Discipline!!

Hi All,

So much needed help.. I am having massive problems staying disciplined during my game and this is costing me a lot of money!

9 time out of ten I know the correct play / decision I should make but either rush into the wrong decision or simply something in my brain makes me make the wrong decision. If I slow down and think about every decision carefully this works for a while but I then slip back into wrong decision mode. Calling to much, playing way to many hands and bluffing to much. I know what I am doing is incorrect but just can't help myself.

Can anyone suggest anything that can help me remain disciplined at all times?? This would vastly improve both my game and ROI!

Any comments and sugestions would be very, very welcomed.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Vingers

Unfortunately the only thing that can really help your discipline is losing a lot of money. Chard's tip about taking your hand off the mouse at close decisions is a good one, but then you need discipline to keep up with that.

I suggest playing within set time frames. So set yourself an hour, say, in which to play really disciplined. Concentrate real hard that whole hour on your discipline, then quit as soon as the hour is up. A couple of those sessions may give you the confidence boost to play disciplined most of the time.

Thanks for the repy.

Sounds like a good idea. I play 99% SnG's and normally play two at a time and play for 2-3 hours at a time. I was thinking about playing only one per night / session and then taking a break which is exactly what you are suggesting. I can then evaluate the results therefore.

How do you cope with making the right decision everything and staying 100% disciplined?

welcome in vingers,

none of us are 100% disciplined...period. we all F-up at one time or another. some more frequently, but anyway...

theres an old article (sorry i've lost the link) to a daniel negreanu article that i would recommend (sp?).

daniel states when he was struggling with discipline early on he would allow himself a session to "tilt." it made it easier for him to stick with the grind when he had a set time to "let loose" all the steam of bad beats/wrong decisions taken/made during the week. it also kept him more disciplined on his normal days. it also tought him about playing/handling tilt. it also tought him how to play some funky, junky hands. it also tought him how to change his table image. good read, i recommend that you search for it. not to redirect traffic, but he has his own site (i doubt that was a bombshell announcement).

of course, this too takes discipline to avoid ruining any winnings from the week. i would suggest taking a session...dropping a couple of levels...and letting loose for 30 mins or so...to minimize your losses. eventually, you may learn how to tilt the night away and gain some money.

when i struggle with discipline, i go play some tourneys. allowing me to make some stupid bullying moves, and if they fail i'm only out the buy-in. and sometimes, i build a hell of a stack in the process and get in the money easily.

early on, when i played a lot more tourneys, i would do the same thing. i knew he had me, but i wanted to "make a move" like the guys i see on TV. and would be overly aggressive into a guy that wasnt going anywhere. obviously, i hit the rail most times.

the greatest teacher of discipline, however, is experience. but you have to be paying attention to what you are learning. you cant just play 5000 hands and expect to get better, you have to learn and adjust along the way, too.

hope that helps, and welcome aboard.

Hi Chopper,

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply and reply in such detail. I will certianly give that a go and also check out Daniel's site and have a read about his discipline problems / suggestions.

I'm still relatively new to poker and of course like everyone want to be the best possible player I can. Its all I think about but this is the one area that will have a massive impact on my game and ROI pretty much straight away.

Any tips or recomendations glady recieved...

Cheers,

Vingers

all i can say is, the more you play, the more you will realize how much you DONT know.

its enought to drive you insane. or, it still does me anyway...

good luck

ps, and i say this truthfully. you may go to other sites and check out articles, and whatnot, but i think you will always return here for the majority of your discussions.

this is truly the better, not bigger, but better site for forum content. and the people here are, generally speaking, mild-tempered and come from a position of wanting to help. they dont just rip on you for no reason...generally.

Thanks Chopper, you are certainly a great advocate for this site and I shall hopefully be a regualar poster.

Speak soon.

Since you say you're playing mostly SnGs, the first thing you want to do is set a goal depending on what is challenging to you. e.g. I'm having trouble with short handed/bubble play, so I want to work on that and make it to the bubble/ITM, etc. Visualizing yourself accomplishing helps(self fulfilling prophecy)...think of the little engine that could :wink: . There are many different types of discipline in poker. Which one are you struggling with exactly?

