Auto-Pilot Vs Hard Work to Improve

One of the side benefits of jumping ruts is that in this new rut I have been binging on poker podcasts. Notably the Thinking Poker podcasts hosted by Andrew Brokos and Nate Meyvis. The recent podcasts featuring T.J. Jurkiewicz and Alex Fitzgerald inspired me to make some changes to my daily routine in the hope that, over time, those changes will improve my overall enjoyment and ability with respect to poker.

The Thinking Poker podcast with T.J.Jurkiewicz provides some pointers to additional material beyond the podcast that I have been consuming over the past week or so.

• T.J.'s 2+2 thread that T.J. used to document his goals and progress. I'm still working my way through this thread but, for me, the pursuit of T.J.'s weight loss goal has inspired me to set a goal of my own. That is, to drop from 95 Kg to 85Kg by October 1st 2016.  I've started using  myfitnesspals food and exercise diary facilities to document my food consumption and daily exercise as a way of keeping myself aware of what is going in my pie hole each day, as well as how much exercise is happening.
• T.J. pointed to Tommy Angelo's book, "Elements of Poker". I've now purchased and been through this book once and several items of information resonated with me. The notion of quitting. And the importance of several elements of performance such as meditation and the importance of getting enough sleep. I'm now taking note of the time I'm starting and looking to schedule a break within 2 hours from my session's start time. A major incentive for me to be diligent about quitting while I am still fresh is that I have noticed my biggest losing sessions came after I had mentally noticed I was tired AND that the thought had wandered across my mind that "I should quit now".... In the words of Homer Simpson "D'Oh!". T.J. mentioned in the podcast that he places a condition on himself of only going to the Casino  if he feels he is capable of playing his 'A" game. I guess this falls into the category, for any particular day, of "Quitting before you start a losing session".

The Thinking Poker podcast with Alex Fitzgerald mentioned Alex co-hosted another poker related podcast and, as I had found Alex to be an interesting guest I wandered over to oneouter.com and found Alex's stream of podcasts. While the ratio of rant to poker related content seems to get a little high I've found the podcasts to be interesting and to have some useful content. In particular, a meme that has kept coming through on Alex's podcasts is the importance of work away from the table. He keeps mentioning flopzilla and card runners EV (?sp). I have a copy of flopzilla and have several hands from recent sessions I can fiddle around with in flopzilla. But I have zero familiarity with Card Runners EV so will have to put aside some time to investigate that.

Both Alex and T.J. seem to have been persistent and disciplined in their approach to improving their game. Time to get off auto-pilot and spend time away from the tables reviewing hands and looking to work out better ways to play hands I've either been in or observed at the tables.