Hello all, i am back! since my last journal i took roughly a month off to go hiking/camping around Scotland, as well as a week in London. since arriving back at my flat, however, i have been pretty unmotivated and my volume has been very poor. i am just playing sporadically, though when i do choose to play a session i am actually playing quite a lot of hands (as was the case when i played over 3.5k hands on Sunday). i was on the fence about making another thread, but i think whatever EV i lose from sharing my results etc, i more than gain back from holding myself more accountable and thus getting in more hands.

so the plan for this thread is slightly different. before the end of the year i want to take my first shots at 25/50 on Stars. by no means am i planning to make this my main stake, but i see no reason why i shouldn't be playing there when the games are good. also, i want to start playing more tournaments again, as they are very soft and sometimes i actually enjoy them. i have watched some streams/highlight videos of pro's playing the highest stakes mtt's over the past few weeks and it's actually insane that they will arrive otr and have no idea what their value threshold should be, often jamming for thin value with a hand that is clearly a much higher EV x back. imo this is mostly because mtt players are used to playing flops and maybe a turn, but rarely arriving to rivers because of the stack depth being much shorter on average. i guess that they are better off spending their time studying short stack play, icm spots etc as opposed to river spots that come up much less frequently in tournaments compared to cash games.

anyways, going off on a bit of a tangent, but the plan is to;

1-take first shots at 25/50 before the end of the year.
2-increase volume at regular tables relative to zoom.
3-play more mtt's, try to get in some mtt study as well (though i will always prioritise cash game study if i am lacking time).

i also want to get back in to coaching more often, so if anyone is interested then drop me a message and we can have a discussion. i find it quite enjoyable to teach other people, and i also learn a lot when coaching others as you can always learn new things when using PIO and discussing poker.

i've played 223k hands of cash so far this year (don't mock me high volume grinders haha). at the beginning of the year my goal was to play 350k-400k hands. averaging out roughly how many hands i have played per day means that i am on track to get in just 328k hands (though this was factoring in a month off, which i will not take for the rest of the year). so i am a bit behind pace. ideally i would complete the 100k hands by the end of November, which allows me to take it fairly easy in December yet still hit that 350k hands target.

so wish me luck! going to get back on the grind this evening after the Scotland game. we are playing Austria in a vital WC qualifier, though i am not overly optimistic about our chances of winning haha.