First month recap, Don't try to control the uncontrollable

My first poker month is over and it's not time for a quick recap of this month's goals. Overall January has been pretty mediocre poker-wise. My head wasn't in the right place, I didn't play enough volume and i've played scared, mostly because of a bad downswing. However, it hasn't been all bad ;

The Good

Poker aside, I like the way January played out. I spent quality time with family, friends & girlfriend, eating habits were good and I only missed 2 days of exercise in the whole month. I also got a good amount of writing done, something I hadn't really planned for. I have some ideas of where to next take the blog and I hope to develop it some more in the future. Regarding health, life and extras, i'm pretty satisfied and wish to continue doing the same in February.

The Bad

Sleeping habits were pretty shaky. For the most part I respected my 11pm bedtime when I worked the following day but other than that it's been all over the place. Hard for a nightowl to resist the temptation when there's no work the following day. However, going to bed too late drains my energy for exercise & motivation and an irregular schedule doesn't help my focus on poker days. Definitely something to work on.

The Ugly

My actual game has been pretty terrible this month. Ran 900$ under EV in my first 2 sessions and it really messed with my head. Playing scared, worrying too much about everything, not playing enough, all things that worsened my downswing. 

However, something good came out of it as i've finally figured out why it messed with me so much. Most of it came from the pressure of "going pro". Because of some arbitrary transition, I suddenly became worried about my game, tried too hard, began to focus on results and winrate way too much, which led to playing scared/losing motivation. 

Looking back at past months, I can see similar spots where I dropped just as many buy-ins yet it didn't affect me because I didn't "feel" the downswing. In the end, downswings are just illusions between two points in your graph but the consequences of "feeling" a downswing are very real. The only thing that materializes a downswing is when you happen to look at your graph at X and Y points. 

Thus, what is the solution? It's actually really simple ; don't look at your results, you can even block the stack amount on your screen to be completely in the dark (unless your opponent is deepstacked and you need to know how much you have, obviously). You only need a couple things to do this ; the confidence that you are a winner in your game (IE : if you have over 100-200k hands as a winner), and a sufficient bankroll.

I happen to have over 70 buy-ins and despite the recent swings i'm still in the green over my past 200k hands at 100NL. The only thing left is to accept the worse should it come. If I lose 40+ buy-ins before my next bonus (about 80k hands), then so be it and i'll either step down or stop poker altogether. I think coming to terms with the worse case scenario frees up a lot of unnecessary anxiety. It also leads to a very important point which is particularly vital in poker :

Don't try to control the uncontrollable. It will drive you nuts and increase the chances you cause, instead of avoid, the undesired event. In poker terms, this means you cannot control luck, variance or your winrate. Face facts, accept the worse case scenario, plan and aim for the best one, and then just play. The rest isn't up to you, and trying to do otherwise will lead to much unhappiness and most likely failure.

Overall, I think the lessons learned this month were worth the bankroll hit. Life-wise, a lot of what I do is already right and if I fix the psychological bankroll leaks, I should be right back on track for February and onwards. Current goal for February is 100k hands, which will give me a bunch of stellar rewards and my next big cash bonus. Onwards!