Sun 5th Feb 2023

Tonight I played the £60 buy-in tournament at Grosvenor casino in Didsbury, Manchester. Turned AKo into a bluff after 3 betting from the big blind from a UTG +1 raise. The flop came 10c2d7s, I checked and the guy bet around half pot. I decided to jam over the top and managed to get the guy to fold A10 or so he said. I have all the over-pairs in this scenario, so my jam all in looks pretty strong. I had another similar situation not too long afterwards and built up a really healthy stack. That’s where it all started to go wrong. Two unnecessary bluffs later and I’m down to starting stack. Managed to get a really lucky double up with 108s against JJ all in pre and then managed to throw it all away again.

In a live poker game, you see around 25-30 hands per hour. I was in the game for 3 and a half hours, so you could say I had seen around 105 hands max. During this time I played far too many hands and much too aggressively. K10o and 85s were the two hands which cost me the majority of my chips and any momentum I had managed to build up.

If we say that the best poker players in the world, online and live play an A-Z style of poker. They’ve seen, and experienced it all and have been in nearly every difficult spot you can imagine. They know exactly what they are doing. Then in the type of game, I played tonight and the majority of the games I play you could say the players play an ABC style of poker. The best way to win these games, I believe is to play an ABCD style of poker. Where I’m getting myself into trouble is by trying to implement a playing style which is far from not only my own level of knowledge and experience but far away from everybody else’s level of knowledge and experience. I know how to play ABC poker, it’s how I’ve managed to be as successful as I have been so far but instead of going from ABC to D, I’m trying to skip ahead and failing.

I’m over-complicating a situation that doesn’t require any over-complication. I believe this isn’t just pigeonholed to poker either, thinking about it I do this regularly in all other areas of my life. Whether it is in football and overthinking about how to kick a ball, or in my desire to start investing and opening my own online business. I have a good idea coupled with a solid intention and before you know it I get distracted and nothing comes to fruition. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember and I’d be lying if I said it isn’t one of the biggest regrets of my life so far, my inability to execute and follow through with my intentions. I share this with the hope that by writing these thoughts out and putting them out of my head and into the real world I can finally start to learn from these mistakes.

I decided to call this blog and my brand “Fighting Tilt” because when something goes wrong on the poker table and you get into your head and begin to make decisions based on emotion instead of logic it’s referred to as being “on tilt”. What I’ve come to realise is that it doesn’t just happen on the poker table, it happens in real life every day. Somebody cuts you off in traffic and you honk your horn and get angry. You didn’t get the job in an interview you prepared really well for and you get frustrated. You go out drinking and partying then make zero steps towards your goals and aspirations and it makes you feel depressed. These are all real-life situations which can make you feel as if you were “on tilt”.

Something I’ve witnessed watching poker dealers up close and personal is that 99% of the time they are dealing, they are shit hot. They do everything correctly and at pace then all it takes is one little mistake and they lose track. Then the first little mistake is followed by another and then it compounds to doing something that may make it look like it’s their first night on the job when really they have got hundreds of hours of experience in the bank. I believe this mirrors my own life in a way, I do really well for some time. I do everything right at football, I do everything right at poker and then one mistake ends up costing me all my momentum and I spiral into a hole of self-pity and depression. Don’t get me wrong, I always seem to bounce back but it almost feels like I’m back at the beginning. Like I’ve landed on a snake in that popular board game we all use to play as kids.

I’m not a kid no more though I’m 33 and I’m fed up with landing on snakes and undoing all the progress I’ve made. My intention going forward is to keep up with this blog each day in the hope that emptying my head onto a page can help me to keep holding myself accountable for my actions and to keep me on track, keep me climbing up ladders instead of slipping on snakes. I hope anybody who dares to dream a dream and set a goal does the same.

Love,

Maggy