Winning and disappointment

I was disappointed by today’s session.

Recently I’ve been working on the mental game of winning. Poker is not a game of short term results, it’s a game of long term profitable decisions. The part you can control, is the decision, not the outcome. To facilitate this, (and after watching a really good Fedor Holz video) I’ve been measuring winning sessions based on two things:

  1. How I approach the game (mindset, preparation, posture)
  2. How I approach the spot (thought process and decision making)

Obviously it’s a slow and iterative process, but last week was very positive. I had a couple of losing days monetarily and a few winning ones, but I felt almost all my sessions were mentally winning.

Tonight, whilst my session was winning monetarily, I got very distracted from my approach, and definitely did not focus on decision making to my full ability, so I’m pretty disappointed in myself.

Overall, I’ve had a good recent period, but my takeaways from this are:

  • It’s fine to feel disappoint. It’s not a reason to put yourself down, it’s a reason to drive you to not repeat mistakes
  • I do have the discipline to approach the game in a professional manner
  • Rome wasn’t built in a day (terrible cliché), forward progress is worth celebrating

So well done me.

L

Stream and Giveaway!

Hi everyone!

I’m streaming as part of the #DaretoStream challenge for a Platinum Pass! To celebrate this, I’m doing a run it up challenge that I’m calling “The Run” – Starting at 2nl and using BRM of 1 buy in, to make as much profit as I can. At the end of this, I’ll be giving away 10% of my profit each to 2 lucky viewers, PLUS 1% of the PSPC action if I win! All you have to do is like & retweet this tweet below, draw will be on the 19th December! Huge shout out to Reggie & Pye, and everyone entering the challenge!

As always, find me at https://www.twitch.tv/lorenzoflamingo

Update #1

Online Stuff

This is update #1, I started back at 10nl with just over 20 buy ins. After a couple of weeks, I’m within touching distance of $400, which is decent progress. I’ve dabbled in 16nl and will mix the two stakes up to $500 – when 25nl will begin. I’m pretty confident I have the skills to beat 25nl, but I need to work on the mental game to cope with the bigger swings. So far, I’ve been slacking on the mental game & slacking on the study (not terribly so, but improvements should be made). I have however, been spending time reviewing hands with a good friend, which is crazy benefical. In general, playing decent and on an upward trajectory.

Platinum Pass Experience

Last Saturday I went to rail my friend Fergrberger in the Pokerstars platinum pass experience. It was at Aspers (my local) and ran alongside the Moneymaker series, so it was pretty cool to meet Spraggy again, meet Chris Moneymaker and hang out with some cool people. Unfortunately for Ferg, he didn’t take down the platinum pass, but it was a really enjoyable day, getting some friends together to share the experience. The twitch poker community in general is a really nice place to be, Gjreggie and Pyeface were on commentary and are both lovely people and to catch up and meet people from their communities is one of my favourite things about poker.

I also played some live cash while I was there, and on what was quite a soft table, in addition to being card dead, I took some liberties and some really fun bluff lines and live reads to turn a profit. Street poker is where it’s at.

Going Forward

My targets for the next update (which will be in a couple of weeks or whenever I get round to having enough to update on) will be to work outside the game.

  • Meditate before I play every session, even just 10 minutes to get ore in the zone and making good decisions
  • A couple of hours of study every couple of days (vague I know) to work on aspects of my game, and then review instances of this during the session

Stream

I’ve got a few things going on over the next few weeks, so I won’t be as active as I’d like, but I’m going to aim for one stream a week (I’m thinking on a Monday evening) and I have just made a cool new overlay in paint.

Hope everyone is doing good, until next time.

The Plan

The Target

It’s every poker players dream to travel the world and battle it out in the highest stakes. This isn’t my immediate goal, but it’s the overarching plan. Live tournaments are where I’m aiming for, but grinding online cash is very much the proving ground, and beating the stakes puts you in a good place to succeed.

The Stakes

At the moment, I’ve gone back to my roots to grind from 10nl on Stars. The first targets are getting to 25, beating 50 and finally beating 100nl on Stars, along with mixing up softer sites and games. The main bankroll tracking and results will be 6-Max Zoom on Stars. I do also play some 1/1 live cash, and HUSnGs online.

Mental Game

As I said in the intro, the mental game is my weakness, and the thing I need to work hardest on, so a good chunk of my ramblings here will be about that – I’ll get into meditation and other techniques that I think are really beneficial. It might not float everyone’s boat, but I’m sure there are other things that you might find helpful to talk about along the way. For me, and I think for all poker players, if you’re not in the right frame of mind, success is going to be pretty hard to come by. I know if I don’t meditate daily, I’m going to really struggle.

The Stream

I do occasionally stream, and hope to accompany this blog with some streams. It’ll be over on twitch: twitch.tv/lorenzoflamingo, and mostly be more talking about cash game hands as I play.

Introductions

Hi, I’m LorenzoFlamingo, welcome to my blog. I’ve made this to put down my thoughts about poker, and all that stuff as I move up stakes. I’ve been playing now for about 3 years – for the first while I was dreadful. Absolutely terrible. And on top of that, I thought I wasn’t, which just makes the whole process longer! Since then I’ve had some good results, I’ve taken a couple of bespoke courses, which I’ll talk about more in future (shout out to Charlie Carrel and Pete Clarke). My main flaw, with poker, and when I used to compete in other sports was the mental game – This blog is going to serve as my journal, my nagging influence and record keeper, as I try to put this right, improve my game, and crush. I hope you enjoy it.