Poker Video: Misc/Other by Tommy Angelo (Micro/Small Stakes)

Wow I should watch this right now after the marathon sesh I just put in.

This is a nice topic. I've recently increased the length of my online sessions and have noticed my win-rate plummeting. Subtle tilts related to missing actions, getting tired, and making bad decisions seem to want to creep into my game the longer I play. I definitely need to work on taking breaks and quitting to properly calibrate my game.

I've just watched this before the marathon session that I'm about to play. I'm not sure how much of a marathon it would be. I believe breaks aren't allowed in a marathon.

This serie is great, I'll buy your book for sure.

Just grinded a long session to get break even. I was down so much, it's insane

Still I believe this is one of the most important vids from Tommy till now. Quiting is crucial.

Funny how noone whines when Tommy swears in vids.

Time Link to 00:41:56

On-line you always have your bankroll available but I also believe its bad to constantly check your bankroll during a session

How to aply a stoploss method?

On-line you always have your bankroll available but I also believe its bad to constantly check your bankroll during a session

How to aply a stoploss method?

I haven't fooled around with this script but it looks like it could be relevant: http://www.overcards.com/wiki/moin.cgi/StopLoss

Hey Tommy, I haven't watched this yet but I was wondering. Is it possible to be quitting too much?

I was more or less out of poker for six weeks or so for real life reasons that sucked and I'm finding it difficult to work my way back in.

The other day I had a session where I lost two 90+% equity pots on the river and didn't get too bothered but quit later when I did something stupid.

Then Saturday I was playing along and having a pretty mediocre to crappy session as nothing was going my way but I thought I was still playing well. My non showdown winnings was positive but I couldn't win a showdown for the life of me.

Then I get KK, raise, blah blah, flop comes J high, He checks, I bet, he calls. Turn is garbage. He checks, I bet, he minraises. I said to mysel "A check minraise on the turn is like ALWAYS the nuts." So I raised him and got to see his lovely set of jacks. I quit immediately.

So I'm pretty sure I'm making good quitting decisions but are there times when you should force things through to get things back on track just to make sure you stay in the habit of playing poker and not picking lint out of your belly button or playing euchre or something.

Not that there's anything wrong with playing euchre.

I think not quitting when our game is slipping is a huge leak but there is also the mirror twin:

Getting a feeling of being content if you get off to a good start and stop playing because you like to end up a winner for the day. Sort of like a stop-win. This prevents us from putting in enough hands and if coupled with grinding to get even when down creates a situation where we are minimizing our A-game time.

"Putting in enough hands" is something that is important for professionals, not for me as an amateur

I think not quitting when our game is slipping is a huge leak but there is also the mirror twin:

Getting a feeling of being content if you get off to a good start and stop playing because you like to end up a winner for the day. Sort of like a stop-win. This prevents us from putting in enough hands and if coupled with grinding to get even when down creates a situation where we are minimizing our A-game time.

I totally agree with this. I think the key point in the video is to have the ability to quit and to even practice quitting because you don't know you have the ability unless you've done it. You obviously wouldn't normally want to quit when you're in a juicy game, winning, or at your best, but to know you have the ability to quit and can apply it in the right circumstances is valuable and something that will give us an edge.

"Putting in enough hands" is something that is important for professionals, not for me as an amateur

Putting in enough hands is never an issue.

Putting in enough well played hands and as a few poor played hands as possible, is however, quite important.

Awesome videos. I am really getting into Buddhism now. I wondered what are your thoughts on listening to music while playing online? Is it OK or too big of a distraction.

A MAJOR issue for me and some playes I know, is quitting when up to end on a high note. And I don't mean after a long solid session. I mean when the fish are high variance and you don't want to lose what you've won when your AK held up vs his JTs for a 200BB pot.

I have a hard time beating the fish and maximizing A-game time because I quit too early. I hope Tommy address this directly.

Is it possible to be quitting too much?

I don't think it is.

Let's go all the way. Let's say a guy quits "too much," and then he keeps quitting sooner and sooner, and he quits for longer and longer periods between sessions, and eventually he stops playing altogether.

So what? Were any of those decision bad ones? Doubtful.

Another guy. He has no intention of quitting for good, or even slowing down. In fact, the problem is that he HAS slowed down. He used to play a LOT of poker, got good enough to make a living at it, and now he plays for a living, and he likes his situation. Just one problem. He's gotten into the habit of quitting too much. And of not starting enough. He plays 2-3 hours per day and he really wants to play 4-6. But he just doesn't/can't. I know these people exists because I coach a few. They have a "quitting problem," but not the usual kind.

So yes, it's possible for quitting-too-much to occur. I think it is extremely rare. By that I mean that by and large, if you look back on any quitting decision that anyone makes, it is extremely rare that you'll find a bad one.

Tommy

Awesome videos. I am really getting into Buddhism now. I wondered what are your thoughts on listening to music while playing online? Is it OK or too big of a distraction.

What you'll learn if you keep really getting into Buddhism is that everything is OK and everything is a distraction. :-)

I think it's fine to not listen to music, and it's fine to listen to it. Whatever works for you at that moment.

