My TEN COMMANDMENTS

I posted this on pokerstrategy.com forum, but thought I would post it here. After I was finished with writing it, it sounded REALLY good, and I wanted to post it in my blog as well...

Came upon an epitome tonight.

For the last few sessions, I've been struggling a bit, and really couldn't figure out why. After losing a couple of buyins tonight, I figured I would stop playing and just look at the hands I was playing, so I shut everything down except Elephant and reviewed my play for the last few sessions.

Truth be told, I haven't been referring to the SHC for the past couple of weeks, figuring I had it memorized by now, so its been sitting in my desk drawer. While reviewing some hands, I took it out again, and to my surprise, saw that a number of the hands I played aren't ON the SHC at all, and I just sat back and tried to ask myself what happened.

Without the SHC, I was allowing leaks back into my game. I figured I had it all but under control, but truth is, I was starting to play speculative hands oop, hands not on the chart at all, and over valuing hands I shouldn't have, all because I lost focus on the basic strategy. I noticed that hands I once saw as worthy of seeing a flop BEFORE I started to use the BSS were creeping back into my playing range again. I noticed that raising OOP with speculative hands was actually detrimental to my game again. All the things I THOUGHT I had a handle on are once again coming back to haunt me.

So...in light of my newly re acquired insight, I'm making a few of my own COMMANDMENTS. Feel free to add your own

I Thou shalt not play w/o referring to SHC regularly
II Thou shalt not allow old patterns re emerge and become self destructive
III Thou shall learn the game by applying ODDS and IMPLIED ODDS moreso
IV Thou shall study a new article every day and fully immerse thine self to it
V Thou shall spend MORE time study thine own performances BEFORE playing a session
VI Thou shall post hands on appropriate forums for discussion and evaluation by experts
VII Thou shall come to know how to compress self made videos to be sent to others for review
VIII Thou shall ACCEPT all criticisms of thine actions without question, for thou art still a pupil in this school and need to open thine mind
IX Thou will participate more in forum hand discussions and never stop learning
X Thou will become a true player of the game, realizing that thou will never 'know it all', and accept the fact that it is the true nature of the game to continuously evolve

So help me GOD, I'm going to learn this game better!!