Starting Hand Discipline
Are you playing too loose? Try not to gamble it up early on with marginal hands like A-rag suited, suited gappers, and non-suited connectors. Also try to limp your low PPs and SCs from mid/late position with a couple limpers ahead of you, or possibly from early if you have seen that the table tends not to RR limpers. Protect your monsters preflop instead of getting greedy. people who limp AA/KK from late position are asking to get busted and receive no sympathy. If everyone folds to your FPR, there likely weren't and hand out there strong enough, and you wouldn't have gotten paid off anyways.

Post Flop Discipline
If you say you aren't making correct decisions during hands, practice calculating whether or not your pot odds favorable during the course of the hand. Knowing them is key to making good decisions. If you're not getting the correct odds to call on your draw, fold. Also, if you bluff a flop and meet resistance, slow down. If you then bluff the turn and meet more resistance, have the discipline to fold to a bet on the river if you don't improve.

Table Discipline
What are you doing while two tabling? Is the TV/stereo on in the background? Are you web surfing between hands you're not participating in? Getting rid of any distractions can improve your focus alot. Also, if you're having a tough time multi tabling, perhaps you should stick to one table until you are confident that you can pay attention to two simultaneously. There no shame in single tabling(at least I don't feel bad about it, hehe). Many of the respected vets like Tai single table.

I find that taking notes about your opps is an efficient use of time between hands which I'm not actively involved in. Another thing you could do is play the 'guess all the actively involved players' hands' game. This will also help you make better reads later.

Fiscal Discipline
Are you playing within your bankroll? Scared money plays alot like dead money, so if you're uncomfortable at whatever level of play you're at, maybe it's time to take it down a notch. Stretching yourself too thin plus a string of bad variance can lead to tilt which leads to losing a good protion of your roll.

Emotional Discipline
Don't play when you're tired, stressed out(on tilt), or have a time constraint, etc. You won't be in a winning frame of mind at these times. Learn to walk away and take a break after losing games resulting from bad beats/poor decision making. Physical activity helps stress relief, so go outside instead of moping on the couch.

On a side note, some of what I just said sounds vaguely familiar. Likely from the smorgass(sp?) board of helpful posts listed in the SnG Tactics Digest listed here:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-36043.htm

I try to read an article from here before every session as a pregame ritual. Rituals help you to get focused, too.

Discipline has definitely been one of my biggest problems of late as well. After a few days of having a lot of good hands hold up i found it hard to stay true to the strategy and style of play that put me in those winning situations in the first place. What i did was take a few days off from playing, and that has helped with my discipline for at least the last two sessions...but im sure ill have a relapse of playing stupid sometime (just hopefully not soon). If you are at least aware that you are not playing your best or making what you actually believe to be good decisions, i think that is a good start to 'fixing' your discipline problems. One thing that you could try is if you find yourself getting out of line to not buy-in to any more SNGs for that session. A break will hopefully help you from getting close to tilting at your own bad decisions (following my own advice a week ago would have saved me $300.... >_< )

Search this forum for poster called 'aokrongly'. He had some good articles about discipline.

One thing thats helpful with S&Gs is to stagger them. I often start out with 2 at the same time, but as I go I try to stagger them so they're at different stages. First 2-3 blinds in an S&G are almost robotic. You play or you dont, you raise or you dont. You should basically be able to write out your plan of attack its so set in stone. On the other hand, middle and late stages you need to think through nearly every hand. Rush those and you'll make costly mistakes. So being able to make quick basic decisions on one table (90% of the time, fold) and the concentrate on the other one really helps.

You say you know the right decision, but rush into them or have a brainfart and do the wrong thing. Have you actually sat down and identified what those plays are? If you have a set plan of attack, its easier to stick to it than guidelines. Again this is mainly for first stages of the S&G. If you havnt, check out Aokrongly's 19 hands post which is linked in the sticky in this forum I believe. You cant go too far wrong sticking to that exact game plan for the start of your games. With a set of rules like this, it might be easier to stay on track.

Other than that, if you realise your self-talk is bad, take a break if you can. If you're thinking things like "I know I shouldn't, but..." or "I'm almost certainly beat, but lets pay to find out." etc, you need to clear your head. If its still early stages, press sit out option and grab a drink or something. If its later stages you probably dont want to miss any hands, but at the end of the game, it would be worthwhile taking 5-10 mins off to refresh your head.

Good luck, and as someone else mentioned, Aokrongly has a bunch of articles related to your state of mind as well as play related ones. Check stickies not just in this forum, but in most of the other ones too.

Cheers guys there's some really good stuff in here. I shall be putting myself to the test this weekend and will let you know how it goes.

Have a nice weekend all.