An interesting night.

So this weekend I finally had my first session with Nick Rainey. Nick has one of the more interesting poker minds that I have ever run into. He went into detail about thinking on not just the first, but the second and third levels. There was a lot discussed, but one thing that I put into practice tonight really brought everything home for me.

Nick mentioned that in order to give full concentration to the game, that we have to control our minds and ourselves like robots. Tonight I attempted to show zero emotion regardless of what was happening. When I had aces cracked on two consecutive tables, I shed not a tear nor threw anything in anger. And you know what? On another table, my aces held to triple up. When I busted out deep in a tournament on a bad beat, instead of moaning about how the world isn't fair and how that guy could possibly call with such a terrible hand, I booted up another game and got back to the grind. ten minutes later, I booked a win. And when I did, I didn't pump my fist, clap my hands, or stand on my chair and cheer. No, I closed down the game and booted up another.

This is how it goes as a professional, and though I've been working hard, tonight may have been the first time I treated the game as 100% a job. I played, I busted, I reloaded, I won, I reloaded, I busted some more and I reloaded some more. All in all, in 5 hours I played 35 games and made a nice profit with 7 cashes. The results mean little, but its the feelings and the focus I had tonight that meant eveything. With all distractions gone, I feel like I played my best game for the first time.

And that led me to something. As I busted out of my fifth conescutive game, and doubled up again on two other tables to take big leads, I realized that I have everything it takes to do this. And not just to be able to make this a full time job and use it to support myself and my family. No, I realized tonight that I can be great at this. That this could be a calling in life that I knew was buried somewhere but haven't found. I think every person who in some way competes at something to make a living, be they pro athletes or top ranked chefs, or anything along those lines, eventually come to a point where they realize that they will be great at this. Tonight was my night. Tonight, I came to the conclusion that I will be great at this, and I'm going to put in whatever time it takes to accomplish that. From here on, my play will be machine like, and I will make the right plays every time. Because I can, because I'm capable, because I will be great.