Back To The Trap House

First off, there are no failures in life only learning experiences. I used the title because there are many people out there who "failed" at poker. Its a term people use everyday, I "Failed" at XYZ. I'm a "Failure". That way of thinking is -EV. It should be why I learned at poker but that just sounds weird. Failure is a learning experience. What you take from failure is IMO much more valuable than the experience gained in success. Failure is much more standard than success. Failure is learning, not failure.

I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to this list. If you can't you will one day or another I can promise you that!

1. Ego-I always thought I was way better at poker than I actually am. This thinking has stunted my growth many times in my poker experience. It shuts your mind off from soaking up anymore information. It keeps you stuck in neutral when you should still be mining for new information. When it comes down to the ever evolving world of poker it's suicide. Not only in poker but in life as well. The minute you stop learning you're a walking ghost.

2.Putting Poker before other things-Tommy Angelo has said that get good at everything else and have poker rise with the tide. It most likely has something to do with a confidence boost. When you learn and accomplish new things it increases your self esteem and probably your Serotonin levels. An example being when I go to the gym, work out and notice a change in my body. It boosts my self confidence a ton especially when other people notice as well. Everyone knows how important confidence is when playing so we should be building it up as much as possible. It's mos def +EV and you know this, Man!!

What I used to do was create an internal struggle with myself. Instead of going out and partying with friends, meeting woman or hanging out with family I'd play poker. When I lost I would beat myself up and feel guilty. On the flip side when I would go out with friends, family or woman and it didn't go like I wanted it to I'd say "Man, I should've just stayed home and played poker" or "I should've been studying or trying to better my game". I'd then beat myself up and and feel guilty about that as well. It was a vicious cycle that would dent my self esteem and ego and lead to losing.

I would punish myself from doing fun things if I lost as well. If I had a losing session I'd think I didn't deserve to go out. I'd tell myself that there would be plenty of time to go out and have fun once I became good at playing poker. I pushed everything aside and it created a wicked imbalance in my life.

3.I didn't really understand how equity worked-I had an idea and have an idea now but am still not a 100% sure. I now understand the ripple effect a -EV play can have on my game and how it can spill over into the next session and so on. I didn't understand how to prevent it from snowballing out of control. I didn't understand how to properly stack equity and how continuosly making +EV plays would create a positive stream of energy. There were no stopping points to capture the +EV or the -EV.

I believe you can stack equity in life so it spills over into poker. Lets say you're on a diet. You go out to dinner with a hot chick and want to splurge a little bit and eat something good. So, instead of getting chicken breast you get a steak. Thats fine and all but what if you also have a white chocolate cheese cake at the end? You then feel guilty. Then you go out and have 6 beers afterwards, fuck her without a condom, wake up next to her and find out shes not on birth control. Boy did you ever stack negative equity! That will most definitely spill over into your game I can promise you that. Equity stacking. When people go on sick runs in tournaments and cash games I think that they had been stacking equity to the point it spills over in the form of huge wins. Or there just lucky fucks but we'll use them as an example too. Some merged ass donk goes on a sick run in a 2/5 live cash game and wins like 5K. Well, I can promise you this merged ass donk isn't going to have too many of those EVER again and the next 10 sessions he loses probably 10K combined trying to catch lightning in a bottle again.

4. I let emotions take control of my logical side-You know what I'm talking about. Chase the flush draw with bad odds. Go ahead, DO IT!! Its fun!! The emotion I'm also talking about is the "burn" you get in your chest or stomach. That anxsious feeling when you know you should walk away or stop but try to ignore. I didn't listen to my emotions or my intuition. Or maybe my emotions drowned out my intuition. I needed to learn to listen to my intuition and I just wasn't at the time.

5. I put too much pressure on myself to succeed-I'm one of those people who constantly wants more. It creates imabalances inside of me and I start coming down on myself. Its a mindset of "should" like "I should be a millionaire by now" when you should just be who you are and embrace it. Saying I should be this or that is a negative emotion and it can cause serious hits on your confidence.

6. I ignored bankroll management at my worst- I say at my worst because I would tilt and throw bankroll management out the window. I would go on super monkey tilt and just spew buy ins like I had eaten bad sushi and got food poisoning and stomach flu at the same time.

Anyways, thats it for now. Anyone else do stuff like this?