Your cycle of growth is a very interesting concept! I can definitely see how that has applied to my own life, and not just in poker. I suppose we sometimes learn the most from our failures, don't we? Looking forward to seeing where this takes you.

Risk of ruin

I had a couple conversations with friends where they tried to bring me down to Earth a little bit regarding risk (one of them is a multi millionaire hedge fund manager so there's definitely value in his insight/experience).
Their points were along the lines of:
1) "At your current level of risk there is a non 0 chance you can't handle the mental stress of the swings and overshot take/blow up your bankroll to 0, no need to do that when you are already doing well at a young age"
2) "People don't understand variance and randomness"-
3) "People think they have way more control over things than in reality"-
4) "Winners bias is extremely powerful and amazingly destructive"

I'm trying to make a lesson out of my recent results, I had a sick upswing in early 2024 playing HU off the back off good live results. My bankroll grew to a really big figure for me, then before it even happened I was aware that the usual pattern at that point for me in the past is to not feel satisfied, to keep taking risk/moving up and then have a big downswing.

I took some marginal spots like HU 10k vs davy, live plo £25/£50 and lost most of my online upswing back to a breakeven ish point. I'm getting to a stake level where I'm almost comfortable settling and playing 1k-5kNL table selecting and earn a lot of money whilst investing.

But I also kind of feel that the only reason I have got to where I am is because I took the risks I did; I always thought that was part of my edge/character(?). But when I try look back at previous figures in the poker world, not many of my archetype have stuck around (notably Isildur seem to blew up his bankroll, Stefan seems to be on his way out of poker, I guess Limitless is the success story in this case). But then there are many success cases on the other side of the spectrum: Sunni_92, dudd1, DejanK, Munez(?) etc

Some statistic that kind of fucked with me is: a 5% risk of ruin each year gives you something like 40-50% chance of going broke over a 10 year period. It's not fully accurate as you derisk down stakes, but you could reason that there is a 5% chance I have a bunch of life events coincide with a downswing and then blow up my bankroll. Though I do feel that like anything in life, this is somewhat of a skill and I have a higher tolerance for "painful" events/networth swings than a lot of people.

Poker is a game of showing up with your most present self in every hand/session/week/month. Gym, meditation, poker/sports therapists etc can all be seen as risk mitigators in a way, reducing that 5% chance to a 1-2% chance has huge impact on your long term career.

On a separate note, I did another couple week live trip lately and broke even, got a bit unlucky with buying small % of myself when I won (& vice versa) and quality of games. I played probably one of the biggest private games in the world also with some very famous poker figures (not Linus/pros, famous triton people) with infinite standup game.

Hey bro. First off I want to say I have huge respect for you and your career, you are one of the top NLHE players in the world if you beat 1k-5knl, this is not a diss or anything. But it’s a good thing that you started realising some of your decisions might not be as high EV as you think they are. I myself have problems with this because I am very competitive and enjoy the challenge more than anything, and have been playing a couple 100s or 1000s of hands vs very top HU NLHE players, but I always viewed it as a -EV play that was a decent way to learn. But you playing a match vs Clickr or even vs Davy (I think) is not a marginal spot but straight up -EV, and I hope you realise that… Clickr has been working on his craft for years and years, spanked everybody that came to play vs him. No doubt you’re good and smart enough to beat him potentially in the future if you work relentlessly on your HU game, but for now it is imo very delusional to think you could be winning. Wish you the best though!

Hey Cd9k, great read and insights! Who is Davy? Probably someone I should know, but I dont haha. Did you play him in NL huhu?

I saw you making some "disrespectful/creative" 3bets when you played plo vs (forgot his name, but the only guy from australia who plays HSplohuhu) X @5k. Was it tilt or actually you trying to exploit nodes in 3bet pots?

CD9K, thanks very much for putting in the time to write this journal, I've enjoyed reading it!

Fat tails/Black swans

Some book notes from Taleb's Black Swan applied to poker:
-Give yourself a narrative that allows for big losses, such as "It's silly to be upset by losing, I lose almost half the time as a professional" (in any given session). Also do not detract from your losses/take credit for your wins for your ego sake.
-Can be quite rewarding to keep a private journal where you document your experiences with variance,
-Love fate/prepare to die. Be open to losing chunks of your bankroll,
-A lot of success is found in just surviving long enough, avoiding losses - not deriving profits,
-Don't specialise too narrowly to avoid sudden changes in the field effecting you too much,
-Take asymmetrical risk reward setups where you can,
-Humans are great at adapting to periods of very high/very low intensity, try not to dull your mind through repetitive monotonous grind
-Don't listen to those that have no skin in the game (loosely)
-If taking on an endeavour in a field that is 'extremistan' (e.g. authors, athletes) where a small % of participants take a large % of the earnings: Be prepared to lose/bleed for a long time then have breakouts, in the meantime expect to have insults/doubt hurled at you. It helps to have a team that can support you in this mentally

My main takeaway or feeling from this book is: Take calculated big risks with small % of networth (ideally where possibility of positive fat tail/blackswan) then have acceptance of losses when they do come, but planning ahead a bit expecting them to come. Trust the process basically.

