Travels, Ramblings, and some good'ole Poker

Hey guys it's been awhile.  I've been back from my Australia/New Zealand trip for a month.  Haven't played much poker last month, didn't go well, kind of a cruel tease but oh well, it happens.  

I played some 6m plo today! At one point I had 6tables going with 2hu plo on the side, it was really sick, really fun, and totally not optimal.

 

Swongy!  I have some pretty exciting news, I have a website project for myself to work on.  It'd be great if it had traffic but the main focus is a personal goal to get it going for at least a few years so I'm looking forward to it.  Expect it to be up around the end of this month!

I'll be getting in the practice of blogging more.  PLO's pretty fun when you're constantly in action.  I'm far too loose but it felt right to just go all out today and play the way I want to in PLO.  I think after I trim some fat I'll have a strong 6m game and more importantly, a stronger PLO game.  I've got so many questions about how to play with 4 cards so I'm going to be focusing on both 6m and hu plo until I'm satisfied with my PLO knowledge.  There are hands that happen HU which are pretty easy to solve but then in a 3 way or 4 way dynamic, I find myself sitting there thinking what do I do? 

It's 2011 and I'm stuck 37k in props.  Yes, I bet $100/point on a neutral ev game (with some bonuses mixed in) and 11 hours later I dropped 37k.  

I've taken two trips to Vegas in the last 4 months and with each trip I've become more and more degen.  This takes the cake (I'm actually up on Vegas lifetime, eat it bitches!).  I was pretty mindblown to experience such a loss playing a neutral ev game but it happens.  I'm grinding as hard as I can before I leave for Australia next Tues.  So far it's going OK.  Can you tell my work with Tendler has really paid off?

I re-discovered a big leak in my hu plo game.  It's a leak I've known about for 6 months and I subconsciously thought I was fixing it.  Well I wasn't and looking at my graphs today, I couldn't believe my eyes.   This laziness, this haphazard approach to fixing my plo game has gone long enough.

  

How inappropriate that I, a pro, be so lazy that I let this happen.  Henceforth, from Jan. 7th 2011 forward, I will make a much stronger effort to fix my leaks in this god forsaken fucked up game of variance.  

2011 has been rough so far but if it weren't for road bumps like these, I'd never reach my potential.

I'm leaving for Australia next Tues.  If you guys are out there, let's grab some food or drinks.  I'm going to sydney, melbourne, auckland, south island for 3 weeks. 

Also, I will soon be blogging on my new site.  This doesn't mean I'm leaving DC as a coach, it just means I won't be blogging here anymore.  My blogsite is a business project I've been wanting to run for awhile. It's about time I start.

My 2011 resolutions:

My list is long.  I'm pretty confident I'm going to get 90% of this done.

 

-Get really competent in HU plo

-Get competent at full ring and 6max plo

-Develop a strong hu badugi game

-Develop a strong hu triple draw game

-learn more about real estate and the stock market

-start learning spanish and korean!

-learn to cook WELL

-develop some bruce lee muscles

-develop my website

-improve tremendously at photography

-play much more poker

-Enjoy 2011 at least 2x as much as 2010

Starting off the year 2 strikes down, only looking forward now.

November 15th, 2010

Our first stop is the Artessa Winery.

 

Not only do they have a gorgeous view of the valley, but they have some amazing wines! 

We spent about two hours here.  I know you're supposed to spit out but most of these wines were too good to waste.  I was feeling the alcohol slowly starting to hit around 1:30pmish

 

Our next stop was at El Molino, which currently makes my favorite pinot noir.  I learned about it at Ad Hoc and instantly fell in love with the wine.  El Molino is managed by a couple that pretty much do the whole thing themselves.  They make this and a chardonnay I think...They're located in Rutherford and they're one of the few if not only people to make Pinot in that region.  They pretty much try to do everything naturally which means no machine to cool down the wine, it's all stored underground where it's already cool.  Another unique thing they do with their wine is that they leave the stems on, they believe it gives their wine a lot of flavor. 

This is where the grapes are poured into and stomped on.  Deeb expressed interest in stomping grapes this trip...unfortunately that could not happen.   

Underground Storage Room:

 

 

Onto the next winery: Stag's Leap

They're known for their cabernets and I soon found out that I am not a cabernet guy :(  But I still tried all the wine :D 

 

 

We compared 3 different wines each and I found out that the only one I really cared for was a $200/bottle cab. lol.

Dinner:

FRIED CHICKEN NIGHT @ Ad Hoc!!!

