Accepting a European Poker Award

In case you missed it, here is a picture of me picking up 'Player of the Year' at the European Poker Awards:

I would love to end the blog there.

I was actually picking it up for Sam Trickett, who was at the Aussie Millions the time. Why was I chosen to pick it up? I'd love to say it was because we are old mates, but I have only ever met him once. We made the same final table in a £300 comp in Sheffield about 4 years ago, I came 9th, he won it (Obv). He was actually a very nice guy and we got on very well at the time, but given that he plays six figure pots with Ivey and durrrr these days, I doubt he remembers it as well as I do.

So I was pretty embarrassed by the time I got on stage, when I had to acknowledge my relationship with him being 'same country, met once, seemed nice'. Thankfully I was pretty drunk which made the whole process a lot easier. I felt a bit of an imposter collecting an award on behalf of someone else, but a complete fraud for accepting one for a guy I didn't know.

Hence why I hid at the back for this winners group shot:

The awards themselves were great. I was a judge again and this year was joined by my old muckers Jon Raab & Kara Scott on the panel. The final results were as follows:

Player of the Year Sam Trickett

Best Tournament Performance Pius Heinz

Rookie of the Year  Andrey Pateychuk

Europe's Leading Lady Natalya Nikitina

Poker Staff Person of the Year Warren Lush (bwin.Party's PR Director)

Internet Player of the Year Ilari Sahamies

Rob Gardner Memorial Award for the Poker Personality of the Year Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier

Best European Event of the Year WSOPE Cannes

Lifetime Achievement Award Jesse May

My own voting did not differ massively from the above. I was particularly pleased for Warren Lush & Jesse May, whom I have worked alongside in several different capacities in recent years and they have been a joy to work with.

Hopefully I get invited back next year, and more aptly, hopefully I didn't go OTT with the free bar. I don't remember a great deal past accepting the award, but I do remember spilling several drinks and narrowly missing a few people with red wine, and I certainly remember perhaps the worst hangover I have had in at least 10 years the following day. 

European Poker Awards 2012

I am now in Paris for my third installment of the European Poker Awards. The previous two events were fantastic do's, one of the few poker events where I don't mind taking the missus because she won't be bored. I'm a judge again, and we will be doing the votes tomorrow afternoon. I can't really say anything about the nominees for obvious reasons, but if you follow my twitter account on Wednesday night, I plan on tweeting the results as they happen:

Best Tournament performance
Jake Cody
Pius Heinz
Fabrice Soulier
Benny Spindler
Sam Trickett

Rookie of the year
Adrien Allain
Pius Heinz
Sam Holden
Oleksii Kovalchuk
Andrey Pateychuk

Europe’s Leading Lady
Liv Boeree
Victoria Coren
Nesrine Kourdourli
Barbara Martinez
Natalia Nikitina
Cecilia Pescaglini

Poker Staff Person of the year
Nicolas Fraïoli
Warren Lush
Edgar Stuchly
Kirsty Thompson
Simon Trumper

Rob Gardner Memorial Award for the poker personality of the year
Barny Boatman
Neil Channing
Bertrand “Elky”Grospellier
Tony Guoga
Jesse May

Internet Player of the year
Jude Ainsworth
Viktor Blom
Rui Cao
Chris Moorman
Ilari Sahamies

Best European Event of the year
EPT Londres
International Poker Open Dublin
Finale du Partouche Poker Tour
WPT Grand Prix de Paris
WSOPE Cannes

Jesse May Interview

Jesse May "The Voice of Poker"

I haven't mentioned it much on this blog, but one of the bizarre things that has just kinda happened since we published the book is that Jared and I have both unwittingly become podcast hosts.

In my case, it is for PokerStrategy.com. Thankfully for me, Matt Kaufman does all the hard work, I shudder to think what it would sound like with me as an anchor.

Anyway, today's show I interviewed one of my heroes, Jesse May, on the state of TV poker, and as always, Jesse cut a great interview:


PokerStrategy.com Podcast with Matt Kaufman & Barry Carter #5 by PokerStrategycom

The Mental Game of Poker is a College Textbook

This was a pleasant surprise to say the least.

Dr Patricia Cardner from Park University in the States has used The Mental Game of Poker as a textbook in a class she is teaching on Poker Psychology. This is the course description:

PS 390 Selected Topics in Psychology: Intensive study of an area of psychology selected by the instructor on the basis of student need or current interest. Variable credit: 1-3 hours. Prerequisite: PS 101 or permission of the instructor.

