Demondoink

SCOOPing

Last week I received a message from a yoga studio that I had briefly visited last year for a few classes. They offered me a free two week pass, which I promptly took them up on. In the past I would do yoga on an almost daily basis, but for the past couple of years I have kind of fallen out of the habit and I don't think I'd done it even once this year before my invitation. So I ended up going to a class on Monday, which was good, and I chatted to a few people at the end too- who were pretty cool!

SCOOP started the day before, on the Sunday. So I wasn't even sure that I could make the class it would have clashed with any day two's were I take to make any. Unfortunately (and in the yoga's case, fortunately) I didn't make any.

The plan for this years series is to mostly focus on cash games and play tournaments on the side. I was going to focus more of my study and time this year on mtt's, but in all honesty I've not done that and instead I just want to focus on making as much money as I can from cash, and on moving back up to $5k and $10k and finally getting some volume in there. However, a nice mtt bink this month could help me to get there much sooner!

Basically I will take Mondays and Fridays off and play for the remaining five days of the week, unless I make some day two's on Sunday- then I will play Monday as well. Usually I take Monday's and Saturday's off, but Fridays are the official SCOOP days off, so it makes sense to shift my schedule slightly to align with that.

I've kind of fallen off with my gym consistency, and don't think i've been twice in a week (as usual) for a few weeks now. Last week I went to two yoga classes, played golf one day and went to the gym and done an upper body workout. I think that exercising five days per week going ahead is a good place to aim for, but I also need to be mindful to balance solo exercise (like the gym) with some more social exercise (like yoga classes) as I need to meet more people up here. It hit 20c for the first time this year, so it's getting to the stage where I want to spend more time outdoors and less time indoors. That will mean adding in hiking as well, and I plan on doing more camping- as well as staying in Bothies, and perhaps increasing my weekly golf to twice per week.

So maybe I will just cancel my gym membership for a couple months and focus more on outdoor activities, I dunno. Either way, my weekly exercise routine is going to look something similar to this-

1x yoga class
1-2x golf rounds
1-2x gym sessions
1x hike

I've been thinking about signing up for another marathon this year but I don't think I really have time to train for it, cos it basically becomes almost like a full time job on the side when you have to run 3x per week, but also have to recover from those long runs etc. If I signed up for it then I would have to forgo some of those other sports, which doesn't make a ton of sense given I just splashed out on a golf membership and just mentioned about how I need to do more social sports in order to meet people. Running by yourself isn't ideal for that haha.

I would actually say that its best to do a marathon earlier on in the year, before the Summer- like I did in April two years ago. Sure, you have to train in the cold months prior to it, but you don't want to play golf in January, you don't want to go hiking in February. Where as when it comes to Summer time, then there are so many outdoor sports that are suddenly much more appealing when its 20c+ and sunny.

It's funny as I'm almost like a hermit in the Winter months, then the complete opposite during the Summer time. I really want to do another hostel trip around Europe, but I'm not sure to which area cos I've been to the bulk of it at this point. Most likely it would need to be more of Eastern Europe, unless I wished to repeat some of the same countries again. I wanna visit Asia for the first time too, and really like the idea of Japan. I seen a TV show on it recently and the North of Japan looked really nice and very traditional. Tokyo looked a lot more futuristic and just more like a typical big city. Nowadays I prefer small cities near to nature- like Salzburg, or Inverness (where I live).

Anyways, in terms of poker it's been a good start to the month at cash games, but less good at tournaments- typical mtt's! It's kind of difficult to get in volume at cash games, at least on Stars. 500z very rarely runs and even getting enough $1k and $500nl tables is often a struggle. Ideally I would only be grinding $1k+, but there just aren't enough games on Stars to play those stakes alone. I've been playing a little $1k on GG as well, but the rake is very high there so it's more just one table on the side for some extra hands per hour and a (probably) very low WR. It's 5bb/100 rake on GG at $1k, compared to 2bb/100 on Stars, and on Stars I'm on like 40% rakeback so it's almost like 1bb/100 rake. So obviously it's a no brainer where I would like to prioritise volume at that stake!

During Sundays session I was running decent at cash but I literally don't think I had one mtt cash. So it's kind of weird in a sense when you are running good at one format but crap in another. However it's just about playing in profitable games, and in the long run, you will make money!

Today (Monday) was my day off, so I caught up on some things I've been meaning to do for a while and called some of my family members too, as I'm pretty bad when it comes to calling/texting people. I prefer to just arrange plans to meet up in person and talk to them then. I decided to go for a walk around Inverness and in to this nice area that I hadn't walked through since I moved here. I found a really cool reading spot too, on this bench that is slightly elevated and overlooks the river- so i'm definitely going to be frequenting that spot a lot in the years to come!

It's back to the grind again tomorrow, and I'll be playing some tournaments alongside the usual cash game grind. I'm just trying to grind hard for the remaining 2.5 weeks of SCOOP and then I'll likely take 1-2 months off so I can travel, play golf, go hiking and see friends and family.

But for now it's time to grind!

GG.

480bb pot at $1k

Bluffin'

GTO jam, non GTO result

The 'I think he's bluffing' call down

Going hardcore

Life-

I just finished reading Elon Musk's latest Biography by Walter Isaacson. It was a very long book (over 600 pages) but some of these pages were pictures (so probably like 550 pages of actually reading) and overall I found the book very easy to read, and very difficult to put down.

In the past I never read biographies or autobiographies, as they felt a little too self indulgent to me. However, I have now changed my perspective and I think that they are a very good way to gain an insight in to peoples lives that you would, otherwise, not gain much insight in to.

I remember starting to read self improvement/help books aged eighteen, when I realised that I had mental leaks that needed plugged. However, over time these have (for the most part) been plugged, so now I feel like the next step in my 'self improvement' journey is to learn from the best and to pick up some small things from them in the process, that I can then apply to my own life.

When it comes to Elon Musk, there are many things that I admire about him- but also things that I would not like to mimic. However, I don't think that someone needs to be perfect in order to learn from them. So surely it makes sense to try to pick up a thing or two from the wealthiest man in the world who (somehow) runs six different businesses simultaneously.

One thing that resonated with me was his mantra about 'going hardcore'. At Tesla, Space X etc he would make sure his employees would work long hours, and push them to their limits in order to speed up the production processes. Of course for some people this didn't suit them and they would quit, but for others it did suit them, and they find purpose and meaning in pursuing a higher mission than themselves- whether that be trying to create a car that could run on renewable energy, or create a rocket that would enable us to (eventually) becoming a multi-planetary species.

That's the beauty of being part of a team and having a common mission, and a big, bold end goal. As poker players we are (for the most part) partaking in a single player game, where we study by ourselves and play by ourselves. We don't really have any long term 'mission' except from trying to move up in stakes and become one of the best poker players.

We are trying to get to $50/$100, not trying to get to Mars.

Musk is clearly a workaholic (personally I much prefer more of a work/life balance) and would push these surges in his companies, where he would encourage his employees to work hardcore for a short period of time and try to meet some sort of very unreasonable and unattainable deadline.

Usually they would (just) miss the deadline, but either way, it showed that when you really want to, we can work so much harder than we think we are capable of doing. We can sleep for a few hours under a desk, and then get back on to the rocket grind after a coffee and some cereal out of a paper cup.

Overall I am someone who enjoys time off as much as they enjoy studying and grinding, but this book inspired me to, at least sometimes, go on my own surge and 'go hardcore'. If we have a car that can go 150mph, then we are very rarely going to hit this top speed and instead, usually max out at around 70mph along the motorway. However, perhaps it is sometimes good to see how far we can push ourselves, and floor it to see how fast we can go.

Even if we do enjoy a good work/life balance, maybe sometimes we should just grind all night and play 3x longer than we set out to do before the session. Perhaps we should set a bold monthly hands target, as a one off, and push ourself in order to achieve this- even if it's just to prove to ourselves that we have the capacity to 'go hardcore' every once in a while.

Poker-

So on Saturday last week, as I was deciding whether to play a session or not, I decided to play- on a day that I typically take off. I knew I was going to head back to my parents the following day, and knew that I would have a week or so off, before SCOOP begins the following Sunday.

Should I chill and watch a film, or should I take some inspiration from Elon Musk and go on a late night surge? I decided to do the latter, starting my session at 1am (usually not a good idea) and playing until 7:30am. In the end I lost a small amount, but overall I was quite happy with how I played, especially considering that I was playing at such stupid times (I typically aim to play between 8pm-12am).

In the past I used to have at least a few of these all night sessions per year (usually losing a ton as I was almost falling asleep) but in the past few years I have kind of cut this out. I was just inspired to take a leaf out of my old, grinder book, and put in some hands.

So that is the plan for this month. I will play some SCOOP events on the side of my daily cash game grind, and aim to have a good month- one that hopefully involves a big MTT bink! When I start to lose motivation I will look deep within, and ask- what would Elon do? Would he take a day off? Would he play a three hour session and then watch TV for the remainder of the night? Or would he identify this as, at least in online poker terms, one of the best and most important times of the year to grind- and then double down in terms of volume!

May- let's go hardcore!

Time moves quickly

Life-

Apparently there is something in our brains that makes the passing of time appear to be quicker as we age, compared to when we are children. I don't have a source for this, I just recall hearing this random piece of information somewhere in the past- but I felt like it was true from my own experience.

Either way, it seems like time moves very quickly. Sometimes ten minutes of a football game seems to last an eternity (especially when your team is a goal up and trying to hold on to their lead). Yet other times hours can pass by with the blink of an eye- perhaps when you are playing poker or a video game, doing some sort of sport or hanging out with friends.

What I noticed with myself is that sometimes I allow days (that I will never get back) to slip by too easily, doing very similar things to what I done the day before, and not really getting out of unconscious daily routines and patterns.

For example, sometimes when I wake up I will do meditation (as usual) and then play 'a few' games of chess. These three games of chess, that should take less than thirty minutes, may end up compounding in to ten or twenty games and eat up hours of my day. Now this may seem fine. I am being 'productive' and playing a good that is intellectually stimulating, so it probably bodes well for my poker game. However, to me it is just a complete waste of a large chunk of a valuable day. Perhaps it's fine once or twice a month when you wake up and just can't be bothered doing anything on that day, but not when it happens often and is costing you the opportunity to do new things in your life and get out of your unconscious daily routines.

