Rebounding from failure to crush life and MTTs
Posted by Douggyfr3sh
Posted by
Douggyfr3sh
posted in
Poker Journals
Rebounding from failure to crush life and MTTs
Hello RIO,
I'm Doug. I'm 28 and live in Maine, USA. I have been keeping a private blog of all my sessions for a while now, and decided to move it to RIO since there seems to be a good community here and lots of positive high level strategy discussion going on. I will post here after every session that I play and will also keep track of some life goals. Here's a little about me:
I've been playing poker for over 8 years, most of that time as a recreational player. In 2014, I had a great year in US MTTs, winning a lot playing part time with an ROI of >50% for the year. At the time I was also working full time as a project engineer in industrial automation. I was paid salary and often worked 60-90 hour weeks along with grinding 20-30 hours most weeks. It was stressing me out and was hard on my relationship, and was not sustainable. Something had to change, and in February of 2015 I decided to quit my job and take a shot at playing poker full time. I decided to take on a backing deal and receive coaching/backing for online MTTs. This went poorly.
I played full time for about 14 months and basically just drained my bank accounts and went into debt to my backers. I got to a point where I literally had 1 month's rent left in the bank and had to defer my student loan payments for a few months just to get by. I considered going back to my old job, which was a bit of a dreadful reality to ponder. I even sold my car and bought a cheaper one to live an extra month while I figured out my options. I considered trying to get into a web development boot camp, but they all seemed to be too cost prohibitive. I independently studied web development and made about 1k freelancing in my last month as a "poker pro", but realized I would not be able to get to a high level of proficiency fast enough to make enough money to survive. In short, I failed.
I have no regrets about my decision to attempt playing full time, and had a ton of amazing experiences during this shot. I traveled to the UK and spent about 18 days in England and Scotland, which was an incredible experience. I got to see a futbol' game, watch live music and tap dancing, visit several historic sites, eat amazing food, and live on a house boat in a canal in London for 4 days. I won a week long trip to the Dominican and played the Punta Cana Poker classic, bringing my girlfriend along for some relaxing on the beach. I met some amazing people, and created some great friendships. I also think I've become a better, more well rounded person and a better poker player as a result.
As these things tend to do, my situation has worked itself out. As soon as I hit rock bottom financially, I got a call from an old friend of mine from college. We graduated and built our senior project together, but hadn't seen each other for years. He asked if there was any chance I might be looking for a job, and I said yes. I went through a couple of interviews, and at the beginning of May I started working as a field engineer for a power engineering firm. I will be doing substation testing and commissioning as well as SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition). This job is a slight pay increase from my last position, and is an hourly position, so whenever I work overtime I get compensated much more fairly for it. I have to travel all the time, but so far my work hours have been much more reasonable and I enjoy the work and the team. I'm actually writing from NY right now, where I will be for the next several weeks for a new substation commissioning. I walked from my hotel today to Stony Brook state park and hiked through it before the Sunday grind. It was beautiful and a great way to prep for the session.
I still enjoy playing MTTs, and still think I have a really big edge in the games I play as long as I can play to my potential (that's the tricky part). I think in most low-mid stakes games people still consistently make huge mistakes and I plan to keep firing away. I've completely changed my approach to both playing and studying poker over the last year and I think that eventually I'll have success. Lately my focus has changed from max volume and results-oriented goals such as profit to a focus on maximizing happiness EV and trying to have a happy balanced life. I only reg a tournament now if I am positive I will play well, be focused, and have done some preparation. I have found meditation and have developed much better study and playing habits. I try to focus entirely on things that are completely under my control and to forget about the noise. With that in mind, here are some of the goals I will track in this thread:
-Session performance: broken down into pre-session, post-session, and ingame performance. I will give myself 0-3 stars for each:
-pre session stars: *meditation/Eliot Roe MP3 prep, *exercise, and *workspace prep (clean desk, have 1 sticky note to be mindful of)
-in-game stars: *maintain focus (no distractions such as skype,web browsing, etc), *Maintain mental game (take deep breaths, etc), *No autopilot or timeout mistakes that can be prevented
-post-session stars: *post game cooldown (Mp3 or meditation), *personal hygiene (brush your teeth before bed idiot), *post review (write a blog, look at a few hands, think about a key factor that could improve for next time)
-Study Habits: Study at least 4 days/week. Learn something new and meaningful every week.
-Life Improvement: Exercise 4 times/week, read a book 4 times/week, meditate 2x a day EVERY DAY, work on learning new skills 4 times/week, and PLEASSE quit using Nicotine (it's fucking stupid and a waste of money).
Guess that's all for now.
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good luck with ur valuebeting and blufcatching goals
Update:
Last week wasn't great regarding life-goals. I didn't work out daily like I want to. I did go on some nice hikes, 11 miles and 8 miles, but I have a 4-day exercise routine I have designed that I did not follow. I also didn't meditate nearly as much as I'd like to. This weekend went very well in the online MTTs.
