Getting yourself into The Zone

The latest in a long line of capricious leaks in my play seems to be that it's taking me longer and longer to reach the stage where I am properly focused, playing the kind of instinctive poker where the ABC moves come almost without thinking so you can dedicate yourself to finding and pushing the edges.

I'm not sure why this happens, but I have a suspicion that, after 8 months and 20,000 hands, I have a pretty good idea of how to play £25NL ring. As a result, the adrenlaine and nervousness of previous months is replaced by a blase, slightly smug attitude which, it seems, invariably leads to me dropping a buyin or two before I can get my A game kicked into gear.

Does anyone else experience this, or anything like it? Or indeed anything that's exactly the opposite? I'd love to hear your experiences and advice.

yes.. every few weeks i do this.. then i slap myself around a bit and start playing properly.. i dont have any strategy to overcome it.. its just dicipline.

The party rings have gotten so tight latley that I have kinda change my strategy.

At the beggining of a sesion I basically nut peddle for at least the first 20 minutes or so (6-8) tableing. I also play my hands really fast so i'm not faced with any tuff decisions without a proper read. This gives me a chance to feel the table out and get a read on a couple of the players before I have to make a decision. This keeps my early sesion losses to a minumum. Then once I am warmed up, and I find out who the maniacs are, I start to open my starting hand selection up, throw in some deception, things like that..

Yes!
This kind of thing happens with me too!

My natural game is quite Laggy. I love putting moves on people and forcing people into decisions. I pounce on any sign of weakness very aggressively. I like to make people doubt the strength of their hands.
I like playing the game as opposed to simply camping.

However, I find that this kind of play works best (maybe only works), when you have a relatively large, intimidating stack. People are more likely to respect your semi-bluff raises, when they know they are at risk of losing their entire stack on the hand.

So, I find that when i sit down to play with the memories of my previous session still bouncing merrily around my head, i want to jump straight into similar kind of action. I want to take control of the table straight away and make people doubt every hand they get.
But, if and when i do this I invariably lose money. I have no respect from the opps. i don't intimidate them. They don't believe me and don't mind paying to show me that they don't believe me.

This is a big leak in my game at the moment. I am plugging it though. i know that I have to grind it out for a little while. Play only good hands, and leave any fancy stuff out of my play.
And when i have built to 2-3x buy-in......I let rip!

Boyobach, you are my poker twin :) I am always amazed that my new opponents don't feel intimidated by this johnny-come-lately with a £20 stack who waltzes in & check-/re-raises with gay abandon! What re they thinking? I am great!