I knew I had to plug this leak, and the easiest way to plug a leak of folding too often is simply to call more often -or so I thought.
Several months down the line upon reflection of my results, analysis of specific hands and generally reviewing some of the lines I take during hands, I have gone from one extreme to another. I call way too much.
I peel vs 3 bets when I shouldn't pre flop, and post flop I simply cant fold hands which should be trivial mucks.
The games at The Vic are so ridiculously soft that a leak, even several leaks may not be exposed for extended periods of time, hence why there are so many terrible regs who think / believe they play a lot better than they actually do, based on the simple fact that they beat the games or have been beating the games for say a x amount of days / weeks / months, though the fact still remains that they are at best lifetime break even players with huge fundamental misunderstanding of the most basic concepts in the game.
I don't want to be one of these guys. I pride myself on constantly addressing the leaks which creep into my game, and I desperately strive to improve as an overall poker player. And I have come a long way.
But I play bad too often, and it hurts. And the fact that I know I played bad further adds to the pain. When I have played bad during a session, I am fully aware of it, sometimes I am still in the middle of a session knowing I am playing bad. Its a bad place to be, but good too.
Good because obviously if you are aware you are playing bad you can take action. You can improve the situation, you can play better. This used to be a very painful process for me. I remember steaming off my face in a game, knowing I am playing bad, and there was no doubt about that, I KNEW I was playing bad and I would sit there saying to myself "...Yigit, come on man stop this! You know you should not have called there, come on Yigit...play good..." But I kept on playing bad, my body used to be tense, and I was in complete turmoil with myself.
What I understand now is that back then even though I knew the correct plays / actions, which were all stored in my brain, I wasn't able to access them or more so get them into use, because emotionally I was fucked, when I was in that state my brain basically partially shut down.
So without access to the part of my brain which would give me all the answers, and facilitate me to play better I found myself playing bad, not being able to do anything about it and this would get me more tilted, which would further worsen both my state and as a result my decision making -which ultimately would result in me playing pretty terribly.
Funny getting all this stuff down, although I am going off topic a little bit here its good!
I am emotionally solid now. I have worked very hard, and it has taken me several years to get to where I am, but I am at a very strong place now. I still get tingles every now and then, but I have conditioned myself to a point these tingles act as wake up calls, a safe guard before any form of tilt can effect me -like a pinch..."....Yigit! HEY! Yigit! Yeah you! Why you getting upset with this guy? You realise this mushroom is the reason you don't need to lace up trainers tomorrow right? So come on..." At this point I usually sit up, smile to myself, and the tingle goes away. Oh before I built this tingle working as a safe guard in my brain, Rosh used to poke me and try to ensure I didn't slip into a tilting trance. We are both still there for each other when rarely these tingles accumulate during very very trying nights, where we in a witty way express / release our frustrations through jokes, texts, and most fun, twitter.
So what's up then? If the problem isn't making bad decisions or playing bad because I am steaming what is it?
Last night I was faced with a decision for my stack, I had £90 invested in the pot, and I had £400 behind. I sat there, and calmly worked through the hand in my head, I thought back as far as I could to draw on any previous hands I had seen this guy play, I considered every possible option, I gave him a range of hands and eventually made a decision which not only turned out to be wrong, but also after the hand even if we take the result away, I still felt I made the wrong decision.
But before I made the decision, I thought about it as hard as I could, and the decision I came to had logic to it. So am I being result oriented? No, not really. Because I have made incorrect decisions about a hand before, and even though I was wrong, I was happy with the decision I had made. Last night, I instantly knew I had played bad.
Or I got outplayed. You know maybe I am being too hard on myself, or maybe I am not giving this guy enough credit for check raising a check raiser in a sick spot, and maybe he did just simply out play me.
Reading this all back, I sound very very special! Its dribble of my thoughts. I suppose its why I have this blog.
Anyway, yeah, so I should still fold more often though!