Saturday: My grind session was terrible, I was a mental game wreck. I felt like I was dead money in everything I played and my entire session was filled with negative self-talk. I didn't do my normal pre-game of listening to an Eliot Roe MP3. I did, however, have a very healthy pre-game of hiking 11 miles and looking at some hands. I also did a good post-session of stretching, showering, and post-session cool down meditation.
Session ratings:
Pre-Session: *
In-Game: *
Post-Session: **
Sunday: A complete 180 from Saturday's session. I felt like I played my A game for most of the session. I did make some mistakes, but overall was very focused and on point. I did let a few beats upset me, but overall my mental game was a lot better. I won a tournament, and won around 70 ABI's for the day. A good result by any measure. I did my normal pre and post session routines.
Session ratings:
Pre-session: *
In-Game:
Post-Session: **
Monday: I took a nap after a 10-hour workday and immediately after waking up at 8 PM I regged a few tournaments. I fired around 10 bullets for the night and shipped 2 tournaments, for a profit of about 40 ABI's. It felt awesome to win 2 and was a good confidence boost. I played well and felt in the zone despite not doing my normal pre-session meditation (sleeping 2.5 hours beforehand probably helped). I didn't do a post session cool down meditation because I got done after 3 AM and only had about 2.5 hours to sleep before getting up for work!!!!!
Ratings:
Pre-session: *
In-Game: **
Post-Session: **
My studying lately has consisted of 90% HRC calcs and constructing preflop opening ranges, and 10% building a new HUD. The range work has been quite helpful and I have stopped opening way too much (I now only open marginally too much) ;). The wins the past few nights have been great. I plan to spent the rest of the week studying and not playing anything until Sunday. I'll be going home for the weekend and am pumped to grind lots of volume. I may try adding a few more tables and playing 8 rather than my normal 6. I feel this is a good decision for a few reasons:
-A lot of my PF decisions are more automated now and faster
-The sickos are at WSOP so let's capitalize on the softer games while we can
-I'll be home, so I'll have 2 monitors to play on
Today I exercised pretty hard and it felt really good. Another goal I want to work towards is getting more sleep on average and waking up earlier. Lately I feel like I roll out of bed 7 minutes before I have to drive to the job site and have a gun to my head while I rush to get dressed and ready in world record time before rushing out the door. I think I would have a much more enjoyable day and be more productive on the job if I gave myself 30-40 minutes in the morning to meditate and stretch and casually get ready.
Primary goals:
-Make daily meditation a habit
-Make weekly exercise routines a habit
-Wake up earlier
doug polk? or doggg paulk?
NO
Reviewed the Hand History of my Sunday win with a friend last night, was fun and productive. Played a session afterwards and got a 4th and 11th for a decent little profit. I meditated afterwards and actually fell asleep with my headphones still on, in the middle of the meditation! I woke up to my hotel room phone ringing and it was my co-worker calling to wake me up because I overslept and we were about 10-15 mins late getting to work. This is really bad and I think I basically have to stop playing MTTs during weekdays. Kind of sucks but there's plenty of opportunity for decent volume on the weekend and I can use the weeknights to get a lot of studying done and do other things. I just felt really motivated to play and didn't have enough discipline to take the night off. I did play really well and didn't make many mistakes, but I need to prioritize better and make sure I am getting good sleep during the week. I'm studying with some friends again tonight and am pumped to drive home tomorrow and to grind Sunday!!!
Ratings:
Pre-game: xx
In-game: xxx
Post-game: xxx
New England!! in houses!
Go Pats
Hope you Crush!
Thanks buddy! That's the plan.
Great read so far, good luck! Subbed
Don't know WTF is going on but I've tried to type out a long update twice and over half of it gets deleted when I post it, so this one's gonna be short and sweet:
-Got drunk/partied with friends this weekend and rented out an air bnb. Had a blast. Parkoured and used pogo sticks at 3 am.
-Sattied 2 sunday majors, min cashed one and got 8th in other, got 2nd in 7.5k GTD. Made 100 ABI's on sunday. 3 star rating for pre,post, and in session. played great and mental game was on point.
-May attempt to start waking up at 1 AM to play the end of the nightly MTT schedules on US sites. We'll see how that goes.
