Manning Up

Hey

I feel i have turned a new leaf in terms of playing poker. No longer are my emotions completely intertwined in with getting a bad beat or winning a huge pot. I am starting to feel like a mercenary, and in keeping with this, one that is only interested in the money. There are probably better ways to get money in poker than to play in MTT's but i just love this form of the game too much to give it up. Also i'm not fully in the know of the optimal strategy in NLHE cash games 6 man or 9 man to ever steer away from what i am doing currently. I have said that i would play sng's more often but i hardly do this (this will change).

In the last 2 days i am up over a Grand sterling from mtt's but for no less than about 24 hours work (yes that is bordering an obsessive amount of time playing, but i love money!), so life is good. No more posts will talk of any bad beats in a "i hate my life" fashion. I might mention some but only for entertainment value and in a matter of fact way. Being too affected by the turn of a card is really bad for you and in seperating your emotion away from the parts of poker you can't control (when you are all in pre flop for example) you can study more on how to better the skill aspect. The variables under the "skill" aspect are quite vast for a game that a lot of people play all the time and you see guys doing different things in the same situtation and both of them can have correct reasoning.

This means that when most pros play day in and day out they always feel they have made a mistake and that they should have done things differently, unless this is a glaring mistake, they are probably beating themselves up unjustly. I realised this tonight. I always come off a session despite being up hundreds of pounds and thinking wow i played crap today i should have done this and that differently (thinly veiled brag). If you have opened your eyes up fully to all the information given to you at any one time and made the best decision you could given the circumstances than you can't do anything else. It's only when the results come in of whether that particular decision was right or wrong do we berate or congratulate ourselves. If it's a negative result we seem to think we did the wrong thing, but this may often not be the case in the long run, just for that given moment.

Sorry for this gibberish but i am just laying out some philisophical shit to help people prepare mentally for the slog of poker. I feel i am grounded enough now to really buckle down and make some money over the summer, and in winning tonight, i can see that i could do this more often, but only with the right temperament.

Laters.