Sorry to hear that John Nash and his wife were in an accident and didn't make it on Saturday.

Thank you for your years of hard work inventing game theory / nash equilibrium sir.

Poker (and the world) would not have been the same without you.

If you have not yet watched "A Beautiful Mind", I really reccomend it, that is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

News article on MSN

The wheels have fell off!

I'm at a bit of a standstill with my poker right now.  I've tried quite a few things lately but hit a wall. There are definitely many positives about my situation but also some parts of my life I'm still working through which have become pretty obvious lately.

Let's start with the positives.

Firstly I am as 'free' as I have ever been in my life. I left my job which I was in for 5 years in September 2014 and then spent eight months fighting an Employment Tribunal (which I lost due to a legal technicality of contract law). I have no more concerns,  priorities or stresses about what to do with the Tribunal, I was fortunate I had a very good law firm who helped me at no cost but it was still stressful. I'm free of all that now.

Yippee!

It's strange how sometimes you don't realise the stress you're under until it's removed!

I'm also free of the job which involved working for a government department in the UK. 

If I had not have been pushed I likely would have stayed there the rest of my life because I thought it was the right thing to do and was promoted once and trying to work my way up the slippery career slope. I was never in love with my job but I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. Now I am free to concentrate on what I want to concentrate on with my life! No more up at 7am in at 8pm! I can work on what I have always been most passionate about - poker!

So what to do with all this freedom? My original idea was to grind 12k in 6 months however I haven't had the €100 spare to start this lately due to sudden last minute changes in my financial situation linked to the employment Tribunal I just mentioned.

So I decided to start with €40 four days ago but this was not a smart idea.  I was stressed by the small number of buyins and ended up playing higher than I should €10nl and also sports betting with part of this.  That went OK and I made about €50 profit until a few hours ago when I remembered the Unibet Open. 

It's been an ambition of mine to play larger size tournaments live for a while now and I've been trying to get to a Unibet Open on and off for a year. Tried Cannes with no success, and now it's in Glasgow so I thought at least it's in the same country this time! Well I got closer than I ever have before busting a €250 sat with about 11 players remaining and 3 packages awarded 3 weeks ago and then busting another sat (this time one I won entry into as part of a ranking hero competition) with 1 package awarded and about 9 players remaining. I busted when my UTG 10bb AQs shove got called by 55 from the blinds and prior to this I lost as a 64% favourite in the other all-in I was involved in.

This is the nature of tournament poker and why you need to be bankrolled for what you're playing or expect to lose more often than you win and I know that, but I still wanted to get there! So with just a few weeks to go until the main event I decided to risk €50 of my €110 bankroll by betting on a tennis match. If it won I would have €50 to play a sat into the final event sat tonight and if it lost I would have a chance of still winning the €50 back with my remaining. Well things did not go as planned.  Shortly after my bankroll is no more. 

This is justice! This is what such poor discipline deserves but I really wanted to go.

Now this isn't the first time I have done this. Patience and discipline are two of my big weak spots. The thing is I can understand how it happened, I reflected on it a bit after my bankroll had vanished.  My desire to play in the Unibet open was great and I also felt a need to start 'making it' with poker.

I might want to be playing €1k live events and travelling all over the world playing cash poker,  but I can't right now and if I'm going to get there I need to be totally at ease with now and my present situation instead of striving to be someplace else.

Then something dawned on me.  I need to be totally comfortable with who I am (weaknesses and strengths) such as needing to improve my discipline instead of pretending I don't have any weaknesses with discipline, and also where I am (life circumstances) if I am going to accomplish anything like building the kind of life I want to create with poker.

When I made this blog and came up with my idea for a challenge I did so with some great motivations. I wanted to help others and thought I could teach some pokerstrategy while also creating an example that others might be able to follow. I wrote my introductory remarks in the present tense as if I had already achieved what I wanted to with my game because I have read when you state things in the present tense you are more likely to accept them subconsciously and have success.

My pseudonym Skilful was chosen because I wanted to be an example of skill and making the right decisions time and time again at the table. I still have a long way to go! I've been fortunate to have had some world class coaching through the years and I know what to do but I need to put that together now into a well rounded package and get on and do it.
In a way I'm not surprised my challenge didn't go perfect first time. 

I still had some distance to travel with my game when I started and I'm sure that will be a work in progress for some time to come.

Also, in a way, this may even be more encouraging for future readers of my blog and this challenge when it's complete as they get to see my weak spots with patience and discipline and providing they are overcome I guess that will be more motivating than someone that simply starts a challenge, plays, wins and finishes.

So where from here?

Bigger Picture

I’m going to work on accepting my present circumstances and coming to be feeling as good in them now,  as I imagine I want to feel in the future when I’ve achieved my poker goals. This is important to keep well balanced while playing I think.

This will be a big project but one that should also be quite exciting. I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time on www.actualized.org as part of this which is a website I found a while ago and the best self development resource I’ve ever come across. I’m also going to blog about my developments on this front!

Poker

I have a meeting with a business adviser in a couple of weeks and depending on how that goes I will be able to get a small loan. I plan on using this to upgrade my computer to a top of the range one so I can then stream every day and I also plan to upgrade my broadband, treating my whole poker project like an investment. This will mean I can stream every day and will no longer have glitches while streaming. I am also going to wait to restart the challenge until I have €100 exactly so I don’t feel any pressure to take dangerous risks early on. The start of this will be off stream as I’ll likely have the bankroll to restart my challenge in a couple of weeks but not to upgrade my kit for a month or two.

In the short term (nowish) I am going to deposit €10 and play €1 sngs. This will mean I can still play some poker while I’m waiting to restart my main challenge. I’ve chosen the €1 sngs for two  main reasons:

1st they are the smallest game available so I can play them with the cash I have free to play right now – kind of a no brainer that one.

2nd I know how to beat microstakes cash and get very bored playing less than 6-8 tables but until I upgrade my computer I can’t really stream more than 1 table and I enjoy streaming. Because sngs are not my usual game I will still enjoy playing just one table so can play them on stream to add to the enjoyment.

I’m also going to be studying poker psychology and putting what I learn into practice, to develop a great mental game.

Lastly on the poker front I’m going to carry on enjoying interacting with other players in Twitter, Ranking Hero and Twitch enjoying the social side of the game that these cool technologies give us while improving my game at the same time! I’m still in a very fortunate position. I have the time, freedom and motivation to play, now I need to get my game where it needs to be to support my wider ambitions.

When I write the book which I plan on giving away for free when I hit my 12k goal and finish my challenge I think it will make for a more interesting and inspiring story for these false starts. I believe I can achieve my poker goals and when I get there I’ll have realised a life long ambition and hopefully helped one or two people along the way!

Thanks for reading! Have a great Sunday!

#blog #challenge #discipline #mentalgame #success