I always thought people should post more pictures in their journals, so I will share as much as I can with my daily activities. July 4th GF and I went for a bike ride (5-6 miles), pretty late at night after 9pm. Fireworks were going off every where and there were a bunch of animals out for where we live. During this bike ride there were a ton of bats! Being late at night and next to "Virgin River Trail" the bats were out in bunches trying to eat all the mosquitoes. Girlfriend kept screaming and I kept laughing as they flew inches in front of our face as we road down the trail. We also saw a dear, owl, a fox (I think), and a couple of frogs. Sorry didn't take any pictures as I wasn't even planning on making a journal at this moment.

For dinner we went to In-N-Out.

For July 5th-31st (27 days) going to set a goal of getting in a lot of cardio, roughly 40 miles on the elliptical + some more bike rides if it's not too hot. It has been between 92-114 degrees for the past month or so here, lucky it's not humid! I live about two hours from Vegas and will be taking trips there for the weekend couple times a month (I hope). This way I can play some live poker ($1/$3 & $2/$5) and have a break from the online grind. My other monthly goal starting July 5th, as that is when my coaching contract starts is to play 80,000 hands. Sounds like a lot of hands, but because I play zone, this is about 94 hours of actual grinding.

Below I will post some pictures of the trail we ride our bikes on and my poker graph since February ($25NL - $200NL mixed). Not going to post my redline because it sucks! ☹ Hopefully, new coach is able to help me with this. Another reason for this journal is to hold myself accountable for my volume goals. I have only been getting in around 40k hands a month and honestly I should be double or even triple that!

July Goals
• 40 miles Elliptical
• 80,000 hands (50NL & 200NL zone)

Best of Luck
Austin

Probably easier to just link google maps which has all the pictures of the Virgin River Trail.

RunItTw1ce nice that you are opening up a journal! It's funny (although I don't intend to sound cynical) how the Covid lockdown has had unexpectedly positive consequences for the life of so many people, also for your personal life and your poker career.

Could you tell us more about the coaching contract you signed? What kind of contract is this? Did you apply for a CfP program?

Cheers!

What a graph, gg for your results, truly impressive, what about the $ graph?

Coaching is actually going to start tomorrow since yesterday was a holiday.

Played a short session for Monday and happy it went well. Felt pretty natural as I tried to open up my game a bit as well. Didn't get in enough hands today as I am going over to visit GF's family and have a family dinner over there. I did accomplish everything besides volume today. I was able to put in 2 miles on the elliptical. I made it a priority to go to the gym after I got out of bed and before I turned on the computer. Take care of all the errands I had today for groceries and workout before I touch the computer.

Really just focusing on time management. #1 priority is going to be health and fitness. I am also going to prioritize grinding before studying as I often get side track with studying and then my volume really suffers! But my monthly goal of 80k hands is staying the same, not going to change the goal because something came up today. I took some pictures off the website for my apartments gym where I do my workouts.

I think that is it for today. Going to ride our bikes (8 miles) over to her parents house to have dinner. It's almost 8pm now! So have to get going as they are waiting on me! Tomorrow after I finish 5k hands I'll provide another update and also have one hour or so of my first coaching session tomorrow.

Have a great night
Austin

In, and not just bc we both clearly enjoy Rounders (what poker player doesn't?!). The pictures are a nice touch :). Best of luck!

Your graph looks amazing. How instrumental was getting a coach in this? Werre you just working through run it once learning paths to reach this level?

glgl mate!

Quick update: Finished my first coaching session yesterday and had some fantastic results based on adjustments I made through BB defense and some post flop play as well with check raising or continuing vs different sizes etc. Won't get into too much detail on this, but long story short I was just a nit in the BB and leaving a lot of money on the table based on my view point of what hands were strong enough to play from OOP and not really considering the pot odds or profitability of certain hands compared to losing -100bb/100. I accepted my BB play was fine based on I was losing less than -100bb/100 so thought it was just normal. When I have a bigger sample I will be able to compare the adjustments I made yesterday to my previous win rate from the BB and see how night & day it is! Was a huge improvement session one and I ran way below EV as well. Finally had some some crushing sessions like Demondoink was having in his games. Before a "great" session for me was 10-20bb/100, maybe as high as 30bb/100 for some of my best sessions. Where Demon I see him post some massive bb/100 win rates in his journal that was quite inspiring.

I made a pace chart to help me stay focused with how many hands minimum I need to play a day to stay on pace for volume and gym workouts. I will try and go above and beyond, but I think these were realistic goals for the time being; since I was so inconsistent in the past and just trying to build a routine, need to start off some what small, but also try and go beyond it and not just meet minimum standards.

Also Demondoink where it shows the blue line for BB won on the graph, how do you change this to currency like in your journal? Here is a link to "Sundays Massacre" (I will remove this link if you want me to) but when I right click to configure the graph on poker tracker it just shows I can adjust the thickness of the line and not change BB to currency. Only lets me change Currency / BB on the main graph tab. If anyone knows how to change this let me know. I looked at PT4 forums and it just says right click, but I am not seeing an option. Thanks in advance!

Day 2 complete. It's almost 2am now and still need to hit the gym. These are my total results so far. Just an epic heater! I still need to download the hands from ignition and check out a few spots where I might of got bluffed or made a good fold? Maybe tomorrow I'll post some hand HH of some interesting spots.

Because I have been playing late at night, just going to be posting total results I think... hard to keep track of day 1, day 2, Monday, Wednesday etc... Gets all mixed when you are playing late a night.

Good luck man!

Yesterday I skipped going to the gym and broke the chain of consistency! But I am still determined to make sure I get those 40 miles in by the end of the month. Might actually do a late night session right now because I am extremely annoyed with the hand below!!!!! It's almost 2am here, but I usually try not to sleep until I complete everything I want to get done.

There are a lot of videos that talk about having a morning routine, but there are also a lot of people (myself included) that are not morning people. Those people who grind out their professions from 9-5 or even people that are "lions" who wake up at 5am and sleep at 10pm who are trying to be successful in life, this same schedule can be applied for people who wake up late. Just make your schedule 12pm - 5am. It's still the same amount of hours it just depends on how wisely you use your time. Just don't make excuses on waking up late then not wanting to do anything after 10pm because it's late. That is just a lazy mindset. Just handle your business.

This hand in question I have no idea what happened because for some reason I got disconnected on the river! Went to go shove where I am pretty sure person has JJ here maybe slow played KK or AA the way the hand was played. Then boom disconnected! Which doesn't make any sense because I could still go online and as soon as the hand was over I could rejoin tables again, so my internet was never actually down, just ignition some how... Doesn't happen often, but this is 2nd time for me this has happened. This is the issue with stars vs other sites. Have to deal with this bull shit. At least let me go all in before you kick me off the table. The other annoying part about this is PT4 didn't pick up the HH, so have to wait 24 hours to figure out what happened.

With all of that said, my GF is going out of town for 2 days to help her sister up north with some wedding stuff (Her sister gets married next month). This gives me two days to just fucking grind like a madman! And also hit the gym like a madman! Play a session, hit the gym, play a session, hit the gym again, play another session, etc etc. Just have to hope games are running when I wake up until I go to bed. Which I think they should because Friday and Saturday are usually some of the best days. I will have to update graphs and stuff later... Actually I will share graph below, but this could be off like $100-$150 depending on that hand I got disconnected on and also the the three other tables, which were 1 small pot and 1 medium pot but those were at 50NL, so shouldn't have much of an impact. but who knows, maybe the river went check check and I won the hand and it's actually +$100 instead? That would be pretty cool. I'll find out early Saturday morning once I download the hands. I don't think there is anyway I can recover it currently. Graph below is all hands so far. I actually lost around 4 buy-ins on 50NL tonight. Still running well on 200NL except that disconnect... Ok gym time that is enough complaining for me. Had to get it off my chest! Now it's time to get some weights off my chest at the gym :-)

Ok.. just checked my ignition balance and I'm down an extra $200 from my actual session graph, so I am pretty sure that disconnect cost me the pot. At least I know the results... ☹

5th - 9th: I'm at 7.25 miles of cardio for the month with my goal being 40 miles, so right on pace. Total hands played is around 11,000 so far The graph above just subtract about $300-$400 as I had a losing day today, but I am unable to download hands right now as ignition is doing server maintenance or something. It is actually more annoying than it sounds because the post above where I had QQ for top set, after waiting 24 hours to download the hands I am still unable to! I am just going to study a little bit and hit the gym again. Would be great if I could do 60 miles this month instead of 40 and pass my goal. Each month I want to up the number on my goals to push my potential. Just the first month I set small and more realistic goals, but I know I am capable of far greater numbers.

When I develop a cold call range in the SB because we are deeper stack this happens:

Embrace your Demon Voice

Anyone of you UFC fans?

Who are you betting on Saturday night Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier 3 ? I will be betting & rooting for Poirier.

Good luck my man!. finally read through this. Looks like it is going well!!!

Guy called me on the river with black jacks! That's amazing

Update for all hands played through the 11th on the graph below. Graph has become some what stagnant the last couple of days, running just about 3 buy-ins below EV. I did play 4,000+ hands on the 12th, which I will download tomorrow night. I am 7000 hands below pace for the month in order to reach 80k hands. Which, means I need to play roughly 3400 hands a day instead of 3,000 to catch up. I also have my brother's birthday coming up at the end of month, which I am trying to take a couple days off so I can travel out of state to see my family.

However, I will need to get ahead of pace in order to do that. The main issue I am having right now are the games are starting late after noon, around 4pm. It still gives me plenty of time to grind from 4pm - midnight to get all my hands in, just need to make sure I have no distractions as I play catch up. It's hard not to go to dinner! I would love to be able to play noon until 5pm then have a 2-3 break for dinner before another session. I think if games were running 24 hrs a day as they are on PokerStars I would have no issues getting volume in. Overall, I am still crushing and not worried about the couple days of being flat.

In terms of of the gym I am only half a mile behind pace on the month, but I just did a 4 mile run, which really killed my legs. I just kept telling myself "I'M NOT TIRED, I'M NOT TIRED, I'M NOT TIRED." Until I completed my goal. Gianna for the Milwaukee Bucks told himself something similar when he got the leg injury. He refused to watch the replay because he knew if he saw it, it might look worse than what he felt. He kept telling himself that "I'm not hurt, I'm healthy etc" and he probably had the fastest NBA recovery for such a freak injury I have ever seen. Really goes to show the David Goggins 40% rule has a huge impact if you are able to control your mind and not let your mind control you.

