- meditation session of at least 30 - 45 minutes. Stretch goal is for an hour but always, always happy when I've had a 45 minute session or longer
- push-ups. Most mornings managing to crank out 50 push ups. They may not be classic in style but I count them.
- Stretching. Janusirasana. Both sides.
- five minute journal. Focusing on finding three things to be grateful for each day, re-reading my affirmations as a way to remind myself on attitudes I need to take into poker sessions and looking forward to the day to work out what a good day would look like
- Daily pages. A stream of consciousness journal where I document a little of the events of the previous day, any emotions of the moment and plans for the day ahead. Derived from recommendations found by following links from Tim Ferriss's podcasts. And part of the reason I seem to have dropped my blogging frequency
- Poker study of around an hour or more. Have been focusing on Ed Miller's "Playing the Player". Slowly grinding through the book as I mind map a bunch of pages each day. The mind map technique is one I use to ensure I engage in the material in a deeper way than if I simply read it.
After that it is off to Crown and see how I go. Every second day I read / re-read some of Zachary Elwood's "Exploiting Poker Tells" or "Verbal Poker Tells". For these books my take is that if I can increase my win rate by 10 - 20% through developing my ability to read people then the investment will have been well worth it.
The best book I've read recently, by a country mile, has been Tommy DAngelo's "Painless Poker". This is one of the few books where I would be happy to write an Amazon review recommending the book. However, as Tommy has produced a masterpiece anything I write praising it would feel to me as though I hadn't done the book justice. With the focus on poker and "medding" (as Tommy refers to mindfulness / meditative practices), this book brings together two of the major interests of the past ten years for me. The chapter towards the back of the book, that deals with objections to medding that Tommy has had to deal with when advocating medding to his poker students, is superb. If anyone wants to play the "Yes I would meditate but..." game, then that chapter deals with pretty much all the "Yes, buts..."
The two major areas that Painless Poker has helped me with are:
- Helping me understand my "Quit leak". This is where I continue playing beyond my intended quit time and subsequently usually lose a chunk of money. While the leak still exists, there have been fewer instances of it happening. And more instances of my quitting. Both on time and prior to the scheduled time
- Helping me with staying focused at the table. There is so much information happening during hands where your cards have been folded. People's betting patterns, possible tells that can be tracked to see whether the tell is reliable or not and so on. For example, last night I realized one of the regular players on the table bets in two different ways. Sometimes he articulates the bet. And if he has verbally bet the flop, he usually verbally bets the turn. And other times he does not articulate the bet. He will bet silently on the flop. Unfortunately, while I see there is difference in his betting behaviour, I have yet to see enough hands go to showdown to see whether there is a meaning to this difference in betting styles. I have a suspicion one is associated with strength. In addition to this, I've noticed another reg making donk bets on the flop after check-calling the flop. After noticing his donk betting on the turn strategy I noticed that twice his turn donk bets have been raised. And twice he has folded. I'm thinking, for this player, and this player only at this stage, this pattern is worth going after.
My goal for September is to have a profitable month at the tables. There is a mountain of study sitting there waiting to be done. And a bunch of material already consumed that needs to be reviewed. Therefore my study goal is to keep pecking away with the goal of putting in at least one quality hour of study per day.
