Zen In

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 14, 2009 in poker, wpt, writing, zen | 2 comments

Reading a now revived blog from ChuckTs has me focusing more on my Zen like mental state when playing poker. ChuckTs (an awesome guy and player) posted a great checklist for Warming Up and Warming Down which I blatantly stole and copied into a word file and keep on my desktop. I thought the next time I played a session, I'd use it and see if I like it.

I have to say the difference in my mental state from the last time I played to this time is a dramatic turn around. I had time to let the steam cool off, as well as do breathing exercises and write down goals for the session. The goals I set for myself were:

• Only play 6 tables of 100nl Full Ring, not 9. Just get back into the swing and give your brain time to ease back into playing.

• Play tight in EP, and look for good steal situations in the CO and BTN.
• Look for good 3betting opportunities in late position.
• Take your time making solid reads at the turn and river.
• Play 45-55 minutes once 6 tables are up and active.
• Stay positive and level headed.
• Stay focused and only have tables open on the computer.

I really liked being able to set goals like this for each session and it's a habit I'm going to invest time and money (via paper notepads!). The results were good, the first session I took what I thought was a bad cooler, but turns out I just made a marginal river call and lost. I stayed calm, focused on breathing and staying positive and playing one hand at a time. Fortunately that paid off, and I focused on playing well and not slow playing anything and got paid off for a couple of great hands and ended the first session up 1.5 buyins.

The second session went pretty well in my opinion in terms of my gameplay and mental state. I pretty much went card dead for 40 minutes and ended up -$15 but what helped is that I hadn't looked at my results at all until after the session was over, so I really don't know how that might have fluctuated. Anyways I wrapped up the night happy about my game.

In other news regarding March ...

In March PokerStars is changing their VIP program and attaining PlatinumStar will only be 7,500 VPPs, which makes it very attainable for me (playing approximately 23,000 hands in a month) so I am definitely going to go for it. Once that happens I'll probably just save up for the 50k FPP bonus instead of the 25k, because this one is worth $650 and by the time I clear my recent deposit bonus I'll be closer to 50k than 25k (specifically once I hit Platinum and that bonus becomes available to me).

Writing News ...

I got word that I'll be part of the team for a new website called www.DurrrrChallenge.com, which will follow the hotly contested challenge that Tom Dwan put out and was taken by Ivey and Antonious. It looks like my part in the site will be breaking down hands and getting some analysis from some top internet heads up specialists. Should be fun.

And finally ...

I am headed to Commerce next Friday to interview a few poker pros, and plan to really just interview anyone I can get my hands on. The video interviews will appear on Gaming Illustrated, and other interviews will show up around the internet on the various sites I write for. There's also a media tournament I get to play in, so winning that would be AWESOME because it would get me a seat at the WPT Celebrity Invitational.