Have my 2nd coaching session with Tyler tomorrow, which he has been a big help even outside of our weekly coaching call. Honestly I have no idea what he will have me focus on tomorrow. I asked him so many questions throughout the week it is hard to narrow the focus down to one topic. Tyler has coached many players before me though, so just have to trust whatever process he has me do. It's a long 3-4 month journey, so we should have time to cover almost everything (I hope).

The mental game of of poker is a very real problem for 99% of poker players, if not 100%! Yesterday July 14th, I faced a lot of adversity over a small 2,000 hand sample. These are the moments that break or make poker players and how they deal with the adversity.

The session started off with a few coolers, mostly in late position formations CO, BTN, SB, & BB; KK vs AA, AK vs KK, AK vs QQ, QQ vs AA, etc. As I type this I realize that listing out the hands I lost is a mental leak in itself because I'm dwelling on past results. A lot of people you see posting things will only post the good times and go quiet when times are tough. I want to share what it is really like being a low stakes professional for others who are trying to make it their future to make it to become a pro or to make it to higher stakes.

Starting out the first half of my session down 4 buy-ins I felt happy with my play, but any time I am down around 4 buy-ins I usually take a break for a minimum of 10 minutes. I close my tables and look at PT4 for my biggest winning and losing pots. When checking the results it's important to review both sides to make sure it's just variance and you are not actually playing bad. There is a discomfort feeling that I lost 4 pots of 200bb and only won one pot of 50bb during this first half of my session. Real poker is not like those YouTube vloggers that managed to hit 2-3 sets and pick up aces and kings every session. They are betraying a false reality of the adversity everyone faces at one point in time. After clicking through the replayer and double checking the solver to make sure my bet size or line was approved I went outside for a break.

Breaks are very important for your mental game and when I say break I mean taking your mind completely away from work. In the past I was taking breaks on my computer, where I would watch YouTube, check social media, emails, sports, etc etc. It's more important to have your work place NOT also be your break place in order to completely reset your mind of any negative or even high emotions. During my break I decided to take a walk outside for 20 minutes and just enjoy the weather. I should have taken pictures actually as we had a thunderstorm warning right before I went outside. The clouds were beautiful and I could see the sky light up from the lightening on the horizon with small gust of wind blowing. Just enjoying life and your environment. This is a picture I took off google but of the city I live in and a resemblance of a thunderstorm we had yesterday.

After my break I came back inside and watched about 5 minutes of the 3rd quarter for NBA Suns @ Bucks and the game just looked terrible to me in all aspects of basketball. People passing the ball and bobbling it around as if it was volleyball, playing one on one instead of team basketball, forcing shots, and just bad fundamentals for what basketball is supposed to be about. Then of course there are the refs where you get a foul for just being too close to a player. The announcer actually had a funny quote "You are not allowed to foul someone, but you are also not allowed to appear to foul someone." I am not sure if he is trying to defend the ref's bad calls or just trying to be funny. Game did not appear to be worth watching and was just a form of procrastination anyways, so shut it off and went back to playing poker.

The second half of my session ended up being really short as I started to feel like a victim and seriously tilted! Another side of me came out where I was saying "WTF! I CAN'T WIN A FUCKING HAND." Once these words came out, I knew I was done for the day. Poker isn't going any where and the money is not going to change my life today. Quitting and walking away is one of the most important skills you can have in poker. A lot of high stake games evolve around recs or regs that are tilted. Again still dwelling on the results, in the first few hands of my session and literally the very first hand back from my break I pick up JJ in the BB, button raises, hero 3bets BB, BTN 4bets, and hero shoves and BTN snaps aces. "Off to a great start" I say to myself and try and laugh it off. Few hands later BvB I pick up 84d on a Ad5x2d board where SB cbets, I raise, sb calls. Turn and river brick but I decided with no sdv, blocking 43s and because villain didn't 3 bet or use a normal value size for a strong hand that I could just triple off here even with diamonds (negative blockers), but ended up getting snapped by A2o. At this point I am stuck around 6 buy-ins for the day, but the session continues. The session continues battling back and forth mostly with some small & medium pots. Then this happens which was my breaking point:

"Fucking rigged" I say to myself and wait for my BB to come around and log off. Just closed everything then went on whatsapp and complain to my friend (DON'T DO THIS) It doesn't help you and no one wants to hear you complain. There is no upside to venting like this. You are logged off and what is done is done and there is nothing that is going to change it. Just need to learn to compartmentalize these results until you review the session later to see if it's just bad play or variance. Another reason I can confirm I was tilted is when I complained about losing this hand and being a victim where "I am getting coolered and can't even win as a 90%+ favorite" that I got the board texture wrong where I said the river was a Q! You know how poker players are always blaming the river!

With that said today is a new day, I woke up at 3am actually. I tend to sleep way earlier than I usually do when I have a really bad session. I think of it as a hard reset and an easy way to get rid of any negative emotions and clear your head. The bright side of this adversity is I end up fixing my sleep cycle a little bit, get studying done earlier so it doesn't interfere with grinding hours, accomplish going to the gym earlier, and last by not least being able to eat breakfast in the morning instead of 12-2pm when I usually wake up.

Not much of a transition, but I would add yesterday everything was going perfect as planned until the negative poker results. All my studying was done early before 2pm, ate a cobb salad for lunch, went to the park and got some exercise playing with my 3 nieces. I will have to say it was a well balanced day. I am proud of how I played and how I balanced my day, but I am not proud of my emotional reaction to variance. The emotional reaction is not just losing, but a combination of other factors as well. Having gone through Eliot's A-game Masterclass I know hydration, healthy eating, enough sleep, and exercise are all variables in these emotional outburst if you do not have enough of them. Also if you are not thinking long term, for 100k hands, 500k hands, or even in a million hands this short term variance is going to damage you emotionally. However, when you look at a graph of a million hands, can you even notice a 7 buy-in swing? You need a magnify class in order to notice it. This needs to be my focus going forward, just longevity in the game where daily and weekly results have no impact on me emotionally. This is what my bankroll is for, it is meant to be able to handle the risk of ruin, where I shouldn't even blink if I lose 7-15 buy-ins.

This is a motivational video for being blind to the results you are having and to trust the process that I really enjoy!

Here is my session from yesterday where in terms of BB/100 I lost -25.29 / 100 with the adjusted win rate of +0.85 bb / 100. I was just getting smashed on 200NL though and winning on 50NL.

I have also set some new cardio goals and broke down the next 3 months for my coaching in terms of volume goals. Instead of doing 80k hands this month, I am just going to aim for 72k hands, which is a more precise number for obtaining 250k hands over the contract. For cardio going forward I am going to aim for 2 miles every day that I can, except for when I am out of town. Before my cardio was set for 40 miles this month, which would be 1.5 miles per day from when I started. I am increasing my exercise and decreasing my volume. This is a better long term vision to have.

Also having talked to other members on this site and taking some advice from DemonDoink on his journal I am attempting to do some cold showers, at least for a few seconds. The last thing I want to do is meditation but I have never looked deeply into it. I have practiced some breathing exercises, but never fully got into mediation even though so many people speak wonders about it. This is something I have to look more into on how to do it properly. One of the goals I want to have is to be numb to the results I have. Back in the day (pre-black Friday) when I was first getting started in poker I would play $16 SNGs and play 100 games a day. I wouldn't care about the results when I was grinding these SNGs, I knew my ROI and how much I wanted to make each month. With a simple calculation, I knew I would be comfortable with my bills and have extra money with a hundred games a day. I would play 15-20 tables at a time for the 9 max turbos until I finished the 100 games, then I would just get off the computer and go on about my life. I never knew if I won or lost most of the days, just knew by the end of month I would have roughly X amount of money. I need to do this again for cash games, where I just set a goal for number of hands played and ignore, be numb to, or be stoic about the results. Just go on about your day and have a happy life knowing long term you have a bright future.

Nice blog, gl!

Great blog. GL on the cold showers. When I first started I gradually worked towards the coldest setting and now after regular shower I just go straight to full cold. Day by day you will get there!

I suggest you check out Wim Hof app on mobile phone. He's famous for taking cold baths and the app has some good free exercises like breathing, stretching, and the cold showers.

When the deck hits you in the face, smile and stay humble.

Facing a cold 5bet EP vs MP vs CO vs SB almost 300bb deep
Spoiler

Facing a 17x pot shove with bottom set!
Spoiler

This is what it looks like when the deck hits you in the face and your reads are on point!

It is important to stay humble a long this journey for such a great session, I'm sure I'll have opposite sessions a long the way. I would like to take a moment to thank my friend Mike who I study with almost every day and helped me get started online, my coach Tyler Forrester for fixing my BB defense and many leaks I still have, Steve Paul for doing the student review and teaching me to overbet on certain boards, Demondoink with his inspiration to take cold showers and many other inspirational things he mentions in his journal, HawksWin for a lot of pool exploits, and lastly my discord group which I'll keep as anonymous.

With that said it's almost 3:00am here, I think I want McDonalds, I know it's bad for me but I want to celebrate with a "Happy Meal."

I decided to give another poker site a try and I have to say I like this new site! I am contemplating moving most of my volume to this site. Won't be able to download the hole cards and see if I got bluffed or not, but the rake back and better software seems really nice!

Maybe HawksWin can answer this, but if I want to combine ignition downloaded hands into the same database as another poker site that only does live import I think... How would you do this? I am not even sure where PT4 keeps the live import HH's because the folder where I download hands from don't contain any live imported hands. PT4 just archives these hands somewhere right away. I would like to see my results from both sites at the same time, same graph, overall stats, etc. I created an alias so I have "hero" for ignition combined with "username" from other site, so I will see my stats for the live import, but you know how PT4 misses some hands from zone some times. Debating if I should move the downloaded hands into another folder and import them again under my "live import" database? Won't double the HH # right? Just show duplicates? I would hit you up on discord, but I promised myself and made a bet with my GF I wouldn't go on discord until I'm caught up with my monthly volume. I should be caught up by Tuesday night. Especially with this new site, way more traffic!

I feel as if I can make my own schedule now and not have to wait until the evenings to actually get some volume in. Can start as soon as I wake up and still enjoy family dinners in the evenings. I am very excited about having a 2nd site option. I never wanted to go on it because I heard it was nitty! Played a tiny sample today and seems pretty standard to me, but haven't tried 200NL yet.

Here is my monthly progress, nice heater after a 20k hand break even stretch.

Hi All! Last minute plan to go to Vegas for the weekend for nieces bday. Will just go ahead and update now since I will be gone for the weekend. Not sure how much poker I'll play, but I assume I'll play a couple hours at least each day and will take pictures of some of the action when I can.