Tommy

A MAJOR issue for me and some playes I know, is quitting when up to end on a high note. And I don't mean after a long solid session. I mean when the fish are high variance and you don't want to lose what you've won when your AK held up vs his JTs for a 200BB pot.

I have a hard time beating the fish and maximizing A-game time because I quit too early. I hope Tommy address this directly.

Ask yourself, how do you determine when you have "quit too early?" What exactly are the parameters? Is it all about money? Or does happiness weigh in?

Is the problem possibly that you feel ashamed for running scared and locking up a win? If that is sometimes the case, they all I can say is, don't. No shame. If you are quitting to protect yourself emotionally, that's a GOOD thing. It's smart. It's why football players wear all that gear. There's nothing wrong with protecting yourself from damage. It could be that the only reason it's a problem is because you haven't yet told yourself that this is what you are doing. If/when you do, then you'll be able to lock up wins shamelessly and consistently and smartly, while in the meantime, you work on finding and removing the cause(s) that make you need the lock-it-up emotional protection in the first place.

Tommy

"8 big bets a month. That's 84 big bets a year" Wayne, I'm pretty sure that's 96 big bets per year. Great series guys. Keep itup

"8 big bets a month. That's 84 big bets a year" Wayne, I'm pretty sure that's 96 big bets per year. Great series guys. Keep itup

Once again proving, I AM NOT THE MATH GUY!

lol

Thanks.

Given our stormy relation I just want to make clear the below is no level of any kind, but the sad, sad truth. BTW I have mentally made peace wth u anyway !


Last night I played seven hours straight and lost $1200 at the 5/10 LHE level. When I finished, four in the mrning, it was bright outside. I don't really know what happened. I have studied ur book (as Im sure u are aware of ) and I thought he quitting section was the best one. I have decided to play 90min sessions and I have sticked to that for months. I did have these similar issues earlier in my "career" though.

Let me describe what happened yesterday and perhaps u can be a detective and figure out when things went wrong and what I should have done differently. Also it helps me clear my mind too I guess, aswell as providing some more content for this thread.

The first problem I can think of myself is that I have lived unhealthy the last weeks. I haven't been out much, nor have I exercised at all. A few walks that's all. Last week has been even slower. Not done much at all. I have eaten a lot of crap too I'm afraid. Aswelll as been pretty lonely. Do u believe these things affected my mental strength? I mean now that I have typed it out I guess it's pretty obvious it did.

Anyway yesterday I let a fellow DC member, who is at the level I was a couple of months back, sweat me for an hour. We started about 21. I felt ok by then. Our skype connecton kept failing so after an hour we decided to quit. I was still at the tables, stuck a couple of hundred and pretty frustrated allready I guess. After he left I kept playing.

One thing I want to point out was that I didn't do my pre-session routine, that I have done religiously the last months. It was in my Omakase vid with Joe Tall that he suggested I should do some kind of routine before each session to prepare my mind. So what I've done is to go out on my balcony and take ten deep breaths. I've really liked this. However since my friend was waiting I skipt it this time.

I'm trying to recall excactly what was going through my mind as I kept playing through the night. I remember I checked my cashier frequently. The table I thought were better than usual at this level, so that was something I remember thinking about. Everything is a bit blurry tbh. I didn't drink any alcohol, just coffee. But I felt really weird. In one way extremely tired and in an other very much awake. Just 10 hours after I can't remember excactly how it was.

I remember the last hour or so that I got really angry with some bad player who found a two outer in a 250 pot. I started berating him in the chat which is somethig I never do normally.

What made me quit was that I didn't wanted my BR to go under a certain level and when I was just $40 away I finally managed to sit out. Right now after getting some sleep I feel incredibly dissapointed and frustrated with myself. I can't believe I could have done it. It's not the money as much as all the work I just blew away. I will move down some levels to mentally come back. I want to develop but this crap just makes me go back weeks.

Ty for reading
Regards,

Peter

I do really enjoy this series! Thanks for making it the way it is. It's never been boring not just because of it's so interesting and significant, more like you know how to make it appealing and funny

What I did like most in this episode, and was thinking about that through the last episodes, was the comparision of meditation and breathing. I mean these concepts of your book and this series should be a constant on everyone's mind. Everyone should be fully aware of those thoughts by everything they do. It doesn't help to know them or have thought them once if you apply them always. This may sound basic but I found for myself that's the hard point.
I guess that maybe a step to more mindfullness but not in the way you described it more checking back like what I'm I doing right now? Does it fit?

@sushiglutton I know exactly what u mean by your story. In my eyes you described tilt and you know you didn't want to and won't it in future.
Not remembering how it was or a blurry feeling seems always like you got out of your mind and into emotions.

Now I've watched this episode and liked it very much! I think this is ur strongest area an u have some very good unique ideas here.

I found something we have in common, I think. Love for piano music. I noticed u played a lot of Beethoven so I wondered if u have listened to recordings by Wilhelm Kempff

Btw from now on I will always think of Grieg when I pee !

