Poker Strategy Quick Fixes

The good old magic pill topic again. There are many ways to improve your poker game. One way to start this journey is to have the right poker mentality. In other words, learning which kind of mindset it takes to become successful in poker.

The following videos will be addressing one particular issue. The issue of the “magic pill“. It’s one of my more favorite topics because, especially in the online poker world, there are so many quick fix schemes and scam sites which sell you the magic poker pill over and over again.

I’m going to post Part 2 of the video here. You´ll find the other parts on my youtube channel. Serach for “The magic poker pill” and you´ll find it as a top result!

Or if you´re lazy, just follow me here: Increase Your Poker IQ Videos

The Law of Attraction

The topic of the short movie “The secret” is what is referred to as the “Law of Attraction”. Basically let me state this right away, the movie is a big bunch of bullshit. But nice fluff, gotta admit that. For more details you can read this overview in Wikipedia .

The first minutes are also free to watch on youtube. Don´t even waste a second on buying this. There´s nothing meaningful to follow. However, I ask you to watch a few minutes of this clip:

A true inspiration

Nick Vujicic is a true inspiration. I often have the fear of getting injured badly and in the worst case, becoming physically disabled. That doesn´t stop me from doing risky things I “shouldn´t” be doing. In a quiet moment the fear is still there.

A typical problem with the poker mindset

In my mind, I know that whatever you do, it all depends on your poker attitude. And every messed up situation can be turned around. You can´t change the past. And some things that I/you/we have done in the past can have a strong impact on our future – both ways. But I´m sure you´ve also heard, read and listened to some big “turn around” stories. Americans in general love those stories. Often though, it seems like you have to “be there” in order to truly understand it.

Poker Mindset Series Overview

Some starting questions:

a) Name some people out of your social circle/family/environment that love to complain. Do you like being around them? Chances are you don´t.

b) Who are the people in your your environment who always have problems and don´t get things done. Are those people also the same who believe to get “unlucky” all the time ?

c) And then do you know those freaking luckboxes that you want to punch in the face, because it seems like they seem to run good for their whole life? And everything they touch turns into gold? It could be that they are fooled by randomness

How much time do you spend daily on chatting or equivalents?

By that I mean social networks like Facebook, talking to friends on messengers. Social networks and other online communities like forums (eg. www.twoplustwo.com) have become very popular in the internet age. People spend more and more time on them and the market keeps increasing rapidly. Anyways, now it’s time to get honest:

How much time do you WASTE on them per day?

The definition of the term waste is to be considered carefully. Whatever is waste and what not is up to each individual. Some people think that doing sports 5 hours a day is waste of time. Others think that being on the computer more than 15 minutes is a waste of time. It all depends where we come from and where we want to go.

Poker Mindset Series Overview

Nobody owes you anything & the flaws of the entitlement mentality

Do you think that…

- It’s the job of your country to provide everybody with a job
- The rich should pay more in taxes than people with average income (in %)
- You have a right to succeed in life
- Everybody should have a free education
- Everybody should get a guaranteed income and vacation, even if unemployed
- You have a right to be happy
- The world has favored others more than yourself and for this reason they owe you some sort of payback (if yes, where do you draw the line?)

Poker Mindset Series Overview

In the mindset series I will be addressing some ways of thinking about the world & poker that helped me to improve my game and overall life.

If you are struggling in the way that you can’t accept that life isn’t fair and just, I would recommend you to take a look at Stoicism. Even if not, I’d advise everybody to take a look at this article about Stoicism. It might help you in other areas that I wouldn’t even be remotely thinking of.
Please don’t be lazy, read it. Otherwise this article will provide no use/help for you. If you think Philosophy is boring in general, then don’t waste your time by reading this. Allow me the little brag and tell you that I had the pleasure to study and major in ancient Greek language in school. Do yourself (and me!) this little favor and participate in what I love so much :). Understand what apathia, ataraxia means. Understand the mindset and values of the Stoa.

Will be starting a series called “mindset”. In this series I will be introducing concepts, theories and worldviews and how they were helpful in shaping me as a person and – since this blog is about poker – as a poker player.

I have often found those two parts (improving as a person and player) can not be separated from each other and often go hand in hand with each other. In the days of online poker you can get away with more leaks in the social/personal area, but only to a certain degree.

I want to make sure that increasing your poker iq also means at the same time to increaseyourpersonaliq. Increasingmypersonaliq is something that I push myself to do more in the future. I have leaks in this area and look forward to improving them.

Today I´d like to share some thoughts about Bad Beats / Whining / Bitching.

We all know how frustrating it can be to run bad, get sucked out on, hitting nothing and basically everything seems to go wrong. Variance in poker is huge, and the tougher the games get, the higher variance gets. I can recall many days when I´ve wished to never have gotten out of bed in the first place.

Before  continue in the “how-to-do-tone”, let me state that I have not mastered the art of not bitching. I can be pretty terrible and if some buddies would print out some past Skype convos – especially in my tourney days – you´ll see my face turning red! I can relate to everybody who does it / has done it, because I´m one of the worst ;) . Most of the stuff that I´m going to write, you´ll already know. Still I think it’s important to constantly put this into your mind, because it can be pretty annoying to other people.