Quick update:
Poker-
I have been slacking on keeping this thread updated lately. I have been meaning to post more often and hope to do so going forward. I have some pretty big news!!!! I had a nice week last week profiting in a few weeknight sessions, and then on Sunday I Shipped the WPN WSOP Main Event Sattelite! I had a really great Sunday morning. I woke up at 8:45 AM, went for an awesome hike in beautiful Grimes Glen in Naples, NY. I jumped into the ice cold water underneath a waterfall and was refreshed mentally and physically:
After that I had an amazing brunch burger at a nearby farm-to-table restaurant called Roots Cafe. One of the best burgers I've ever had. I felt very relaxed going into the grind and my mental game benefited immensely from the enjoyable morning I had. I couldn't play the main even if I wanted to because of work commitments, but this score is going to allow me to pay off my makeup and get out of the stable I am currently in, and play on my own again. I'm going to be left with a decent bankroll to grind small-mid stakes MTT's as well as getting rid of makeup and paying off my credit card, which is awesome. I'm pretty stoked about this. I did spew a bit off last night in a session where I played some midstakes cash and small stakes PLO cash, games I haven't played in over a year. It was a blast though!! Going forward I will be continuing to focus on MTT's and may start playing some HUSNG during weeknights. I have a really hard time not putting in any sessions during the week, I crave playing too much to play weekends only. However, MTTs are really tough to grind when you have to wake up early for work. Finding a good balance which allows me to improve my game and play a decent amount is going to be tricky.
Life-
My life goals have been sliding pretty badly. I haven't been working out at all the past few weeks (except for hikes) and my meditation practice has been inconsistent. I also haven't been reading any books because I've been grinding too much and between that and work don't have any free time. I really need to balance better and get back on track with meditation, and try really hard to make exercise a habit. If anyone has any suggestions to make this a reality please let me know!!
For the next few weeks I won't be playing much with the holiday coming up, but will definitely be getting some sessions in here and there.
Yooo RIO!!
So I've had a really great week. I got the moneys from my wsop main event satty win and have paid my backers, paid off my credit card, and have like a 6.3k or so online bankroll. I've been starting to dabble in PLO cash, and that has been super profitable and super fun so far. Over a small sample I'm running like lord Jesus and my all-in adj. win rate is quite good. In MTTs I think I'm either about break even or slightly up since the satty bink. I don't make a habit out of paying super close attention to my $ profit per day/week/month etc. and I think it's a bad idea to do so.
I'm having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment, I don't know if I want to be a PLO cash reg or continue being an MTT reg going forward, or maybe some mix of both. With my new job I can't play mtts during the week, but I could totally study the shit out of them during the week, and grind them fri-sun and just suck it up and be tired Mondays. The nice things about PLO are that its easy to get in several shorter sessions, I am enjoying studying it more than NL and probably improving faster, and it's soft and I'm pretty sure I beat micro and small stakes already (no sample size to prove this). My next steps are going to be to revisit my goals for the remainder of 2016 and my next post will probably be on my goals for the rest of the year.
I switched to PLO cash not too long ago. I was on monkey tilt and said "fuck it" and clicked PLO2 and haven't played a hand of NL since, instantly fell in love with the game :) So my opinion may be slightly biased so I won't give my opinion on that, but what I will say is work out which you enjoy the most and stick to it. Developing in strategy and performing well whilst playing two types of poker as different as PLO cash and NL MTTs would become very difficult. Stick to what you can see yourself still enjoying grinding in a years time.
Also, runbad in PLO is like nothing NL ever sees. People talk about it (I was told about it before switching) and I didn't understand just how bad it can be. 20BI swings are somewhat standard in PLO cash, BRM needs to be much deeper than NL and has to be very disciplined. It's also much harder to prove you're a winning player in terms of volume because variance is so high. I may be wrong about this but my intuition tells me that any sample size below 100k hands is nearly irrelevant. I read on a forums a while ago that 1mil hands isn't enough to determine in PLO. While I'm not sure if that's true, it's an ode to the general opinion of it. Definitely worth taking into account before making any big decisions
Hey Seacombe,
Thanks for weighing in on this man! Appreciate it. I agree with all the stuff you said. I know that PLO swings can be crazy compared to NL, but also I think that NL MTT swings can be roughly equivalent to PLO cash swings or maybe even worse, depending on stakes. I've definitely been through my fair share of huge MTT downswings and have battled back from 100+ BI downswings more than once, so I feel like 20-30 BI downswings in PLO wouldn't be that bad.
I know it takes an absolutely massive hand sample in PLO to get anywhere near your true winrate, but I'm also a big believer that if we are self aware and very honest with ourselves we can somewhat "feel" how well we fare vs. a player pool. Reviewing hands and seeing what our equities look like when we put in money on all streets is pretty helpful too IMO.
As far as going with which game I enjoy more etc., that's a bit of a tricky thing for me because I find myself really enjoying both MTTs and PLO in general. I do think that I can realistically play more volume at PLO and it's more sustainable while carrying a full time job, but I am also a far more advanced MTT player right now and would need to put in a lot of work to become a really good PLO player (although the small stakes games seem insanely good to me, and I think I may be beating those already). PLO wins in a lot of departments; I hate that if I'm playing MTTs I'm committed to sitting in one place for 8+ hours and often times I get very frustrated with myself after 3-4 hours of play if I make mistakes, then my game declines for the rest of the session. I love the idea of being able to play 1-2 hour sessions with nice breaks in between, and PLO is suuper fun as well. I think the solution is going to be to just focus 100% on PLO for like 2-3 weeks to see how it goes and how much I enjoy it, and go from there. I actually wanted to start doing that last week, but I find myself not being able to resist the urge to fire MTTs, especially on Sundays. Maybe starting this week I will just play PLO cash for a few weeks to see a) how many hands I can get in and b) how much I enjoy it. Thx again for the comments!