I put in a lot of cardio at the gym today and did a "fast" on top of that. It was more of starvation than an actual fast though. My body has enough fat on it where it's not going to starve though LOL. I weighed in at 208 lbs this morning and a healthy weight for me is around 175 lbs. Was hoping to workout hard this weekend and just do a super low calorie intake to drop some LBs over the weekend and next couple of weeks, but doesn't look like that plan is going to happen any more, so will have to continue this on Monday when I get back. GF's sister is getting married in August so also want to lose weight for that. There are so many diets and workouts with healthy habits, moderation, consistency etc. I think what works best for me is just doing something extreme and then seeing the results so I can stick with healthy eating after. The 6-18 month plan of just developing healthy habits and consistency; I just end up falling off the horse and over the years this hasn't worked out well for me. I hope I can drop about 20 lbs in a month, but I know realistic know or a healthy number is closer to 5 lbs. I do not think over training is a negative thing, I just don't think anyone truly know what is correct. Much like poker there are many styles that win money, just like there are many diets and exercise that lose weight. Water fast, egg diets, keto, carnivore, vegetarian, etc etc. For me personally I love salads but often over do it on the dressing, so I will try and do more of a carnivore diet and just eat a bunch of chicken when I get back. If I can manage to run about 10 miles a day and probably eat half a chicken or a hole chicken each day I think I'll lose quite a bit of weight over the course of a week. That is going to be my plan for next week. I started it today where my first gym session was 4 miles, I am going back to the gym after I post this to do another 6 miles though. Make myself extremely tired so I can go to bed early and just enjoy Vegas for the weekend.

Two days ago ate at a place called Zupas, pictures below of the salad / soup I ate. Salad was really good! The soup taste what it sounds like, but I don't think I'm a fan of that flavor of soup. I love enchiladas as a food, just not as a soup.

Poker I'll show my graph from July 6th - present time. July 6th was when I started coaching with Tyler. Still have quite a few leaks to fix as against some bigger size 3bets / 4bets or even larger 4x-5x RFI sizing I am a bit timid. Tyler is helping me break out of this shell and understand what range they are actually doing this with and being ok to 3bet against such a range. Even though it's a tight range, it's not well protected with nutted hands. Also it's mainly going to be a lot of weak players using this size as well unless your name is Stefan. When I come back next week my goal Mon-Friday is going to be to play 21,600 hands or 4,320 hands a day. Usually I need around 2,700 hands a day to stay on pace for 250k over a 3 month span. Because I'll miss poker Fri, Sat, and Sunday these 8100 hands will be made up Mon-Friday. Important for me to go over these numbers ahead of time, so I don't get anxiety and feel over whelmed with volume when I get back. Often if I don't work out the numbers, I get stressed trying to do everything in one day. This way I have a plan in place going forward with working out and volume. The graph below is 19 buy-ins below EV. I am very pleased with my win rate with being so far below EV over this smallish sample. In terms of BB/100 it's 3.52bb/100 below EV. Which I know will happen quite often even over 500k hands I think this might be common.

That is all for now. Will upload some pictures Monday of my Vegas trip if I do end up going to the casino, which is about a 90% chance I go! Off to the gym!

Vegas trip went well. I only played one session though, in for $1k out for roughly $1500. It was a rocky start of running bad and just not believing people even with all the live reads. Where my mind says folds based on all my data points and my hand throws in the chips to call. I think I was right with action + mind on the same page about one time out of eleven. It's always good to donate to the fish to make sure they have a good time though. Then hearing the young kids talk about it "Damn (insert name) you should keep playing, that is like $118/hr." Then the kid responds with "I usually like to stop around 5x" as if it's common LOL. This is the same kid who didn't know when it was his turn or would min 3bet after a bet and two callers LOL. It was hard to contain my laughter in some of these spots as live games are just so different than online. I was only playing $1/$3 where there was one nit at the table and 6 other recs (8 handed). I was licking my chops but couldn't get much going.

I bounced back towards the end of my session when a whale came to the table, he was up around $20k+ he said on baccarat and just came with his buddy to play poker for fun before they went to dinner. When the whale pulled out a fat stack of 100s! and asked what the max buy-in was I knew I was in for a wild ride. Dealer said "$300" and he responded with "that is no fun, might as well go all in every hand." First hand they sat down they both went all in dark $300 each, I think it was J2o vs 75o something like this. Next hand I pick up Q10h btn, whale opens CO $35 (11x) but RFI sizing and ranges go out the window when whales sit down so I of course call. Flop T75ss. Whale bets $50, I shove and whale snaps with JTo. QT holds up. Next hand his friend dares him go all in dark again so he does. His friend calls him with A4o. board A7725. Whale turns of a 2.... then a 7! LOL

A few more hands go by and I have to say Vegas nits are the absolute worst! These guys are going all in dark almost every other hand or opening $30-$75 without any limps, just grabbing stacks of chips and splashing the pot. When game is this good, you can't really think in terms of Big blinds. Just focus on making a pair or having a decent strong hand top 20-25% of hands or so and hold on tight! This hand UTG all in dark before he gets his cards as he has done the previous two hands, he doesn't care if it's his turn to act or not, he just leaves his stack across the line and people can do whatever they want. Guy in MP tanks for about 90 seconds, here I think he is hollywood with the whale to act behind him. Whale sitting on my direct right makes a comment "Not that serious, taking way too long for $300" and the Vegas nit eventually folds. Whale gives his friend action and calls blind! and they go HU. Board runs out J7265. UTG shows J9o and whale shows 43o LOL. Fantastic game! The Vegas nit smiles and says "See that is why I folded AK!" He is proud of this fold! This is the worst player for the game. How do you not give whales action with AK? Just go home if you are going to fold AK to people shoving dark!

Next big pot I played vs them before they went to dinner, whale opens $35 MP, I call CO 55, BTN calls behind 3 ways. Flop ($109) 543hh. Whale all in $500ish, I am not one to waste time and snap with 55 and to my surprised BTN snaps as well ($350). I had around $400 and change here so pot ends up being around $1250. Board runs out 543TK. Whale shows 52o, Sb 33, and hero scoops with the case 5 for top set. They left to dinner shortly after this, but his friend played all in blind his last 5 hands just reloading 300 each time as his friend went to the bathroom. I'm glad the whales won in baccarat. I think they only donated around $2k-$2.5k as they did win some hands. It seemed only me and two other guys were giving them action. Anyone else who called their bets preflop ended up always having JJ+ or AK. Makes me wonder if people are actually folding ATo or 77 type hands to them. People were scared to put in $30-$75 preflop with their small pairs, SCs, or weaker off suite broadways. When you have a hand like JTo here it's a monster preflop compared to their ranges. There is nothing wrong with playing bingo against whales.

I heard many comments in Vegas about how people "don't want to play against maniacs." Does this make any sense to anyone? Last time I went to Vegas one lady actually said "Bring us someone tighter, that guy played too crazy." Are people going to just pay rake and cooler other nits or are they there to make money?

One of my FAILED bluff attempts early in the session. I mean this play has to be pretty bad!!! I call a $10 bet preflop and goes 7 ways to the flop ($70) 875r. SB bets $20, BB raises to $50. SB asked him "Do you already have it?" with still 5 other players left to act. Everyone folds to the donkey (ME!!!!) Who thinks "well I block the nuts and I don't really care if he has it, maybe I'll get there." 3bet to $135. BB ask "how much do you have?" He literally wanted me to count my chips so he can go all in for the exact amount. I don't have my chips covered and dealer tell him that I don't have to count my stack. It was only like $135 behind and kid has me well covered. After some hollywood he eventually goes all in and I snap of course being pot committed at this point with an OE. Just hoping he has two pair or set so my outs are clean. I told him I heard him say he already has it but didn't care. His 64o held up on a 87592 run out. I think these are the types of plays you have to make from time to time with low SDV and decent equity to give these fish action. No one likes when you tank and are trying to make calculations in your head of the highest EV play on every street. Just check your ego at the door, loosen up, have fun, and just play simple poker. Live poker is easy enough where you don't have to take it that serious to make some decent money.

Anyways I only took one picture since I only played one session and didn't eat out, so no food pics either. Just some home cooked meals visiting family. This week back to online poker for a couple weeks playing catch up on some volume. Also bought some groceries this morning, so just going to focus on veggies, eggs, and chicken this week as my "diet." It's not really a diet, it's all food I like! So should be sustainable long term. Just cutting out all the processed foods, fried foods, red meats, and dairy. I am not sure what my gym routine is going to look like this week. Last week I wanted to run 10 miles a day to lose weight, but research I was doing just talked about lifting heavy to burn the most fat, then finish off your workouts with some high intensity cardio rather than long jogs. That is what I'm going to focus on. Not going to set time limits or distance to run. Just try and push myself to my limits on the weights and do some walk - run - walk - run workouts to finish off each session. Then next Monday I'll check my weight and see where I'm at. I will likely play 10-20k hands before my next update. Maybe wait for Friday as a weekly recap. Time to go start my first session of the week :-)

That was a great read!

Only played 10k hands since my last update and results have been stagnant as you can see in the graph below. I am still having one of my best months, but doesn't look like I'll achieve that $10,000 milestone I was hoping for. Been under the weather the last two days, but hopefully feeling better tomorrow (Friday) so I may put in some extra volume. I redid my pace chart for 2,360 hands a day which will go from July 6th - Oct 19th for 250k hands. This puts me on pace with my coaching.

I am still making some decent size blunders despite my win rate. It's spots where there is a 4-straight on the board and the K hits the river in a 3BP, where I XC flop cbet, turn XX, and I know opponent has AK which I can't beat. I check to let them value bet, but I go for a fancy check raise knowing they only have one pair and being check raised on the river is pretty nutted usually, but I keep getting snapped off by this AK. If only I managed to have "it" once in a while my win rate would be even better.

I did find another error as I filtered for all my aces this year because I felt I wasn't getting much action the last couple of days whenever I 4bet, so I wanted to see what they had. Most of the time, 90% or so, they were making reasonable laydowns with AQo, AJs, 87s, or 77 etc. The error I was making though was my 4bet sizing has been way too large! When I was going 2.5x to even 3.5x in some spots and looking back at it I just ask myself two questions 1) What was I thinking? 2) What was I afraid of? Aces doesn't need protection! My sizing was so large I was killing my own action. Today I managed to fix that where they will 3bet to 9bb (PSB) and I will make it 21bb but they were still folding. Some spots were a little surprising such as BvB where they are folding IP, which is quite astonishing because the pool already under 3 bets as it is. That is what I'm going to be focused on this weekend is using smaller 4 bet sizing and I also need to check my 4bet success rate to see how many more bluffs I can mix in. There are a few of these hands where they are folding JJ-99, AJs, and AKo! To Normal size 4bets!

