BlankyLion - Life goes on

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BlankyLion - Life goes on

Hey guys. I'm south korean and 25 years old.

Recently I've been hit with pretty painful downswing, and I've even come to the point where I don't want to play poker. But I have to play poker in the end and get over this sloth. I thought writing a blog to might help break this situation.

I have enjoyed playing strategy games (such as hearthstone chess league of legends etc ) since I was younger, and I first encountered poker at the age of 18.

Ever since I turned 20, I've enjoyed poker as a hobby and mostly played SNG on stars.

Then I joined the military in 2019 (99% of older than 20years old men must go to the military in south Korea ) and after depositing $200 for gg poker in the military, whenever I had free time, I studied by watching several videos and started grinding from R&C cash nl2.

In 2021, I was discharged from the military and played 100k hands for each limit from nl2 to nl25 and won with a pretty good win rate. (I have a win rate of 5~7bb in NL2~NL5)

In 2022, I entered college and while I was in college, I couldn't concentrate on my schoolwork, and I kept playing poker, drinking, and hanging out. At this time, I was playing gg50~100nl, and I spent a lot of money on Poker Bankroll.

In 2023, I continued to play GG 100~200NL R&C. I thought I needed to make a big decision for life at some point after living such a indecisive life, and I didn't like my major and I liked the poker better. So I decided to drop out of college in June 2023 and become a full time poker player.

so yeah . From June 2023, I left the house and started living on my own, and from then on, the only thing disturbing my poker was laziness, except for downswing.

I played Stars as I started hating GG network in 2023.

Here is the result of my entire 2023

2023 Stars

50z
Won + RB : $5470.19
(Card hunt , leaderboard is not included)

100z
Won + RB : $ 11,106.53
(Card hunt , leaderboard is not included)

I made $16,576.72 on stars.

and also made additional $4k on live poker.

Here is the entire of 2024.

yet I played only stars and very small volume of KR live poker games in 2024.

I played a little more 100z at the beginning of the year, then immediately started playing 200z. I had quite a hard time getting used to the pool in January, got a little bit better in February, and then in mid-March I completely rekt.

2024 Stars (Jan~march)

Graph version

200z nightmare (March 8 ~ March 14 )
after this I movedown to 100z again. I think I've been on primedope a lot in this week.
but still it was so much painful.

Okay now I will set my goal.

[Small goal]

1. back to the 200z.
recover some BR on 100z and give a try to get back 200z.

2. back to the tables.
After nightmare I'm constantly having downswing, so it's painful to play poker, but I have to go back after a little break

3. post results on blog per 1month.
The biggest reason I decided to write a blog. To keep making myself play poker, whether the results are good or bad
Idk 1month is proper posting cycle. lmk

4. play at least 5days per week in april.
If i running good, I can play 6days a week. In April, even if i running bad, I should try to play at least 5 days a week.

[Goal of the year].

1. develop skills and BR for 500z
This is one of the biggest goals I set when I decided to play poker full time. Achieving this is my most important goal. I really want to achieve this before the end of the year

2.Creating a habit of exercising consistently.
jesus this is so hard. but I have to.

Cheers.

17 Comments

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BlankyLion 10 months ago

My goal for April

Play poker for 25 out of 30 days in April and take 5 days off.
If you play 4800 hands a day and do it for 25 days, you can play 120k hands during April.

BlankyLion 9 months ago

April recap

Results

  1. 100z
    my C Won : $ 501.63
    all in EV : $ 237.07
    (so break even )

  2. Past Monthly goal on Volume : 120K
    Actual Voluime : 79K
    I endup 79K hands even if I do only poker thing on whole month.

  3. Get permanent select rakeback system on April 23th.

*What I felt over the past month*

what I realized is, if you play more than 100,000 hands a month, you'll be able to do almost nothing other than related to the poker.

Because I usually play the poker for about 8 hours a day and then after 2 to 3 hours to review the session, 24 hours disappear when I take a shower, eat, rest, and sleep.

Sometimes I want to meet a friend and refresh on a day when I don't play poker, but there are moments when I just want to relax quietly doing nothing, so grinding with a goal of 100k per month in stars has a very tight month schedule.

So like 120~150k month would be insane really.

I don't prefer to play 4tabling now because 4tabling zooms makes it pretty easy to play hands over 100k a month but I get to play very bad quality often.

btw , Is there anybody who makes 5bb/100 + on 100z or 200z with large samples these days?

I always trying to reach 3bb/100 + winrate , but It's so hard tbh. never get there on Long term period. Please let me know any advices.

I mean I really work hard. I really do.

But despite your hard work, it's pretty depressing if you don't like the results. I know poker isn't a game where I get the same results for my efforts for a certain period of time, but still wanting to see a prettier shaped graph is always my first priority.