Hey yoo guys,
Been pretty busy with work,life, and poker. I am way overdue for an update in here and have a few spare minutes now so here goes. Poker has been going great lately. I recently binked 3rd in Bovada/Ignition's Mad Monday main for a nice score. On Sunday I played mostly 4 tables at a time of High/Mid stakes MTTs and had 2 finishes 18-9th place in 109's, got 9th in a 33 7k, and a few other scores. Given that I was playing mostly all High stakes I still had a marginally losing day, but played great and if I would have won one or two of those deep flips I would likely be up 1k+ for the day.
Generally I am constantly on the road for my job, but right now I am fortunate enough to be working on a project closer to home. I have been waking up at 2-3 AM during the week and grinding cash for a couple of hours before going to work. I've also been meditating and going to the gym before work. I think it's the most balanced and healthy schedule I've been on maybe ever. My main game for cash is currently 100NL zone with some 1/2-2/4 NLHE regular tables. This morning I randomly felt like playing PLO so I fired up 4 tables of midstakes and had a fun and profitable session. I think my best game is still NLHE MTTs, and Im playing those every sunday for the most part and am REALLY looking forward to the current/upcoming series on Ignition. I'm not playing much MTTs during the week but when the Higher Stakes games kick off for this series I will be going into "F*CK SLEEP, GRIND!!" mode for a few weeks. My winrates in NLHE cash games have been super solid so far as well (although the sample is too small to really be meaningful).
On the life front I've made some big changes. My girlfriend and I just closed on a small building on Friday. There is a small apartment upstairs which we will be living in and a storefront downstairs which we will be renting out. Currently there is a Chiropractor operating out of it and they will be staying for the foreseeable future. I'm very pumped to get all moved in, as I will now have my own GRIND OFFICE!!! I am planning to jump in and try streaming on twitch once we get settled in, seems like it could be fun.
I might try to play at the Foxwoods World Poker Finals events in early October, aside from that I plan to continue with mostly online cash during the week/ Mid-High stakes MTT on weekends. I have been working through a lot of the NLHE learning path here on RIO and it has been extremely helpful. Lefort's videos, while a bit dated, are absolute gold.
Some photos of our new building:
Until next time!
Sick man, gj!
Thx man! Big step and excited to settle in and have a grind room.
Golden spade!
Yes sir! I'm going to miss a lot of the HS stuff because I'm traveling for a wedding but will play all of the end. Pretty pumped for it.
Traded my points for the 150K ticket tomorrow GODOGBODOG
Good luck Doug!! I'm glad it seems like both of us have vast improvements on our lives happening the last few months. Nice job battling your way through it all.
Thanks man! It feels pretty good to come from a significant negative bankroll to some success and a decent roll to play with. Saw your comment on Bayesian inference on my other post, thanks for that pointer. I did attend why Apestyles is right but was too lazy to pursue bayesian inference further. I'll have to revisit it.
Yo RIO!!
The upswong is appearing to continue. On Sunday I binked 3rd in the Ignition Sunday Major! I really wanted that win but played my heart out and was very happy with the result. My bustout was a spot where I 3b jammed BB vs SB and got it in good although with not a massive equity edge. It was the biggest payjump spot I have ever busted in and I didn't really feel upset at all when I busted, which felt quite good. I used some of the bink money to buy Pio Solver and am looking forward to diving in and learning that software. I've been insanely busy with moving into my new apartment building and haven't had much time for anything else. I'm looking forward to getting all settled and getting back to a routine of having more study time.
I'm a nerd and love to tinker with things, so one of the first things I did in the new place was to look into automating it and making it a "smart home". I installed smart light switches in the bedroom and deck, and bought a smart hub to control them all with automated routines and an app on my iPhone. I then picked up an Amazon Echo and connected that to the hub, so I now have lighting that is voice controlled when I'm home and greeting lights that automatically turn on when i arrive. It's really cool and convenient to be able to turn the bedroom lights on/off without leaving my bed.
I'm going to be busy with fun life events for the foreseeable future and I'm pumped about it. This weekend I'm going whitewater rafting on Saturday and grinding hard on Sunday. I'm planning to head over to Foxwoods for the WPF $1200 150k GTD on 10/8 (the only live bird I'm likely to play this year). In October I'm taking close to two weeks off to go to New Orleans for a wedding and then a short road trip to St. Louis afterwards. Then i'll be planning to grind out the last week of the GSPO series on Ignition.