Doesn't necessarily mean try to control risk and reduce to 0, but have an income source/% of portfolio that is low variance whilst still taking on big risk

Results this year have been pretty bad, ran bad at 10k+ in small samples
HU graph YTD (Note I am actually net down this YTD including live and untracked ante app games)

Reading you and dd's blog always so much inspiring for me. keep it up! thanks!

Great blog bro, pls update

It's been a while I updated, more of the same feelings haven't really managed to figure out what my values are around poker. I've amassed some savings that I can be happy with but it never feels enough, I can always ruminate and regret on decisions I made that cost me loads (I've had the sobering realisation that I've lifetime lost 100k on PLO, half from HS live plo6 probably rigged game, and realised that at multiple points if I just put my entire net into BTC I would have had same performance as my poker results..). Unfortunately due to HS variance I'm breakeven ish $ this year so far which is far from my goals, but bound to happen when you're mixing a range of stakes 100x of eachother

To wrap up the conversation over the last few posts on basically the same topic, I think my final thoughts (atleast for me) are:
1) Mid-low stakes rewards aggressive BRM to escape raketrap at fastest rate (and the reg vs reg edge is too small, so should just concern yourself with getting to 1k where there's still lots of recreational volume as fast as possible)
2) At 2k+ unless you have access to a goldmine site/pool you need to ramp up your BRM requirements significantly. For most people the potential swings are too much mental impact and the real world value also begins to get quite real, perhaps even 150buyin reg battle BRM
3) Playing super aggro BRM -> "unforeseeable" variance + tilt -> other self destructive behaviour (in form of: C game / mega tilt / gambling / depression etc) -> Big drawdown in networth // counters the somewhat minor increased ROI of shotting earlier
4) Adding to Marinellis great point earlier in this thread that I overlooked at first: If you don't have other avenues of self expression/passion than poker, you should avoid going too far into risk averse money stacking/bumhunting

Also I'm reading a fiction book for the first time in forever, English translation of 'The Tartar Steppe', a book that "explores themes such as the passage of time, the loss of youth, and the unfulfilled dreams that many people experience in their lives ... a powerful metaphor for existential waiting and the human condition, emphasizing the idea of waiting for a moment of glory or significance that might never arrive. The story examines how people cope with their aspirations, routine, and the inevitable disillusionment that can come with waiting for something more out of life. It's a meditation on time, hope, and the meaning we try to assign to our experiences." (-chatgpt)

Lastly a funny aside, I played a decent student private game game that's like 5/10/20, I've played 2 sessions and in both I'm close to the biggest loser and I'm the only pro lol. I wonder if that's a comment on how bad I am vs recs or the variance in small samples, it's very hard to socialise with bunch of people and also pay attention to the infinite information that 8 people are giving away (huge tells + insane showdowns)

even after playing tons of hands variance still blows my mind sometimes. Im quite certain if I ever (or anyone) would have experienced a bottom (or top range?) downswing, we would have quit this game long time ago. good insights on brm, appreciate it.

1) Mid-low stakes rewards aggressive BRM to escape raketrap at fastest rate (and the reg vs reg edge is too small, so should just concern yourself with getting to 1k where there's still lots of recreational volume as fast as possible)

Are you saying less recs at 200NL / 500NL or 6bb/100 win rate is still less hourly than a 4bb at the next level up?

4) Adding to Marinellis great point earlier in this thread that I overlooked at first: If you don't have other avenues of self expression/passion than poker, you should avoid going too far into risk averse money stacking/bumhunting

Can you CD9K elaborate on this a bit more. Thank you

Update on graph and stakes?

Do you think the tanking redline for 30k hands was a passivity leak / afraid to bluff catch due to monsters under the bed? Afraid to bluff because they keep calling down light? Putting too much money in on earlier streets and folding later streets? What do you think caused the tanking redline before flat lining and then profits starting to recover again?