Here is a hand where I thought the min 3bet was someone just messing around, as usually the min 3bets are really weak, combined with the fact it's a deeper stack player likely points to a weaker player in my pool. I tried making an exploitative 4bet and it went a little something like this:

Other times my blunders don't work out so well, but just to show you all what I mean by deeper stack players are usually weaker, in this hand guy cold calls 3bet, then called the 4 bet. Based on this board texture and my hand this is a pretty large blunder to shove this flop. Got to the flop with a 1-SPR and didn't know what to do...

That is pretty much it for the update, will try and update again after the weekend. Being a little sick, I can't do much else besides stay home. Don't want to get anyone else sick, so not going to the gym, visit family, or outside in general unless I have to. I am guessing by Sunday I'll be better! It's just a small cough and running nose, but just trying to stay hygienic, drink lot of water, continue to take my vitamins, and get lots of rest; the body will do the rest with the recovery.

Managed to lose 11 out of my last 12 sessions, which I don't think has ever happened in my entire career. ☹ [Click smiling face for how I feel]

Ouch. That is the nature of Zone or any ff game. It will turn around ten fold just hang in there.

Things haven't been going well in August or since July 27th when my downswing started. Truthfully, I am having a hard time mentally dealing with it. I hate complaining sometimes but struggling to find answers. Working with my coach, study group, drilling on wizard, and even purchased PIO finally. I feel as if my skill level has increased but results have gotten worse! On the bright side the downswing forced me to grow as a player because when your back is against the ropes your only choice is to quit or fight and I never quit!

I am going to be out of town the next three days, so won’t have a chance to put in any volume, which maybe a good thing. The most frustrating part about some of these days I am losing is that I will get enough sleep, have a salad for lunch, study before my session so I don’t go in cold, then just get absolutely annihilated in my session. Makes me question if it’s just variance or not. One big thing Tyler helped me approve on was NOT bluff catching vs some bigger sizes. Once we filtered this where I was bluff catching with decent bluff catchers but getting shown value 90% the obvious choice was just to start folding even if you are top of your range. I still bluff catch in the wrong spots sometimes, but I try and use entire time bank before I do bluff catch the spot and review if my range is protected, blockers / unblockers, pool tendency etc. I only have 15 seconds to think through it all though, so try and bluff catch or not bluff catch to the best of my abilities.

I feel I have gotten better at this, but wrong side of coolers still. Two hands come to mind from the last couple of days where I cold call Jd10d in the SB, got a T83dd flop and I took a donk bet 1/3 – ¾ - 1/3 line and faced a river raise after making a flush! I elected to fold this spot (timed out actually, but I think I was going to fold anyways) thinking BB’s range with the pot being 3 way to the flop is going to have so many QdXd+ hands and with a 8-4-3 of diamonds on the board I didn’t’ see a ton of worse flushes he could have, so I folded and ended up being bluffed by 5h5s! No idea how he even floats the flop, let a lone the turn, then bluffing the river as a raise without a diamond! Just a spot where my 1/3 river bet induced a spazz. This hand was still in my mind the next day where I raise T9h got a 542hhh board and ran into QhJh. Tariq made a fold with a 8h4h hand in a similar spot which went through my mind, but just one of those spots where I end up having bad timing and should call one hand and fold the other… Yesterday had 3 flushes all loses to boats or higher flushes, so just going through this bad spill for the last 35k hands or so. I hope the weekend off will bring some peace of mind of some kind as I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed every month! This is my only losing month of the year so far; hopefully can bounce back 2nd half of the month though.

Below I wanted to compare some stats of before coaching and after coaching, so I am not result oriented during this bad run. I know I have had some negative thoughts recently and have been questioning if I am getting better or coaching isn’t working for me. Rather than base it on results, as variance can play mind tricks on you, thought it was best to just look at the overall stats. Also I don't think I'm the easiest person to coach as I am not "all ears" as people say. I have strong opinions but try and keep an open mind. Some times I word things where I come off defensive but I try and make it a positive discussion to better my game.

Before coaching
VPIP 21
PFR 18
3BET 9
WINRATE 6.73bb/100
ADJ WINRATE 6.09
Cbet FTR: 63 - 49 - 46

After coaching
VPIP 24
PFR 20
3BET 11
WIN RATE 5.35bb / 100)
ADJ WIN RATE 7.98bb/100
Cbet FTR: 63-44-48

*Win rate is pretty heavily influenced by 50NL as I am losing around -12bb/100 during this stretch on 200NL.

Stat wise and adjusted win rate I think there is a clear improvement to my game, so I want to chalk up the downswing to variance. However, Tyler is finding a lot of marginal river calls still vs some bigger sizes that makes me think I am still playing bad. Study group is finding some cbets where I use 1/3 instead of 1/2 that can lead to a lot of miss value or fold equity on later streets, which can really add up over time. Below I'll share graphs of my overall results, then results of each stake of 50NL & 200NL. All games are fast fold anonymous. I think I would do well on regular tables, but I enjoy the fast fold games more and I think their hourly potential is much higher, so just want to master this format. Depending on my schedule and times games are running I might have to mix in some regular tables in the future though.

Side note: picture(s) of dog my GF & I are babysitting last two days for my GF's sister as she prepares for her wedding this weekend. Puppy is only 4 months old and was a gift from her brother. Dog has a lot of energy as you would expect from a puppy but also just loves sleeping on my lap when I work or go for a drive. The fun together makes me want a dog, but the responsibility with a dog reinforces I don't have a lot of time for a pet as you are limited to places you can travel, especially if the dog is clingy and can't be left home alone for the day. Puppy does bring a lot of happiness to me during my losing sessions, but don't think I am ready for a dog full time.

Going to play one more session tonight before we leave out of town tomorrow morning. Should be able to get in 1500-2000 hands, but honestly if I come up a couple of buy-ins I might end the session early just to have some confidence on my trip before I leave. I will say this month my stats appear even better in my eyes at least 23/19/13 with cbet FTR of 62-43-50. The 3bet is a little high, mostly due to BTN vs CO formation where I was 3 betting too many SCs, AXs, ATo, KJo etc instead of just folding preflop. Forced action a bit too much even vs 3bb opens. I need to put some extra emphasis on 3bb opens vs 2bb-2.5bb and treat them differently. I was trying to treat them the same because pool just clicks 3x as one of the site buttons and didn't want to be exploited against people that just raise 3x with their entire range. I think I got into my own head on this one though and was leveling myself a bit.

My next update will be at the 100k hand mark, hopefully I recover by then, doubtful, but as long as I am heading back in the right direction I'll be happy. Not sure how many more losing sessions I can take before I decide to just drop down levels and take the easier money.

During this downswing I felt like my back was against the ropes and have been studying none stop! With the help of Shaun Pauwels and Tyler I am FINALLY starting to bounce back. During this stretch I had a 15 out of 20 losing session stretch on 200NL, which has never happened in my career! I have been playing poker for more than a decade and I have never encountered a 25 buy-in+ swing (Maybe in SNGS). I know pokerdope shows these swings are pretty common, but for whatever reason whether it be live poker or micro / low stakes online against soft player pools, this type of "variance" I have never experienced before. I put variance in quotes because it turns out I am actually a fish! Tyler has been helping me a lot with my frequencies to make sure I am not too tight or not too loose as he as told me he has never seen anyone lose over a million hands with the correct frequencies. Just wants me to focus more on the longer term and not the 10k-50k hand stretches as we can't control the short term results. This has helped me a lot with my preflop game. Then I have been making so many theoretically mistakes, where I'm just burning money vs players who know what they are doing. Also trying to follow wizard's advice, but not applying it correctly because the pool has different ranges, just made me a fish in the pool.

Post flop Shaun Pauwels has helped me a ton over about 2hrs of coaching. He was able to make two videos for me reviewing one of my sessions and was able to plug the biggest leak(s) of mine and that is betting OOP and choosing too big of a size a long with it. My redline went from losing -10.91bb/100 to being close to break even. This is just over a couple thousand hands though. In either case the difference is night & day. Once I stopped cbetting so much OOP, around 48% of my range, and just started checking most of my range on 9 high boards and lower as a range check, which is supposed to happen 91% of the time on these boards! I was able to book a couple of winning sessions. If only I followed his advice in his first video for cbetting OOP in SRP then maybe this downswing could have been avoided. You can see in the comments I made an argument I was winning when cbetting OOP, but maybe by checking and mixing in more check raises I will be able to win even more!

Yesterday I spent about 6 hours, maybe a little more studying a bunch of hands and making sure Shaun's advice was correct on the solver. Going through these hundreds of hands takes a considerable amount of time. Not just what I am doing with my exact hand, but also checking what I am doing with my range in those spots he pointed out. Then I also found a really great youtube channel by Jarretman, one of the 500z regs. I really like his style of play and wish he was a RIO coach, but with his youtube channel able to get a lot of FREE information on how to play solid poker. I am working my way through his 50 videos, checking his hands on solvers, comparing his lines and sizes to my own, and trying to fix more leaks in my game. I think this week has been a huge improvement to my game, I hope the results will follow suit.

Can't post any graphs at this time, as it's not a lot of hands between my last post either as I was out of town. I am still down around -$1900 on the month and a little more going back to July 27th. I should be able to recover by the end of the month though with these new found skills! I have two databases for ignition, one for downloaded hands where you can view the hole cards 24 hours after and one for live import. Yesterday I forgot to switch my database and was doing live import on my downloaded hands database. Now I'm importing all the files back into a new downloaded hand database, so I'll be able to view hole cards for yesterday's session. I am pretty meticulous about reviewing any pots I lost $25+ on the following day as well as some winning pots where I get to see if they are making nitty folds to over bets and I'm missing value with my sizes or if I'm checking too much. There are a couple more spots I plugged today. I don't want to give all the info away or the player pool will get really tough!

If you are interested in Shaun's coaching this is the link to contact him. I'm going to continue to mix in theory + exploits going forward, but will focus more on building a strong GTO background so I can exploit correctly. I think making my own path and the results I have had thus far has only been successful because I have been playing soft pools for many years. My "fear of success" in terms of moving up levels as Tendler calls it stims from not having a solid foundation and confidence to beat the better players. This will be my focus this week. Just binge watching videos, double checking the solvers, checking PT4 to see if I'm winning / losing in that spot etc etc. Either when I reach peak profit again or I think Saturday / Sunday will be my next update whatever comes first.

It doesn't feel like this downswing is ever going to end. I was looking at my graphs right now for before I got poker coaching and after I got poker coaching and I have to say I think I will just be happier going back to being nittier and ignoring frequencies for my RFI ranges. My results were a lot smoother, and I didn't have all the stress I have now.

