26 Sep 2024 mindset mental game studying discipline motivation In this article, the famous Brazilian regular Zoom NL500+, coach and instructor of the Run It Once website Saulo «sauloCosta10» Costa will share nine harmful tips on how to behave in order to start stagnate in poker, get bad results, lose money, waste time and nerve cells in vain, and eventually leave poker altogether. Let it all be obvious to someone here, but it is the setting of goals and priorities with their physical implementation - that is, discipline - that determines whether you will achieve long-term success in poker in general, and especially in a cash game, where the competition is much stronger than in tournament poker - in any of its formats. And it is worth reminding yourself of this regularly. Further - in the words of Saulo «sauloCosta10» Costa. Tip #1: Don't waste time and effort on learning Why waste time studying some theory and analyzing your game every day - that's for nerds. A truly talented player will make his way up the limits with his innate intelligence and intuition. Do what you enjoy most - play, and that should be enough anyway. After all, you came to poker for freedom, and not to strain yourself in a card game. - Especially if you already have a normal job. If you're curious - how should you have played that hand with a big pot that you didn't win, then forget about it - there are still plenty of such spots waiting for you in the long run. And there, for sure, you'll be able to get your money back, and even win on top. In the meantime, you can watch something else. Now some advice on the game schedule Play several dozen hands after lunch and before bed, mark hands for analysis the next day, and on that very next day, look at them for 30-40 minutes, without going into too much detail and without thinking about how you could have played it more effectively. Don't even think about loading the hand into a solver - it's a waste of time. It won't reveal anything good to you. And now the notorious theory There's no point in trying to learn complex concepts and ways to win a hand without a big hand. There's no need to study the tendencies of the field's game yourself either - you can always just order an analysis or simply buy / find existing ones. And God forbid you - dig into equilators, study the interactions of ranges in different situations and, based on these observations, gradually build your own ways to exploit opponents where everything works anyway. - It's better to simply find ready-made solutions and implement them in your game, saving time, money and mental strain. - Surely, this information reached you only through a chain of transmission, and not from the original source. Tip #2: Blame it all on variance Poker is a game of luck as well as skill. When you hear that in the short term, chance rules everything - that's true. And you should persistently develop the habit of blaming everything on variance, removing personal responsibility from yourself. Did you lose a big pot? - You did everything you could and did everything correctly, it's just that your opponent was luckier and there was dealt a cooler against you in time. - It's just that variance doesn't allow you to succeed yet. But one day, that will change. Taking personal responsibility for something we have little control over is for masochists. It's not about your laziness, lack of diligence, or some kind of incompetence - it's your opponents who are lucky, and all you can do is accept it and try to go through this storm. Instead, it's better to set aside half an hour after each session to count the number of coolers, bad beats, and suck-outs. Run variance simulations online occasionally and waste 20 minutes of your life every week looking at that bunch of meaningless numbers and charts until you get the hang of blaming everything on pure chance. Primedope - Online variance calculator And also regularly send your hand history to your poker friends to show how unlucky you've been all this time - they definitely care, because with their luck everything works out great for them, which means they have time to look at your hands and console you. If they say that these were standard coolers and that this happens to everyone, then feel free to pour out your anger on them for all their insensitivity to how unfairly the rigged RNG treated you. Bu the way, try our Win Rate Variance Calculator - it will show you some curious things. Tip #3: Don't even think about sharing your knowledge with anyone It's pretty suspicious when poker players, such a solitary game, want to teach you something, right? In poker, everyone wants to profit from you, take the best from you and cause problems in return. Nothing good will come from sharing your knowledge with potential opponents. In fact, you'll only make your game more difficult: regs will only become stronger, hindering you both personally - in confrontations, and indirectly - by taking money from the fish faster, which you could have. Everyone will know those cool things that only you have so far and will use them against you. - Why do you need this? As soon as you learn a good game strategy or tactical trick, try to keep it in yourself for as long as possible. And don't even think about telling a couple of tricks - how to improve your psychology (which can't be bought, unlike a ready-made game strategy) - your competitors will immediately start playing like bots: fearlessly, GTO-style and super-effectively against you personally. Only a stupid person is ready to share secret Knowledge with others who are, at best, nobodies to him. So, if someone asks you to share your opinion or a grain of your invaluable experience - say that you don't know how to help him or that it is too difficult for the one who asks, and that he should not contact you for this anymore. Tip #4: Check your game results as often as possible Even if it seems like a bad habit, you should develop it as much as possible. Start by checking your results at least once a day. When you feel that it doesn't bother you anymore, increase the frequency: check your balance and graph every hour, and then more. Now seriously - this way you will start to obsess over your short-term results in the game, where, yes, in a separate session