Wake Up to Play Poker

Several days ago I was describing to my friend a routine that I go through almost every working day and which works very well for me. And I decided to write a post about this. It took many words, but in reality all this lasts 30-40 minutes at maximum, especially if you do it several days in a row and get used to it. This make my mind and my body to wake up completely and make sure I am ready for some serious work.

1. Wake Up 5am. My mind is very clear in early mornings and games are quite sweet this time too. I sleep 7 hours and usually wake up 3-5 minutes before the alarm clock,

The first thing I do is:

– Remembering Why I wake up today?
To do something good and useful. To improve myself. To make myself and other people more happy.

Something positive enough to bring a meaning, inspire and make you smile.

2. Wash up myself. Clean up the room, my working place, etc. If there is an order everywhere, there is an order in your head too. And its just a bit lazy sometimes to do the morning exercise straight away. Sometimes I check e-mail, Facebook just to make sure there is nothing new in there, same pictures, same people and same 80% of spam messages.

***Update. I now also do a 30 mins meditation session every single morning, regardless if I play today or not.

3. Do the morning exercise, its highly desirable to start sweating. I do Ashtanga yoga or just general set of stretches, push-ups, sit ups, etc. If there is a swimming pool around, I swim. This should take at least 15 minutes. I need to start breathing deeply and freely, as sometimes my nose is blocked in the morning.

During this warm up I try to think ONLY about warm up. Like:
“this is my hand, touching the ground. This is my breath, I am inhaling now. My knee still hurts a bit, probably after that basketball game”.
I think only about NOW, not yesterday, not in another city… But Here and Now. By doing this I prepare my mind, restraining it from random thoughts, stopping it from wandering away at every favorable moment, and instead make it do what I want it to do, namely make good poker decisions.

Often thoughts completely unrelated to what I am doing at this moment would come into my mind:

“I am going to Australia next month, where will I stay?”
Fk this, I’ll sort this out just before or when I come there.
Now I am lifting up my left leg…

“My Girlfriend is gonna have a birthday next week, what should I buy her for present?”
Ok. I’ll put this task into my daily planner (using Simpleology ) and will think about this later. Now I am making a deep, deep breath…

4. Shower with cold water and breakfast. I eat cereals with fruits, salads, soy milk or juice, scoop of protein. I never eat something fried, like eggs or bacon or any bread like toasts or cookies – this makes me lazy and sleepy, and it’s just an unhealthy food overall.

During the shower and breakfast I keep thinking about here and now.

“ehhm.. This water is cold. Goosebumps on my skin. The pineapple is sweet and tasty.”

Some unwanted thoughts would keep coming into my mind:

“It’s friday. How should I entertain myself today?”
I’ll think about this after I finish my work, It’s not something urgent. Now I am chewing my pineapple and enjoying the taste.

“What if result of my today’s session will be negative like yesterday?”
Doesn’t matter. I am aware of variance, and If I make any mistakes I will review them later and discuss with my poker friends. Now I gonna play with huge edge against fish. And more often my sessions are positive than negative.

Or even better just to leave them Unanswered and ignore.

5. Ready to go. If I still have some thoughts running in my head, I write them down to a notepad or online, I use http://simpleology.com/.

6. I open my Poker Warm Up, check if there are some newly discovered leaks to be added to my warming up routine (though I usually do this afterwards, during my session review).

Start Warm UP and attentively go through all the steps completing it like it’s the most important checklist of my day:

a) My Poker Goals. I remember why I play, except for the play itself. Besides money, what else gives me her majesty Poker? If I have some new Goals to add, I quickly check it is a SMART goal.
b) My Technical leaks. To become better these must be eliminated. And to eliminate I need to constantly be aware and work on my weaknesses.
c) Mind leaks. To evaluate results of my play, I use not only monetary measures but how I coped with various forms of tilt too. Recognizing signs of upcoming tilt is the most important thing I took from Jared Tendler’s Mental Game of Poker.
d) Distracting factors. Yeah, I can play 3 tables HU and discuss plans for the evening with my friend on the phone. But can I be sure that the quality of my decisions during this time is the best? Not at all, rather opposite.
e) Check my Concentration. Several days a month I would delay or even skip playing poker just because I don’t feel like playing. I had enough cases in my experience when I ignored this strong feeling and had a very bad session that day, including 10 hours non-stop play, broken mouses and keyboards, chairs flying across the room and screams like “I knew I shouldn’t play today”. So I learned it hard way. Most probably this is caused, as Jared Tendler defined, by accumulated emotions tilt.

7. And the last step, as Poker Warm Up suggests I set up the Poker session Timer for 1,5 or 2 hours with strong intention to have a brake or finish the session when the Timer tells me do so.