I firmly believe that my recent successes in the online games have come almost entirely from being balanced and happy in life. I still have a ton of room for improvement in that department and haven't been exercising and meditating regularly due to a very hectic schedule with the move, but I have been finding that during my recent grind sessions I have felt very level and haven't let mistakes and bustouts bother me as much as they have in the past. I have also been having some very productive group study sessions, but TBH I don't think my technical skill in Tournament poker has really improved dramatically in the recent past. I think it's just that my ability to perform has increased due to balance/happiness being much greater.
If any Pio Solver studs happen to read this and would be interested in group study shoot me a message!
Later!
Hey Doug, cool thread, just dropping by to follow and leave a gl :)
Apartment looks nice and smart home seems really dope btw!
Thx man! Yeah it has been fun setting up all the smarthome stuff. Currently have bedroom, deck, and bathroom lights on the network and automated. Plan to finish the rest in the coming weeks.
Sitting in my hotel room at Foxwoods right now. Got here earlier today and I am playing the $1200 150k GTD tomorrow. I played a $300 satellite tonight to try and get into it on the cheap and busted that a bit after reg. period ended. After that I lost 2 buy ins in the $2/5 cash games. Feeling kinda shitty about my play in that and feel that I probably would have been better off quitting after the satellite and spending time studying and reading tonight. I really need to get better at quitting well and balancing life. It's a constant work in progress.
On the bright side, I did quit after losing 2 buyins, which was my stop-loss for the cash game. I came back to the room and have been studying for about an hour, and plan to get another hour in before going to sleep. Probably curl up and get real cozy with some HRC calcs. Plan for tomorrow is to wake up and drink my version of bulletproof coffee for breakfast, find the hotel gym for some cardio, and then play my heart out in this tournament. Despite having a shitty last couple of sessions I'm still on a pretty big life and poker upswing and should be able to find myself in a clear headed and focused state for tomorrow's event. GL us!
Hey Doug, always a pleasure to read through these. Please post some report of some kind on the rest of your Foxwoods trip!
Yo guys,
So the Foxwoods trip didn't go well results-wise. I actually lost a decent chunk of my bankroll. I busted the $1200 level 6 and lost money in $2/5 NL and $2/5 PLO cash, and had one deep run in the $250 super stack turbo with an 11th place finish for like $900. Overall, I am quite happy with my play and decisions regarding game selection, balance, etc. I meditated and worked out, I ate reasonably healthy meals, and I played well for the most part. There were some mistakes made where I should have quit sessions earlier than I did, but I felt that I did quit in a reasonable amount of time.
The $2/5 PLO game I hopped in was super sick. I felt total confidence at the table and had the feeling like nobody wanted to play pots vs. me. I was Squeezing tons of pots exploiting the overall tendency for players to 2bet/fold too much and also to flat pre and fold to 3bets WAY too much. The game felt much softer than I had expected it to be and I gained a lot of confidence from playing it, even though I walked away a loser. I lost my whole stack (180bb ish) in a 3bet pot where I 3b pre in position and flopped 393 with the 99 in my hand. Villain flopped quads with 33xx and we got it in. I snap left even though I could have reloaded because I felt like I wouldn't be able to continue playing my A-game for much longer. In addition to the beat I was also super hungry and it was only 3 hours before time to go home anyway, so I quit early which I felt was a really good decision. There was one other really sick pot in PLO that I will be posting in the strategy forums and will probably post here as a separate post when I get a sec.
Between the live trip, taking shots at mid stakes online cash games, and being too dumb to not play when I'm not in an optimal mental state, I've found myself all the sudden in the middle of a pretty big downswing. I'm struggling with picking a good healthy and sustainable schedule and deciding which games I want to play. I know MTT are my best game and most profitable, but I can't grind them every night with my job. I also am really enjoying PLO cash and think I probably beat at least up to $1/2 online for a good winrate, but I don't know how to sustainably study and grind PLO and MTTs. I have been feeling lately like I am very good at MTTs relative to the pool I play against, and I feel like my EVROI should probably be massive as long as I consistently study, exercise, meditate, etc. Healthy routines and balance continue to be my biggest challenge. IMO these things are much harder than knowing ranges on turn etc.
Fortunately, I LEAVE FOR VACATION TODAY!!! 10 days starting in New Orleans and ending in St. Louis. Will be posting some Trip Reports ITT. Rungood everyone!!
SO I thought this email response I just got from Ignition (formerly Bovada) was hilarious and wanted to share it here. I emailed them with my itinerary for my upcoming trip including dates and what states I would be in, explaining that I wanted to log in and play from these states while traveling. I know that none of them are on their list of banned states. Here was their reply:
How would you guys read into this reply? IMO it means that I'm fine to play from those locations while traveling BUT Ignition doesn't want any liability and wants to always have the doomswitch option at their disposal, basically it's ok for me to play but they are covering their bases. Would you guys just grind and not worry about it after getting this response?
