today's play as a big winner. These were the only two hands in which I got felted for 100bbs, which I suppose I should be happy/proud about.
This hand, the villain was a MEGA nit... He was something like 22/8 with a 3-bet of 0.9% over a huge sample. Sick life.
In this hand, the villain was also the mark at the table. He was pretty passive but bad... so I actually figured he had a hand here, something like AQ or AJ. I just call him down (standard IMO) on the flop and turn since he's betting so big and quickly... it was so likely he'd at least bet the river, so then I could just jam the rest in. Well turns out he just ships it in for me on the river after binking his 4 outer.
I actually took these two hands a lot better than I normally would. Of course I spazzed the chat in all caps a bit just for fun/show, but I really didn't give a fuck that I just got sucked out on at all. It's tough to completely remove emotion from the game after you get an unfortunate result. I've always been a little pissed when shit like this happens. I never really let it affect my play at all, but really there's no point to even be pissed off at all in the slightest bit. I think reading
this article over before I started the session was really good for me. I definitely recommend everyone to read it. I don't know exactly who the poster is, but I saw someone recommend that Rob, my student, read it... so I took a gander.
The post was written a long time ago (2006) but I feel what he's talking about as far as mentality and approach to the mental game still is relevant. The stuff he talks about is pretty standard and known by most poker players but how many people actually have that kind of attitude? We all know we should be happy when a fish sticks all the money in vs. our monster when he only has a 10% chance to win. It's the luck factor that brings the poor players back and makes this game possible to profit from. But how many of us actually take the attitude that Tien is speaking of in this article?
From now on, when I get sucked out on, my mentality = "Whatever I don't give a fuck" It's a hell of a lot simpler than remembering all the stuff from "
The Poker Mindset", lol. Basically it's a way for you to help yourself master #1, #4, and #6 of
The Poker Mindset's key principles (Understand and Accept the Realities of Poker, Desensitize Yourself to Money, and Remove all Emotion from Decisions).
In fact, it's pointless to even post or look at hands where you know you did everything right but just got unlucky. I don't even know why I posted those two hands above, lol. I guess they are fun to look at sometimes, but really it's a waste of time. I'll try to minimize posting hands like that in the future. I guess I show hands like that sometimes because I don't really want to show the super interesting or hands I played trickily because I'm sure some of my opponents read my blog. :)
Anyways enough about that, here are a few pics from Halloween! I went out to the bars with some friends and it was an absolute blast. I even ran into my friend Brea, who I've known since I was like 12. She's the daughter of the sporting clays range owner in Bismarck so she was there throwing targets or keeping score every time my Dad, brother, and I went there to shoot. We didn't get to talk all that much though, as she took off with some friends to a different bar after awhile. Here's a few pics she took of us.
Brea and I
Brea, myself, and Kevin
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