thanks man. 

To anyone that might be reading this, I've been writing up my sessions recently as a way of trying to help me look at my game from the outside.

We had the live tournament tonight, and I made several mental corrections — some kinda drastic and not just for poker, but for my thought in general — and I have to say I think it was a success. I busted one spot shy of the final table (I think) but I played a good 4ish hours and played a good game IMO.

I have set a long term goal that I didn't think I would meet this session (tourney runs every week) and some short term goals that I set for this session.

Short term goals were:

*keep the total of the pot in my head at all times, be able to rough estmate everyone's stack at the table, keep on watch to make sure these counts are correct.

*watch my opponents much more carefully

*spend an extra 2-3 seconds 'double checking' decisions if i feel they're coming to me too quickly

*DO NOT SPEW CHIPS TO TILT. If I start to feel “injustice tilt” just be glad they got their chips in bad.

Long term goal:

Finish first in the tournament. (I have played 8ish? more? times, have cashed twice. Not ahead at all but I MAY be close to breaking even from a couple of good cash game runs there plus a couple of other good recent live results not at this game). 

So just three key hands to review. 

tHe first one normally would have sent me on monkey tilt to the extreme.

Blinds 200/400. I am UTG. I have been fold, fold, fold, folding all night. It has been two hours and I've been looking at J3, 62, 72, 52, all kinds of garbage, just waiting for anything playable. Got no two face cards together, not even shitty ones, got no pairs. FINALLY I wake up with 1010 under the gun. An older player, who I have noticed gives off some info preflop based on how he handles his cards on occasion, looked prepared to fold. But I raised, with blinds 200/400, to 1500 from UTG. he looked at the bet and then looked up at me, took his hands off his cards and called. with 7 people behind. However I know this guy and i know what he's doing. he's assuming im playing such a shitty range that he's just going to float/steal. Well… okay. one player in blind also calls.

flop 9 6 3 flush draw on board. check from Blind, I bet 3/4 pot, call, call. turn makes the flush. check check check. river brings a fourth heart. blind bets out. I thought one of my two tens was hearts, but check again and ****, its diamonds.  i have to fold having no heart. UTG+1 calls. Flips over JT, ten of hearts jack of not hearts. blinds shows 6 7 with one heart.  J T had no draw no pair, called my raise way out of position, and went out of his way to give me chips. I checked the turn when the third heart came out and let him get there, sort of.  I had accumulated a few thousand chips and that really hurt my position.

Alarm bells going off. Tilt sign blinking on and off on pinball machine. its time for me to make an injustice spew. These ****ing guys call my raises with NOTHING after i sit and sit and sit for 2 hours folding. Then when i finalyl get the hand they cause me to need to fade every draw imaginable.

But I just took deep breaths and put on some music, chilled out, promised myself i was going to play a full orbit using only the tip top of my range. Nothing even rclose came, so it amounted to a break lasting one orbit (with me making sure the cards were break-worthy). I'm into transcendental meditation so I put on an audio file containing my mantra and kind of took some deep breaths and reminded myself its just a game, and its just money. i was not playing with the grocery money or anything.

So that turned into a lot more folding and waiting. Finally one of the game's very strong players raised with me in bb from UTG. he usually picks on my button but i guess becasue he was so far off from it he wasnt able to. I put him on a really strong range with that hand. He has shown willingness to call my shoves with a strong pocket pair, so im not pushing him off those, but i know how he will play them. 

he did not have a lot of chips at that point and he made a bet that I took as extremely weak on a 7-3-3 (or close – a pair and a rag) board. instict said “good spot” and I jammed it. he folded and was muttering for several hands, even missing when it was his action. I felt good about that one. 