It sounds like they have no response at all, to be honest. Your account being disabled is on them, and probably the responsibility of someone else in Ignition, so the customer facing department is spit balling a response. I work for a 20 person company and communication among them can be horrible. I can't imagine what it's like for a company that has as much money moving in and out of it as Ignition. Departments don't communicate fluidly.
That said, I played after I moved to Baltimore. Maryland is on the banned list, something I didn't even know until 6 months later when Ignition took over and I tried to convert over.
Yeah I'm probably gonna try to focus mainly on studying and hopefully play like 1hr a day 7 of the 10 days or something. I doubt there's any chance of a perma ban for playing in legal states after notifying them. I think you're 100% spot on about it being a no communication/no standards issue within the company.
Update:
I suck at posting here regularly. Part of the reason why is because I have my own blog website where I tend to write major updates. I wrote a reflection on my 2016 there, and will continue to blog there throughout this year. I also plan to keep this thread going. As of right now, my plan is to study during the week and grind massive MTT sessions every Sunday. My phases of dabbling in cash games has not been working out very well, and I still think I am good enough to have a big edge in MTTs.
I need to stop grinding MTTs during the week while working 50-60 hour weeks, it's massively -Life EV and I'm way out of balance and feeling burnt out. I'm also going to have a big life change coming up later this year which will make it impossible to grind during the weekdays.
Life Update:
I've had some pretty cool things happen since my last post. I took 2 weeks off from work to have a pretty big surgery that I've been putting off for years. During the time off I taught myself JavaScript and applied to Hack Reactor, an elite coding bootcamp and arguably the best software engineering school in the world. I got accepted! I hope to attend this school at some point this year, graduate, and land a job as a software engineer. (maybe at RIO Poker???) :).
I also had the tenant who was renting the downstairs storefront in our building move out, and a new one moved in who pays more and pays in cash 2 months in advance! They are running a Medical Marijuana dispensary, which smells great. The new legislation here in Maine really worked out for us.
That's all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to post more regularly here this year!
Weekly update 1/16/17
I set my goals this year to be more achievable and forgiving than I did last year. I felt that I was setting myself up for failure by having goals which were far too ambitious and extremely difficult to attain for 2016, and I think I did a good job of focusing on process-oriented and life improvement goals this year.
I studied more last week than I have in many,many weeks prior. I watched a bunch of RIO videos and did some dabbling in Pio. Sam Grafton's recent vid about check raising BB with Pio findings got me pretty excited to do some more work w/ the software. I did OK with meditation, but didn't exercise at all. I was also late to work every day, and one of my goals for this year is to be on time. I show 10-15 minutes "late" because there is 0% chance of getting anything done for the first ~30 minutes on the current project I'm working on (due to factors outside of my control), so there isn't much point in me being there "on time", but I want to be just to prove to myself that I can consistently do it.
My weekdays are currently insanely busy. I'm studying poker and software engineering every night, working 10-12 hours a day, building 1-2 websites on the side for clients, and cooking good dinners most nights which take 1-2 hours to prep and cook. I'm also trying to become more of a minimalist, so some weeknights I am spending going through all of my belongings and getting rid of most of them via donations, selling stuff, etc.
I went to Boston on Saturday to visit the girlfriend's family and watch the Patriots' game at a bar. We got pretty drunk and I didn't get a great night of sleep, so by the time I got home Sunday I was pretty tired, definitely not 100%. I still played a session but played far fewer tables and quit early. I broke even bubbling a $12k GTD final table calling a flop shove with TP vs 2nd pair, villain binked trips. It was annoying and I said f*ck out loud, but immediately settled down and went to bed. Slept really well, and I'm ready to kill this week!! I plan to study some more postflop with Pio and might post some analysis here if I get into some interesting findings.
Weekly Update 1/23/17
Last week was decent. I worked 6 days and grinded 2.5 days (Sunday, one weekday, and one very short half session on a weeknight). Yesterday during the Sunday grind I mixed in some 200NL zone tables while I was wrapping up my MTT grind and down to my last few MTT tables. I really enjoyed playing those games and made 3-4 buyins which was nice. I also got 2nd in a 33 12k GTD and was extremely frustrated with my mental performance in the HU match. It was nice to have a decent winning week since I've been down swinging lately, but my performance for Sunday was honestly shit even though results-wise I did quite well. To be fair, I did go for a good run and meditated in the morning and ate a reasonably healthy breakfast, but that was where the good habits ended. I snacked for my entire session eating a bunch of bullshit food and didn't have in-session meals/good snacks prepared. I also smoked and watched netflix and/or youtube for basically my whole session. I worked out a bit last week, but nowhere near as often as I would like to. I also didn't read books as much as I want to. It was a somewhat unbalanced week, but I also was focusing on Minimalism and got rid of a ton of books (like around 30-40) and some old files and papers I will never look at again.