I feel a bit pretentious to assume my input is worth anything so I'm just going to leave these various quotes/paraphrases (that were most applicable/useful to me) and let the reader think for themself (from Inner Game of Tennis, and The Tartar Steppe)

IGOT:

-People who derive their self worth from their achievements (in competition) are indirectly saying that their opponent loses worth when they beat them.
-If you let your mind wander whilst playing you'll find it fixates on the past/future and all the anxieties that encompasses (e.g. what do my friends/family think if I'm losing in a downswing/what if I'm not good/what do regs think of my play etc).
-Your mind drifts inbetween hands not during them - A good tool to stay present is to 'meditate'/focus on your breath inbetween hands (it's always there to ground yourself on)
-Some people care about winning/not losing/looking good (results) - But few care about their inner relationship with the avenue in which they're expressing themselves and comparing themselves only to themselves.
-People end up setting impossible standards for themselves due to the pressures of our achievement oriented society (report cards growing up, measured by your economic impact at work etc, everyone is turned into a statistic in a spreadsheet)
-Some people cope by giving up before they even start trying, that way they can have an excuse when they fail.
-Surfers wait for the big waves because they value the challenge it presents, only vs the big waves he/she requires all his skills + to explore their capacities.
-Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached.
-Shift in mindset from: You're overcoming your opponent personally, to overcoming the obstacles they present you. Therefore no person is defeated in true competition.
-On that tangent, some people don't feel good about beating others as if they believe they make their opponent lesser.
-If you're too attached to results you can't control you'll be paralysed in anxiety + try too hard + won't play in a present flow state
-Shift from focusing on micro to understanding the bigger picture = transition from pidgeon to true player of any game.
-Through 'games' you can become more stable by being unyielding to variance (shifting your perception of the events, not attaching your feelings to a scenario, stoicism etc)
-How do you distinguish inner requests of your ego that's accumulated over years of environment/society telling you to value competition etc from your true innate desires.

'Tartar Steppe' that relate (spoilers);

-You can let months fly by if you think you're waiting for some end goal/happiness point (value journey over endgoal).
-'Drogo perseveres in his illusion that the really important things of life are still before him'.
-A book about really looking at your actions, not letting yourself off the hook.
-People live their day to day lives as if they will live forever, blink and then decades have past (but that's ok, you can interpret is as life still being beautiful even without glory).
-He's wasted his whole life waiting for something (or has he? ambiguous as what else was there to do).
-A book about the solitude of life, all our sufferings and joy being within us. "Your suffering is yours and yours alone, no one else can take upon himself the least part of it".
-People live in a state of just strong enough hope to keep persisting but never hopeless enough to change.
-Main character dies having wasted his life and deemed a failure by society, but that only is a sad thought if he lets it be.
-Maybe everyone is looking for a way to pass the time in a simplistic manner that lets them be unaware of time passing.

Energy and distractions

I had a productive past couple months, I made some deep strategy changes that involved changing my whole framework of thinking about the game which coincided with an upswing that has cemented those ideas as probably good (fortunate to have an upswing when toying with what is probably a good thought process overhaul).

But I kind of had this feeling of 'What now?', grind out months of this strategy to prove to myself and others that I know it and it works? That's fine but what about in the time inbetween that? The inner struggle with tying self worth to my achievements pops back up here, not knowing what to do with my downtime outside of the routine I've built up via interacting with the people in my close circle. If you were to have no responsibilities/people around you, what would you do with 13 hours of your day if the rest is used for poker/work?

Because I realised that to truly perform my best and execute the things I wanted to, I can't play more than 3 regbattles, and I can't play for more than 2.5 hours at a time.

Then to maintain that level of fluency you have to spend mental energy simming the hands in a thoughtful way, not just clicking through the solution. This all requires a lot of mental energy/friction.

So then I'm left extremely fatigued. I was then wondering (still am), is it possible to increase your capacity for mental load in a day? If you remove X/Y/Z, and add A/B/C for certain reasons can you increase your brains capacity?

My WIP answer to this question from some reading/other things I was thinking about recently/how I'm tackling this energy issue:
-Social media of any form, and my phone at large is a detractor of willpower, focus and energy. Willpower is a muscle and every time you stop a hard task for an easy one your willpower muscle gets weaker. This is probably why a year ago when I managed to take cold showers daily for a bit I was the most productive, energised and happiest I'd been.
-Time spent mentally processing the contents of a tiktok/reel/random tweet is battery drained from your next hour(s) until you get to rest.
-(Some study shows ofc that) more focus on a task at hand = a deeper learning/understanding of the content. The idea of deep work (good book on the topic). Only to a certain point though, as if you focus too much you're overthinking about optimising the task etc and not actually focusing on the task at hand/being immersed.

So 2 easy things I implemented recently is, 1) I switched from my iPhone to a punkt phone which basically is a nokia brick (no apps - this way I dip into social media with intention to check my friends messages every now and then rather than accidentally get lost in reels etc). 2) Switching to taking notes from podcasts/working thoughts and just writing them onto paper as its slower and more focused + can collate eventually into a summary/takeaway/action later.