I wondered if u have listened to recordings by Wilhelm Kempff

Nope. At our house we did Rubinstein. My mom snuck me backstage after a concert to shake his hand. I was 11. His hands were eight feet long.

Btw from now on I will always think of Grieg when I pee !

In that case, I will now consider the series a success. :-)

Tommy

Just want to say this is a sick sick series and love it. I also love your book. So anyways, after I heard your cigarette example about quitting and how you'd go to the casino and just play 1 round then leave and see if you could make it home without buying cigarettes, I decided with about 6 minutes left in the video that I was going to practice my quitting while watching your video. So I did. I stopped with 6 min left. Normally once you get 90% through watching a video it seems silly not to just watch the last few minutes, but I resisted the temptation. My next step is when I read a book to read the whole thing in 1 sitting and stop with 1 chapter left. It makes quitting a poker session seem rather trivial. Thank you!

Just want to say this is a sick sick series and love it. I also love your book. So anyways, after I heard your cigarette example about quitting and how you'd go to the casino and just play 1 round then leave and see if you could make it home without buying cigarettes, I decided with about 6 minutes left in the video that I was going to practice my quitting while watching your video. So I did. I stopped with 6 min left. Normally once you get 90% through watching a video it seems silly not to just watch the last few minutes, but I resisted the temptation. My next step is when I read a book to read the whole thing in 1 sitting and stop with 1 chapter left. It makes quitting a poker session seem rather trivial. Thank you!

No, thank you. You have inspired me to quit posti

Great vid, I decided to quit poker.

Poker is a game of luck where the lucky ones tell the unlucky ones that it's a game of skill

Tommy and Wayne, thank you for this series. The first 4 episodes were absolutely a foundation of my success at the WSOP main event this year. In my first major buy-in event, I placed 384th and was able to concentrate *most* of the time through the approximately 35 houArs of poker I played using the techniques you described. Unfortunately I still have plenty to work on as I am not proud of my bust-out hand where I lost my patience. Thank you for opening the door to this. In my early twenties I tried some reading on eastern philosophy and just didn't find the "life is suffering" mantra very compelling. The way you explain it cuts through much of what made it difficult for me to relate to and makes it very accessible. Keep up the good work and I am excited to apply this to areas outside of poker as well.
James Bayer - Oak Park, IL

I decided with about 6 minutes left in the video that I was going to practice my quitting while watching your video. So I did. I stopped with 6 min left.

lol

Congratulations on your success. If we played a small part, then nothing could make us happier. No doubt you will find it gets better, and your suffering lessens. (I like Tommy's take on it much, much better, too.)

Thanks for letting us know.

Best wishes,

Wayne

10 buyin stop loss !?! 10 ! 1 session ... yikes , i wouldnt be able to get out of bed for a week after a loss of 10 buy-ins in one session , mine is 3 buy-ins , although recently i had 2 , 6 buy-in losing sessions , one of those where you think bah set over set im not counting that towards my stop loss !
Great episode guys

This is the best of the series to me. Probaly because I have put in a 24hr
session of online poker b4.If u have ever done it then u know the feeling. Seriously by the 22nd hr I was just playing on instinct I had no concept of what game i was playing and why i was doing what. Im going to watch this over and over.

I'm having some trouble with the MP3 version of this one. I've downloaded the whole series in MP3 wanting to make an MP3 CD to listen to in my car, but every time I try add episode 5 I get an error like "Media unsupported, a plug in may be required". Does anyone know why this is happening? All the others are fine. I have tried deleting & redownloading but get the same message.

Time Link to 00:46:59

lmao weed

Time Link to 00:34:53

Is it safe to say as our A-game gets better, so does or C-game, or is getting rid of our current C-game that makes our A-game better? Or both?

Is it safe to say as our A-game gets better, so does or C-game, or is getting rid of our current C-game that makes our A-game better? Or both?

Both.

Here's a drawing (from the series) that's worth about 100 words:

http://www.tommyangelo.com/images/top-up-bottom-up-white.jpg

I really enjoyed the videos. Any chance of a follow up series addressing more advance topics?

Time Link to 01:00:55

This is deep, I've never heard any mention of this in poker books. This episode is worth a lot of buyins. Well done

Time Link to 00:58:30

Quiting in real life called letting go.

If you love something let it go, if it comes back to you it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was. Hold me down baby
DMX

ps seeing this series made me so glad to follow my MNF Mind fullness cours if set up next month:-)

Time Link to 00:55:52

LOL the music reference in this series cracks me up!!!
I'm a professional orchestra musician, and really love these piano interludes. The one where you did pieces backwards etc was so funny it hurt....guy next to me on the plane must have thought I was stone or something.....

LOL ...
I'm a professional orchestra musician... The one where you did pieces backwards etc was so funny it hurt....guy next to me on the plane must have thought I was stone or something.....

Mission accomplished!

Usually not much of a piano guy, but after this series I downloaded some piano stuff and listen to it while I play. Very relaxing.