I've also picked up another web design project and will be setting up a new website for the dispensary downstairs for the next few weeks. I'll be designing and building their site and online store, and also setting up online spreadsheets, email accounts, PoS system, etc. etc. I'm not having any trouble staying busy!!
Plan for this week:
-Continue to work on minimalism. List at least 3 items on eBay to get rid of.
-Go hard at the gym at least 3x.
- Read every night
-Review some HH from recent MTT hands
-spend a bit of time studying Cash games/Pio
-Get both current website projects 70-80% complete
Weekly update 1/30/2017
I had a great week in poker and life results-wise, but still feel shitty about my process. I played a bit of 200NL zone on Ignition and crushed it this week, but also lost 1.5 buy-ins playing HU, bricked a few high stakes MTTs on Sunday, and played 2 orbits of 400-600NL before realizing how stupid it was and quitting. I also played a live $2/5 deep game on Saturday and destroyed that for some pretty sick profit. In that game I did everything right. I sat out regularly to go for short walks around the casino and get drinks of water. I had no ego and pulled exactly zero big bluffs. I was able to read my opponents ranges with great precision, in one hand I gave villain an extremely narrow range with only 3-4 combos of hands in it after he check-overbet shoved flop and was right. I quit early despite being up a ton because the game was drying up and half the table was playing 100bb or less stacks, and I was losing focus causing my game to start to slip a bit.
On Friday, I gave my notice at work. I went in to the office for my annual review and immediately after my boss gave me a (very good) review, I broke the news. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I'm very happy to have it behind me. I will be done in mid April and will be starting Hack Reactor in mid May. I'm nervous about the financial aspect of being unemployed for 3-5 months plus the 18k tuition I will have to finance, but I think I'm even more nervous about being able to change my lifestyle and habits in order to code 70+ hours a week and do so optimally.
Reading the above back as I type, it sounds like a pretty fucking solid week by all measures. I can't help but feel it was a failure, however. I only worked out once and had a goal to do so three times. I did not work on Minimalism at all and got rid of zero items. Although I got a decent amount of poker study in, I did not study code at all. I also had a very unhealthy diet all week and found myself stress eating almost every night. I didn't get much reading done and feel like I took a step backwards despite all of my poker success. I felt lethargic at work and depressed at home. I felt like I couldn't get out of my own way. I am grateful for the realization that I desperately need to change my routines, but feel hopeless in implementing the changes I want to make. Logically I know that exercising and meditating daily and eating better will make me much happier, but I struggle to apply that knowledge. I feel that I have come to a point where I know this is all the most important stuff, and that even when I do have good results on the felt I still feel like shit because I'm not doing these things. It's time to get after it in a big way and to stop with all the excuses I'm making for myself. LET'S GOOOO!!
Update
What's up! Had a bit of a frustrating weekend. Played an extremely wild live $2/5 game on Saturday where the game started as a $200-1000 and about 4 hours in became a $500-5000. Many of the wealthy businessmen in the game quickly topped off to 5k and at the time I had run my buy-in up to a $2500 stack with some bad calls and luckboxing. I ended the night losing my whole stack to a drunk fun player who was probably on some ToS breaking substances, so basically I gave back most of what I won last week in this game. On Sunday I had a deep run in the Ignition Sunday Major finishing 13th for a break even day. There is one play around 20-25 handed where I passed on calling 2 jams that is haunting me, I will post it here later today since I don't have the HH on this computer.
Process
I feel much better about my process this week than I have in previous weeks. I finally got to the gym three times in a week, and kept up on meditation pretty well. Other areas were sacrificed- I didn't read or write much at all and didn't study any code. I have come to the realization that I have too many to-do's on a weekly basis and it's going to be impossible to do them all, so the best I can do is try and balance everything and do my best. Usually what happens is I end up putting in an amount of volume at the tables which requires me to sacrifice other things. I've realized that I'm OK with that. In fact, I think it's the way things have to be. Although I am planning to pursue software engineering and change my career (and am very interested and motivated to do so), I am also still very much pursuing the lifelong path of poker improvement. After all I've been through with the game at this point, I think it's safe to say that I will never give up on this.
Time Off
I allowed myself to be pretty unbalanced and put in a lot of poker-work this week partially because I knew I wouldn't play at all for a week. Tomorrow I am leaving for Boston to go to a RHCP concert, something I've been wanting to do for a long time. After that I'm heading up to Quebec with my girlfriend for a week to enjoy the winter carnival. I'm very excited to take a week off and have some relaxation and fun time. I hope to spend ~2 hours a day while on vacation studying code and poker, and the rest having fun!
Thought of the Week
I stole this idea from DirtyD, who has a great poker journal on RiO where he posts an insightful thought each week. Mine will tend to be shorter and less detailed than his, but I loved the idea so I wanted to incorporate something like it.