Of course there are other ways that I eat away time in an unconscious manner- watching Youtube, randomly scrolling on Instagram etc.

The problem is that we don't know how long we are going to be alive for. Hopefully we will all be here for a long time to come, but you just never know. So with that in mind I want to start living each day with more intention, being more present and doing less things that are a massive time drain. Today I uninstalled chess.com, and I don't plan on getting it back any time soon!

As I was heading back from my brothers today (on the train) I had to make a change at Stirling, and switch from one train to another. I only had around ten minutes to wait before the second train arrived. However I had an idea- could I go out of the station for a couple hours and then get (a different) connecting train back home? It turns out that I could. So I ended up walking around Stirling for a few hours, getting food, then heading up to the castle for a good viewpoint. Usually when I get the train (or drive) I am just in the 'lets get home' mindset. I will drive by places that I always intend to stop in. One day I will stop in them, but not today- I have to get home!

I ended up turning an unconscious day of travelling back home, in to a more conscious day. One where I managed to visit a place I hadn't been to since I was a child- yet a city that I had driven past literally hundreds of times since then.

I know I still have a long way to go before I can start to fully shift out of these unconscious, conditioned though patterns, but today was another step in the right direction. Now I know that I can get off at random places on my train journeys, and explore (for free) places that I have either never been to, or not been to for a long time.

I want to slow down time instead of speeding it up. I want my daily life to become a blank page where I don't know what will unfold, instead of a page that is 95% filled in advance. I want to have new experiences and visit new places, instead of doing the same old shit on auto pilot and going to the same 'favourite' restaurant one hundred times.

Poker-

Last week I only had time to play three nights. The plan was to play four nights- Monday was my day off as usual to reset, then I would grind Tuesday-Friday, before heading to my brothers for the remainder of the weekend. However, after watching Rangers drop points (again) on Wednesday, I was a bit tilted and figured it was best to just avoid playing and get back on the grind the following day instead. Though at least I followed through with this and ended up playing Thursday and Friday.

The games weren't great last week in all honesty, with lots of regs and not many fish on the tables. Perhaps this is because of the time of year, where recs are getting outside and doing less indoorsy things- like playing poker on the computer! Or perhaps it's just variance and the games will be good again this week. Either way I think I played pretty well, and fortunately had a good session on Friday to round out the week.

SCOOP is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I will grind for the remainder of the week, and likely take off most of next week- before locking down and grinding for most of the 3.5 weeks of SCOOP. I'll probably just play tournaments on Sunday, and then go back to cash games for the other days of the week- perhaps adding some mtt's on the side of my cash game grind. In previous years I have abandoned cash and completely focused on mtt's for the duration of SCOOP, however I don't intend to do that this year. Hopefully I can bink some random, big mtt, but either way I just want to keep focusing on cash and on moving up. Things are going well atm, so I just have to keep studying and putting in hands in the coming month or two- then I'll take most of June/July off.

I was actually thinking of going to the WSOP to play the main event this year, but I'm not so sure. I will have a think.

Anyways, I got home today and didn't play cos it was a Monday, however I will be back on the grind tomorrow! Hopefully the games are good and I can get in a decent amount of volume.

GG.

Questionable stack off

I think it was over six months ago now haha. Tbh I was never good at planning in advance either, but now I quite enjoy it. Especially being a poker player, imo it's good to have clarity in advance on social plans etc, so that we can arrange our 'work' around those social (or travel) plans.

I procrastinate on plenty of other things, but these tend to be the less important things. In 'eat that frog' they talked about creative procrastination, where you basically procrastinate on the least important things and prioritise the most important things. So I will always make sure to clear a Pokerstars chest before it expires, but I will not open an electric toothbrush that I bought months ago (I normally use the bamboo toothbrushes). It sounds ridiculous when I type this out, but it's true- I just opened it tonight haha.

There isn't really any negative consequences to procrastinating on these sorts of things though, but if I were to procrastinate on the Pokerstars chest then I would cost myself money, or if I were to wait too long to book a hotel etc, then I am going to be paying a premium for another hotel.

I believe in that, the mystical arts, home cooked meals, nature
walks, having a pet, yoga, massages, art, love, many others, some of
these practices are as old as time and probably have even more
benefits than we have proven at this point in time.

Yes I agree, I am the same. At the moment it seems like humans are determined to move towards further integration with technology, perhaps to the point where we have chips implanted in to our brains, or spend days at a time with a VR headset on.

However, my intention is to try to do the opposite- spend more time in nature, outside, around people, reading etc and less time on screens and starting mindlessly at my phone. Just today I finally took the plunge and uninstalled the chess.com app from my phone. Sure, I really enjoy chess, but it's such a time drain and it can also tilt me when I play poorly. I already play an intellectually stimulating game for a living, there is no need to add another in to my life which will end up coming at the cost of spending more time outside.

This may sound cheesy or naive, but I actually believe in love at first sight. I think that you can tell a lot about someone's energy and personality within just a couple seconds of meeting them, or sometimes even just by looking at them. I don't want to meet someone on an app, even if you do (perhaps) maximise your chances of meeting someone with the volume of swipes you can get through. Our grandparents and parents met through the 'real world' so imo there is no reason why we can't do the same.

She was smiling ear to ear when she told me that she feels so good all
day afterwards, "pure endorphins".

This is similar to what I felt afterwards, and I think that it actually sustains for a few days afterwards, as I didn't feel much need to do meditation in the following days, yet still felt very present and in a more positive than normal mood. I think that we, naturally, seek out things that make us feel good and feel a buzz. Usually this is things like drugs and alcohol as they are both very common within society, but these things are much more profitable for people and companies than turning your shower to cold or throwing some ice cubes in a bathtub (unless you are an ice cube company I guess). And obviously the former are very unhealthy habits, where as the latter is a very healthy one. So it's good that people like Wim Hof are spreading the message, so that normal people like myself can pick up these 'weird' practices and incorporate them in to our lives. As opposed to leaning on drugs and alcohol for our highs.

So even though I am a bit of a loner, I think connecting back there
with some people who share common interests would be cool.

Yes exactly. We all crave human connection to a certain extent, so it makes sense to join a club/class etc where you think that you will be able to meet like minded people!

I wonder if starting a shower warm kind of compromises the benefits
of your plunge and turns it into a cool down.

Maybe this is true, but in places like Scandinavia (which I believe are to be some of the happiest places in Europe) they do the hot/cold exposure. Perhaps it's better to go in to the cold before the sauna, but I don't think that by doing the sauna (or warm shower) you are cheating or detracting from the cold water experience. I mean either way, if you go from a warm shower to freezing cold shower, it's a massive shock to the body and you are still inhaling air very quickly as you attempt to adapt to these new temperature conditions. It's not as if a freezing cold shower feels 'normal' cos you are heated up from a warm shower or from the sauna.

Wim Hof definitely uses a sauna and doesn't do cold water exposure only, he does both. So even though I am sure that old guy knows what he is talking about, that is (most likely) just his own preference and not a rule of thumb for everybody to follow. It seems that he is doing everything for the mental challenge instead of for the physical benefits, cos there is no reason why you should cut out warm showers (or saunas etc that also show health benefits). Two minutes of cold water exposure seems to be more than enough. Showering and bathing in cold water all the time just seems excessive to me.

Re cold plunge/shower, this is good advice, it goes a long way. It
helps release more white blood cells, which fight disease. I also
noticed it helps deepen the breath.

That's cool to know. Tbh I don't know much of the science behind it, but I just see it being constantly championed by high achieving people, sportsmen etc, so I just gave it a go and noticed the benefits for myself- especially in terms of my mood improving.

I have reapplied myself, at this point I am like halfway there in
relation to Demondoink, or the people in my yoga studio who use the
cold plunge after a practice, and I already find it effective. We live
in a culture where more is always better, and nothing is ever enough,
and that can be too intense and a rough way to approach disciplines.
Leads to burnout, resentment, injury. This specific discipline can be
a pleasure if practiced with measured care.

Just to be clear I am by no means an expert on this yet. When I stand under the (really) cold shower at the gym, I get brain freeze if I leave my head directly under it for too long. So I tend to move around and just put the water on different parts of my body until the 2 minutes are over. If I were to just sit directly in a cold plunge then I would probably struggle to do the entire duration.

You are completely right though that it's important to built up to it. Imo 30 seconds is a good time to start. Long enough to be challenging, but not long enough to be overwhelming.

That's cool that you are thinking of doing it at your yoga studio. I do agree that that idea doesn't appeal as much to be either, where people are watching you etc as you go in to the cold plunge. I tend to prefer to just do things like that by myself haha, instead of getting clapped or cheered or something if I managed to stay in for 2 minutes. However, it's probably worth trying at least once, cos who knows perhaps it could be fun and I am completely wrong. Maybe its, like you said, some kind of spiritual practice where you all kind of connect and then all of you feel great afterwards with all the endorphins etc that you get from cold water exposure.

Fwiw I just have a normal shower first, then just do the cold shower at the end once I have washed properly. Maybe at some point I will get a cold plunge or something outside, and then start my day by jumping in that- then have a warm shower afterwards. But atm I do warm shower then cold shower cos it's a bit easier imo and I'm just getting used to the 4x increase in time.

Do you think that starting hot or lukewarm is a big compromise?

What do you mean?

Lausbub Yeah mate I applied in the general sale and managed to somehow get four tickets for three matches. It's pure run good as nobody else that I know got any. One of the tickets is for Scotland's final group game against Hungary, which is amazing (as it could have been literally any game).

How about yourself? Are you going to any matches?

2 minute cold showers- the cheat code to feeling good

I just want to write a short post. I was considering writing about another, completely unrelated topic, but I want to be 100% sure before I write about that- so I will mull it over for a little while longer.

Anyways, I just wanted to give a suggestion to people if they want to feel in a better, more positive mood. I've done cold showers off and on for the past few years, but after hearing Wim Hof's suggestion of two minute cold showers (I was only doing thirty seconds to a minute) it has almost been life changing.

Today I went to the gym then sauna, before finishing with a two minute ice cold shower. Ever since then, I have been feeling in a mood of almost elation that I could only really remember in my drinking days when you hit the peak of your night and have that social buzz.

