There are some things that can not be changed. We live in an information era. There is so much information to be found about the game, coaches to be hired, sites designed to help people to stop being fish and maybe becoming a shark someday, yet I don't think most of the people here use these things to their benefit, because that would mean they wouldn't do 99% of the things they do, and say 99% of the things they say. Set goals. Aim for whatever is realistic. Don't let shortterm results affect your judgement. You've all heared or read this 100 time or more, and claim to understand it, but you do not act on it. Be honest with yourself. Train yourself mathematically, statisticly, make the neccesairy investments. Get the hands in. Look at those hands objectively and change what needs to be changed. Recognize patterns. Act on them. Recognize how different types of people play and exploit the mistakes they make. Ask yourself how people exploit your mistakes. Don't play scared. Don't be affraid of variance. Embrace it, as it is what keeps so many players believing in the idea that they are in a supposed downswing and not just losing players. Teach yourself how to read hands. Think about the game, read about it, discuss it. Ask for critisism. Give something back to the people that helped you get where you are at. Don't burn bridges. Get to know yourself and see that the psycholgical aspect of the game is 99.999% what goes on in your head, and only 0.001% what you claim to have as an emotional effect on your opponents. Don't alter your play when you're losing. If you can not do that, take steps so that you can. Hide the view on your winrate and current online roll. Play every hand the best you can, while not forgetting metagame and longterm importance. Do the best you can do, and never whine or complain. If variance bothers you, run simulations about standard deviations on winrates over a certain amount of hands. Don't play different when you're winning. Make sure that when you run hot, get the maximum you can get, in stead of settling for what is easy to get. Earn your money, don't just win it. Money won is money that you will inevitably give back when the rolls in the hand are reversed compared to the way you just stacked your opponent. Almost everything is variance, and clear cut. Your winrate lies in the very few things that aren't. Recognize these things. Don't let variance get to you, embrace it. I know I've said that already, but you don't just have to know it's being said a lot, you have to do it. And most of you do not, otherwise you would have more money earned, and you wouldn't whine and complain because you fully understand what is going on.Try to get somewhere and keep track by keeping crystal clear records of how you get there, or failed to get there. Do what you have to do, but never blame anyone else but yourself if you do not succeed. Doing so is stupid, shows a lack of self knowledge, a lack of knowledge about the game, and a lack of self discipline. Train your memory. Doubt yourself when you should and believe in yourself when you should. Learn how to recognize the difference between the situations where you would better do one of these, rather than the other. Understand the games' variables. Understand position, stacksize, table image, reversed table image, pot odds, hand strength, implied odds, reversed impled odds, current state of mind, preflop game play,flop game play, turn game play, river game play. Realise that every one anyone of these streets, one can be assigned a range. This is an information game. Gather information, combine it, draw the best conclusion that can be drawn and leads to the best mathematical decision. Keep in mind that any of these variables, including the look in your opponents eyes in a live game, or the twitch in his finger, don't change your decision. They change the mathematical calculation that leads to your final decision. Sometimes drastically, sometimes very slightly. Realise that a mathematical equation with many different variables of which most are intervals, and not set numbers, is always going to lead to different answers. Learn how these variables interact with eachother. See the patterns. Ask yourself why you do what you do and change it if you're not 100% on it. Be a perfectionist, not a person who whines and complains, but does not have the right to do so, because he did not do everything he could, and that that is the only reason he feels as if there is no justice in the outcome of a hand, or a number of hands, and that it is therefore his own fault. Become better and faster in doing these calculations. Realise that most of them are nothing more but estimations. Become better at estimating. Realise that your hourly rate is what is important at the end of the day/week/month/year/decade, and do whatever you can do make it a better hourly rate. Better meaning higher, and not less variance. Embrace variance. Take the initiative. Realise that almost all good players worked very hard to get to where they are. Don't ask someone to do something for you if you can do it yourself. Search for valuable input, because it is out there. Don't expect it to come to you. If it does, see it as variance, and realise that if you really want to achieve something, at one point or another, you have to do it yourself. Only play with