The Feel Decision
I've been taking in some material on subconscious decision making lately, and it has gotten me thinking about decision processes in-game. I often find myself having a "gut feeling" about a play I should make which is non-standard and may look crazy in a vacuum. It might be a big river bluff or an extremely tight exploitative preflop fold. I also find very consistently that going with that feeling tends to be much better than overriding it with logic and coming to another conclusion.
I feel that it has been drilled into my head to take my time with decisions and really think them through, and while I think this is good advice, I also think that I have misapplied it and that many people will do the same. Our subconscious or "ancient" brain has been around for much longer than the decision making prefrontal cortex and has far more computing power. It is like a supercomputer and stores all of the knowledge and experiences we have ever learned or had. In contrast, the prefrontal cortex is a newer part of the brain and has less computing power than a 5-dollar calculator. I think that a lot of people don't have a good enough relationship with their "gut feelings" and don't do well at balancing those instincts with intuition and logic. Basically, trust your gut, your brain is stupid!
Whatuuup
Hey guys. Slacked on updating this thing the last few weeks. Immediately following my last update I took a week long vacation with my girlfriend and did noting related to poker. It was great. I went to Boston and hung out for the Patriots' victory parade, then caught the RHCP concert at TD Garden. The next morning we drove up to Quebec City for a 5 day stay at the sickest Air BnB. My car broke and wouldn't start on the way so I had to pop-start it by rolling it down a hill and then we had to swap cars! We did a lot of drinking and eating in Quebec, but one of my favorite days was a bitingly cold and windy one where we ended up walking nearly 6 miles to get to "Sky Spa" - a rooftop spa on a high-rise-ish building in Quebec. By the time we got there we were freezing and tired, and the steam room, sauna, hot and cold baths on the exposed rooftop were amazing. We also got to catch some big air ski and snowboarding which was pretty cool:
In the few weeks after returning from vacation I did a lot of things to upgrade my grind room/grind setup. I cleaned and remodeled my office, and ordered a standing desk from Autonomous. I also ordered a bunch of parts and built my own PC with 32GB RAM for running Pio calcs on. The new setup is very cozy. Unfortunately, my results have been shitty for the past few weeks and until very recently I have felt like I am battling through a constant low in terms of morale and in-game focus and excitement. I feel as though I have come out of this lull though, and the cure seems to have been spending about 6-8 hours straight studying this past friday. I found a video series on Youtube that really inspired me and got me fired up to play more creatively again. I had 3 or 4 final tables this weekend with one win, but it was still a net losing weekend since I was firing some big buy-ins and only FT'd the small stuff. Here's my new setup:
At the moment I feel pretty good and determined to continue improving and crushing. I do need to get back to studying web development more since I will be starting school in May, I'm a little stressed about that but overall I feel pretty good and optimistic about the remainder of the year.
Let us crush!
Consistency over Creativity any day of the week
/\ Nick Howard posted something similar to this in his blog recently, and it really resonated with me. I firmly believe that if I had stuck with one game and played within bankroll limitations with smart game selection my bankroll would be 100k bigger today. Instead, I hop around games and every x months decide it's time to take another shot at cash. Then I lose at cash and decide PLO is probably pretty easy and people are spewy so I play that and lose. This creates a big dirty snowball effect which causes me to downswing more frequently, caps my earning potential, and causes loads of unnecessary stress.
I recently had a conversation on facebook with a poker friend who is struggling to move forward in the game and our discussion led me to thinking about the above.
That seems really fucking easy, right? Why do I find it so hard to do? That is the $100,000 question. I don't know why I'm so bad at maintaining consistency and keeping my focus on MTTs (which I know I win at), but I'm determined to get to the bottom of it and to reach my potential. I'm super grateful I found poker and decided to start playing online freerolls 10 years ago and super grateful that I have enough grit to never give up, but I know my life would be infinitely easier if I could just focus and be patient. It's time to make cultivating those skills a top priority.
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What's up / End thread
Just re-reading my last post above and thinking over my last few weeks makes me think that it is probably pretty irrational to continue to torture myself over not focusing on MTTs. I've been putting in more and more volume in cash lately, and haven't paid much close attention to results or evbb/100 or any of that nonsense. I have felt for the past month or so like the games I have been mostly playing (100-200NL Zone) are very beatable but that I just fucking suck.
Then the other day I looked at my results. Over my first 30k hands at these levels my EVbb/100 is +0.12 and my actual bb/100 was around -2.10. Being break even over a somewhat reasonable sample would probably not be very exciting for most people, but it made me pretty happy to see this. I just jumped into cash and have not put in enough work yet, and already I'm playing break even. This sample also includes a LOT of spew and mental leakage. Seeing this made me feel pretty optimistic. Cash just works better for me, and soon MTTs will be a non-option due to time constraints. I have about 45 days before I start school 66 hours/week, and by that time I want to have a large sample of beating cash for a good clip. That is now my focus. It seems fitting to start up a new journal at this point as my goals and direction are changing and I will be undergoing a ton of life changes through the remainder of this year, so I'm gonna do that.
/Thread
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