Granted, it's not a massive sample size as I've only been doing this for a couple weeks, but I would highly suggest that other people try it out too if you would like to feel in a better mood on a daily basis. I think when I get my bathroom done up, I will try to see if they can install something that makes my showers colder (like the one they have at the gym) so I can do it on a daily basis- as atm I am limited to 2x per week at the gym, and then a not so cold 'cold' shower at my home on the other days.

Anyways this post is short and sweet, but to me a two minute dose of daily discomfort is worth hours of daily bliss and feel good.

Clickity click

Thought you played really well during this video!

Are you mostly playing live or you are grinding online? Cos based on your analysis it seems like you study online ranges/hands etc a lot, but I'd imagine this wouldn't be the best use of your study time if you are mostly grinding live poker.

I think it can be easy to feel like your straights in this situation aren't getting in enough money by over betting- so then you go for the block bet/3bet all in line instead in the hopes that your opponent will perceive the sizing as weak and either expand their value raising range, or bluff raise more often.

However, I feel like for IP this isn't a particularly appealing board to bluff raise, given that OOP is very likely to miss the turn pot bets with hands like A8/A7/A6 etc that are now block betting for thin value otr.

So when you bluff raise then you are targeting these combos as pure folds (which imo most humans don't have), and the remainder of the range is now consisting of either two pairs or AK/AQ combos, both of which could easily click the call button if they perceive you to not slow play enough KQ combos and perhaps over bluff with the QJ/QT/Q9 etc region.

I've noticed in the meta recently that people love to do these block bets in to 3bet, so there's also a strong chance that Hero is following this meta for the reasons of both trying to get max value with the nuts, and also protecting his block betting range. Cos if a certain combo is effectively pure overbet otr, and someone block bets, then it's pretty unlikely they rolled a 5% river block and much more likely they either rolled a much higher frequency block bet, or decided to go for the sneaky line and pure bet the nuts for a small sizing. It seems like Patrick done the former though as he mentioned randomising.

Anyways great video and hopefully there is a part two!

Minimum effective dose

Life-

In recent years I have quite liked the concept of minimum effective dose. It is defined as 'the smallest amount of an input required to achieve a desired outcome'.

There are several ways that I have (consciously) adopted this methodology, and perhaps others where I have (less consciously) adopted it.

For example, while listening to a podcast (I think it might have been Joe Rogan, but in all honesty I can't remember for sure) they were talking to a neurologist who specialised in treating military personnel who were suffering from PTSD etc. The neurologist was using mindfulness techniques to treat them, and she highlighted that 12 minutes per day was enough to help to rewire the brain and help them to overcome their PTSD.

So after hearing about this, I decided to increase my 10 minute daily meditations (that would sometimes be 5 minutes and sometimes 20 minutes) to 12 minutes, in the hope that I could rewire parts of my brain that did not necessarily serve me well.

Now I can't say I done a ton of follow up research on this, to see if 12 minutes was indeed the magical number, but for the sake of 2 minutes of my daily life, I am willing to take that risk! She seemed like a credible woman, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt haha.

A few years ago I also started doing cold showers too. I've seen some Youtubers doing a '30 day cold shower' challenge, but to me this is kinda dumb cos it's basically impossible to wash yourself while you are in the cold water cos you are just trying to survive. So what I do is to just have a normal shower, then at the end turn the water to cold and (usually) set my watch to 30 seconds.

However, I had literally no idea what time I should be doing, or whether this was long enough or not. I just done this amount of time because it was long enough to be challenging, but not long enough for me to dread it each day. In general I would feel some positive after effects, but I think this is always going to be the case with cold water exposure.

Then the other day I click on a random Wim Hof video, and he talks about how 2 minutes is the sweet spot in order to reap the rewards of cold exposure, and anything beyond that is simply a mental challenge and nothing else.

So with that in mind, I decided to extend my cold showers and do 2 minutes per day now. The one at my home is quite easy, as the water isn't that cold just now as it's a lot more mild water just now (so the pipes are a bit warmer). But the one at the gym must be specifically for cold water, so you literally get brain freeze if you keep your head under it for too long. Surviving in that for 2 minutes the other day was quite brutal, but afterwards I felt quite amazing and it seems like (despite the small sample size) it does have a very positive impact on your mood if you stay in for that long.

Even with my workout, I started to use a timer in between sets, and it's amazing how you can cut down a 1 hour workout to just 45 mins if you take shorter rest between sets. I feel like taking shorter rest periods is better too, so that you can push yourself more during your sets, instead of waiting 5 minutes between each set and either staring at your phone or (in my case) staring out the window haha. I just do an upper/lower body split each week, cos in the past I would go 5+ days per week, but then completely lose interest and not go for ages. This way it's easy to go and I know that even if I'm busy for most of the week, it's pretty easy to get in 2 workouts.

Plus the reward of sauna etc afterwards can give you added motivation to go.

It's the exact same with poker study. As I've said before, I tend to study for around 1 hour per day (though this year it's probably averaged a little over an hour). For me, this is the MED where I can learn a lot, but also avoid burnout and mental fatigue that will negatively impact my session later on in the day.

I wouldn't say I am a naturally productive person. You see former military guys like Jocko Willink waking up at 4am every day, and here's me lying in my bed watching Youtube for an hour and getting up at 2pm- though of course it makes no sense for me to wake up as early as I don't usually grind until around 8pm. However, this is a good approach for the more naturally 'lazy' people, who want to improve (both at poker and perhaps in other areas of our lives) but aren't willing to wake up at 4am, nor grind 12 hour work days.

Poker-

So far this year my results have been quite good, it's just frustrating cos I am running way below EV and can rarely seem to win an all in. The good thing is that if I catch a bit of heat then I should be back at $5k soon enough. I mean I probably could just play it now, but I decided to set myself somewhat of a bankroll challenge, where I just start off with the money in my poker accounts and try to run it back up to higher stakes- without depositing anything else or counting other money as my poker bankroll. So hopefully I start winning some all ins otherwise it could take a little longer to get back there!

This week my friend is coming over to visit for the weekend. I thought he was coming on Friday, which would mean taking Friday off (as well as the usual Monday/Saturday) but it turns out that he won't be coming up until Saturday- which means I can grind tomorrow night too! I've not ran great this week, but I've been pretty resilient in terms of getting off to terrible starts in the sessions, but keeping going and usually clawing a decent amount of the money back. I think that people who quit after they lose x amount of buy ins (or perhaps if they feel a little tilted) are missing out because imo it's important to develop mental strength and toughness by continuing to play even when you are running like shit. If you just insta quit any time you're down 5 buy ins, then how do you ever develop this mental toughness? What then happens if you're in a juicy live game with a whale open jamming any two cards, and you are down 5 buy ins? You quit the highest EV game of all time?

So I usually just set myself either a hand target (typically between 1-2k hands per session) or a time limit (usually 3-4 hours per session). That way, I won't quit until I have achieved at least one of these session targets, even if I'm running terrible and feeling a little tilted. Then, if the games are good and I feel like continuing to play, I will keep grinding. But tonight, for example, the games were kind of dead so I just stopped after a little over 3 hours (which was only 800 odd hands) but I hit the low end of my time target, so that was good enough for me. Then we go again tomorrow!

On Sunday I played a couple MTT's on the side of my cash grind. One was the Sunday Million anniversary, and the other a 109 Euro satellite to the Estrellas live poker event in Malaga (a 1k buy in). My friend mentioned at the start of the session about going there, so I thought I would see if I could get in on the cheap- and I did! It was a 1500 Euro package, and the field was so soft, mostly consisting of fish and weak regs. I guess most regs wouldn't even bother playing this sort of satellite. I ended the day in the Milly with 70bb, but the next day I could barely win a hand, so in the end I was just happy to min cash (and recoup most of my 2 buy ins back).

The only slight problem is that the series ends on the 16th of June, which is also the day that I am supposed to be flying out to Germany and heading to the Euros (from Scotland). So I'm not exactly sure what I will do there.

Either way, it's going to be a fun Summer!

In the meantime, though, I want to have a fun Spring! That will involve being consistent in my poker routine, studying, grinding, going to the gym, playing golf and having 2 minute long cold showers!

GG.

Finding bluffs

Finding bluffers

Finding my passport

andymckenzie Hey mate, thanks for your response!

If you have seriously ruled out living in a beautiful country like
Canada because of ‘wokeness’ then you have gone down a right-wing
rabbit hole that isn’t a balanced representation of reality and won’t
serve you on the path to happiness.

I think living and visiting in a country are two completely different things. Would I go back to Canada for a holiday? Of course I would! Like you said, the country is beautiful and the people are nice.

However, when selecting a country to live in, then (as much as is possible) my values and beliefs need to align with theirs.

For example, of my five points, literally number one was free speech. Essentially I have zero reason to move from Scotland other than the free speech laws- but for me they are a massive issue because without free speech then you don't have democracy. Scotland is widely considered to be the birthplace (at least in recent times) of free speech with the Scottish enlightenment. The UK has had a proud tradition of free speech for the past 300 years. So to me it's a massive issue when we see that eroded by some ideologically driven politicians.

As much as I like Canada, it would make no sense to move there now. Free speech laws aside, my money would go nowhere near as far there, I couldn't afford to buy a property, I am far away from friends/family. Essentially Canada is just a more expensive version of Scotland.

So in order for me to move there, then it would have to exceed Scotland in the five points that I made in my post. They both fail on point one, and pass on points 2-5.

Though unless I'm mistaken, you have to pax tax on poker winnings in Canada? You don't pay any taxes in the UK.

Also I am not right wing. I would consider myself as more of a Libertarian/centrist. I want the governments to just do their job and stop trying to control what their people can and cannot say, can and cannot do. Of course I realise that they need to create and enforce certain laws to maintain order, but imo for the past 5-10 years Western governments are trending towards authoritarianism instead of freedom. Freezing banks accounts, controlling speech, demanding vaccinations etc are not indicators of democracy.

Also just to be clear, I have lots of 'left wing' views too. I'm not sure how many right wing Vegans there are, but I can imagine it's not a lot lol. The reason that I went Vegan was because I watched a ton of slaughter house videos, of animals having their fur torn off them while they are still alive, of animals being dunked in boiling water while they are still alive or just the general ones where sheep/cows/pigs are shot in the head with a bolt gun or have their throats slit while they are still fully conscious.

