Dealing with an erratic/impatient/easily bored personality

[SmileyEH]

I have been playing poker for about 7 months now and have been a marginally winning player since about 2 months in. My problem is that I can't stay with one style of game for longer than a couple weeks before I completely lose focus and enter into a strange sort of tilt. I had my NL SNG phase where I played them exclusively for a decent ROI...then I got bored, started tilting, started losing and gave up on them.

I've tried limit ring with no sucess. I enjoy NL ring, but again I havent been able to play consistently for longer than a few thousand hands. I love MTT's and I think I've become a pretty decent player at them, but I doubt I could make a decent profit playing exclusively multitable tourneys.

I've been toying with the idea of setting a schedule for myself ie; planning exactly what poker I will play on a weekly basis to give myself some semblance of a routine, but I really dont know if this will be sucessful or not.

I have an extremely obsessive compulsive personality such that I will latch on to a certain activity for several months and then drop it immediately for something else - I only hope poker won't be another flash in the pan obsession.

Does anyone else experience focus issues such as mine, and if so do you have tips for me to combat my erratic nature?

thanks,

-SmileyEH

[paland]

Wow. That describes me too. I have to walk away for a couple of days every month or so or I start playing 50% of my hands.

[RPatterson]

I'm in exactly the same boat. Right now I am making the all your money gambit playing a NL cash game much higher than I can afford.

[ACW]

I think sometimes your style can evolve without you being aware of it, and it changes the kind of game you're best at.

I became a winning player at limit ring games, had a spell of single table tourneys, heads-up tourneys, no-limit ring, MTTs, short-handed, etc.

I find that it helps sometimes to change to a different game when on a bad streak. It might just be luck, but it might also be that I'm playing differently. When I return later to that format I'll come back to the basics when I start off, and probably win again.

One idea would be to keep track of your rolling win rate at each game, and your long term win-rate. When your rolling win rate drops significantly below your long term win rate, it might be worth moving to a different game for a while.
Make sure the rolling period is long enough to make some sense though.

[donkeyradish]

Something that helps me at the moment to avoid going on tilt is that I set my expectations much lower.

ie. I now expect to make a loss during some sessions and don't feel bad about it when it happens.

I keep records of my overall progress and am comforted by the gentle upward trend. The occasional spikes up and down don't matter.

I try to approach every hand exactly the same as I would as if I was currently breaking even. I don't subscribe to a 'play tighter while losing' idea, to me every hand is a brand new game.

If despite the above I'm still unhappy with how things are going I will move to another table to start afresh.

I don't move up a limit to try and recover a loss quickly (this what I used to do, and it has taken me a while to realize why it's a very dumb idea)

If I'm still feeling down due to losing, I'll go to a play money table or even play Microsoft Hearts or Reversi. ie. Do some free activity that will give me back that winning feeling.

[IlliniRyRy]

You're definitely not alone, poker seems to draw in obsessive compulsive people. I almost think its a prerequisite for people that play the game for a living. Fortunately, being obsessed with poker has a great benefit if you know what you're doing. If you're confident that you're beating the games, try playing more tables. I get really really bored playing 3 tables, so I have to play 4 or I'll play too loose.