Poker Coaching Graph

Before Poker Coaching

The strange thing is I was 3 betting more aggressively, above GTO frequencies from almost every position besides BB, which I under 3 bet that position. After watching Gary's video yesterday I am tempted to go back to my old style. If you look closely at the poker coaching graph at the very end, it just jumps off a cliff! I am not even sure how much I lost yesterday yet. Lost around 7 buy-ins I think in 30 minutes being flush over flush, AA/KK vs sets (squeezed pots), where I went from being up 3 buy-ins and starting to "once again" make a comeback to get even on the month to just really hating poker. I know this type of variance is supposed to happen, but I'm seriously questioning why it has never happened to me before and all the years I have played poker.

I signed off after this hand. It's a small $110 ish pot, but after almost every fish in the pool sucks out on you, it's just time to call it a night. In terms of variance that everyone deals with the actual swing itself yesterday wasn't bad. I think I went from being up 3 buy-ins to down maybe 5 buy-ins.

Despite having bankroll completely separated from a year of expenses saved I still feel extremely stressed out with life in general. I think I'm going to try and get out of my contract if possible and drop-down levels to 50NL / 25NL again where I don't have all this stress. Also take a few days off and just focus on exercise and taking care of the home.

My lease renewal is coming up, deadline Sept 30th to renew, otherwise apartment complex considers it month to month if I don't renew. Rent jumps a staggering 50%+ if it goes month to month. Even if I sign a one-year lease again the rent is still jumping 19%! This just seems crazy to me because when we moved here, we moved into a nicer apartment complex than other complexes and we were already paying $200-$300 more than other places, roughly 20-30% higher than most places because it had a gym, pool, game room etc. Also, it was one of the few places that had openings. About two miles away another complex, also with a pool, is charging less than what we pay now for a 2 bedroom! In short, I think this complex is just a greedy scam. If they were upfront about their 20%+ rent increases every year I would have never moved in here. Will end up paying more here than I was in California. There are some houses (2-3 bedrooms) I am looking into, which are $200-$300 less per month than what the new lease is asking for. I just need to factor in higher electricity bill, internet, garbage, landscape etc. I am going to guess I'll end up paying maybe $50-$100 more than if I were to resign a lease, but that also means 1-2 extra bedrooms and maybe a garage as well. Also, won't have to walk up and down four stories of stairs every time I go somewhere. It's not about being able to afford the new lease, it's about the actual value compared to other places near by.

Also when you sign a lease they want you to make 2.5x whatever the rent is x 12 (months) for the "cost of living." Based on the economy in this area a lot of people don't make that type of money around here. They end up having a room mate in order to meet the criteria required. By raising the rent 20%, are they assuming you also got a 20% raise with work? They just assume you start spending an extra $500-$1000 a month based on their formula? This entire apartment complex living is becoming a nightmare.

I think this will be my last update for a while as I take a few days off from poker and try and get my life in order. If I do play it will just be the micros because I have spare time, but not going to try and force myself to play to meet any type of volume goals at the moment.

I am back at peak profit again, but only thanks to live games. Went on Vacation for a week and was able to play three sessions at my old casino where I grinded at for a few years. Online I did drop down to 50NL / 25NL after taking roughly a $4k swing on 200NL, which I guess is standard in terms of variance, but if I'm being totally honest with myself a lot of the hands that I lost stacks with I am not happy the way I was playing. I would say it's roughly 50% variance and 50% bad play during that downswing. Probably a little harsh myself for "bad play" being a lot of the plays are solver approved at some frequency, but the problem is I was not using RNG for some of these calls I was making or loose shoves seeking thin value. Also just in terms of overall data, I shouldn't rely on solver if the ranges are not built around the pool's ranges and or tendency. With some basic data a lot of my calls would just be pure folds.

The 50NL / 25NL fast fold games before I went on vacation were pretty fun and I was able to just play solid poker and relax without worrying about the variance. Losing $300 on 50NL (6 buy-ins) doesn't really make me feel anything compared to losing $1200 on 200NL.

Graph shows all hands online since July 1st. You can see not that many hands since my last update, maybe another 40k or so. Have a ways to go to hit peak profit again. In terms of BB Graph though I am doing well. Just need to make sure I don't over think bluffing ranges at 200NL compared to 50NL. I also think I took vacation at the right time because table tamer has been down for a few days now, which makes zone games impossible to play manually without timing out. I'm either going to look at Jurojin or possible switching sites to put all my volume on ACR. Not too sure what I want to do yet, but today is my first day back home, so taking care of other stuff before I decide to start grinding.

Here is one of my stacks from Bay101 which I am not too impressed with their website. Thought there would be more photos. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos while I was there. Happy that the casino is open! I only moved because of covid and casino being shut down for so long! They got rid of their $1/$3 game they had and now everything is $2/$5 or $5/$10 for ($200-$800) for the $2/5 game and I think $5/$10 is $1k-$3k. They do run a $10/$20 game I think on Fridays which has up to $7500 buy-in. I was just playing the $2/$5 though. That is my bread and butter. I think the games have gotten extremely soft and the regs have gotten worse. Some obviously got better and finally learned how to bluff LOL! A lot of regs before were just nut peddling, so made for some easy reads. Also getting rid of $1/$3 having those weaker players move up makes for some extra soft games. Hoping I can go back in a month, maybe sooner if I don't get table tamer to work! Or if I'm not happy on ACR, I'll have to find a way to play way more live games.

Two hands from my first session:
HH#1 $470 effective
Hero EP AhJh $20. Co called.
Flop ($44) Qh7d5d
Hero X (trying to check a lot of my range OOP)
Co bets $30
Hero XR $115 (blocking some AQ QJ hands and bdfd is a nice candidate)
Co calls.
Turn ($274) Q758ddhh
Hero AhJh all in $335 (just hoping he has a diamond draw and folds or weak Q here, turns out I was right! but not what I was thinking)
Co thinks 30 seconds and calls QdTd
River. 9h (Lucky!)

HH#2 This was about 2 hands after the last one
Mp opens $35 (7x)
Btn calls
Hero AA BB $140
Both snap call.
Flop ($420) 542r
Hero AA check
Mp checks
Btn $100
Hero AA calls $100 (felt like btn was just taking a stab or had a hand like 88)
Mp all in $900ish
Btn snap folds (later said he had 77)
I think 10 seconds call. Set didn't make sense with $35 open size so figure big over pair as well.
We run it twice. Board bricks out both times.
Mp KK.
2k pot or so.

Besides poker I have started lifting some weights. Trying to get my weight down (205lbs), which is staying roughly the same still, but I think that is from being on vacation. I have tried many different workouts and I think I found the one I like that gives me the best boost of energy and just dopamine in general. Before when I wanted to lose weight I was doing light weights for 100s of reps. Then I would also mix in cardio, which just made me exhausted before I started playing poker / studying. The workout I am doing now, I am not sure what it is called, but I start with low weights as a warm up for 10-15 reps. Then I increase 5-10lbs depending on machine / dumbbells' I am using. If I am doing biceps for instance I'll grab some 15 lb dumbbells' for a quick warm up. Then I'll just do 5 reps each arm of the 20s - 25s- 30s - 35s - 40s - 45s - 50s. I max out at the 50s, Tried the 60s but couldn't manage a single rep, but just started working out! So feel really great about my progress. I do the workout for each muscle group bicep, tripcep, chest, & shoulders. They only have one leg machine at my gym, so can't do too many leg workouts. Might grab some dumbbells' and do body weight squats though in the near future. The dopamine hit from this workout is quite intense. I am only doing one some times two muscles a day though for 30 minutes.

Started using google calendar way more as well. Instead of binge watching RIO videos or being distracted on youtube. Trying to map out each day or entire week of exactly what I want to achieve. I'll link the RIO video I want to watch, jarretman video I want to watch, type of workout I want to do, how many hands / hours I want to play, any other errands like groceries or appointments etc. Just having everything planned out and not letting anything get in the way that would distract me. Today I am going off a small to-do list being first day back home. Usually take Sunday's off anyways. But I'll have Mon-Wednesday planned out by end of the night, so when I wake up I am focused and prepared on accomplishing everything I want to accomplish. Also trying to fix my sleep cycle, its one of the hardest things for me to fix because I have been "off" any type of regiment schedule for so long, so sleeping at 2am - 6am range, it's hard to go back to trying to sleep at midnight without waking up at like 6am, then want to take a nap again around noon because you slept less than 8hrs. Slowly but surely I'll achieve everything I want to achieve though.

When I get hot key program to work and some more hands in I'll try and update a bit more on any progress I make. Good luck at the tables.

Nice to see you posting again RIT!
I didn't see your last entry (i took some days off during that time and when i came back i may have had too much)
-ps it'd be nice if notifications wouldn't disappear unless you enter all of them...as soon as i click on the bell all is gone haha

I think it was a good idea to reset your mind and change a little bit. Going to the live arena and chilling with some online small stakes!

I used to have table tamer but i think they stopped their support and never opened it again...i may have to switch to jurojin too :)

Took another shot at 200NL, which I think my mental game still needs work. I am so relaxed on 50NL / 25NL for fast fold tables and bankroll is fine for 200NL as well. I thought the time away from 200NL and just dropping down stakes to make sure my fundamentals are solid would help a bunch. I feel confident in my overall strategy but for some reason my heart still races on 200NL. Which is odd because I can lose $1k-$3k playing live and feel perfectly fine. I lose $600 on 200NL and I get anxiety and starting panicking. My strategy, ranges, bet sizing, etc stay consistent when I start panicking which is a great because means I am not tilting, but I would really like to control my heart more. I made sure I had music off and all distractions eliminated while playing. Tried some deep breaths when I was running bad to help stay calm, but heart continued to race and I just continued to grind. Ended up being a small win and got off immediately after showing profit for the day. I think I'll try again tomorrow but if you have any tips on controlling anxiety I would like to hear it.

Took a trip to Zion National Park with my GF & my mom when she came to visit. Ended up doing 3 of the trails. They both have fit-bits and was able to get 20,000+ steps! After Zion we came back home took some quick showers and then went to the hot tub to relax our legs! Then after some tacos for dinner it was bed time. Met up with a friend and her son for a Vegas trip the next day. Her son is only 7 years old, so we went to Circus Circus for some games and Grand Lux for dinner. Before Circus Circus we saw a magic show by Xavier The Dream Maker which was better than expected! Will have to explore more of these shows in the future and just have more fun in Vegas in general rather than just playing poker when I go.