So mostly the reasons that I went Vegan was for compassionate reasons cos if I were a pig/chicken/cow/sheep etc, I wouldn't want to be killed for the sake of a meal, but also because I was concerned about the environment. Which is why I try to walk a lot, not drive a ton, use public transport and when I do go abroad nowadays, go on longer holidays so I don't go on tons of flights per year. I also recycle almost everything and try to keep the heating on as little as possible.

I also think things such as socialised healthcare, schooling and universities are much better compared to systems in the US, for example, where you have to pay for health insurance or get in to huge debt in order to pay for your University tuition.

So the reason that I don't like this woke ideology isn't because I lack compassion or because I am 'far right' it's because I think it's a load of rubbish and lacks any logic.

When I was at high school we didn't have any of this, and there was no suicide (at least as far as I am aware at my high school) very little depression and the 'hate' that we received gave us thicker skin and made us stronger as a result. Compare that to nowadays where there is sky rocketing depression, suicide and mental health issues. Yet we seem to think that the antidote to this is to inoculate people and make laws to stop people saying bad things?

Both political sides have valid points. There is never going to be one side that has got everything figured out. Imo we should just use the best of both sides to come up with compromises for the betterment of society- something that Arnold sought to do when he was in office too, as he would bring in Democratic people in to his Republican team and would also form relationships with the 'other side'.

1- There are lots of advantages and disadvantages that we inherit from our parents and that we have no control over. Perhaps skin colour is one of them, but then so is height, good looks (or lack thereof), hair colour, eye colour, intelligence, temperament, health etc (for example if your mother is a drug addict then that will have a big impact on the baby in the womb).

Then you have to factor in which country you were born in, which century you were born in (cos life expectancy is much higher now than 500 years ago), do you have good or bad parents etc?

So where does race fall in to all of this? Is it more important than height or intelligence? Is it better to be a 5'1, white guy with a low IQ, or a 6'5 black guy with a high IQ?

Is either of them actually 'better' or we have just become so comfortable and bored in Western societies that we have to start feeling inner guilt/shame over genetic characteristics that we have literally zero control over?

I hope this answers your question, but I think its disingenuous to answer it directly because there are another 50+ genetic factors that may also be just as, if not more, important than race when it comes determining the quality of your life.

2- This is impossible to quantify. How am I supposed to measure if the 'legacy of slavery' is still impacting peoples lives today?

Maybe for some people it is and for some people it isn't. Maybe it doesn't impact anybody, or maybe it impacts everybody.

These kind of questions are so vague that you can never give a 'correct' answer- because there isn't one. Each person has different thoughts and feelings.

I don't really like the victim narrative in these questions either. They both imply that by being an ethnic minority, then you are automatically a victim in society and you will always struggle to realise your full potential simply because of the colour of your skin. If anything, THAT is exactly what I do not like about the 'woke' ideology. It's an ideology of victimhood and a lack of responsibility, where people prefer to point fingers and blame others, or blame history for all of their problems.

Do you think someone like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods adopted such a weak, victim mentality to become the best in the world at their respective sports? Of course they didn't! I am sure they experienced plenty of racism along the way, but they were also extremely genetically gifted (not that that cancels it out, its simply an acknowledgement) and more importantly, hard working.

Now if they were born in todays society, perhaps they would have gone down the victimhood route- thinking that the 'legacy of slavery' will forever extinguish their hopes and dreams of becoming the best sportsmen in the world. Or maybe they wouldn't.

Ultimately, only we can control our destiny. Sure, there are genetic characteristics that will make success in many fields more difficult for us, but it's our job to figure out which field suits us best, and strive for mastery in that field! We can choose, on a daily basis, to take responsibility for our lives or to forever remain a victim. We can choose to be grateful or ungrateful. We can choose to thank our parents for our genetics or resent them.

The choice is our own, and our own only.

FakeEmpire Thanks for your comment!

Curious what laws you think would affect you if you moved to Canada.

1- Vaccine requirements.

I am not quite sure what the current laws are around vaccination status, but unless I am mistaken, for certain jobs you need to be fully vaccinated? Perhaps I heard this incorrectly or perhaps the laws have changed since the pandemic era, but I had a friend (not involved in poker) who looked in to working there, and one of the conditions was that anyone who applies needed to be fully vaccinated with boosters etc.

As someone who decided not to get vaccinated (before I get called anti vax I've had all the childhood ones and would happily have ones for malaria etc if I were to travel to a country where it was common) then that would be a bit of a problem if I couldn't work- assuming that I decided to do something other than poker in the future.

2- Lack of free speech.

I'm not aware of the exact laws around free speech in Canada, I'm only aware of the C16 law. However, these are the kind of laws that I am trying to get away from- not move to a country that has just as many, if not more.

Personally I think it's ludicrous to get jailed or indeed receive a big fine for words that you have said. If you are threatening someone or inciting violence then of course, this is completely different. But to criminalize 'hate' (who on earth is morally superior enough to even define what is hate and what isn't?) is Orwellian imo.

Of course we should be respectful to one another, but this is basic human decency and doesn't need to be enshrined in law. Cos the issue is that you can easily get someone who takes advantage of this 'hate speech' and creates wrong think based on their own ideological perspective. Where as something like assault or murder is pretty objective and thus much easier to define and criminalize.

Those are two of the reasons off the top of my head. I've also heard that certain podcasts etc are getting banned in Canada, but I don't know if this is true or not. Then about the truckers having their bank accounts etc frozen during their protests, which is kind of insane.

Trudeau has become a weird talking point for right-wing US media

I don't watch US media and would consider myself to be more Libertarian/centrist than right wing. Disagreeing with a left leaning politician doesn't automatically make you right wing. Everyone should be open to criticism- especially in a democracy!

Imagine a poker player who never accepted criticism :)

Where are the best places (outside of the UK) to live and why?

Hey guys. So this week (April 1st) the Scottish government brought in a new law on 'hate speech'. This wasn't put to a public vote, and instead was pushed through by politicians that are ideologically driven. Essentially this law is an anti democratic one, whereby offenders can face up to seven years in jail if they are convicted of a 'hate crime'.

Anyways, while I am still happy living in Inverness at the moment, I need to plan ahead and think about what I will do in the future. My new house was not only bought as a place to live in, but also as an investment. So it's not really a problem if I decide to move abroad and rent it out- as it should be pretty easy to rent out.

I am at the age where I am thinking about what to do next in my life. I watched Arnold Schwarzenneger's documentary and found it quite inspiring, but I also related to it in certain ways. During the first period of his life, he focused solely on body building and on becoming the best in the world at it. When he achieved this, and was clearly the best, he decided to move on to something completely different (acting) and become one of the best at this too. Then when he hit the pinnacle of that, and was raking in tens of millions per film, he decided to move in to politics.

He didn't milk bodybuilding for every penny, he sought a new challenge. He didn't milk acting for every penny, he sought a new challenge. He didn't seek to become the next US president after being the governor of California, he decided to move on and enjoy the twilight years of his life and help others at the same time. He didn't quit each career at the bottom, he quit at the top.

By no means am I saying I am one of the best poker players in the world, but I can also recognise that I have managed to get up to high stakes and, at the very least, become one of the better regulars that play cash on Stars on a regular basis. Last year I mentioned about how it could be my last year in poker, but ultimately I decided that it wasn't to be and I would do at least another year. I am fully committed to playing for the entirety of 2024, but after that, I am not so sure.

Perhaps I will play on a more part time basis next year. Perhaps I will go back to University and finally get a degree. Perhaps I will open up a food truck and make food. Perhaps I will travel around and simply enjoy living. Or perhaps I will decide to carry on for another year at poker.

But sooner or later, I will decide to move on from poker. Like Arnold, I have always seen my future as being away from my 'first love' of poker (or in his case body building), and that I wish to try out something else. I've never had any intentions of doing a Negreanu or an Ivey and playing the game for a living for 20-30+ years. It just seems pointless to do something for such a large portion of your life when we have one life. Surely the goal is to try different things and make sure that each 10 or so year cycle in our lives is different from the previous 10 year cycle.

I digress. I am going to take another day or two off poker (I've been back visiting my parents) and the plan is to do some research in to where would be a good place to live, should I decide to move out of Scotland in 2025. I would really appreciate other peoples perspectives and insights, so that I can narrow down my search.

At the moment, the two places that kind of stick out to me are Switzerland and Poland. Switzerland is probably one of, if not the most beautiful country that I have visited. The people are very nice and whenever I speak to girls from there they are always extremely intelligent and open. I like Poland too, and I think that, because they are more of a religious country, they still have a backbone that many of the European countries seem to have lost (UK included) in recent years. Obviously Poland is a lot cheaper though, so if I were to be playing poker, then my money would go a lot further over there!

I always liked the idea of moving to Canada, as I really like the people there and it's a really nice, scenic country too. But Trudeau is a nut job and their laws are even worse than ours- so unfortunately that is off the table. Austria was another option (another great country with a ton of mountains etc), but their laws during lockdowns were extremely draconian.

Perhaps this is just the way the world is going at the moment. We have went through 100 years or so of democracy and freedom, and now it is time for much of the world to slip back in to authoritarianism. Hopefully that's not the case, though, and this is merely a blip in history before we return to normality.

I will highlight a few things that I am looking for;
1. Free speech. Preferably the country isn't woke and isn't heading in this direction.
2. Very scenic. Mountains to go hiking and lakes to go swimming.
3. A good standard of living and low crime.
4. Nice people. Family values.
5. Able to play on Stars.com- preferably no tax. In case I decide to keep playing.

Anyways, I would appreciate anybody's help. Perhaps they have lived in Switzerland or Poland and can give me some information. Or maybe they have lived in another country that they think is a better option! Even feel free to share your experiences of living in a completely different country and the pro's/con's of living there! I'm all ears.

This is not something that I plan to do immediately. I will almost certainly remain in Scotland until the end of the year at least, but I thought now is as good of a time as any to start doing some research on where could be a good country/place to move to in the coming year(s).

Thanks in advance! And even if you don't agree with some of my conditions, please remember that they are just what suits me and it's totally cool if you have different preferences. We can still be friends though :)

Thanks! I will read it tomorrow then :)

I'd like to read your post but the lack of paragraphs makes it impossible to do so.

Day 7- what next?

Life/phone challenge-

This week has been a good week. Of course there have been the odd times where I haven't felt in an amazing mood or whatever, but overall this is the direction and way that I want to live my life going forward.