 

 

 

God the food was soooooooooo good tonight.  

We start off with a salad that's served family style.   

 

I'm not a big salad guy but no complaints, it was delicious!  The carrots were ridiculously good! And this is coming from a man who hates carrots.  They were crispy and their flavor was vibrant, it was exciting, here I am actually enjoying a salad that has carrots.

The next course, one of my favorites: Crisp Pork belly with broccolini.  Oh My God that broccolini was delicious.  It didn't have that kind of sour nasty afterfinish, it was just beautifully done but I mean the pork belly itself was perfect. 

 

Ladies and gentleman, not a good picture but I present you the best mashed potatoes WITH MUSHROOMS (and cabbage on the side) 

For our main course, Fried Chicken.  I was a big doubter.  I don't really care for chicken, it's usually too dry or just boring.  Also, from my experience, Koreans make by far the best fried chicken   

But this is Ad Hoc we're talking about! This is one of Thomas Keller's babies we're dealing with here.  I present you the most delicious fried chicken man may ever know 

The meat was falling off the bone, the skin was salted to perfection and full of flavor.  I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Ad Hoc does by far the best wine pairing.  The alcohol served beautifully compliments each meal.  So what did we have with chicken? Beer right? Nope, sparkling wine. 

moving on for intermission we had some cheese, pistachios, and honey 

with a beer pairing! 

A sorbet to cleanse the palate 

and to finish it all off, giant cream puffs.  What a decadent way to finish off the meal

 

the alcohol served that night 

After dinner, some of the staff told us we should meet them for drinks so we headed over to Bouchon for some truffle fries and cocktails.  Afterwards we headed over to the bar where the staff did not show up D:But it was cool, instead we met our bartender, whom Ryan so cleverly named "crazy asshole"

I forget how but Crazy Asshole was ranting about religion and whatnot and he said, regarding Heaven, "you can keep your virgins, I'll take 3 hookers any day"

2am, the night ending, Ryan decides he wants to have the cab meet us at Ad Hoc.  We walk over enjoying our last together (Deeb was leaving the next day) and as we're hopping in our cab, Navid (really chill bartender/server) busts out of the restaurant and invites us in for a drink with the staff.

  

 

 

 

It was not a bad way to end the night :) 

The Napa Valley Trip part 1:

It's a Sunday afternoon in San Francisco and myself, Shaundeeb, and Fees are eating at Tony's Pizza Napoletana, just making a quick stop before we head over to Napa Valley for what would be for me a week of binge drinking and eating.

I've been living abroad for the past two years and I just have to say thank God I came on this trip with poker players.  I'm doing Napa for 2-3 days and then San Francisco.  Fees is doing Napa for about the same time as Deeb but his schedule is flexible. Deeb has to leave Tuesday for a shootout tournament in Compton.  But he texted someone to see if he can move his tournament entrance to 6pm. 

Me: I think a lot of food here looks good

Deeb: I think we should just buy whatever we want

YES!!!!!!!!!! 

Boom, homemade nachos: they were pretty interesting

Margherita Pizza: They supposedly make 73 per day 

and my favorite, a truffle pizza, I've never spent $100 on a pizza before: 

and it was worth it, so good!!  And of course I lose my first CCR in the United States (how did we spend $200 on a pizza lunch?) thanks guys

I'm not much of a baseball guy but Deeb wanted me to snap a photo of this graffiti: 

And while we're doing that, this drunk couple walks up to Deeb and the girlfriend asks him if he could snap their photo.

Boyfriend interrupts: you idiot why are you asking him? ask the asian with the camera!

:(

I snap the photo, she asks me to shoot one more and I just flat out tell her "it's good", boyfriend laughs and he yells "yeah, that's how you do it, that's what being a man *he grabs his junk* is about!"

what a sexy man

*boom*

fast forward to dinner, we're in Napa Valley and we are eating at Ad Hoc in Napa Valley.  It's Thomas Keller's sister restaurant that was actually going to be a burger place (supposedly inspired by In N Out) but I guess the county didn't want to give him space for a garden so it became what it is now.  They only serve a prix fixe 4 course menu that changes every day based on what's fresh and what the chef wants to make.

We sit at the bar as it's the only spot that doesn't take reservations and the staff just falls in love with us.  We're drinking, joking, and saying God knows what and having a great time at the restaurant.  The manager comes by...

Deeb: So you guys know T.K. right? Can you get us into the French Laundry?

Manager: You want me to call and find out? I can do that for you.