Week 1 Introduction to the Psychological Issues Associated with Gambling & Poker Strategy
Week 2 Poker Strategy
Week 3 Motivation and Goal Setting
Week 4 Managing Tilt: Anger and Anxiety
Week 5 Concentration: Focus under Pressure
Week 6 Gambling Addiction and Treatment, Other Potential Personality Issues
Week 7 Detecting Deception Week
Week 8 Putting It All Together

Instructor Learning Outcomes

1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the major psychological constructs that are important to gambling realms (particularly poker)
2. Students will develop an appreciation for the psychological nuances of various gambling games with a primary focus on poker
3. Identify and label psychological themes as they appear in gambling mass media
4. Explain the impact that gambling can have on a person and their family when an addiction to gambling develops or escalates
5. Understand the course of treatment that applies to gambling addictions as well as assessment procedures
6. Demonstrate high quality written and/oral communication skills through interaction with other students and the instructor utilizing correct psychological terms and concepts

Quadjacks Mental Game Show

Last night I was the guest on Jared Tendler's Mental Game Show on Quadjacks Radio. He has been hosting a regular show there for a month now, where he discusses mental game issues with a top name (recent guests have included Lex Veldhuis and Dusty Schmidt).

Clearly someone cancelled because I was on the show yesterday. We talked about the mental game in the context of some of the elite players I have interviewed, and also some broader journalism stuff.


Listen To It Here.


 

Kindle Highlights of The Mental Game of Poker

I was not even aware of the 'Kindle Highlights' feature that showed you the most highlighted sections of a book, but someone pointed it out to me last week. Here are what most of our readers choose to highlight from The Mental Game of Poker: 

While personal issues certainly affect performance, mental game problems can happen for far more simple reasons; for example, hating to make mistakes, having high expectations, and having a poor work ethic.

Highlighted by 11 Kindle users

‘When you look at a weather forecast and it says it’s going to rain, do you get mad when you go out and it’s raining? So why do you continually get angry when you know variance is going to happen?’

Highlighted by 12 Kindle users

You must stay focused on learning the correction to your weaknesses until it is trained to the level of Unconscious Competence—especially after your A-game improves.

Highlighted by 24 Kindle users

Preparation provides a way to make it more likely that you’ll perform in the front end of your ability, and less likely that your worst will show up.

Highlighted by 17 Kindle users

Here are some general things you can do to prepare to play: Review your long-term goals and set goals for the session. Review a list with the corrections to your common poker mistakes. Review your strategy for improving mental game issues. Use deep breathing, meditation, and/or visualization to steady and focus your mind. Listen to a favorite song.

Highlighted by 15 Kindle users

Look closely at tough decisions to see how you played them. Estimate how much variance influenced results. Calculate whether you accomplished the qualitative goals you set before the session. If you fell short, why? Review how you did in the areas you’re trying to improve (poker strategy and mental game). Did you see any progress? If you’re going to analyze hands later, write some game flow notes or thoughts about them that you may otherwise forget.

Highlighted by 25 Kindle users

Resolution keeps all the positive features that emotions add to your game and removes the negatives.

Highlighted by 18 Kindle users

When the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions.

Highlighted by 24 Kindle users

The only way you can stay in control at that time is by doing work off the table to reduce accumulated emotion.

Highlighted by 14 Kindle users

Recognition Deep Breath Injecting Logic Strategic Reminder Repeat as Necessary Quit

Highlighted by 19 Kindle users

Quick Review of 2011

It was always going to be a better year than 2010 - simply because my dear Father passed away that year.

2011 was a great year all in all. It was still tremendously tough getting used to life without Dad, but some great stuff happened. Most notably releasing The Mental Game of Poker.

Talk about running bad, we released it on April 15 - what became better known as Black Friday, the darkest day in the history of online poker and without doubt the worst day in history to release a poker book.

As a result, we set our original lofty sales goal much lower for the year. I am pleased to say, all things considered, sales have been good. We beat our 18 month target in 7 months, and had our biggest selling month this month (Christmas, plus an unexpected surge on Xmas day from everyone who got a kindle as their big pressie).

More importantly, the reviews have been amazing. To hear that it has been a life changer for some is certainly more rewarding than anything else I have felt in my career and I would like to sincerely thank everyone who bought it, and in particular those guys who chose to discuss it on poker forums, twitter, and the like.

There was a ton of material Jared & I did not use, because the book was getting too big, so we will be working on turning that into something significant in 2012.

2011 also saw me move from PokerNews.com to PokerStrategy.com. I loved it at PokerNews, so it wasn't an easy move, but PokerStrategy are a big exciting company and it has been a great experience so far, and I look forward to helping them become the number 1 news source in poker in 2012 (I already think we are, but I would).

On paper 2012 is going to be awesome. The missus and I are off to Paris next month, we are getting married in New York in May, and going to the Olympics in June. Jared & I are working on 'Mental Game of Poker Project 2' and if that doesn't become a book (It might be a website for example) I want to have my second book finished in 2012 (Working on a couple of ideas at the moment but nothing concrete).

I don't set resolutions as such, but I do have a 'weight loss bet' starting tomorrow. I know 100% that these things are destined to fail, but in my case it is purely a short term thing, as I want to look good in my wedding photos. I am very content with the idea of putting the weight back on immediately after I get married (And America is a great place to do that) - more details on that tomorrow.

Will I blog more in 2012? Not sure, I am always hot and cold with blogging, and ironically blog less when the interesting stuff is happening, but I will try.

Happy new year all.