In the end I spent an average of 57 minutes per day on my phone this week. This is obviously a little higher than I planned, but overall I am still very happy with how little I used my phone and of the overall improvement in the quality of my daily life as a result. I hadn't actually checked my daily/weekly phone use in a long time, but essentially for the previous two weeks, I had been using my phone for an average of five hours per day!

(These stats are just for screen time btw).

It's actually insane how much I was using my phone before. Yet I wholly believe that the average person actually uses it for a decent bit longer than this, or is at least connected to their phones for much of the day (perhaps listening to music etc as they commute, workout at the gym etc).

So it was like an 80%+ reduction in the use of my phone. What did I do with this new found time? Well, of course some of the Youtube use etc was simply outsourced to either my TV or my computer, but I also spent the time in a productive manner. I read around 280 pages this week, which is almost the length of an entire book. This was split between two books- one of which was a self help book and the other about geopolitics. So they offered a quite good variety. I would tend to read the self help book first thing in the morning, to get me in the correct mindset for the day to come, then read the geopolitics book later on in the day, often after I had been in the sauna and was just chilling on one of the benches.

Because I didn't take my phone in my room, then I would fall asleep much quicker at night, and then I would wake up earlier as a result. I took away any opportunity to do something like binge play chess for four hours upon waking up, and it meant that I was starting every day in a productive manner with a 12 minute meditation followed by some reading. I also spent more time alone simply with my thoughts. Sometimes mulling things over, other times just trying to remain more present and think less.

Today, for example, I set my alarm for 11am, and woke up then as a result. I done meditation/reading, then quickly ate my breakfast before driving around 30 minutes to the golf course. I was just going to play by myself (it's only my second round there so I don't really know anybody there yet) but the guy at reception said I could play with the guy in front of me if I wanted to. So I quickly caught up with him as he was teeing off, and we ended up playing 18 holes together.

He was probably in his early sixties. We got along pretty well and the round ended up lasting just under four hours, simply because we were stuck behind a fourball that simply refused to let us through. I don't think I checked my phone once throughout the round, and felt really present for the entire duration of it. It was almost like I was in the flow state. I noticed that as soon as I got back to the house and logged on to the computer in order to study, that I started thinking too much again and lots of random, somewhat negative thoughts would go through my mind.

Anyways, the round was fun and now I feel like I have the golf bug tbh. It is like the perfect sport for me just now in the sense that it gets me out of the house and off technology for long periods of time, and you can also end up playing with random people and have good conversations in the process!

I went to the gym twice this week too (doing an upper body workout one day, and a lower the other) and went to a gym class for only the second time since I've been a member.

Btw, I have to highlight the importance of the book 'the wisdom of groundhog day' in all of this. I bought it last weekend from a charity shop, and it was almost as if it was placed there in that shop on purpose (perhaps it's the universe helping me out). I cannot overstate how good this book is (at least for me, at my current point in life) so I would definitely recommend it if you are looking to go down the route of being more present, more conscious in your daily life and want to break out of the unconsciousness that daily habits, routines etc can inevitably bring.

I've not finished it yet, but that book, along with the law of attraction (which I read a couple times in December while on holiday), have had a massive, positive impact on my life and on my outlook. So I would definitely recommend both books, especially if you feel like you are on a bit of a 'spiritual' journey and wish to feel happier, more content, more grateful etc in your daily life.

Anyways, I am going to continue with the routine of leaving my phone in another room when I go to bed at night. I assume I will start to use it a little more at other times of the day, but I still plan to often leave it at home as much as possible when I don't think I'll need it- for example when I go to the gym etc.

I want to spend more time outside, around other people and having new experiences. I want to spend less time staring mindlessly at a small, rectangular screen and allowing precious minutes, hours and days of my life to slip by.

Poker-

I ended up playing poker tonight, as planned, but the games weren't amazing and it was pretty difficult to get in hands due to the 500z pool kinda dying (and then several $1k tables etc died too). So I only played for like 2:30 hours, and ended up having a breakeven session. In literally my first hand of the session, I doubled up bvb in a 3bet pot with AA against a pretty sticky call down. Sometimes it's good to have the image of someone who likes to bluff a lot! It's just not so good when you are bluffing and then they make the same call down haha.

The plan was to play five days, as usual, Tuesday-Friday and grind Sunday, but I didn't play on Thursday as my friend showed up for a surprise visit. Overall I'm pretty happy that I even played four days tbh, cos I had almost no motivation to grind this week, and before basically every session it was a struggle to sit down at the tables and put in some hands.

The good thing is, however, that my pre session anxiety seems to have completely dissolved this year (which always held me back for the past few years), so I'm much better nowadays at sitting down on days that I plan to grind on. In the past it was much more a case of playing when I felt like playing, which isn't a good recipe for getting in a lot of hands as it's always easy to rationalise why you should take another day off.

I'm not too far off being able to shot take $5k again. Though I'm not in any rush as I know it's only a matter of time if I keep playing well, studying etc. The most important thing is to avoid complacency when you are running decent, as it's easy to get cocky when you are on a bit of a winning streak.

So it doesn't really matter if I have a really good session or a really bad session, I am still showing up for my study the next day and approaching if with the exact same intensity, regardless of how the previous days session went.

Tomorrow I will (likely) take the day off, as part of my usual Monday/Saturday day off schedule. I have a call with a poker friend in the evening, though I am somewhat tempted to also try to grind at some point because I will be away next weekend- meaning that I miss out on the Sunday grind. So I could grind Monday-Friday and hit my five days that way instead. Though in reality I might just be happy to hit four days, given that I am feeling quite burnt out.

Anyways we shall see. Back to the weekly posts again on here again too.

GG.

Was gonna pure fold otr then changed my mind

Also, this ties in to my post the other week about work or play. I want to do more 'play' when I am grinding- so this tends to involve taking myself less seriously, joking around with others, showing some cards etc.

Of course when I enter a pot then all bets are off and I will be trying my hardest to win that pot, but I want to make sure that I am having as much fun as possible while I work and not just treating it like another job.

HodorIsKing Hey man, good question!

If I'm playing online I chat quite regularly, just because I am sitting alone in my office and I quite like interacting and having banter with other people. I also think it's very important to interact with fish (especially if they are initiating the chat themselves) so that they have an enjoyable experience at the tables. I am making money from them, so the least I can do is to be nice to them and to treat them well.

I really don't have any ulterior motive behind my talk at the tables. I never try to get reads or tilt my opponents. If someone trolls me then I will often troll them back at the next opportunity, but apart from that, I will always be respectful of my opponents.

I don't like to use underhand tactics to get an edge on my opponents. I am confident enough in my game that I will have an edge on most of my opponents through poker skill alone. Imo people that need to tilt others are usually just shit at poker, so have to get an edge from somewhere else.

In general I won't talk when I'm in a hand though. If I'm playing live then I will never talk when I'm in a hand because I am not overly confident playing live and I think I give away some tells. So I will just try to remain as stoic as possible, then go back to talking afterwards.

However I tend to find that online players are more friendly/nice than live ones, so I usually talk more to the online guys than when I'm playing live. Online players have less ego than live players, so they tend to be easier and more fun to chat to.

Day 6- free time

There is only just over a day left of this 'challenge' but in reality I will likely be continuing this beyond the end of the week. In all honesty I have used my phone slightly more than I'd have liked to, but 30 minutes per day is very difficult to remain under when it can take you 20+ minutes just to catch up and reply to some messages. I've still been listening to podcasts while I cook, too. In a sense I think that I should stop this, in order to remain more present etc, but in another sense I really enjoy it, so why should I?

If I was literally listening to music/podcasts etc during all of my daily activities, then I'd accept that I had a problem with simply doing the activity and being present in it- but that's not the case. When I go for a walk I don't listen to anything, similarly when I am at the gym, playing golf or on a hike. Tomorrow I will be playing golf where I am outside for 3+ hours and completely disconnected from technology.

When I leave the house now, I throw my phone in a drawer and leave it at home. It's weird, cos for the past 15 years or so I have always walked around with a wallet in my right pocket and a phone in my left. I never alternate which item goes in which pocket, it's always the same. Now I am just walking around with a wallet in my right pocket and nothing in my left. It's weird, but at a certain point I think it's important to question WHY we are doing certain things in our daily lives, so that we do not simply drift through life unconsciously, before arriving on our death beds with a lifetime of regrets and missed opportunities.

If I were to ask you if you thought having, and using, a smartphone on a daily basis was a net positive, or a net negative, what would you say?

I am genuinely curious, so feel free to share your thoughts and opinions below. For me, at least, it's a net negative. So when I look through my life and figure something is a net negative, then I will usually cut it out- like with alcohol etc too. So below I will share some of the positive aspects (in my opinion) of using a smartphone, and some of the negatives.

Positives-

1-Useful apps- whether that be maps, Duolingo to learn a language, chess.com to grind chess, spotify to listen to music/podcasts etc.

2-Entertainment- if we are on a long flight, train journey or simply waiting in line, we can tap in to our phone and instantly be entertained in some fashion.

3-Easy to contact friends/family- whether that be through social media, facetime or by simply calling or messaging them.

4-A web browser in our pocket- we don't need to load up our laptop or computer, we can access google (or in my case Brave) in a fraction of the time.

5-A handy torch- in all honesty I don't even own a torch. Putting out the bins at midnight would become more problematic without my phone.

Now I will go through each point and attempt to debunk them.

1- This one I can't debunk in all honesty.

Without a smartphone then you couldn't access these apps, so it just depends how highly you value them. You could always learn through other means (like taking a Spanish class, buying a Spanish dictionary etc), but for things like maps there isn't really a good alternative imo.

2- Read a book or a magazine. Buy an old Gameboy or play cards with a friend while on the train/flight. Buy an old Ipod and listen to music. Become more present and stop seeking entertainment cos you are in a queue for two minutes.

3- A basic phone can still call/text. Sure you can't facetime them, but you could always just meet up with them if you wanted to see them so badly- unless they are in a different country or something.

4- Again, you can't really debunk this.

However, I would say do you actually need a web browser in your pocket? Do you need to fact check 24/7? If you wanted to check something, you could easily take a mental or physical note of it and check it later on in the day on your computer.

5- Buy a torch for £5-10.

So imo only points one and four are valid arguments, the rest you can easily find an alternative. I guess we have to assess whether these two points are worth the negative points that owning/using a smartphone inevitably bring.