a lot is determined not by skill, but by what was dealt and what fell on the board. And at the same time, you will acquire a really bad habit - regularly looking at the balance of the poker room and the graph in the tracker. And this is about relatively low-variance cash. - Even in regular SNGs, you can lose 10 buy-ins per session with near-perfect play - this is within the norm. What can we say about the much more dispersive turbo and hyper-turbo SNGs, spins and MTTs of all speeds? Now let's continue with the bad advice. If you want to make your career more interesting, then you should maximize your emotional swings - both in frequency and scope. When it gets to the point where you feel damn bad after 100 hands or damn good from just winning 50 big blinds, then you will understand that you have achieved your goal - to make your life full of emotions. And the routine of playing every day will no longer be boring for you - you will always have a lot of bright events and emotions from this crazy game. Try to get out of the habit of displaying stacks as BB, and start playing for real money (or chips - if you are a tournament player). This way you will be able to clearly see how much real money you have at stake, how much you have won, and how much you have lost. And be sure to tie their volume to the magnitude of the emotions you are experiencing. After just a couple of sessions, you will notice that it has become super-uncomfortable for you to make expensive bluffs or call-down opponents for all of $25-$100 (and this is not the limit). This way, you will clearly become a normal, living person and tie your emotions back to the size of the pot you are playing and its impact on your bankroll. Oh, and I almost forgot to advise you this. Your poker bankroll should not be allocated exclusively to poker - regularly withdraw money from it for fleeting pleasures and entertainment, as well as so as not to bother looking for a part-time job - after all, poker has now become your new job. And you need to succeed in it as soon as possible. Also, if you are unlucky enough to significantly drop in money, then at the first opportunity add money from real life to your bankroll - after all, you are definitely unlucky, and it is not you who are screwing everything up yourself. Tip #5: Never give up on your current beliefs A man keeps his word at any cost. And a poker player is no exception. It is true that learning some new concepts and other strategies is pointless. And updating your past beliefs to new realities is generally shameful and a feeling of betrayal. However, while you «know everything», nothing new will be strengthened in your head - the vessel is full. And in order to fit something new into it, you will either have to free up some space or increase the capacity of the vessel itself. So continue to follow your current attitudes and believe that Fish never fold, Big bets are always value, That you must outplay everyone at the limit ... And if someone tries to present you with new and, in his words, useful information, then leave this unpleasant conversation and just find new reasons - why you should continue to do everything as before. There is no practical sense for your friends to arm you with a more profitable strategy and make you stronger, so that you can later prevent him from earning. Remember: your knowledge and skills are working, but you are just unlucky so far, unlike others. Do not step over yourself and condescend to accept advice from others - your potential opponents - feeling like a weakling. I repeat: your strategy will still work out, and while you are waiting for it, you always have a reason to be proud of yourself: you are true to yourself and your previous attitudes, and also that you clearly remember and do what others have long forgotten. Tip #6: Make fun of others more often If someone plays in a very different style from you, then the only adequate explanation for this is that he is stupid and does not understand what real poker is. If you see a hand on the showdown that you did not expect from your opponent, then immediately mark him as a fish or just a bad reg. Since they do not understand what they are doing, then your conclusions are 100% correct, and such play from opponents is not an accident and, therefore, you should adapt to this, radically revising your strategy when playing with them. When you see that hundreds of tight players confidently make profit on their simple strategy - not like yours, cool and super-aggressive - then you still should not doubt yourself. The fact is that they are lucky to pay off obvious strong hands, and you are not. - But the distance will show who is a real poker player here. You are not like the others, your brain works differently, your emotions are different and you are special in general. Just keep laughing at your opponents - you are better by the fact of your presence at the table, and your hidden potential will definitely be revealed and will shoot not at these micro stakes, but at NL500+, where your version of poker will work 100%, and which your current opponents will never conquer. Perseverance is a very important quality in life. And the very fact that you are unwaveringly following your - so far not working - strategy gives you every reason to believe that your success will definitely come. Surely, your mother told you in childhood that you are able to feel and see what no one else in the world will ever be able to. And therefore everyone else is wrong, and you are the only one who is right. Tip #7: Training should definitely be free Only losers and those who can't learn themselves pay for someone else to teach them. Only nerds buy software: equilators, trackers, solvers and other captions. You are a priori better than them. You have innate talent, an ideal hormonal background and an irresistible desire for self-training, which means you have no need to give money (again) to your potential competitors, who will only become richer because you paid them. And another obvious question: why and why should someone teach you if he is able to beat his own game? Your destiny is predetermined and everything will happen by itself at the right time and in the right place. And you don't need to worry about