Now an aside, an anecdote about a friend of mine without going into too much unnecessary detail: He was working harder than anyone I've ever met, every hour of his day was organised, like a marine he'd wake up at 5am do kettlebell exercises outside in the cold, read/write daily, study, play poker, do martial arts twice daily. But he of course got extremely burnt out and it had the opposite outcome to what he hoped, he wasn't succeeding in some of the avenues he wanted.

Seeing his life of routine has instilled in me what can go wrong if you take self optimisation etc too far. But I think taking some elements of that; combining it with deep meaningful rest/play is what I'm going to try.

One great way of resting that energises me is exercise, the act of completely turning off your brain and letting your fast acting twitch muscle fibers or whatever act is energising. For me this has been going to the gym daily for shorter sessions to energise me for a day of work. But then I would crash in the afternoon so I'll add some mobility focused slot in the afternoon; maybe soon pick up wrestling/bjj.

All these things you know you should do but not really know why, gratitude journals, meditation, strolling are all times to process what you've been working on and re-energise in a way? Or to fix some deeper issue of the brain/ego (ie due to your upbringing you're an insecure over achiever who needs to constantly work and focus on negatives, so you reflect/be grateful to lighten the burden a bit)

I've been doing this a bit for the past few days and I feel I bring a much healthier energised presence to everything I do. Be it competitive video games, socialising (being more involved/caring), gym and poker.

lastly I thought it's cool how a lot of the avenues I find interesting have overlaps in the way to get good at them:
Poker, melee (old fighting game), csgo, chess, skating, gym form, bjj, etc are all basically the same process of fundamentals/reflection/flow state/energy optimisation/conscious work and rest. It can be extremely fulfilling to feel in control of the outcome of something, be conscious of the mechanisms at play etc... Although this is probably an illusion of control by the ego it's fun for now

Are you a failure?

The mental energy you need in your day reminded me of this movie Lucy.

Ted talk for staying productive as you mentioned what to do with the other 13 hours in your day. 6:15 of this video kind of stood out to me.

I actually didn't ever want to be a machine. I just felt guilty and ashamed for not being one.

Do you feel anything like this because you don't know what to do with the other parts of your day that you are not working on your health or finances?

I keep thinking back to 'The Tartarre Steppe'. I feel I couldn't have read a more relevant book to my life than that book by pure chance.

I recently went from playing daily hours of nosebleed cash games where purpose/routine is automatic, to taking some chill time off to study what interests me; reducing my urgency. The immediate feeling is something akin to melancholy.

But it also feels freeing to know that majority of the things I do/don't do today will have close to no impact on anything that actually matters, it's all very low stakes. The most impactful decision of an off day can be as mundane as what you eat and the lasting health effects of that if compounded daily.

I also feel less of an ability to be absorbed into the hedonistic(?) entertainment that would've once consume most my hours.
A friend recommended a book 'Outlive' which I haven't read yet but I've started to understand the key message of from some interviews. My main takeaway at the moment is that a lot of people die a health death before their actual physical death, you can spend the last 10 years of your life unable to do the things you want to due to pain/health issues. It argues that (some?) of your exercise should be geared towards longevity not arbitrary games (I think it probably takes the stance that there is some place for the latter but not a sole focus).
Which makes me wonder what's the point of creating more time (via health and savings) if you're unsure in your peak health+time+wealth what to even do with it. Is it acceptable to do whatever you feel like at any one moment?

Lastly, I may go to EPT Barcelona to play the 10k and 20k MTTs for stars depo to play some random HU volume - Potentially looking for a very short term MTT coach if any are reading :P /

edit: I heard some people questioning if I'm broke because I'm not playing on stars/because I played 40bb, but reality is I have depo limits and busted stars roll (and also spent some time recently trying out 40bb strat). Still playing other sites/live, am having a good year. BR is at ATH, am rolled pretty comfortably for even 5k regbattle now but questioning whether I can be bothered with the variance at the moment compared to just buying BTC + doing higher ROI grinds/study. Might at the end of the year play some HU/HS regbattles for fun

Update pls! How are you? Why do you join coin poker?

Hey! Saw the coin results and I know that you are very familiar with variance from the past. But still as a representative of 1-5k semiregs/bumhunters I wanna remind that we are still very afraid of you.

CD9K 2025 cont pls

It's some time ago, that you wrote about Talebs Black Swan. I'm reading it right now and wonder if you turned your takeaways into action? (Obv you're journaling ;)

Doesn't necessarily mean try to control risk and reduce to 0, but have an income source/% of portfolio that is low variance whilst still taking on big risk

Because i dont think the concept of extremistan fits to poker. I dont think it scales large enough. At least, i dont think, shottaking with an aggressive brm fits into the defintiin of extremsitan. However maybe you found a poker related niche? Or did you try to apply the concept outside of poker?