Mountain Dews

Where to begin...

From the moment I started playing poker in early 2007 I was hooked. I wanted to make this new found hobby into a serious form of making money. After 3-4 years of hard work, of working on my game, learning a lot of different games, learning how to coach, coaching, and everything in between I have arrived where I am today. My biggest leak in poker, as most who know me know, is tilting and constantly not playing my A game. I recently had one of my famous downswings in which I tilt off half or more of my bankroll. (And we aren't talking about a small bankroll [?] brag) I had a -40k month which was enough to finally admit that I needed help, queue in Tommy Angelo. When I first showed signs of tilting and not playing my A game, Joe Tall had told me to get Tommy's book, and I shrugged him off saying "well, I know I'm tilting so I just need to not do it" ignorant me. Just because as I learned, you know you are tilting, doesn't mean it will be easy to stop it. 

Now let me pause a second to explain the kind of tilt that I experience. It's not the, throw my mouse at full force into my monitor type tilt. It's the slow building explosive jump stakes and give away my money at games I'm not even that good at tilt. Essentially the worst kind of tilt for my bankroll, as my mouse is sound and safe on my mouse pad, I sometimes wish I had smashed that mouse so that I couldn't keep playing. 

Ok back to why Tommy Angelo saved my life. So here I am on the most recent downswing, the largest one yet. I am emotionally wrecked, I'm depressed and I have no idea what I'm going to do. Thoughts of quitting poker for good pass through my head more and more frequently, I can't sleep and I am truly suffering. I don't want to give up yet though. One thing I told myself before playing poker was that I was going to achieve my goals in this game, I wasn't going to quit like most other hobbies I've had in the past, and I WILL succeed whatever it took. So here was everyone around me encouraging me to keep my head up and to look forward. Some people recommended taking a break, some recommended transferring my money to someone to hold until I felt better, but I knew what had to happen. I had to do what almost everyone recommended. Watch Tommy Angelo's series. So I banned myself from poker from each site for a week (which was step one of recovery) and fired up Tommy and Wayne's first episode. I watched it, entirely focused on it unlike I had watched any other video before. I really wanted to better my tilt. 

A few days passed by as I watched an episode each day, sometimes two a day as if a highschooler going to twoaday football practices to get into a d1 school. His words stuck in my head as I wrote down notes to each episode. After each day I started to un-tilt, I started to feel like it was going to be ok. During the new found time I had, I took care of a lot of outstanding chores in my life which added a lot of stress to my life. I really felt like this time I can do it. I can keep my roll, handle the tilt, and make it as a pro. So as I sit here, sitting up straight, I feel I have to credit Tommy Angelo to my future success as a poker pro, but looking back on my decisions I would have to say it was I that saved my life by taking the first few steps.

I have two videos left to watch, episode 7 and 8 which I plan on watching tonight and tomorrow. After that I still have a lot of work practicing everything that I learned, as it won't be easy. I'm eager to test myself with my new found knowledge and with lots of practice and patient I hope to be tilt-less in the near future.