Nice post.
I'll comment about "Essential 8".
(Asym, I will comment on your responses with underlining my responses)
Plan
Yes, we need a plan to play any game of the universe, but it must be adapted to the actual situations. Even if I'm the second best poker player in the world, I do not want to play Phil Ivey being the only customer there. Or the other 10 or 20 best poker players.
Therefore a preordered plan may not find the proper circumstances and very often efforts made to get the best of it simply don't work.
(I can't stress enough how important this single item really is guys! Super important. Yes, it is extremely difficult to always stick with it and even more so when others are winning and losing. When other win, especially reinforcing things you believe in or let's just say 'see', 'predict', or believe in, with the events and presentment of the current shoe, it is even more so difficult. When they lose it gives you a false positive sense of strength as well as, when they win, you will subconsciously be like, hey I should have wagered and I knew so. Then you go at wagering without the clear and complete neutrality of thought, you really do need.)
Willpower-patience
Willpower is everything. Quitting home knowing what could happen and what must happen at the casino is of primary importance. We are not there to hit jackpots, just playing probabilities.
Realizing that most of the collegues at the table will quit as losers could help us. We are long term winners, right?
Most players lose as they are not patient, meaning they love to force probabilities.
(Believe if you keep playing you can overcome the current losing events happening, or keep playing under the impression it is all going your way and you become focused on larger and continued wins. Both are disastrous situations. Sadly you will have to experience them both and numerous times until you even recognize them and are able to consciously see those things occurring at the casino. You can sit there reading computer written stuff and say, "all of it does not affect me at the casino because I already know all that or I am that unintelligent to let those things happen". Well, it will happen and it will repeatedly happen for quite some time.)
Recognize your plateau/levels
Professionals try to win little but steadily per ranges of opportunities.
Profitable opportunities are not around the corner every time.
For a $100 bettor, it's a lot more likely to win $300, $300 and $300 within three different sessions than trying to get $900 in one single session. Especially when we are on the losing side.
(Extremely important. Do not believe you can keep rising and playing larger and larger and larger. No matter if winning or losing. We all have a plateau and a level we operate at, fit into and are comfortable in. Find yours and know it. If you do that you can operate a Money Management system of the correct type in your favor and if you can stick to recognizing what is happening, you will lose only a planned amount or if won, you will be able to walk away with a certain percentage of your win money as you satisfied the desire to win more with the eventual partial loss of it, when that happened. And that will happen, always, 100% of the times.)
Money management
The less the money we bring in at the table, the better should be the efforts to defend it.
(The correct Money Management system will allow you to only lose a single buy in, the buy in or money you brought and were willing to risk. It will also allow you to only lose a partial percentage of your win money, if you won. That is the most important thing. I have described in detail Money Management systems that I found will work. So many people confuse and believe a Money Management System will allow you to actually win. It will not. The same as the pre-set stop loss and the pre-set stop win. Unless you are really grinding it, like with real small amounts of money, those last 2 are IMO, the largest mind playing and mind altering things that will only cloud and confuse you with what to do and how to actually do it.
Proper Money Management will allow you to recognize and use your win money for capitalizing on continued good luck, events falling your way that you are wagering on and the system will allow you to have the will power and the knowledge as to when to leave a winner. Sadly, if you are losing, it will also give you fuel to actually leave. But it all depends on your recognition of events and having the proper Money Management System.
A proper system really does have several different sections. Buy in is a percentage of your bank roll. The refusal to buy in if lost. Win money gets divided up and put into 3 different sections, current chip stack, positive progressions and side wagering or side parlays, etc.)
Progressions
The only way to win at EV- games is setting up a method capable to get more winning hands than losing hands, period.
Progressions just accelerate a possible advantage OR a sure disadvantage.
(Correct. And this is done when you win and with positive progressions and keeping yourself in the same plateau/level and with complete recognition, will power and control of the happenings. Focus and understand being on the correct side is timely and cannot and will never be converted to a science with mathematical formulas and statistics. Once you truly understand, believe and play according to those three things, your play will improve.)
Totally forget comps and perks
It depends.
If comps are so high or certain deals are made with the casino, we have two ways of winning: winning and just breaking even.
Nobody is going to play with the aim to break even. Sometimes he/she should.
(I did not mean to not take advantage of them. What I did mean was to not play longer or larger or anything of the likes to get food, hotel rooms, or any other items the pit boss or a casino host will award to you for a certain amount of hours, a certain wager, etc., of being played at the tables. If you already earned it because you played the way and style you desired to play, fine. If you are sitting down and saying you will play 4 hours at say a $250.00 average to get full comp for room, food & beverage, you are foolish. If you go to an event that was for VIP, gifts, shows, etc., and you gamble because you went, again, you are foolish, IMO. As far as rebates on losses, they are so trivial, like 2-3% on a $50,000.00 front money deposit with 4 hours of play a day at a certain min. wager, it is really ridiculous to play at that level if you want the discount either upfront or at the end of your session, if you do not normally play at that level. That is what I am saying. FYI, 10-20% discounts normally do not even come into play any longer unless you are depositing front money amounts of $250,000.00 or larger. The average wagers will not be in your favor and you will be pressured and your thought process will become clouded. It is not in your favor, not one bit.)
Enjoy and be content with what you get or happens
The best section of the 8.
An experienced player knows that every kind of shoe could happen right there. If we are losing small after a "terrible" shoe was dealt we should be happy. If we win we should be happy no matter how much we are winning. Same about breaking even as we are entitled to lose.
Being happy help us to put aside the dangerous world of betting when angry.
I do not know a single player quitting the table as winner when playing angrily.
It's a scientifically proven fact that angriness leads to worse decisions.
(Anger, frustration, clouded judgements, being influenced, pressure to win, borrowed money and everything along those lines are not in your favor and will generally hurt your decision making process with huge negative happenings.)
Don't force to be outside your zone
If our plan dictates to bet from $20 to $60 and we've found out we're wagering $100 in the effort to recoup or to win more, we are just gambling.
It's true that a $100 winning bet will balance in just one shot five previous $20 losing wagers, yet we should wonder why we had lost such five bets, meaning we must win five bets back. And naturally we should think that a $100 losing bet will double in one shot our previous diluted losses. Now what are we going to bet next hand?
(IMO, plateaus and levels are a bit more complicated than that but yes, playing with the believe you can recoup and recoup quickly with negative progressions is the ruin of almost all players. I don't need to go on about that. As well, when winning, continued positive progression without a positive Money Management System that allows for such a thing, will also wipe you out rather quickly. You need to work with percentages and stick to them with religious and constant recognition. All of that has to be coupled with the proper frame of mind which will assist you in controlling yourself and using your knowledge at the table while playing. All of it a huge task and not easy to stick to, because your mind will see everything else happening and convince your knowledge side of everything proper, we are going outside of it all just few a little bit of negative progressions or continued parlay and presses because of the zone you are currently in, is 100% wrong.)