anything. Isildur1 never sat in solvers, and Phil Ivey never learned from others - he learned everything himself. - Are you worse? - No, you are just as talented and hardworking. So feel free to spend money on what you really want - you only have one life, and today may be your last. So you need to have time to enjoy it now. And tomorrow the distance will return to you. When someone tells you that a cool poker course has recently been released, let them know that you will not buy it (which is true - after all, you spent everything on entertainment). And besides, why should you buy a course or hire a poker coach? - As I already mentioned, courses and coaching services are offered by people who can no longer earn at their limits, and therefore try to recoup their costs from other sources. And in the end, why would they make you stronger, as they say, from the heart? - After all, this way you will quickly rise to their own limits, where you will bankrupt the fish and prevent them from earning themselves. And the same thing with me: I run a YouTube channel and work as an instructor on Raise It Once only so that I have a constant and non-dispersive income. While trillions of dollars are spent on training in the world every year, poker is an exceptional business, and here everyone should also be exclusively on their own. Because, as you have already understood many times, it is healthier and more profitable. Tip #8: Once you beat your current limit, stay there forever because it's comfortable for you Regardless of your bankroll level and your skill, stay at the beaten NL25 indefinitely: You beat the limit with a good win rate, There are still a lot of fish here, The poker room pays a very good rakeback, And the regulars are not as formidable as at NL50+, And, most importantly, you feel psychologically comfortable here, You know that under certain circumstances you could beat NL200, but you don't try because you just don't want to waste your nerves and efforts, as well as feel the pain of unsuccessful shots on new limits and getting used to them. Life is pleasant and comfortable when there are no serious challenges in front of you. Therefore, if you have enough to live on, and you have long since lost big ambitions in poker, then why should you strain yourself? - Just earn $2,000+ here every month and live happily ever after. - 90-95% of the world's population can only dream of such a monthly income. - And we're not even talking about the method. Otherwise, what good will come of you if you decide to storm the next limits? Yes, you will probably have to develop your poker skills and habits in order to find new advantages over tougher opponents where you couldn't do it before. It is also likely that you will have to work hard to develop your theoretical knowledge. And for this, you will have to either search and study everything yourself, or hire a coach and/or pay for poker training courses, which are not necessarily aimed at pumping you up as a player - we talked about this in the previous point. And in both cases, you will most likely have to spend money on software, and also learn how to learn in it yourself. - Why do you need all this effort? What doesn't suit you +$1,000 every month at the usual NL25? Here you get $400-$600 rakeback from the poker room, in fact, as a salary, regardless of the results of the win rate. And if the affiliate also pays extra, then this is a whole +$1,000 per month with 100% probability - already from the salary alone. You simply do not need to bother with this - you are already better than other regulars for a number of reasons that we have indicated above. And you do not need to prove anything to anyone. What worked 5 years ago is still good for income. Fish remains fish at all times, and you don't have to clash with regs. And what you have achieved in your career is already a huge reason to be proud for the rest of your life. You are enough - and that is the most important thing. But, learing this article can be even better for you: Top 3 Tips For Moving Up Stakes Tip #9: Forget about your health Spend your days locked in your office, sitting on a chair and looking at the monitor at arm's length for 10+ hours. Don't go outside, don't walk the streets and don't breathe in the fresh air. And close the blinds tightly so that the sun's rays don't hit your skin. Don't go to the gym or the pool. - Why? - If you are quite happy with a little fat on your belly, and many girls like it, then everything is fine. Doing exercises in the same place, loading your muscles and mind in vain like a madman is a pointless exercise. In 1-2 months, your appearance will not change significantly anyway. It's only advertising and other social networks that mislead you into believing that such rapid changes are real, in order to sell gym/pool memberships with chlorine, tasteless sports nutrition and other supplements more effectively. - There's a lot more to discuss here, but that's probably enough. And how much does this cost you in lost profits in poker, if you specifically calculate your game expectation, add rakeback and affiliate surcharges and compare it with the time you waste? - It's better to play more and earn money while you're young. And your health can always be improved - it's all solvable when you have money. It doesn't matter that almost everything you eat is processed and chemical supermarket food, stuffed with sugar, fats and sodium salts, which make you, accordingly, weaker in psyche and habits, fatter and weaker, and also fatter from the excess of accumulated water. You are still young, and you will always have time to develop good habits in the future, when you have already earned enough money for a comfortable life in your mansion, and can afford to eat only healthy food. Although it is often even cheaper than processed chemically industrial food. And now you just need to grind hard at your usual low limit and accumulate resources. You are so good at your limits that any extraneous activities will bring you such a meager pleasure that there is no point in spending an hour on them. You already have everything to succeed in poker in the future. This article was written from the the How To Stagnate In Poker And Waste Your Potential video by Vladimir ABIVPlus.