Me: nah it's ok

Deeb: Mike! It can't hurt to try!

Five minutes later:

Manager: Congratulations guys! There was a last minute cancellation on Tuesday Night!!

Ryan and I burst out laughing

"Guess you can't make it Deeb"

"Oh I will try, if I bust out of the tournament by 3pm, I'm flying back up for dinner"

*Boom*

Deeb gets a text message that night from his assistant:

Congratulations! You run good! Your tournament starts at 6pm!!

and for the rest of the trip, not only did Ryan and I needle deeb but so did the rest of Napa Valley.

Really cool note, Monday night at Ad Hoc is Fried Chicken night.  They told us we could come back tomorrow and have our spot reserved at the bar.  We got a reservation at the bar that takes no reservations, how good do we run? All thanks to Deeb.

yes

at the age of 24, it's my first real experience with death.  I'm not looking for sympathy but rather I thought I'd blog about such a unique experience.  She was my best friend and I loved her from the bottom of my heart.  My dog's name is Hawk, and she lived up to her name.  The very first night I brought her home, she caught a rat in my courtyard. Ironically, she lacked the balls to seal the deal and end the rat's life.  My dad had to do the good dead instead.

She was my best friend and my love.  If I were to be reincarnated into a dog, that's how I would've turned out.  I taught my dog a few tricks, but I never disciplined her nor did I keep a collar on her.  She was a free spirit and while I would've liked to have a disciplined dog, I loved her for who she was.  She was the type where as soon as she saw a chance to escape the house, she seized it. But I never worried too much because she always came back in 10-20 minutes, either it was out of love or to get a drink of water :)  It's very like me.  IT's hard to trust those types of people, the ones who won't listen but claim you can rely on them.  I knew my dog very well and I could always trust her so I never had a problem w/her shenanigans.  In the end I was her best friend.  

  

It is really weird to lose someone you love.  I can't complain, I'm 24 and this is my first real first hand experience with the loss of life.  I don't think I could ask for more, she died in my arms on the way to the hospital.  She started with me and I came back in time for her life to end with me.  She had a good run and I will miss her so much, it pains me to write this.  I personally feel miserable.  It's on and off again, I feel fine for an hour or so and then it hits again.  But I must be very fortunate for this to be my first hand experience with death at 24.  I mean, the world is a pretty fucked up place after all.  

If you are a sci-fi kind of person or someone w/a scientific mind, you should have realized by now whether you believe in God or not, we are made from stardust.  Stars that die and give birth, that's how we've been conceived.  It's theorized that OUR universe (Multiverses are the new theory) started from a tiny incredibly dense mass and what caused the big bang is gravity.  Because of gravity, our universe exploded and expanded.  It's from this explosion, from deaths of stars, that Life had the chance to start.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHpKkelE5c&feature=related

I guess I'm trying to rationalize all this, this after all is my first hand experience with death.  My beloved dog, my companion who demonstrated loyalty I will never know from a human being, died in my arms on the way to the hospital.  I will love her and miss her and I as of right now I feel guilty because I know I cannot return the same devotion she showed me.  This might be incoherent and I can expand on it later but I have a headache.

One of my favorite movies is The Fountain by Darren Aranofsky.  It has to do with buddhism principles but also the fact that life is neverending.  This is all cyclical.

I'm taking a few days off from poker before I hit the grind machine again.  I love you Hawk, you were truly a man's best friend.

I got a laugh as I was looking through my blog.  Working w/Jared has worked out some big leaks in my mental game and while I've still been lazy about poker, my mental approach to poker has been so much healthier from it all.

Losing that session really was a gift and I'm feeling pretty good about seeing less and less, and possibly even no more of those types of terrible sessions.

 

This is the assignment Jared has given me for the past two weeks.  His hint was to watch Shawshank Redemption.  I have not and i'll take a look tonight haha.

See, in my mind, I've grown up with the attitude that "you should compare yourself to the top, to the best" and that there are "no rooms for mistakes."  I owe a lot of my success to this past mindset.  We need pressure to improve and I tend to perform at my best when my coach or whomever is an asshole who pushes me past my limits and the only way I can do that on my own is to put as much pressure on myself as possible.

But, this thinking is wrong and it's unhealthy.  I think to be human is to accept that you really do make mistakes.  Not all mistakes are preventable with or without knowledge.  That's hard to deal with because I always envision that the elites, the ones who know better, never make easy mistakes.  In poker it would be something like 2barreling and giving up on a jt9 board against a station.  Unfortunately I think I have to accept that mistakes happen, even ones where you really should know better.  This is a lot of reiteration I know but it's a pretty big mental block for me and I'm not comfortable with it at all.  I believing in pursuing excellence and unobtainable (lol unobtainum) PERFECTION.  I set my goals high, far out of reach, so that if I fall short, my "failures" typically will have accomplished a lot anyway.