Finally I fold fold fold some more until i am sort of in push or fold mode and I've got 99 in the big blind. it folds to small blind who says “raise” and i make my mistake for the night, which luckily wasnt TERRIBLE since i  didnt have a TON of chips. i thoujght he had already put in his raise and he hadn't. I was thinking too much about the chips. I said “all in”  and he recognized my confusion. he did not have to put any chips in even a min raise (which I thought was bs but it ended up not mattering) and he said call. flips over qj. Queen  damn jack for 12,000 or so chips with blinds at 400/800 or whatever. when im raising it after giving up tons of hands preflop and not playing anything except for the 1010 that lost, a couple big preflop hands that won without action pre, and the bluff vs the strong player.  i didnt show the bluff so everything i showed was strong. and he figured qj is good against my range when i push, even though i treat my chips too cautiously, its clear to everyone paying attention, and THNE i throw them away after a mistake. I had not made a mistake. I know i was very confident when i said it.

So after thhat beat I was out and I left. Results wise, this one was another goose egg. However – I felt I was spending a lot more time thinking about what was going on in and out of hands. I felt that i was “on” in a way i havent felt in a good while. I have to say part of that is – long story, but i broke my femur several months ago, and ive been on pretty heavy pain meds to combat the arthritis ive gotten as a result. i finally decided those things were clouding up my head way too much and have been getting off them. That's just one factor of many, but i felt alive, and on point. If I had made it to the money, i know i would not have made the damn stupid mistakes I have made the last couple times ive made the money.

I'm going to keep updating this post on this topic – if nothing else it helps me. Thanks to you guys who have offered your advice.

and to some degree im playing out of my league there, but i know that im smart enough to do this. 

side note. sub focused came to my house to help me break in a poker table for a single table tournament. he destroyed it. but my wife cashed too, 3rd place. i busted like 8th. My wife has played 4 tournaments and 2 cash games, sort of, and doens't read TPE forums though she's watched some of the videos with me. She was happily putting chips in in spots where it looked obvious she was bluffing. she later explained thought process on several hands and i was like … damn. .. you're going to be better at this than me very soon if oyu aren't already. 

that said, we met as spades partners. you cant really hate that.

…Maybe she should play at Don's game and I should stay home and watch Desperate housewives or whatever the hell wives in America are watching these days.

Thanks for the reply folks. I have been waiting for a chance to get to respond. I'll just note the things i've prioritized after a general response…

The approach described by subfocused – particularly that of picking on a bad player with isolation & postflop play – sort of looks like a return to the way i want to play. I had returned to tournaments recently after 2 straight years of 14ish days a month of casino and home cash game play, no tournaments almost whatsoever, and found that i was “playing the player” alomst too much, or so it seemed. 

I generally do widen my range of 3 bets but my traditional way of doing it has been the Harrington-advised method of looking at the watch and noting the second hand to randomize when you do it light.

At the game in the last two sessions I have been noticeably card dead .. . much worse than typical nit complaints about that, just hands i fold all day in a cash game. the concept of blind stealing has evolved so much since i was playing tournaments that i can see ive gotten lax about playing position w/o the cards.

I actually have been practicing pretending not to look in games with my wife and best friend, ive made it work a couple times.

as for my goals, I agree they were rather thin. Ive replaced them with a few of the 'missions' at the back of hulls' “poker plays you can use”

So that's 3 books im making integral to this whol ething, but that's lucky for me. i've been reading 3+ hours a day since first or second grade… weird habit to stick, but there youi go.

thanks again for all that input, i strongly feel that this game is going to be better. however, subfocused, i really dont think ill play well if im feeling like you're analyzing my play on the spot. I'm fine with you doing that and telling me about it later, just don't make any references to the fact that you're watching during the session, unless its something hugely important. it'll throw me off, is all. i

i tried playing with no music at all last time and that actually did make a difference. but i am going to try it with again this time.

will pos tagain soon with updated list of goals ive been working on

Oh, for sure!  I do the same thing. Your notes check out with mine. What I meant was simple and the poitn was missed probably in my verbosity. I know you'll be watching for pointers. Just dont say anything while we'er playing that reminds me of that. That's all. I'm just trying to keep my play as au naturale as possible so you have plenty to give feedback on later. I just know myself and if that comes into conversation at all it'll throw me off.

But by all means. Analyze. And we can compare notes. S ofar it looks like we pretty much have the same notes. Gave up on bluffing Taff the day I got called down and won holding AK high.