Negatives-

1- Huge time drain. This cannot be overstated. I heard on Joe Rogan's podcast that the average teen uses their smartphone for nine hours per day! That is just insanity. Personally I used it nothing like this much, but I guess I also go on my computer etc for work, so perhaps this cancels some of it out.

What else could you be doing with this spare time?

2- Destroys your attention span. If you need constant stimulation, check your phone in between sets at the gym, on the train, in a queue in a shop, as you take a shit, when you are out for a meal with a friend, then you have no attention span.

3- Takes away from the present moment. Imo it's extremely difficult to enjoy and live in the present moment when we are on, or tempted to go on our phones all the time. There is something special about just staring out of the window while on a train, or in a car etc. However, when we have a phone in our hands then we are so much more likely to seek out some form of entertainment as we take that journey, instead of staring out the window and watching the trees, fields, houses, animals go by as we speed past them.

4- Makes us unaware of our surroundings. When we are walking around and staring at our phones, we stop being aware of our surroundings. We might be putting ourselves in to more danger by not looking around and seeing the shifty guy walking towards us, or seeing the speeding car weave carelessly towards us.

5- Expensive. I bought my Iphone a couple years ago for around £500, but I can imagine they are a lot more expensive now. You could easily get a decent, basic phone for one tenth of the price.

Now I guess the challenge is to compare the positives and see if they outweigh the negatives. In my personal opinion, they do not. Does this mean I will throw my Iphone in the bin? No. But there is a good chance that I will buy a more basic phone, so that I can alternate between the two (perhaps taking my Iphone with me when I go travelling, as I will need maps etc a lot more than if I am at home) and using the basic phone more often at home.

Either way, I am very happy that I finally decided to do this challenge. I think that everyone knows we are, to some extent, addicted to our smartphones. It's just become so common now that we all seem to prefer to ignore the issue and sweep it under the rug.

For me, the challenge is now to find enough things to fill my day with. All of a sudden I have a lot more free time, and less urge to use other forms of entertainment like TV etc. I will need to find more hobbies, get outside more, spend more time with people in order to fill out my waking hours. Ideally I would be able to get up earlier in the day, so that I could make use of the daylight, but unfortunately I play poker between 8pm-12am (roughly) so it would make no sense to wake up at 8am as I would be too tired by the time that I would start my session.

However, I would much rather have this problem than have the opposite problem of too little time- which can easily happen when you wake up and grind chess for four hours lol.

The most valuable asset of a material life is money, but the most
valuable asset of a simple life is time.

It's time I started taking time more seriously, and made the most of each and every day.

Back to the grind tomorrow!

Day five- running on fumes

Life-

It was time to get back on the grind today after an unplanned day off yesterday, and the preparation leading up to my session involved going back to the gym too. Today was leg day (which I actually enjoy) and so I done a leg workout consisting of squats, followed by some machine exercises and farmers carries.

I usually don't do farmers carries, but I've been watching a lot of The Stoltman Brothers (Scottish strongmen) videos recently, so it inspired me to add a new exercise to the workout. The problem was that the gym area was too busy to use the dumb bells, so I walked to a different area where the only option was either very light dumb bells, or plates. I warmed up with a 20kg plate in each hand, then tried to do 2x 20kg plates in each hand, but I couldn't really hold on to them properly as they were too thick to hold on to, so it didn't really work. So next time I will just have to either do a longer distance with the 20kg plates, or go at a quieter time so that I can use the dumb bells. Either way it was a cool exercise and I feel like it's probably good for your core strength and especially your grip strength.

Cos I've been getting out of my bed earlier (as I'm not staying up as late watching Youtube, and not wasting time on my phone in my bed in the mornings either) then I've been able to go to the gym a little earlier too. This means that I can enjoy longer in the sauna/spa area. I've started taking a book with me again, so I tend to read for a bit after exiting the sauna. I think that if you struggle to maintain motivation and consistency in terms of going to the gym, then join one with a spa and reward yourself by going to it after every workout. It's like a cheat code, cos even if you can't really be bothered going for a workout, you will go regardless in order to go to the sauna/steam room etc. So nowadays I find it pretty easy to go to the gym, even though I lost all motivation to go to it a couple years ago and barely went last year either.

Scotland were playing Holland tonight, in a match that I wanted to go out and watch, but it would have meant pushing back my poker session from 8pm until around 10pm, and I also knew that there was a good chance we would lose tonight (we did) and so I would probably be kinda tilted after watching it. So I made the mature decision not to watch it, and instead grind instead. This would mean I would be finished before 12am, and so I could also get up at a reasonable time on Saturday and make the most of my day off.

Poker-

Fortunately the session went well again. I lost a bit back towards the end, but it was still a good, profitable session. There were quite a few $1k tables running, mostly around this kind of reg/fish guy. I mean he is not terrible by any means, but he makes enough mistakes to make it worthwhile grinding when he is at the table (even though WR's will probably be relatively low, especially compared to playing against proper fish or even whales). 500z had a massive pool too, at one point with around 40 entries or so. The bulk of them were regs, but it was still fun to get in some zoom hands and the boost in hands per hour that it inevitably brings.

I even played a 530bb pot at 500z, which was kind of crazy.

In all honesty before the session, again, I felt a little burnt out and wasn't too bothered to play. However, I overcame these thoughts and put in some hands regardless. I am going to head back to my parents next weekend, and hang out with my friend (the one who is back from Australia) and probably catch up with other friends too. So this made it easier in a sense. I will get some time off poker to reset and recover from this burnout, but I have to earn that time off- and you don't earn it by lying on the sofa watching TV!

Phone challenge-

I've hardly been on my phone all day. I think I may have been on it like 15-20 minutes total. In all honesty this challenge is pretty easy, but has also made me realise how much of my life I was wasting, staring at a small rectangular screen for hours on end and for no real benefit other than to satisfy my minds insatiable appetite for stimulation.

This 'detox' actually seems to be having quite a big effect. I sat and watched TV for like 1 hour or 1:30 hours after my session had concluded, but towards the end my mind actually said 'enough is enough' and didn't want to watch it any longer. So it seems like I am, perhaps, starting to rewire my brain so that I don't just crave mind numbing stimulation in every spare hour of the day.

Reading is also much easier too. In the past few months, I have often sought out something more stimulating (like watching Youtube) instead of reading in my down time. My mind would crave something like that, and struggle to focus on reading as it was 'too boring'. But at the moment I can easily read 20-30 pages in one sitting, and I am probably averaging 40-50 pages per day atm. Which is a lot more than the 10(ish) that I read on average per day.

In the past I have switched my diet and stopped drinking alcohol. It seems like this challenge may lead me towards correcting the next leak in my life- the smartphone addiction!

Anyways, tomorrow I will take the day off and do something different- though I'm not quite sure what yet. I just want to get a good sleep tonight and make sure that I am fully ready for Sunday's session. I have kind of scrapped playing tournaments on Sunday's for the past month or so, and just switched back to playing cash on that day instead. I am sure I will get back in to them again later on this year, but for now I am happy to focus on cash instead- and on moving up in stakes!

GG.

530bb pot at 500z

Day 4- Unplanned day off

Life-

Today the plan was to wake up around 12pm, get in an hour or so of study and then go to the gym/sauna before getting on the grind later on in the evening. However, this plan was quickly torn up when, at around 9:30am, I was awoken by a ring of my doorbell. My friend moved to Australia around 1.5 years ago and I've not seen him since. We keep in touch, messaging every so often, but it's an old friendship that doesn't really need a ton of contact to maintain.

Whenever we see each other then it was always just going to continue from where we left, due to the fact we have known each other since primary school- actually I think I went to nursery with him when I was aged like 4 or 5. I'm not saying we have been friends this entire time, but I have known him for around 25 years and the bulk of my life.

He had messaged me the other day to say that a parcel was going to be delivered my on Thursday morning, and that I needed to be in in order to receive it. I didn't think much of it other than thanking him for seemingly buying me a present randomly. Anyways it turns out that it wasn't a present, he had come back for a two week long visit instead! So obviously that meant by days plans were thrown out the window (though of course I didn't mind). I didn't get to sleep until after 4am, so I had only gotten around 5 hours sleep- I usually try to get 8 hours as this is perfect for me.

So we had a catch up, went out for 'lunch' (even though it was my breakfast) but then we realised we were both very tired- he had barely slept for the past couple of days and I wouldn't mind a power nap either. Well, that turned in to around 3 hours and, at that point, it was about time for him to head back down the road- though we are catching up again next weekend.

Anyways, after this weird middle of the day sleep, I felt pretty groggy. I got in an hours study, looking over some 3bet pots from yesterdays session, but I couldn't shift this grogginess and decided that it was better not to play today. This definitely wasn't ideal, given the fact that Scotland are playing Holland tomorrow as well, in a game that I would have liked to have watched. So playing today was a no brainer, but ultimately sometimes social plans take priority over grinding, and today was one of those days. I can always play an extra 1-2k hands another day to make up for today, but I might not see my friend for another 1.5 years (well, apart from next weekend haha).

Whenever I take an unplanned day off, I always try to at least make it somewhat productive. So I think that even if I don't feel like playing, then there's no reason that I shouldn't get in some study. Actually, these are the kind of days where you could just get in 2-3 hours and completely fry your brain cos you aren't going to be playing later on in the day. I was just happy reviewing all the 3bet pots that I tagged from yesterdays session though. Even though I had a good session yesterday, I still wanted to review plenty hands that I was unsure about and to give me clarity for the next time a similar spot arises.

In all honesty I have no idea how often other cash regs study, but I usually do 5-6 days per week, typically ranging from 1-2 hours per day (though most study sessions are a little over an hour). Unless I am away elsewhere, or have a friend over to visit etc, then there is literally no reason that I cannot sit down and do an hours study. Even as I type this I am considering doing a second, shorter study session before I wind down for the night and start watching some brainless TV- most likely another couple episodes of Yugioh!

One thing that I do love about poker is it's ability to humble you, and to make you realise how little you know. However, this is not a demeaning 'you know nothing and are stupid' humbling, it's a 'lets improve/correct your thought process' humbling. Improvement is amazing. It's cool to look back at the stakes we were playing several years ago and see our progress, or to see what weights we lifted when we started going to the gym, or our 5k times when we just picked up running again- then compare them all to the stakes/weights/times we are doing now. Of course, sometimes we might have peaked in the past. For example, even though I am better at poker now than I was several years ago, I am weaker at the gym and I haven't ran in like 6 months, so my marathon condition would absolutely smoke me in a race in my present condition. But it's not only about where you are now, it's about where you started off at, and where you got to.