Stayed extra two days at my GF's cousins place and was able to play about 25 hours of poker at the Bellagio. I will say the action kind of sucks! I was just playing $1/$3 there. Always put my name on both list, but usually sit down at $1/$3 first. Didn't start off too well, so stayed at $1/$3 instead of going to $2/$5. Had mixed comments about my play, one guy super upset I won 76s vs his A2s on 345 flop where I raised UTG with 76s. Later in the session I raised KQo UTG again, 2 callers, and he jams for $350ish with AK and made a comment my range is so wide raising 7 high that I'm just going to fold 95% of the time. So he viewed me as a donkey because I raise SCs. Another pot a little more interesting, where I cbet 1/4 (4 ways), barrel turn 60% and river 1/3. On a AK4hh-8x-7x board I bet $120 on the river 3 ways into $310 and first guy folds and 2nd guy only has about $140 shows me A8o he defended in the BB and then folds. So one guy thinks I only bet AK+ there and other guy thinks I'm a donkey.....

Also the first guy was a weirdo.... He opens $6 Co, I 3bet $25 QJs BTN. He says "do you want to play for stacks?" I said "Whatever you wanna do." He jams for like $400+ I fold and he looks at the dealer and tells him it's binding LOL. Dealer tells him it's not binding and he stands up demanding I put my stack in LOL. He was having a bad session and I guess he wanted me to give him a free $400 so he can get close to even? Idk what his thought process was but definitely a weirdo. He storms off mad putting his chips in pocket and then I confirm with the dealer that I didn't say nothing binding correct and there are no weird rules about it being binding? Dealer says I didn't do nothing wrong and the guy is always like that. Always mad about something, I guess one of the Vegas $1/$3 regs that even the dealer said he is weird. I don't want to write too much but there are definitely some characters in Vegas. Most players are pretty chill and nice. I would say like 1 out of 25 or so make the game interesting with their personality.

Going to be home for about a week, then planning another Vegas trip for 2-3 days. Will grind some more there, then I have my California trip to visit family there, but mostly just a poker trip. Will be there for 8-days and plan on grinding the $2/$5 games there a ton! GF is flying to visit her sister for a full week, so I will just visit my family and friends there and play a ton of poker trying to end the year strong. Future trips as well for Thanksgiving / Xmas. So will be there for at least 3 days once a month. Besides these trips just going to keep grinding online.

I have been reading The Mental Edge by Leszek which as he says is very practical advice but I do find it very helpful! I'm slowly working through the book with the exercises. I'm only about 1/3 of the way done with it, but I stopped on a section that has me set a yearly goal and performance goals beneath it. Trying not to move forward beyond this chapter until I can figure out a detail plan to go with this exercise. When I first wrote down a goal and some performance goals behind it, the math didn't add up to the amount of money I wanted to make for the entire year, so now I'm a bit stuck, where I either need to aim for a higher win rate, higher stakes, or play more volume. This is something I'll be working on today as well. Hopefully can start reading it more tomorrow. Not going to wait for the new year to set a yearly goal. 12 months whether it's Oct to Oct is the same as Jan - Dec. Waiting for the new year would just be lazy. Highly recommend this book though if you are the type of person to get distracted by your phone, youtube, or have trouble sticking to a schedule. Lot of practical but helpful advice.

I guess that is my update for now. Just going to be studying and grinding throughout the week, nothing too exciting planned. More of just grinding until our next trip. Some pictures of Zion below from our trip.

Deer 1 taking an afternoon nap

Deer chillin near the lodge

Deer not scared of humans - Also huge $7k fine if you feed them.

Squirrel

Zion 1 looking up

Zion 2 looking up

Emerald trail - supposed to be a waterfall but in a drought, so it's tiny!

White mountain top

More deer getting a drink of water

Mamma deer and her kids

More red rock mountains

Beautiful view

Playing darts as my GF gets ready. First time hitting 3 bulls!

I love this non-poker centered entries :)

Regarding The Mental Edge, I might take your advice and start it this night.
I tent to read books and while I do take a lot of notes, I rarely review them, so I don't get as much as I should.
Probably I should deploy your method:

Trying not to move forward beyond this chapter until I can figure out a detail plan to go with this exercise.

I think you are gain the max of out in this way

Keep us update and gl

I will be going out of town Saturday the 9th (back to Vegas! �� ), so just going to set some goals this week for Mon-Friday.
#1 Goal is of course my health. Need to get at least 30minutes of exercise a day either gym, walking, bike ride, or swimming every day for 30 minutes. Will try and do a little bit of each one just to have a nice variety and enjoy it a bit more. The time is more or less irrelevant it's more about being consistent every day. This goal should also be taken care of first 1-2hrs that I wake up. Usually helps with focus for the remainder of the day and since my sessions usually don't start to late afternoon - evening it works out pretty well.

#2 Grinding: Planning on grinding 20,000 hands of fast-fold poker. Will be a mixture of stakes depending on the games that are running, but should be roughly 10k hands of 50NL and 10k hands of 200NL. I play two tables of each stake, which is why I have different stakes, site doesn't allow four tables of the same stake. Might be a reason to switch to ACR eventually instead of ignition.

#3 Study goals Will be drilling these on GTO-Wizard one each day Mon-Friday.
3.1) SB vs BB SRP cbetting
3.2) BTn vs BB SRP Cbetting
3.3) SB vs BTN 3BP cbetting
3.4) BTN vs SB 3BP facing cbet
3.5) Review biggest pots of the week (winning & losing)

#4 Things to focus on each session (Ignoring short term results)
4.1) -pre-session warm up with breathing technique
4.2) -Making notes of tough spots that I'm unsure of
4.3) -Focus on # of hands played (four sessions - 1K hands each) Quit session at 1k hands even if I'm losing! Embracing quitting as a skill!
4.4) -Posture! Some times I tell myself to refocus during my session and I noticed I'm slouched way down in my chair where I'm almost laying down!

Then Of course I'll be watching one - two videos each day as well. Tomorrow I'll post a screen shot of my excel sheet breaking down my daily goals as I check them off. Teunuss has a video with making schedules as well if you need help on it.

Monday 10/4/2021

Woke up early afternoon, so it was a bit of a time crunch, but I managed to accomplish everything I wanted to on my list. It's almost 1:30 am now, so went a little beyond where I wanted to in terms of time management.

checking off everything on my list.

During my walk it was pretty humid outside as it's supposed to rain this week, so clouds are starting to come in. Ended up doing 50 minutes instead of one hour, but that is just from completing the 2+ miles which was my main goal. Probably did closer to 2.5 miles. Picture of a little bunny I saw on my walk below.

Made a $100 prop bet to complete 20k hands Mon-Friday with a fellow member as extra motivation. My mental game feels way stronger this time around. I think the main reason is just playing better and being confident in my play. The results are good, which also helps. There are a few pots I lost that just made me smile though LOL. I think that shows improvement in my mental game as well. I hope this shot taking attempt for 200NL allows me to become more of a regular at this stake.

Made me smile

Getting paid off on a royal 3 way! + Bonus

Cooler straight flush vs vs top boat

Is he bluffing or value betting?

Tuesday 10/5

Results from Mon-Tuesday

Happy with the overall EV, but obviously running bad. Today was definitely a mental game test as I took a 7-8 buy-in swing. What made it the most upsetting was I clicked sit out next BB and managed to lose 3 stacks while waiting for the BB. Standard QQ vs KK (2x) and KK vs AK. Went to the gym immediately after this and completely destroyed my tricep LOL. We had a scheduled bike ride today on my schedule but due to weather, at first was like a dust storm and then started to rain after. Decided to just hit the gym instead of doing the bike ride.

Let me know what you think about this hand. Is it a punt or not? It's 200NL anonymous zone, so no HUD stats.

Keep crossing off my task each day. For my Presession warmups I have been listening to Eliot's MP3s. The online cash game warm up #1 actually put me to sleep yesterday! Definitely makes relaxed and calm. Not quite sure how I want to feel going into a session, calm is probably the best, but didn't expect to fall asleep lol.

For studying BTN vs BB today, I was pretty shocked how often btn is checking back. I always thought the 1/3 cbet could just be a range bet on a lot of textures, but turns out there is a pretty high frequency check going on. My world was kind of flipped upside down by this because I've always been taught that you can range bet most boards for 1/3 sizing. And how GTO is very aggressive in general. Drilling this BTN vs BB formation today made it seem pretty passive IMO. Lot of boards were checking 35-55% of the time. I have a 33%, 50%, 75%, and 125% flop options.

Onto tomorrow.

Doesn't look like a punt to me. Just unfortunate he had the JT. He could have all the other BW Tx as well so I think its fine.

I feel like range bet is still very +EV in anon games (zone games esp) since you don't have to worry about balance and population overfolds and under xr vs 1/3 in comparison to how a OOP solver would play. Glad to see you posting more frequently again. GL in OCT.

Will be going to California tomorrow and likely be grinding at Bay101 on Tuesday. Online this month hasn't gone well, down around $1100. Running 11bb / 100 below EV at 200nL! High point was +$1k and low point was -$1900. The concerning part to me is that even the adjusted EV is still negative! Will have to take another break from 200NL. I will be playing $2/$5 at bay though for live games. Hopefully I can turn my month around as I'll be there for a week. During this same stretch of hands winning at 14bb/100 on 50NL and adjusted at 17bb. 200NL obviously has some better players, but I dont think the skill gap is that big between the two levels.

In terms of my check list for Mon-Friday I didn't complete everything but feel pretty good about how efficiently I was studying. After losing my mind Friday night and diving into conspiracy of site being rigged, decided to take today off, well most of the day. Didn't actually play until 11pm. I woke up at 8am Saturday morning and did a 7.2 mile hike, which was to my GF's parents house. Then road my bike back. Total was 3hrs and 40 minutes of exercise and I was completely exhausted!

Weighed in at 208 lbs Saturday morning, I would love to be 199 lbs by Monday haha but we know that would be very unhealthy. Just have to keep changing my life style choices. Not dieting or exercising but embracing these changes as a way of life so they stick long term. Two of my main flaws is eating late at night before bed while watching TV and energy drink (240 mg caffeine) while I'm grinding. Avoided those today, which I think will actually make me drop weight pretty drastically. In the past I did a $500 monthly prop bet with a friend that I would have any soda or energy drinks for the month. During this time I did actually get my weight down to 198lbs but it went back up after. Ideally I want to be around 175 lbs for a healthy weight at 5'10. Side note while I was at the gym the other day I was actually able to a couple reps of a concentration curl with a 60 lb dumbell! This is the heaviest I've ever did and my goal was to be able to do alternating curls with them by the end of the year. My strength is improving quite rapidly actually when I do go to the gym.

