Hi, i have been playing husng for about half an year now, 10 ROI so far the the 6.25, and just starting out the 11.5s. over the last 6 months, i have had TON of time, yet i have only played less than 400 games. i would have the goal in my mind of playing certain amount of games, yet after winning the first 2-3 games consecutively, i start feeling complacent, and is unable to motivate myself into playing fearing changing my perfect good winning session into a losing session.
overall, even when i haven't started, i would still feel fear of playing and would procrastinate or not play at all, feeling nervious and anxious even though i am a winning player.
how do you guys deal with this?
I have the same issue, but I just force myself to do it. It is a pain to get started but once I get going I get a decent amount of games in. Just open up some tables and the rest will take care of itself.
At least you care about it.
I, on the other hand, don't really mind what stakes or games I'm playing, which sounds great except for the fact that I have trouble getting myself to play and stay focused consistently.
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The only thing I can really suggest here is to try to find different viewpoints on the subject and try different excercises to get yourself to play and play well. Just experiment with different techniques until you find something that works. Once you've done that, focus on your newest "biggest leak" and so on. That's the best I can do on this one, as it's really hard for me to relate to you here.
I had the same problem until earlier this year. Now I've got 385 heads-up tournaments so far in April.
One of the things that worked for me to get used to the longer sessions/days was to force myself to play x tournaments a day, or to play x consecutive hours. I was afraid this would affect my focus so after a while of play I moved down in stakes. Now I'm able to play at my best for longer periods of time and don't have to move down in stakes anymore. Also, you get used to the fact that unless it's the end of the day, you're registering for a new tournament no matter how much you're up or down so far. And, as xSCWx implied earlier, once the cards are being dealt in the new tournament the rest will take care of itself.
Also analyzing your game with something like HoldemLuck to get a somewhat better idea on how good you are vs how lucky you have been might help your anxiousness. I played with a horseshoe in my *** for a couple of days and seeing how much this affected the bottom-line, and then realizing that even without this extra bit of luck I would still be up, helped me a lot. When dropping 5-15 buy ins and then being able to see a 10-20 buy in drop caused by bad luck helps even more, not on your bankroll, but your self esteem and comfort.
I'm not crazy about luck analysis because:
a) it takes up time that could be spent playing, so it is costing you money.
b) people tend to focus on how bad they are running, which eventually leads to them playing poorly because they think they will get sucked out on.
I think that if you put that same amount of time into playing more games you will make more money and it will be less stressful.
Well, yeah, for a long term solid winning player it might not be necessary, but for someone just starting out or moving up in limits analyzing luck will give more accurate results on whether or not they are a winning player, and by how much. A lot of players moving up in limits and then falling victims for the Peter Principle because they misread they're initial good results as skill when it was luck, could have saved their bankroll by doing a very simple analysis. And the anxiousness OP mentions might be a caution and fear of falling into this very trap (and it might be something completely different, but for arguments sake it's so much better to pretend it is.)
The "stressful" remark must be very different from person to person as I've seen a lot of players, especially cash game players, praising such analysis's as being their biggest tilt-stoppers as their bankroll no longer becomes the measurement of success, but rather their "expected bankroll" if you will. Of course showing they're horrible graphs to the world for pity, that's another story.
Btw, thank you so much for this comment in your latest video about a break even mid stakes player, made my day:
I don't really think that they have any concept of position or pot odds or anything, I'm pretty sure they're like randomly pushing buttons.
Hey Pondus, let's stay out of each other's games from now on :)
I actually just moved up to the 33s today so have never bumped into you until now.