When I done my first 5k run during lockdown, I almost threw up and shit myself simultaneously. I was a tall, skinny guy who done a lot of walking and thought he was quite fit- wrong! Fast forward to marathon day, where I ran it in around 3:40 and far exceeded my 4:00 target time. So even though, in my current condition, it would probably take me four days rather than four hours to run a marathon, I know that I have this massive improvement and high ceiling in my locker, if required. We can't peak at literally everything simultaneously in our lives. We can't prioritise poker, running, lifting weights, dating, reading, coaching, blogging, cooking, socialising, travelling, hiking, volunteering all at once. Perhaps we can select a couple of these things at once, focus on them and give them our all, before shifting our focus again (especially if we want variety in our lives).

For now my priority is poker and on being in good shape. Not marathon running shape, not peak physical strength shape. Just 'I'm going to the gym twice per week and doing some other sports on the side' shape. If I compare my social life now to it in my late teens/early twenties, then I might also become frustrated and sad. However, it's just the nature of life. I am happy that I enjoyed such a fun time as a younger, alcohol drinking guy who had no worries other than to get the cheapest £1 drinks and have just enough money left over for a McDonalds the next day.

Imo it's kind of cool to look back on parts of our lives and see how much we have changed, what was going for us, what wasn't going for us and on how different we are now to where we were. Of course there will always be aspects of our lives in the past that were 'better' than what we have now, but there are also plenty aspects of our lives now that are 'better' than what we had back then. For example, as a teen/early twenties I was pretty insecure overall and, for the most part, I have fixed this through meditation, self improvement books etc. So would I actually want to go back to this point in my life where I was always heading out to bars/clubs, meeting up with friends and trying to chat up girls? Not really. But am I glad that I experienced this? Absolutely.

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

So perhaps we aren't currently in our best physical or mental shape, perhaps we are on a downswing and had to move down in stakes, perhaps we have lost several friends over the years or are just out of a breakup. There are so many reasons or excuses to be sad, but conversely (assuming we frame things differently) there are so many reasons to be optimistic.

We can still get up tomorrow and go to the gym, we can start of our day with a meditation in an attempt to rewire our brain, we can put in some extra study (but not too long haha) and battle to move back up in stakes, we can get out of our comfort zone and meet new people and make new friends and we can walk down the street and fall in love (like that Lego meme) with the cute girl who just smiled at us as she walked by.

We are told to embrace negative poker variance and downswings, but perhaps we should be told to embrace life variance and life downswings too. That way we appreciate the upswings so much more.

Phone challenge-

To be honest I have one admission to make- I have been listening to podcasts while I cook! I just enjoy it too much haha, and I'm not staring at a screen or anything so I don't think it's a huge deal, though arguably I should be more present when I cook instead of following a random Joe Rogan conversation.

I've still massively limited by screen time, and pretty much only use my phone atm to reply to messages. I've been leaving my phone at home when I head out (for example today with my friend) and haven't watched any Youtube videos on it, and barely open Instagram either. Its funny but when I watch Youtube or whatever on my TV, then after like 30 mins to an hour I just say to myself this is enough and come off it. Where as, for some reason, if I'm watching it on my phone then I can watch it for much longer periods without feeling the need to come off it.

I read 50 pages today too, basically split evenly between the two different books that I'm reading. I'm honestly quite tempted to buy a crappy flip phone that I can alternate between when I feel like it. I'm not saying I'm going to completely get rid of my smartphone (it's still very useful in lots of ways) but I think it would be good to have a more basic phone so that I can do this kind of 'challenge' on a more consistent basis.

When we were out eating at the restaurant, there were two older women sitting next to us, and both were just staring at their phones. It was kind of sad tbh, that we value a piece of technology over the company of a friend or a family member. This is obviously very common and you see it all the time when you walk past restaurants, bars, pubs etc.

Anyways I'm not preaching, cos I'm sure I do this (occasionally) too, but it's just an observation.

Back to the grind tomorrow, unless I get another friend from Australia arriving at my door in the morning!

GG.

Day 3- A productive 'rest' day

I planned on playing golf today, but late last night after my session, I was kind of dreading having to get up 'early' to go and play. I definitely wanted to play, but the problem was I didn't get to sleep until after 4am. My tee time was booked for 12pm, but its a 30 minute drive to the golf course, which meant I needed to get up at 11am.

Having been at the gym on Monday and done a kettlebell class on Tuesday (as well as getting in more than 10k steps on both days too, walking to the gym and home afterwards) meant I felt kind of drained. Playing/studying poker can be draining too. So today ended up being a stay at home day, where I didn't bother leaving the house- and I was happy not too!

I had a study call with my friend scheduled, which ended up lasting around 2:30 hours (around 2 hours of study and 30 mins of chatting). Afterwards my brain felt completely fried. For me, around 1 hour of study is optimal, so long as I do so in an efficient and deep way. When you get towards 2 hours then, assuming you are studying intensely, it can start to have a detrimental effect on your ability to play poker later on in the day.

Think of it this way. If you are playing a game of football (soccer) then you would do a warmup beforehand that involves some jogging, stretching, ball work etc and then perhaps some sprinting, just to get a little more blood flowing as you approach kick off. You wouldn't run a half marathon before playing an important game, would you?

It's the same in poker. We want to approach our daily study, assuming we are also playing poker on the same day, as something more akin to a football warmup. However, we still want to be doing slightly more than a warmup, cos we are wanting to learn before our session, not merely warm up our brains before playing.

So there is a fine line between learning just enough in your pre session study, where it will both benefit you and also serve as a mental warmup before playing, and overdoing it completely, frying your brain and burning yourself out before you begin your session. This is completely fine if you are taking the day off playing and just want to get in a bunch of study. But if you are playing on the same day, then your study should serve as both a learning process, yet also a warmup process too.

Imo if you are able to study 2+ hours per day before playing then either you aren't studying very intensely (most likely you are just randomly checking hands to see if you played them 'correctly') or you are simply unaware that you are burning yourself out before you start playing, and are likely playing worse as a result.

In Luke Johnson's video at the start of this year he also mentioned about how he 'only' studies for around an hour per day, too. However, he obviously does so in a very efficient manner, as he is a very theoretically sound player who has a great understanding of the game.

So for me today, 2 hours was probably a little much, so I made sure to take a couple hour break before I started playing, so that my brain could have a bit of a rest before I got in to the poker mindset again.

The session didn't start very well. I got stacked in a couple of tilting spots, and seemed to continue the previous session where I could barely win a pot towards the end. However, towards the end of the session, I started to run hot and in the space of a couple hundred hands, I had completely turned the session around and was now in healthy profit.

I'm not gonna lie and say it was skill, it was mostly just down to making good hands in big pots, but overall I think I played quite well and managed to ride out the negative variance at the start of the session to reap the rewards of the positive variance towards the end. It was also a fun session in terms of banter at the tables. I wrote my post on 'work or play' a couple weeks ago, and since then I have tried to have more fun on the tables when I am grinding. I quite like interacting with other players at the table, and quite a few of us were all chatting/having a laugh during our sessions tonight.

I also managed to win a $6k pot at $2knl, so we take that! I have quite a clear plan on how I am going to get to $5k+ again, but I need to win a bit more before I will shot take those stakes. Hopefully it won't be too long though, ideally in the next couple of months I will be up there again and take my 2bi shot!

In all honesty I'm not sure how much longer I will play poker for. For the past couple of years I have almost felt like each of these years could be my last. However, it also seems pretty dumb to 'throw away' something that I am pretty good at, making a good income at and have a ton of freedom in doing. Yet I still don't think that is a very healthy, long term profession (at least for me).

Anyways this may seem contradictory towards my goals of moving up etc, but ultimately I will just take it year by year, until I no longer want to play. Most likely in my next career, whatever that may be, then I will be earning a fraction of what I do now and starting at the bottom. However there is more to life than money, and I don't want to do the same job for 20-30+ years and auto pilot through life. And the good thing is that, if you develop good, strong poker fundamentals, then they will never leave you. You can always come back at some point in the future.

Sure, you will have to shake off the rust etc, but GTO doesn't change. A solver approved play now will still be a solver approved play in 2-3 years. So perhaps what I may find that I need, is a year out of poker (at some point in the near future) trying out some other form of work, before coming back to the game.

Who knows. For now I am just studying and grinding. Trying to play well and move up. No more mental restrictions, only opportunities and open doors. It's time for me to walk through them.

GG.

When their line makes zero sense

Day 2- Back to work

Poker-

On Tuesday it was time to get back on the grind, after taking the previous day off. At the moment I am feeling close to burn out in all honesty, and feel like I need a holiday or a week or two off to get away from poker and mentally reset. The first two months of the year were very consistent in terms of my playing schedule and volume, however this month has been more of a struggle. Before many of the sessions, I've had zero motivation to play- but I am quite proud in the sense that I have played regardless. In the past I would have rationalised about why I should have taken a day off, but now I have quite good clarity with what I want to achieve.

At the start of this thread I highlighted that I want to play 200-300k hands this year of cash. So my plan has been to hit 20k hands each month, and do so for the first five months of the year so that I hit 100k hands by the end of May. That will enable me to essentially have two months off where I can do whatever I want, and then I simply have to hit the same volume goals for the last five months of the year. Of course I won't take the entire June/July off, but I have two weddings, I am going to the Euros in Germany and I would also like to do a lot more exploring in and around the Inverness area- to make the most of moving up here.

So when I am struggling, or have literally zero motivation to play on these cold, dark, March nights, I look forward to the carrot of a warm Summers day, where I have complete freedom and no obligation to play or study. Of course it's vital to live in the present moment as much as possible, but when our present moment doesn't want to do something, sometimes we have to use the delayed gratification tactic in order to get ourselves to sit down at our desk and put in some hands.

Overall the session didn't go very well, but I think I played pretty well- which is the most important thing! It started off well enough, then I went the last hour or so losing pretty much every single pot.

