Free your mind...

I often remind myself that there is no such thing as a “bad run” or being “out of form”; I remind myself that every hand is an entity of its own, as long as you play each hand “optimally” without being adversely effected by previous hands (and sessions).

Imagine you are able to reset your memory after each hand, well maybe not your memory but your session.

Reset your session.

You play one hand, and then you have the power the next hand to reset. You are back at the start of the session.

You have a fresh start every hand, you are not “stuck”, the retarded moron in seat 4 didn’t just hit a gut shot straight on you, the hope-a-tron to your right didn’t just double up through you.

You just came in; it’s the first hand of your session.

You have absorbed all the information from what you have experienced, you have followed, studied and scrutinized your opponents (both their plays and general behaviour), you have noted all the “meta” game implications, but you have deleted the results.

You are starting a new session, it’s your first hand, but you have a catalogue of information to base your purely objective decisions on.

You are not upset, nor are you “giddy” (as Rosh would put it) from a “squeeze” play you just put on the table, you are in a neutral state of mind and emotionally stable.

It’s the first hand of your session.

Every hand is the start of a new session.

Late in 2007 I was able to condition myself through this mindset, and recently I am working immensely hard to do so again. It’s a powerful state of mind.

Through gradual exercise, and practise it can be achieved. I am not there yet.

I am a very irritable person. I get upset very quickly, not necessary at bad beats, but often at people.

People upset me. The way they eat, the way they speak, the way they smell, the way they just fucking look.

A guy across the table from me might not do a thing, might not say a thing, he might not even make eye contact with me, but just his fucking retarded face will annoy me.

I would not say I am an aggressive person by nature; I have never had a fight in my life.

I lived in a “squat” as a refugee in 1989 for 3 years, I grew up in the most deprived and volatile areas of London.

I moved constantly as a teenager, I went to 3 different high schools. The last of which (Haverstock Secondary School in Camden), topped a poll of the worse schools in England.

My exotic name attracted ridicule and my Turkish background in non Turkish communities put me in a number of challenging situations.

Yet, I never had to fight. I loved school; I took part in every single activity and club ranging from football to chess, photography to cookery. You name it I was there. I wasn’t a “jock”, nor was I a “geek”.

I wasn’t what you would call the most popular kid in school, but everyone knew me, and I was the kid the “jocks” would protect.

I avoided confrontation, I was nice to people, and people in general were nice to.

So where has this force of aggression inside of me come from?

It has come from frustration and frustration in “one’s self”.

Frustration in my failures to realise my potential has long been the fuel igniting the fire in my stomach.

As I write this I feel immensely relieved with my ability to be brutally honest.

I am desperate to put into practise what I know, what I know to be right, and what I need to do to succeed.

I am close to freeing my mind of the aggression which has a hold over it; I am close to freeing it and conditioning it.

So here is the reason for all this, my March and April results to cheer you boys up! I run better than the average guy, but play worse then the average retard.

Excluding my heater £3k month in February, the first 4 months of this year have been a complete fucking write off, but I am extremely focused and motivated more today than I have ever been to get back on track.



Quick shout out to Rosh, pictured here shipping a monster pot (what we call a session breaker!), after some fucking retard doubled him up. How on earth that kid plays £2-£5 someone please explain to me.

If you look closely you will see Rosh grasping all the “blues” (£25 chips) in his palm –standard weeding off!



As I said last night Rosh you play real good, I wish you all the best of luck, and trust me I am rooting for you (and equally for Rob too) every pot which I am not in.

Interview with Robert “The Mad Man from Amsterdam” Angood coming soon!

Yigit