Money

Make $2~3k a month and trying to cover living expenses and poker BR both is no make sense in my country.

So I decided to make some money on other minor sites , and will get back on stars after few months later.

Getting rid of bad habits

I didn't post it on my blog, but I decided to get rid of two bad habits myself during April.

  1. Listening music during the session

  2. check the graph frequently during the session

-1-
I've been absolutely successful at getting rid of my first bad habit. I've been playing music with lyrics and it's so disruptive to the game that I've been listening to music without lyrics for the past few months, but I decided not to listen to it at all because I thought even that would interfere with the game.
You may not create unnecessary emotional fluctuations by simply not listening to music during a session

-2-
This is so hard for me personally , But I will keep try it. I failed this tbh.
When a session goes in a bad direction, I pause or turn it off for a while, so when I feel like I've lost too much bi even if I'm not looking at the graph, it's hard to put up with the desire to check the graph.

Demondoink 6 months ago

Hey man, good luck in your poker journey!

what I realized is, if you play more than 100,000 hands a month,
you'll be able to do almost nothing other than related to the poker.

I think this is one of the biggest leaks for lower stakes players- they prioritise volume too much. Of course you need to build up a roll to begin with, so that you can withstand variance, pay bills etc, but if you have 2x the WR then you can play 50% of the volume. So imo it's just as important to study than it is to grind.

Also, the longer the hours you play, the lower your WR will become (especially towards the end of a session). Your WR isn't static, it fluctuates based on tiredness, fatigue, mood, how your session is going etc. So if your database WR says 3bb/100, well maybe you are winning at 4/5bb/100 for the first four hours of your session and 1-2bb/100 for the last four, or perhaps you aren't even winning on the last hour of your session.

Having a social life is important in life, as is being healthy. You keep referencing how you want to start exercising regularly but don't, this is simply procrastination. You just need to join a gym (or join a running club, whatever exercise you want to do) and decide what days you will go on per week. I read in a book about planning your social/health etc activities FIRST and then filling in your work life around them- not the other way around, which is what most people do. They plan out their work week and then are shocked when they have no willpower to go to the gym after grinding for eight hours and studying for two hours.

However, if you have told yourself- I will exercise Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I will see my friend on Saturday, then those events are set in stone, meaning you will now play poker/study around them. So perhaps that means on Monday you wake up, study and then go to the gym and play poker afterwards. Maybe you can only play six hours because you spent two hours of time heading to the gym and commuting there and back. Then on Saturday perhaps you take it as a day off, or get in some study/grinding in the afternoon before meeting your friend in the evening.

What I'm trying to say is that you have to make your health and social life a priority, instead of an afterthought. Ultimately we earn money (in our case from poker) so that we can enjoy our lives. Sitting indoors all day, not exercising and never seeing your friends isn't exactly the definition of a fulfilling life.

Ever since I read the suggestion to plan social events, exercise etc first, and fit your work in around them, it has made a massive difference. For example I have two weddings this month, both marked on my calendar, so now I have to figure out when to grind around those events. Obviously weddings are big events, so they are easy to justify taking a day off poker, but so should be seeing your friends, or exercising and taking care of your health.

I didn't post it on my blog, but I decided to get rid of two bad
habits myself during April.

1-Listening music during the session

2-check the graph frequently during the session

I wouldn't say either of these are a bad habit, I would say neglecting your social life and health are much bigger issues than listening to music while you grind or checking your results. Fwiw I do both, but I make sure to listen to music that doesn't have lyrics (or if they do, then they have to be very relaxing playlists). I check my graph throughout the session too. Some people swear by not checking their results, but imo it's better if we can see our results and continue to play well, than to play well but not check our results. The first scenario means that, despite knowing we are losing a bunch, we can still play our A game. The second means that we can only play our A game when we pretend like we don't know we are losing.

Of course you could say 'results don't matter' but in reality they do. We want to constantly review hands, check problem areas in our game (perhaps through database filters) so that we can improve. Closing our eyes during an all in isn't a good way to develop mental resilience. We want to see our AA losing against KK and continue to play well after that suckout. Cos what happens when we play live and we lose several all ins and have to keep rebuying physical chips? Then we KNOW we have lost x number of buy ins, but online we have pretended like this has never happened, so it's likely we don't have any mental resilience towards losses and thus we (probably) play worse in the live game as a result.

So personally I would rephrase these 'bad habits' as-

  1. Not exercising
  2. Not socialising

Fwiw I have to continue to improve the second option as well, as I don't know many people in my new city. So it's also something that I have to consciously work on in the coming months! I have a good exercise routine, though.

Good luck for the rest of the year.