Trail Mix for my hike

Rained a lot the day before. River is flowing again.

When people think I'm crazy for walking in shorts and a shirt through this weather, I tell them walk a little faster and your body will warm up :-)

The Start of my Hike Is it actually called a hike? It's a 10 mile trail in front of my place.

Achieving Gym goal

Monthly Graph

KK-JJ, AKo, AKs. Running -$1377 below EV
It's actually a little strange because a lot of people tell me I need to size up on turns and rivers when I bet. Where I bet 2/3 a little too often. I think this group of hands is only time you will see me with a positive redline.

Not sure If I'll post for the next week or so while I'm gone. Maybe if I win a big pot or get a huge stack or something I'll share some live chip porn. It's actually the food I'm looking forward to the most LOL. They have some Fire Cracker Chicken there that is delicious but I haven't had it since Pre-covid. Then my last trip there a friend of mine bought me a steak! It was surprisingly delicious for casino food, so hat tip to the chef on that one. Also I think one of my issues is when I'm tired I tend to grab an energy drink instead of just eating. Will try and avoid them as much as possible on this trip. I also think they increase my "aggression" levels which is not good for poker. I think I play a pretty robotic style but I think with enhanced caffeine levels people are more proned to tilt. It's like "roid rage" for people on steroids. I don't smoke or drink any alcohol. I just need to think of caffeine as a drug as well and I'm sure I'll be able to stay away from it.

Inspiration comes in suffering.

Interesting...i noticed his veins were more notorious than ever and he told me that he was using creatine.
He is trying to loose weight too so it may be counterproductive

Back from my live poker trip. Didn't go as well as I thought it would, ended up playing 80 hours on the week over 6 sessions. Week started off off well the first two sessions won $600 and $3k, then followed it up with 3 straight losing sessions of -1100, -1200, -3k. Then before picking up my GF from the airport, decided to play a little bit since its close by, made around $500 back, but overall still down around $1300 on the trip. Hopefully it was a learning experience as I was able to fix a pretty big leak for next time in this pot odds vs reverse implied odd spot.

UTG ($600) limps $5, btn ($450) raises to $20, hero BB AdJd 3bet to $75, UTG 4bet to $200. BTN calls the $200, & at the time I felt priced in for $125 to win $600. Was planning on folding to UTG but when BTN cold called the 4bet I'm a sucker for getting a price. Ended up tagging a long, and flopping a flush draw that bricked out. This spot came up 2-3x at least on the trip, which had I just folded preflop would of only lost $75 on the hand instead of $600. Maybe a good thing I lost the hand, so my bad play doesn't get rewarded and reinforce a bad habit.

I am really questioning in these soft live games if 3 betting is really the way to go. I made some light 3 bets against players that were opening too much, for example HJ opens $20, hero 3bet KJo in the CO and SB cold calls with KTo... If I am not getting the folds preflop, is there really a point in 3betting all the time? Even with my default range of 99+ AQ+ and suited broadways, just seems to add a lot more variance to the game. There was an older Asian guy there who was playing 75% of hands, but just limping to see the flops. Played with him 3 days in a row and he always had a big stack, which he seemed to play a 75/10/3 type style. Debating pushing these preflop edges or just relying on implied odds rather than creating lower SPR pots.

Castle I built on my 2nd day there. Was up $4500 at one point that session but started to run bad at the end with AKo vs AA BvB for $700 and then a couple of $100-$200 losses and called it quits after. I seemed to have AK vs KK+ 4x during my trip which is a lot considering only 25-30 hands an hour. That I ran pretty bad in a lot of spots.

Back to grinding online, which Steve Paul was a big help a long with my friend Mike who went over a live session recording I had. Just continue to plug leaks until my strategy is solid. Feel stuck on low stakes for eternity, but honestly if I'm able to beat 200NL online consistent I would be pretty happy and then play live poker on the side, just been playing so long, I feel dumb that I haven't' figured it out yet. Will just be grinding and watching RIO videos rest of the month. Will update after I do another 50k hands or so.

Hey man, really nice read! Will deffinitelly follow your thread. This habit of journalling for sure is a thing that take us to really nice places on our carreer. Best of luck!

HeavyMask

Do you have an example of what you are struggling with?
Fear, in everything, also in RL, just couple of examples
1) I always expect anything bad to happen and I won't be able to recover.
2) Good moments are temporary while bad moments last forever.
3) Fear that I'm not going to fulfill my potential

For #1 a quick google search on how to stop seeing negative. In my opinion you are not giving yourself enough credit. You have a very difficult life but have had success in poker. When you look at poker players only top 10% or so win money. Of those 10% like 10% of those have a positive redline? Should be proud of the small accomplishments you achieve.

#2 I would say in general social media type platforms make life out to be exciting and fun and full of joy. In real life these moments don't happen very often. You sleep 56 hrs a week, you spend 14 hours eating each week, Probably spend 20hrs watching tv?, Maybe exercise 2hrs a week, play poker 20hrs a week?, There is not a lot of excitement in life with traveling, time with friends and family, parties etc. I think you just have to be realistic about good moments only being 1% or so of your life or anyone's life really. For the bad moments just focus on what you can control and learn to forgive yourself. Treat it as a learning experience and move forward.

#3 Goggins would say no one fulfills their potential or really gives a 100% effort in trying to fulfull their potential. His 40% rule is where when people reach 40% of their potential they tend to quit. Humans can do incredible things but you have to conquer your mind and be some what of an extremist in order to do it. Have you written down where you think your potential is? Set goals yearly, monthly, and weekly to achieve your potential? Most people in terms of poker want to play high stakes, but 99% of people just login and play and don't actually make a plan, a detailed plan, on how and when they are going to move up. Need to make a syllabus of what you are going to study and treat it like a college course. Write down your bankroll management, write down your strategy and ranges etc. Each month evaluate your progress in order to achieve this. These negative emotions are usually from dwelling on something you want in life, but not putting a plan in place in order to execute the happiness you are seeking.

Off topic have you told your parents you forgive them? Even if you don't actually mean it, maybe just say it and see where the conversation goes. It might take a small chip off your shoulder and relief some stress in your life. Just ask them questions on why they did certain things. Usually these deep rooted family issues have a long lasting impact on your future. I am not one to forgive certain things, but I do hold myself accountable for my own actions and accept responsibility for my choices and where I end up in life. When people say they are trying their best ask yourself if your raising 4 kids as a single mom, working 2 full time jobs, and giving money to your family. Some of these "Mexican moms" even though they have very little in life are the ones that are really trying their best. When you go to bed at midnight and wake up at 4am every day, then you are trying your best. I shouldn't ever complain about my life because I am no where near even 40% of my potential. You really need to seek out pain in life in order to succeed. There is no growth without pain, so the suffering you endure, not necessarily physical pain, but its just you growing as a person. Just try and make yourself completely exhausted by the end of the day and then realize you achieved only 40% of your potential.

This is one of the best post addressed to me, ty for this.

I think you touched on a great point about my family/parents since I hold a huge resentment toward them. I think, in the end, I really need some sort of guidance because, sometimes, it seems my problems just overwhelm me and I cannot get a handle on anything, resulting in a lot of stress.

Also, I want to return to my old routines and rules that gave me a good pace in life. Following some guidelines will prevent the chaos to dominate my life.

I've read many self-help books but tbh, they haven't helped much, that's why I need to seek therapy asap. Luckly enough, I got a very good professional which changed some of my friends' lives and even mine, although I've seen him only for 6 months.

Ty again for everything, you are a very intelligent guy

I have zero positive emotions right now, so going to stop posting and commenting until after the holidays. Wish everyone the best of luck on their journey. Next update will be January 2022.

Took a couple days off to try and clear my mind. After a couple of days of just lying-in bed and playing the victim, I reached the conclusion that I was too obsessed with the game. Obsession usually leads to success, but there was a video Saulo made in the past that popped into my head, where he stated if you do not have life balance you are more likely to tilt. Before my downswing I studied a lot but didn’t play very much. In total I was still putting in a lot of hours throughout the week but wasn’t making much money as most of the time was spent studying. Then hours I was not studying I did have more life balance with family dinners, going to the park, watching movies, etc etc. Then because I didn’t make much this year in total, I decided I would stop being as social, make some sacrifices and really crunch down on focus on my career choice. This is when the downswing started happening. I lost my life balance and despite studying and grinding even more the results were worse.

I am still reading ‘The Mental Edge’ which I find very helpful as it’s not just poker strategy but how to manage your life more practically. As I set my schedule and continue to work on time management, I realize I do have time to have a successful career and life balance. It does not have to be one or the other. This month I set a schedule where I’m studying roughly 1hr a day and working 6hrs a day for 5 days a week. Saturday & Sunday will be my off days, Saturday I’ll still work some, but it won’t be part of my schedule. More so on my downtime around other events I have planned. Mon-Friday have roughly 7hrs of work total, but also planning to go to the gym or exercise daily, meal planning for more home cooked meals, & spending more time with my significant other.

Will post some pictures on Saturday after I complete my 25k hands this week for my graph and results and maybe some pictures of other things we have planned. Side notes there is a huge UFC 268 card this Saturday that I’m hyped about! If the rematches are anything like their first fights, it’s not something you want to miss!

Colby vs Usman Fight #1

ROSE NAMAJUNAS KNOCKS OUT ZHANG WEILI

GAETHJE VS CHANDLER ''CHAOS'' EXTENDED PROMO 2021

I expect all three of these fights to just be war. I think all these fighters are very technical at the same time. Honestly I don't know who I'm going to put money on yet.

Fight odds:
Colby +250 vs Usman -330
Zhang -119 vs Rose -111
Chandler +173 vs Justin -218

The First fight Colby vs Usman one judge had it 3-1 for Colby, another judge 3-1 for Usman, and 3rd judge had it at 2-2. To get +250 odds on something that was a extremely close fight! :-) Then Rose slight underdog after winning the first fight. Probably go with the underdogs in terms of best value here.

I hope Usman and Gaethje win :D
Zhang has a huge potential to be a massive star in China , but Rose's footwork and technique is just to good. can't wait for this card

All 3 fighter have Trevor as a coach.Rose played mind games vs Zhang when she did not want to touch gloves, she was also affected a lot by being on "enemy" territory and people boooing her.Usman did the same against Gilbert Burns, did you see the expression on his face? he was shocked and already affected.It's nice to see that even these monsters deal with their own demons and all have mindset issues :)

With much help from my discord group I was FINALLY able to plug a huge leak in my game. I am still refining it, but because my cbet OOP was probably twice what GTO is I was burning money my last 400k hands. Special thanks to HawksWin Shaun Pauwels RaoulFlush CrappyTimeSlot @blackice and some others that I'm unable to tag on here.

