Second Quarter Graph and Where I'm At

April 1 - Today (June 25th)
Going to take it easy for a few days and go down to Belize!
Better than the first quarter, but still a bit disappointing

Where I'm At: 

I think that I have learned a ton of new stuff over the course of the first six months of the year. And yet again the biggest thing that I have learned is how little I know and how much more there is to learn. 

I just read a few books and they talk about the Adult Learning Model (ALM). It states that there are four stages of learning, unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.

Adult Learning Model

Unconscious Incompetence- You don't know what you don't know

Conscious Incompetence- You realize what you don't know

Conscious Competence- Things in the process of being learned

Unconscious Competence- Things learned to the level of mastery or when things become instinct

I have also been reading a lot about the mental aspects of poker (as opposed to tactical/strategical aspects). Basically how to get the most/best tactical and strategical shit out of your brain while playing. The three coolest/most important things that I have learned are that there are three types of knowledge accessed by our minds, the role emotion has in the mental game of poker, and stable confidence (with which I struggle with). 

3 Types of Knowledge Accessed by Your Mind

Intuition- Intangible Competence reacting in the moment

Thinking- Conscious knowledge that requires effort to extract

Instinct- Knowledge trained to the level of unconscious competence

Role of Emotion in the mental game of poker

- when your emotion is above a certain threshold your "Thinking" 

brain shuts off and you are left with intuition and instict

(and pretty much all my good poker knowledge is still in the Thinking

portion of my head, almost nothing has been "mastered"....yet)

- emotion can accumulate

- emotion is not a flaw in your mental game it is rather just highlighting 

an underlying problem in your approach to the game

Stable Confidence

- Relying on short term results for confidence is a BAD IDEA

(especially in poker where there is so much randomness)

-The other way to build stable confidence is by 

1- Understanding your own skills

2- Understanding your opponents skills

3- Understanding Variance/Randomness/Luck

My goal over the next month is to work more on these things and worry less about results and improving strategically....Anyway....I am looking forward to my last few weeks in the taco mecca that is Playa Del Carmen (but am also beginning to look forward to visiting back home (can you visit your home?))

Hope all is well,

Ted