So to be human is to accept that we make mistakes, and that we can improve from them and move on.  If poker can be a metaphor for life, then it's taught me dwelling on the past too much is never a good idea.  It's all about moving forward, forward, and forward.  1 step back 2 steps forward.  Funny, last month actually replicated that.  I've started reviewing some stuff in holdem manager and wow, I was definitely too arrogant.  I feel like a student again peeking in, asking questions that may perhaps be too simple, but I'm soaking in more and I'm tweaking my game for the better.

To be human is to accept faults, strip away the excess, the unnecessary, and improve.

Maybe this means I should stop expecting perfection?  I'm excited to talk to Jared about this.  I'm assuming he's really a sports psychologist (I never actually looked at his credentials but he really is awesome) and he should know some stuff about coaches who push players past their limits in pursuit of perfection.  "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is the mantra I live by. 

My 3rd session w/Jared was amazing.  I'll cliffnote it later but it was something along the lines of realizing that my tilt session was inevitable and that there are things I can do to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Being indifferent to winning/losing - Aside from the fact that this is most likely not achievable/practical, I think it's an important part of being a human being.  I like to live my life emotionally.  There's nothing wrong w/feeling pain.  It's only because of pain that we reflect and improve in my opinion.  What Jared and I are working on is not to try and make me an unemotional machine but instead, we're doing what we can to strip away the excess layers of pain that I might give myself.  For instance, chastising myself when i have sessions like those or getting angry to the point where I start letting it out physically.  And you know what? This mentality is working out so well.  It's realistic and I feel much better about having that losing session.  I learned a lot about myself and some issues that I have, which are pretty embarrassing.

I actually appreciate humility so much more and it's a goal i really want to work towards.  The question of the month is: How can I be more human right now? 
(Jared used Andy Dufresne as a role model and I certainly agree with that image)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Took a day off and then played on Saturday.  Had a nice session against a notorious bumhunter who sat me.  It was the perfect session to have.  I was down 3bi to some coolers and 1 really stupid stackoff but it was so clear to me that his knowledge of poker, and heads up poker, was far from complete.  It's what happens when you bumhunt or become satisfied with winning and stop improving.  Poker is dynamic, you either get worse or you improve, nothing is going to stand still for you.  The match was also great because the way I prefer to play matched up perfectly against him.  I completely ran him over to swing back some profit but more importantly I regained much of my confidence in knowing that I am an adept player. 

My Month:

So yeah, I'm pretty demoralized right now.  I just lost 12bi in 300 hands or something in NL, that's a record for me.  Not really sure how to feel but I guess in consolation at least I'm not tearing at myself mentally like I used to.  I snapbooked another session w/Jared since I'm trying to re-wire myself mentally, I've decided I'll hold judgement and stay in a little shock before judging how all this happened.

Right now I'm still in disbelief/a little sad that it happened.  Til now I was outplaying the guy and this session was a combination of run bad and retarded tilt where I stopped thinking and called off too light.  Yeah, there was definitely tilt, once my mind shut off I should've stopped. Instead of analyzing hands, I just went with tp everytime and that's not correct at all when you play as loose as I do.

God earlier I was shocked/depressed/lonely.  Heh, loneliness is an interesting feeling, it's something I don't have unless I'm losing at poker, like yesterday.  I dated a girl for awhile in Canada, and while I was not in love with being in a relationship, I was in love with her.  So I cut both of our losses short and moved back to San Diego.

It's annoying that I played poorly.  All I can do I think is to just keep my head up, learn from this session, come back and rape the shit out of him.  Unfortunately I don't have much money online  so we'll see how this turns out.  Another 10 buy-ins and I may regroup...we will see.  I'd hate to not continue my match.  I guess I really am showing progress w/Jared.  These types of graphs used to tilt me ridiculously hard.  Having a big profit and then losing it all is just one of the worst feelings but I'll get through it.  I mean c'mon, I beat 50nl, I know exactly what I'm doing.

Jared is my Mental Game Coach.  I'm taking notes/reviewing my first session I had with him.  This is more of a note list than a blog entry but feel free to read through.

