playing a game for a living = +EV

You sir, are a bastard. why must you always come at the last opportune times, blurring my vision and clouding my thoughts. Making all logic leave my brain, and raw emotions take over. Damn you tilt, damn you to hell.

Why do I tilt??? I don’t know, but I definitely tilt less than I used to. Day by day, it minimizes. Then when I think its gone for good, I have a losing session and I want to throw my computer out the window. At least I’ve isolated what mainly causes tilt for me. Its not so much the coin flips lost, or the 2 outer caught on the river. Though this may initiate it. Its the blatant mistakes I make that cause me to tilt the worst. Because at least when I run under EV, or get massively coolered, I know it wasn’t my fault. But when I play a hand worse that I should have, and cost myself $s, this causes me to tilt the worst by far. Luckily, as my game improves these types of mistakes happen less often. But I’m still working on them.

Well I’m tilting pretty hard right now. Not the kind of tilt where I’m going to lose a ton of money, but the kind of tilt that puts me out of “the zone”. When I’m playing optimally, I’m in a zone of sorts. I am taking notes, exploiting opponents, and playing my A game. But when I get out of it, I lose the energy to do all these things. And it makes it very difficult to get in hands when this happens. I usually just quit, take a break, watch a video or something. But, I’m going to experiment with something else tonight. I think when I am tired, at night, I play less than optimal. I think in the morning, I play better. So I’m going to stop playing today, well short of my 8000 hand mark. I only played 4000 today. But tomorrow, I’m going to wake up at 6, grind out some hands, and see how it goes. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do hand-wise. My goal for this month was 160,000 hands. So far, I’m at about 115,000. So that means I’ll be taking this weekend, and playing a bunch of poker. Obviously its not about how many hands you get in, but how you play the hands that you do get in. Quality over quantity. So whenever I get semi-tilted, I will take a break, watch a DC or CR video, then start up again. Its those winning sessions that I wait for. Because those are where I play my absolute best. Going up 1000 dollars in an hour feels amazing. And does wonders for ones game. Having super deep stacks, 400-1000BB on multiple tables is great. And makes me play well. I need to make sure I extend these sessions as long as possible. Because these are when I’m playing my best. Keeping my losing sessions short shouldn’t be too hard, but may mean more video watching and a few less hands this week. I’m still learning the 6max game, and its gonna take a while. But logic is my thing. Critical thinking. Its what I’m best at. I guarantee I can beat a bunch of clowns at 100NL. Every hand is just one big puzzle, with a +EV decision on every street, and an optimal bet size to go along with that. The challenge is using the vast amount of information available to determine what the best possible line to take is. Hopefully I can dominate tomorrow. I have to keep in mind that this game is beatable, not matter how hard I’m tilting. But I’m calling it a night for right now. Tomorrow is a new day.