One hand that tilted me was when a reg made a flush in a 3bet pot with a hand that is a pure fold pre flop, cos that's obviously a variance free 4bb profit you 'should' be picking up pre flop, instead of a 100bb+ loss post flop. However he punted off in an almost identical spot with another hand that is a pure fold pre flop the week before, so I guess these things even out and we should focus on playing +EV poker, and enjoy when our opponents make -EV mistakes- even if we do lose the pot in the moment.

There was another hand where I folded top pair in a 3bet pot when the FD completed, and my opponent showed a bluff. But in game I had a pretty clear game plan- call when I had a FD blocker along with my TP, and fold when I don't. The solver agreed and went for that exact strategy, so my slight frustration was alleviated when my thought process was proved to be correct by the solver. It's pretty funny how results oriented we can be sometimes, where as a solver just cares about making good, +EV decisions and wouldn't care less if an opponent called too wide pre flop and made a flush, or bluffed you off a hand you're supposed to pure fold. But I'm a human I guess, and I had a losing session so I'm going to be slightly more irrational than usual!

Life-

In terms of the no phone challenge, it's going pretty well so far. Yesterday I got in a bunch of reading again. Starting off the day with a 12 minute, silent meditation followed by some reading, before getting in some poker study and then heading to the gym for a kettlebell class. At the moment I am going to the gym twice per week, but as the weather is also getting better, I am also trying to play golf once per week too. I feel like I should be doing some sort of class at the gym once per week as well, cos atm I'm not really doing any cardio except from walking. I'd never done a kettlebell workout before, and it was funny that I was struggling with 10kg kettlebells at one point just cos my body wasn't used to this high rep, no rest form of exercise.

Afterwards I went to the sauna as usual, which is always a nice reward for a workout or a successful gym class. Then it was back home, before making some food and of course getting on the grind.

So far I have not really missed using a phone at all tbh. In the mornings I do notice it a bit, where my mind is kind of craving some sort of digital stimulation when I wake up, as it's so used to me checking Instagram, the BBC sport and watching a Youtube video or two. However, ultimately these are just habits that I have picked up over the past 5-10 years, and so they can also be undone. I think that after I do this week long challenge, I will likely stick with the habit of leaving my phone in another room when I go to sleep, and of doing a silent meditation (no music etc) and reading upon waking up each day. This will also curb by chess addiction! So it's a win win haha.

Anyways, time to get in some study and then get on the grind later on tonight. I am more motivated to play today, actually!

GG.

Good turn

Bad turn

Day 1- more hours in the day

Last night I ended up playing poker until 4am. Needless to say, this kind of ruined my sleep pattern and I don't think I got to sleep until closer to 6am, as I like to chill after playing and not attempt to go straight to sleep afterwards. It doesn't seem too healthy to me to go from thinking intensely for 4+ hours straight, to then lying in your bed trying to fall asleep. So typically watching TV/Youtube etc helps to dumb me down a little before I fall asleep.

It's funny cos recently I've got back in to Yugioh. As a kid me and my brothers friends would collect and play Pokemon cards (as well as the Gameboy games), but for whatever reason I preferred Yugioh. The PS2 game of it was really good too, from what I remember. I actually bought an old silver, slimline PS2 a couple of months ago. I haven't owned a console since I was a teenager and had an Xbox 360 (I'd usually play COD 4 online with my friends). However, I just had the urge (mostly for nostalgic purposes) to buy either a PS1, or a PS2. Ultimately I went for a PS2, just cos the graphics are a little better and there are more good games for it. It's funny but the PS2 is actually the best selling games console of all time, even though, naturally, we tend to buy the more up to date versions of consoles nowadays.

Anyways, I started watching Yotuber's opening Yugioh cards, then that got me thinking of how I still had some cards at my parents house, in a random box somewhere. So I ended up picking them up while driving home the other week, and I also started to watch the anime too. I have a few friends who watch anime, but I've never been that bothered about it tbh. However I used to watch this as a kid too, and it's quite good to watch it after grinding as it's pretty relaxing, but you are actually following a storyline- instead of watching random, unrelated Youtube videos. The first series is almost 50 episodes, and I think I'm on 40 or 41, but they are less than 20 minutes long, so it doesn't take too long to work your way through them.

I've not actually played the PS2 that much, just cos I don't like the idea of playing another game after playing poker, and atm I am not taking that many days off. However, I'm sure I'll play it more in the Summer etc when I am planning to take more time off poker to get outside, play golf, go hiking, travelling etc. It will be a nice way to wind down after spending most of the day outside.

Today-

Like I said in my post last night, this week I plan to use my phone as little as possible, and today I achieved that. Usually when I wake up I like to watch Youtube for around 30 mins to an hour (probably not the healthiest habit tbh) as there is a channel that does a 30 min video each day about Rangers (though I watch it at 1.5x speed so it's only 20 mins for me haha). Then I will quickly check Instagram, read the sport on the BBC website and then do a 12 minute meditation, followed either by some chess puzzles, or some games of chess. The problem with me and chess is that when I go on a losing streak, I can't stop playing. There have been days where I've laid for 3-4 hours in my bed, upon waking up, grinding chess. Obviously this is a colossal waste of time (even though it happens rarely, maybe once every month or so) and I often get tilted as well lol. So it's probably one of the worst ways you could start your day- drain your brain of energy, waste several hours of the day and get tilted in the process.

However, last night I left my phone in another room so that option wasn't there. So I ended up doing the 12 minute meditation without music, then followed this up by reading 10 or so pages of the book 'Prisoners of Geography'. Imo this is a far superior way to start the day- even though I did wake up just before 1pm due to the late night last night. So far I've been really enjoying the book, and enjoy learning more about geopolitics- which I didn't know a whole lot about before. It's amazing how something as simple as a river can be the cause of conflict that, perhaps, could even lead to wars. For example it was discussing how Ethiopia have built a dam somewhere along the Nile, that is capable of storing a years worth of water. Egypt are almost completely reliant on the Nile as their water source, but now Ethiopia can control the flow rate with which the water runs. So, if they decided, they could essentially turn off the water that is flowing in to Egypt (or at least that's what I garnered from the book).

There were plenty more interesting things in the book, about why Africa continues to be a poor continent, about why the USA remains the superpower of the world, about why Europe needs an EU- otherwise conflict may arise again between France and Germany- and even a snippet about Scotland too! If we get independence from the UK, then we won't be allowed back in to the EU for 10+ years. So that would leave us in a very vulnerable position! This book is what inspired my previous post. Clearly it wasn't a particularly popular post, but I wanted to discuss it, so I wrote it regardless.

I also picked up the book 'The wisdom of groundhog day' at the weekend from a charity shop. I like buying books from a charity shop for several reasons. 1- they are cheaper. To me it doesn't make a ton of sense to spend £15 on a book that you are, often, going to read once. 2- the money goes to a good cause. 3- you end up finding random books that you would never select in a book store, due to the randomness of the books for sale (as they are all donations).

I will analyse the book a little more once I've read more of it- as I've only read one chapter so far. All in all I read almost 50 pages today, between both books. I went to the gym and done an upper body workout, then went to the sauna. I got in just over an hours worth of study, focusing on 3bet pots in position. When I left to go to the gym, I just left my phone in a drawer at home. I didn't see any point in taking it with me.

Overall it just seemed like there were more hours in the day. When we, subconsciously or consciously, write off large chunks of the day as 'phone time' then we are writing off chunks of time where we could be doing something else- like reading a book, going to the gym, studying etc. Of course there are times, like after a long poker session, where we want to do something fairly braindead (like watching Yugioh) but it's probably not a great way to start off our days in this manner.

Anyways I'm only one day in, so I can't say that I have learnt anything life changing yet. My first impression is merely that it feels like there are more hours in the day when you are not using your phone.

I didn't play today as I had a long session last night, and Monday's tend to be my day off regardless. I'll get back on the grind again tomorrow.

Lausbub Hahah, but I always reply eventually! It's funny cos in the past I didn't mind messaging, but over the past six months or so I have grown to really dislike that form of communication. I think it's partly cos I live by myself now, so I am more interested in real conversations instead of digital ones. Where as in the past I was living with friends/family and then you are less reliant on meeting up with other friends on a daily/weekly basis, cos you have them to hang out with.

How about taking a book for the trams/subway? It's amazing how quickly those 5-10 pages compound over time.

When I was travelling through Eastern Europe last Summer I didn't have any phone data in quite a few of the countries, but I was getting bus journeys that could be 8-10 hours long. It's amazing though, even though I had books with me, I wasn't even bothered about reading. I would just look out the window or have conversations with other people on the bus. I made friends with this Swedish guy as we talked for most of one of these journeys. Your attention span quickly resets when you simply remove the option of going on your phone.

When there is no option you can go 8+ hours sitting on a bus without boredom, but when there is that option, you might struggle to do 5-10 minutes of sitting before you get bored and want to reopen your phone.

Fwiw I am not saying I could do that just now (sitting on a bus without a phone for that period of time) but I just mean that your brain always has that capacity to reset, even if we have trained ourselves to be constantly stimulated via our phones, laptops, tablets etc.

One week challenge- no phone

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, and I've decided to begin this challenge on Monday morning and do it for the next week. I will post daily updates for the next week with my thoughts, what I've been up to etc.

I want to see what is possible if I minimise the time I spend on my phone. I'm only going to allow myself a maximum of 30 mins per day, but ideally this will be 5-10 mins and only really to do things such as responding to a message or booking a golf time via an app etc.

Usually when I wake up I meditate in my bed (playing some meditation music off Spotify) but I'm not going to allow myself to listen to music, nor podcasts. I'm not going to lie, the thing that is worrying me the most is not being able to listen to podcasts. I don't really like messaging any longer tbh, and often take ages to reply. I don't really listen to music on my phone either. So I tend to use it for mindless things like looking through Instagram and watching Youtube, as well as more 'productive' things such as listening to podcasts while I cook/wash the dishes etc.

I feel like there are a lot more hours in the day that are passing my by as I do mindless things, or even 'productive' things, on my phone. When I take away that option, then it will be interesting to see how I respond and what new things I will get up to in the coming week. I think it's pretty likely I'll finish my book in the next week, for example, even though I only planned to have it complete by the end of the month.

Anyways I better go chill for a bit and wind down after ending my poker session just before 4am.

GG.

Do you think I'm balanced here (vs whale)?

Value bet, converted in to bluff