the right mindset. Don't lie to yourself about downswings, upswings, winrates, level of play. Don't compare yourself to a fish, compare yourself to someone that is better than you. Don't always be happy with what you have, and if you are, don't let that stop you from digging deeper, going further. Happy does not and should never mean the same as currently inactive. These little mental changes, such as taking a positive result as an encouragement and trying harder and try to become better, in stead of standing still because you are happy, and thus wasting your time in stead of doing all you can do, at the end of the day, when added up, create the difference between a winner, a loser, and bigger winner. The big things are mostly common knowledge, and should be known, but are also almost always just a form of variance, something you can not control. It's the small things, changes in attitude, in actual play, that define your winrate. Realise that you can drop 5 buyins and still run hot. Realise that you can win 5 and run bad. Realise that you can drop 5 and play great. Realise that you can win 5 and play terrible poker. Know the difference between negative and positive variance, whether it be the fact that you were behind on his total range but decided to put him on one precise hand and happened to be right, or the fact that your opponent hits a 4 outer on the river, but also had no way of folding and was coolered in the first place, because he could beat 90% of the hands in your range. Know the difference between playing good and bad, and not only the parts that are very clear cut, but also the tiny, subtle things, which at the end of the day are so much more important. Which, at the end of the day, decide whether you win or lose. Realise that a winrate is always very small compared to a buy-in, in any game, and that one shouldn't hope to win big at any time, because that will inevitably happen anyway, just like it will also happen that you will lose big, without it being in your control, even slightly. The fact that a winrate is very tiny compared to a buy-in for whichever game, is the ultimate proof that only the small details matter, because the big details are very easy to arrange, as they are common knowledge. When you can, table select. Don't let your ego get in the way of things. If it's for fun and games, that's fine, but if it actually alters any of the things above, you've got a major problem. Force yourself to have a good work ethic. Force yourself to be good for the game, and generate action. Be polite, and friendly to your opponents. If you do not have the discipline to do this, because of some short term thing that happened, you probably do not have the discipline to be a good poker player, and you probably didn't remember anything of what you should focus on. Work hard. Train your work ethic, your endurance, your motivation, your precision, your mental thoughness, your ability to focus. Don't play for money, or a winrate. Play for a higher goal. Set one for yourself. Every time you sit down at a poker table, know why you are there and what your objective is. Realise that the fact that you do not understand a certain play, does not always mean it was stupid, but can just as often mean you got outplayed and in a way that is so blatant that you do not even know it happened. Analyze. Interpret. Try your hardest.If you do, you will not whine complain. You will have a set goal, and have found your own ways to get there. Reward yourself when you do, but be reasonable. Always be reasonable. Think before you act. Don't tell yourself that you thought before you acted when you did not. Get to know yourself as precisely as you can. Get to know the game as much as you can. Know why you did what you did and what other options you had. Never let the variables which affect your decision out of your sight. Never let a variable that should not affect your decision in to your sight. Be objective, be precise, be analytical, be openminded, be smart, be hard on yourself, be honest about and to yourself. Don't be a fucking fish.Ask yourself questions, in which the answer is already revealed. I'll give an example. Suppose you c bet almost every flop; but if you happen to flop a monster, you check it and slowplay. What are you repesenting with your c bet? It can't be a monster, since you check these. A simple example like that should already bring up thoughts about how one actions affects another, and how one range affects another, and how one action affects another one. If you choose a line, make sure it makes sense. Don't push the river with air when the flush card came and be amazed when you're called with two pair, stating that 'come on, he had to be affraid of the flush', while if you did in fact have the flush, you would have bet 3/4th of the pot. Make sure that if you play a hand a certain way, you should play another like that, too, if you want to represent the first hand. Look for connections and what is related to what. Know what your opponent is thinking. Think ahead. Don't call a c-bet on a J-high board with 99, because you think the preflop raiser might have missed overcards, if you full well know he will bet the turn regardless, because he knows why you called the flop bet, but just hope he does not. Be creative.

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