BlankyLion 6 months ago

hey dd!
I'm glad to hear your advice and thoughts :D
I haven't been able to update in real time because I don't come in often RIO
Well first , I entered gym 1~2 weeks ago!
I paid for personal training and I work out with my exercise coach. It's always very annoying to go out of the house to exercise, but when I arrive at the gym and exercise, I feel very good

So if your database WR says 3bb/100, well maybe you are winning at
4/5bb/100 for the first four hours of your session and 1-2bb/100 for
the last four, or perhaps you aren't even winning on the last hour of
your session.

I think this is so true.
As I go toward the second half of the session, even with a small bad beat, I sometimes get annoyed by myself, maybe because of the lack of physical strength in the session compared to the beginning.
So I'm actually focusing on quality rather than volume these days and I think this is good in many ways.

I wouldn't say either of these are a bad habit, I would say neglecting
your social life and health are much bigger issues than listening to
music while you grind or checking your results. Fwiw I do both, but I
make sure to listen to music that doesn't have lyrics (or if they do,
then they have to be very relaxing playlists). I check my graph
throughout the session too.

Yes, I also enjoy listening to music without lyrics. Especially, I like guitar music, so I enjoy it. Sometimes when I running bad, even guitar music without lyrics gets in my way, which makes me annoyed. So these days, when I'm about to feel bad, I turn off the music altogether. For graphs, I check them every 1 hour and 30 minutes. I think each pro has different opinions on "checking the graph," but like you, I check the graph to check and carry out my own condition. I'm a little relieved to hear that you have the same habit

This is the gym how it looks

BlankyLion 9 months ago

My Goal for may

  1. Make a money on other poker sites instead play stars
  2. Do some stars session once a week to maintain feels (I'm not sure I can do this)
mx404 8 months ago

Hey buddy, those downswings are tough to experience but we've all been there. Just gonna cheer yourself up and weather through.

Look forward to your May results, good luck!

BlankyLion 7 months ago

May recap

  1. make a money on other poker sites instead play stars.

    • done. made $18k usd on may
  2. Do some stars session

    • I've done 0 session on stars. It's been 50 days since I played stars
  3. Deprived of selectrb system.

  • Stars relentlessly deprived me of select after 1 month when I didn't play on their site lol
  1. I don't think I'm going back to stars for a while.
    • Let's make a lot of money and think about it later.
BlankyLion 7 months ago

My goal for june

  1. Do some exercise
    money problem is solved so now time to develop my lifestyle.

  2. Do profitable game consistently.
    made 100k roll first and then do any thing next

BlankyLion 7 months ago

My new grinding enviorment (home) from may
I'm satisfied on my lifestyle except I don't exercise so only thing left is exercise these days.
I should start

ZaiahJJ 6 months ago

With the exercise, it's important to just show up and be consistent. A little something is better than nothing.

Demondoink 6 months ago

ZaiahJJ Exactly. Most of the battle is just getting to the gym in the first place, the workout is the easy bit. It's often easier to make excuses on why we shouldn't go today, instead of putting on our shoes and heading out the door.

BlankyLion 6 months ago

June recap

It's a little late to do a June recap. I'll try to do the July recap as soon as possible.

  1. Do some exercise
    Okay at least , I completed " Do some" cause I entered and started!

2 Do profitable game consistently.
made 100k roll first and then do any thing next.

I'm on it, made 35k during 2024-06-06 ~ 2024-07-10.

BlankyLion 6 months ago

My goal for july

It's a lot late to set a goal for July, but basically it's to exercise consistently and play high-quality games.

To set a goal to become a better person in August, I will aim to read a book for at least an hour a week, even if I don't finish a book during the remaining 12 days

  1. Read a book
    1hours for a week.
BlankyLion 6 months ago

Things that happened july

I upgraded grinding enviornment

After installing the monitor arm, I have almost 0 physical strength to do anything else that day

BlankyLion 6 months ago

Things that happened in July 2

I was getting very tired of myself because I spent a very long time sitting in front of the computer playing online poker and not doing anything other than going into lab after session. I always wanted to go on a trip somewhere, but I couldn't afford it because I wanted to go up as soon as possible in the poker scene.

In the meantime, I had a live tour schedule in Japan, which is very close to Korea, and a few days ago, I went to live tour + trip for the purpose of refreshing

I exchanged quite a lot of yen for the 3 most expensive tournaments, but I failed ITM for every event LOL. 4.5K dollar blowed up , but I still had fun memories

BlankyLion 6 months ago

Shove JJ 20bb eff BTNvBB villain calls with A5s

Tourney beginz

Takoyaki and udon It was insane

Ramen (stunning)

I hooked up two Japanese girls here with my friend but nothing happened except to exchange instagram id haha

entertaining bar in kabukicho

sushi omakase

The sushi -

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