I'm able to play my best because I avoid opportunities that can tilt me (lack of sleep, feeling grumpy, etc.).  Doing so artificially cuts off my weaknesses.  In order to make sustainable consistent progress on my BEST, it comes by eliminating weaknesses continually.  That's how you achieve your best.

An inchworm represents what making progress looks like.

Adult learning model - 4 stages of learning. 

1st stage - unconscious incompetence.  You don't know where you suck

2nd stage - you become conscious of it.  Consciously incompetent, you are aware where you suck.

3rd stage - conscious competence.  Getting good at it but you have to think to get through your problems.

4th Stage - Unconscious competence.  You have actually learned something.  This exists below the emotional system, in a place in the brain called Procedural Memory.

Would you say you're a better player than a few years ago? Yes, that proves what you have learned to the level of unconscious competence.  Think of it as muscle memory for the brain. MM for things you think about.  The stuff we talk here about the brain actually relate to the muscles as well.   Having your brain burnt out is like going to the gym and working your muscles to the max.

Our brain works optimally for 50 mins.  What if you train more of your knowledge into unconscious competence? You increase your capacity to play.  Not as easy as you think.  I work 80 hours, to get to 120 hours is a 50% increase.  Just because you run 5miles doesn't mean you are capable of running 7.5.

I've had periods where I put a lot of hands in 1 month, gets easy to put in hands after that but when I take a vacation it all disappears.  What happens is I haven't honed that skill set into unconscious competence.

We need pressure to push us to work hard. If I have no pressure, my energy is too low, so what I am relying on is unconscious competence.  Freerolling what I've already mastered.  You cannot learn anything new unless you have enough energy.

Performance Theory Model - Adult learning model would be at about the middle

      

If you don't have enough energy you suck, if you are too stressed, you suck.  For me I'm at about 70-80% stress to perform at my best.  I need to feel slapped by the other guy to perform at my best.

My goals so far: 

 -More consistent work ethic.

 -Increase hours I am playing.

 -reduce anxiety.

 -Reduce under/over confidence levels.

The current way I get kicked into the best mindset is not sustainable.  It's not that it is wrong, it is just unsustainable.

We want to build off a sustainable base, what I am really good at, and go from there.  The reason why my confidence can go to the shitter is that there is nothing there to snap me out of it (besides upswinging).  Not stable.

I feel as if I'm not the best then I am shit.  There isn't much of a midway for me.  I am competitive, nothing is ever good enough from my standpoint.

There is knowledge in the experience.  The only reason emotion stays around is because there is something to learn from it.  

I shun and hate mistakes.  The problem with that is I have zero tolerance for understanding why I made those mistakes.

Problem: I get very frustrated when I make a mistake.

1) Why is it logical that I feel that way? Why even make that mistake in the first place? 

2) Have I ever made a mistake when I was learning something new and got frustrated over it? 

Personally: Mistake happens because you did something wrong.  I don't like to believe it's out of my control because you have to be responsible for your mistakes.  However, there is a difference.  Poker is a game of incomplete information.  We're always going to make mistakes until we have enough experience to fill in the gaps, like life.

3) Does it feel like there's this mystical level of perfection that is attainable when I am playing? Yes, definitely.

******4) If you make a mistake, and you learn from it, would you say that it's worth it? OF COURSE!*********

In poker it can seem like you're losing money when you make a mistake, but the only time you can say that is if you have made the same mistakes time and time again.  Otherwise it is an investment in my future return.

Why is it logical that you make mistakes in the first place? You didn't know.  Think of it as going in a maze, there is just some stuff you don't know yet.  Your intuition hasn't had a chance to grow from it.

It's like knowing how to ride a bike w/out ever having done it.  Or riding a bike in the rain, on a freeway, in the city, etc.

So why did I make a mistake in the first place?  Because I didn't know any better and there's no way I could've.

My Old Model: I am responsible for knowing something I couldn't have possibly known.

New Model: I am responsible for actively learning about what I have experienced so that I make it less likely I make mistakes in the future.

Old model - punishing myself. New model - optimism, learning from my mistakes, there is always progress.

In relation to the adult learning model, I have just become consciously incompetent about it.  I realize I suck at this. 

My Task:
Review and think about every day these two statements:
I didn't know any better and there's no way I could.
I am responsible for using what I've learned from my mistakes to improve myself.

Goal is to better understand myself. What is occurring emotionally during my sessions.  You cannot improve what you do not understand.

Blogging about experience is an awesome form of repetition.  If it's in your head, it may be too subjective, however writing not only revisits but gives you a 3rd person perspective on it.