Two videos from Shaun below
C-Betting OOP in Single Raised Pots
C-Betting OOP in SRP: Range Construction

In the comments you will see I argue about the pool being so bad and calling with hands they shouldn't be calling with and how cbetting OOP I'm still making profit. What I didn't realize was even though I am making profit from the soft pool I am not really maximizing profits compared to XC or XR and keeping their range wide where they have opportunity to bluff or over value their hand. Blackice in my discord group pointed out that "you're trying to win too many pots and not make money." Which took me some time to REALLY understand what he meant. Needed to see some results behind the method so I can compare past strategy vs current strategy. The difference is night in day! I know Hawks helped me build some heuristics in the past for cbetting OOP, which helped because I went from like 48% down to 40%, but even the 40% is way too high. After tweaking it a bit more I THINK I finally understand!

Below is my graph for the month, didn't hit the 25k hands I wanted to for the week, still have some time, but I'm also focused on my mental health, so I won't play much over the weekend. Mainly going to be watching UFC fights and NFL games. Just some R&R and then with my confidence coming back will be able to grind a lot again Mon-Friday. Will probably just update the journal each weekend going forward.

My biggest pot of the month 472bb

My 2nd biggest pot, I thought I was going to lose when I got jammed on, but given the SPR I'm not going any where.

I am not much of a writer, so just going to ramble some things I have been working on. I am currently very unhappy with my weight, mostly midsection! I'm at the heaviest weight I've ever been 209 lbs! For most of my life I was 165-175 lbs when I was playing sports, but I really have let myself go. I want to try different diets, but I know they only provide short term results and not long term life changing healthy habits. I joined Eliot's A-Game Players Club (link to their discord) and was talking to some of the coaches on there about some of my bad plans i.e egg diet, extreme weight cut goals, etc. Glad I talked to them before making the leap into a bad decision. I mostly need to cutout all the processed foods, fast food, and sugars. Sugar is a huge downfall for me. I am no where near diabetes or anything, but I know people that eat less sugar than me that have that health risk.

One thing that helped me, but is also very sad is Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt Reportedly Dead at 40 I say it helped me because I remember watching him play back in the day and I'm only 6 years younger than him. For him to have a heart attack at age 23 is just shocking! Makes you really question some of your life choices. I know in Eliot's A-Game master class he talks about picturing your funeral and what people say about you. It's a shock therapy method to make you realize how much time you have in life in what he refers to as the "death clock." I hope his death will wake me up a little bit to make some better choices in life. Just have to remember we are not entitled to anything in life and no one owes us anything. If you watch the short one minute youtube video on the article you can see how one may have a heart attack with those eating / drinking habits. Even if it was made as a spoof, its a sad reality for a lot of people.

Trying to start a new journey this month, ran into a lot of technical difficulties though as my internet went down 3x this week! Which, to me feels like a bad beat because I was trying to approach December as a Pre-New-Year-Resolution type thing and test myself to see what I'm capable of before the new year comes. My results have been great over a small 4k sample, but honestly I should have 5x that sample by now! I would have to say if December was the start of 2022 I would of failed hard! However, I can still play catch-up and get back on the horse and just keep going. A lot of people fail new years resolutions because they try and go cold turkey and they tell themselves what they can't have or can't do. Tony Robbins has some youtube videos on how to make your goals come true. That is why I wanted to start before the new year. Be able to start out small and then progress to harder stages in January. Also telling myself or printing out pictures of what my end goals look like. Why I am trying to go to the gym every day and what is my long term goal or reason for being consistent at the gym.

Probably a better update next week (Sunday). Just wanted to write a little something because it has been a month.

December results (small sample)

My results since I started this Journal in July.

Honestly this is about 40% of what I should have achieved, but has been a very lazy and unproductive year. A lot of mental game issues with stopping when I'm winning and not wanting play when I'm losing. Studying inefficiently and asking the wrong questions. The biggest leak was trying to play perfect and not accepting mistakes are ok. Everyone is going to make mistakes and you can still make money while making mistakes, you just wont maximize profits. I probably gave up at least $10k in profits from this one leak by itself. I can definitely beat the games; I just need to change my mind of not trying to be the best play in the pool, just try and make money off the pool and everything else will fall in place over time. Also not really focused on moving up the ladder any more. Let that domino fall where it may, Just going to focus on one level at a time and try and get healthy. On Eliot's discord some of those people have intense morning routines. Makes me feel very lazy! I don't know how they find time to do it all and still have energy for the rest of their day. Some of them even have kids and actual jobs to be responsible for. I have no excuses, so it's really just laziness. I forgot what video I was watching the other day, but it said something like motivation doesn't come from watching videos, the motivation comes when you start! Don't need to watch a video to get pumped up to go to the gym, I just need to put my shoes on and step out the door. That is when motivation kicks in. James Clear was the one who talked about how you can build habits in 2 minutes. It's just about getting started!

Anyways another update will come on Sunday Dec 12th. I have some other stuff to share for travel plans (out of the country) but waiting on passports, then holiday travel etc. Crunched for time tonight though, so that is all I have for now.

Best of Luck at the tables and Happy Holidays to everyone.
-RIT

Nice Post. Agree, short term diets dont work. Read a study once stating that 90% of people who loat weight on various diets had put the weight back on within 2 years.
I think sonetimes its a mentality thing if thinking of it as a diet which is for the short term. Rather we should be thinking, what hange can i make that would make me healthier. E.g. dont drink from Sunday to Thursday. Dont eat chocolates until after 7:30pm, only alowed one snack per day etc. Make lots of these small changes over a long time and eventually you'll just have a healthy lifestyle.

Another good rule i heard somewhere was, its ok to fail but if you do make sure the next day you don't.

Gl with the grind.

December Update Dec 1st - 13th.

Trying not to play the victim, but the results are hard to deal with. I don't want to get too wrapped up into conspiracy but honestly feels like there is a super user in the pool that some how knows what the board is going to be? Maybe its just from playing low stakes and encountering some drunk individuals splashing around. In either case I'm glad I have PT4 in order to track the results and see the hole cards to really figure out if someone is just super using or not. The last couple of days have been frustrating as I will grind a few hours, then my graph just falls off a cliff! I'll be steadily winning then lose 6-8 stacks in 30 minutes of just pure coolers.

Trying to work more and more on my mental game and think long run. Instead of looking at session results, I tried looking at daily results, now I'm going to try and look at weekly / monthly results and not worry about recording daily sessions. Just know my BR is in place to handle the variance and that is the most important part. The results will take care of themselves over 100s of thousands of hands.

Anyways enough "victim" talk for now. Wanted to update December results, graph below, and share a couple of wild hands. Also for Christmas I'll be going to Mexico to visit my GF's extended family whom they have not seen in 16 years. I think it will be a nice vacation to end the year on before I put so much pressure on myself to start 2022. I'll most likely start a new journal for 2022 as well. I always set this $100k goal every year, but always fall short. When I was playing live poker I was on pace a few times, then I get content or encounter a bad stretch, I let life events take priority etc.

December Filtered for AA-QQ only.

I'm also break even with my last 60 sets!

KK vs 44 cooler. Some reason it won't show results in replayer, so just using this screen shot.

Wild donation! These are the hands I wish I was playing regular tables where I'll be able to play a lot of pots vs this guy.

Super User Status

These next hands are all from the last couple of days. I find it fucking bizarre that every time I flop a set of 10s, I run into a set of aces, and when I download the hands I see someone else folded TX as well. What are the fucking odds of set over set with one of my outs gone and then for it to happen back to back to back days!

4BP AA vs TT

Min 3BP AA vs TT

TT vs AKo Losing the minimum after thinking I have the board locked up on the turn.

Boat vs Quads - should probably fold the river but its BTN vs SB. The River 3bet after block bet is so damn strong though.

I keep telling myself I'm due for a big upswing, then each day I say that I get kicked in the balls. Not going to expect any type of results today, just going to play it let the results be what they may.

Hi Austin, a long-due update at last.
I don't have much to say tbh, I think some players are very lucky, there are a bunch of players (who are their clones because statistics allows this) that are running much below.
The problem is, if you are at the low end of the curve and you say about your run, most of the players (who runs normal or good) don't believe you. That makes me feel more alone and more sad.
I don't have any advice, you are more wise than me, so I just hope the next year will treat you better

Hi buddy!
It doesn't look that bad tbh
Of course some of the coolers are really hard to digest (lol, you must have had nightmares with pocket tens) and the EV graph owes you a bunch but you have to know that happens.

On some hh's you seem to be trolling us (ako on nl200) were you won the pot (at least according to upswing replayer haha) -you wouldn't have stacked both players other than on that flop/runnout.

One thing i find useful to tell to myself while grinding is knowing what my wr "should" be on the stake and, if i am checking graphs too much, is acknowledging the ups and down according to that number.
For example, if you know you beat nl200 for 4bb/100 you 'll see you are running hot there 39bb (ofc small sample but you see the point).
Sometimes when we win a couple buyins on one session we are running on the good side of variance but we can't recognize that. Because of our hard work ethic,we believe we deserve that run.
If you play 1k hands with the wr i put as an example on nl200, you should be making 80usd...recognize when you win 400 (even if villains punted on us) and it'll be easier to manage when you lose 400 :)

Finish your december grind strong and enjoy your trip to mexico.
If you thought about folding that boat on nl50,there's no doubt you are a winning player on those pools, just fix your mental game a bit and you'll crush.

Hope it helps !

My advice is to stop with all the filtering various hands and "finding the spots you're running bad." Your winrate over the sample is 7bb/100, there's nothing to complain about! Take that time and drill some preflop, play vs trainer, look at some flops where you should be using bigger sizes, or whatever spot you're interested in. Who cares if you're breaking even with the last x sets or that you're running bad with AA-QQ but not JJ, or that random fish sometimes get there when they put in stacks with 65s? You'll drive yourself crazy with that crap, just keep getting better and keep putting in volume.

Tiny update: Off to Mexico until the 26th to visit GF's extended family. Pretty happy with my progress this month even though its low volume. Just reviewed the last couple of sessions and had around 20 hands marked. Happy to see I make some pretty nice over folds! And was correct 17 out of 20 hands. If I was not "over folding" would of been a pretty massive downswing actually.

This hand QTd vs KK I iso preflop and face a 3bet. Despite flopping top pair because it's MW pot and facing a larger half pot sizing decided to fold because pool is just super honest in MW pots as they should be. Happy to show some discipline and make a fold here. Also 3bets are much tighter vs ISO raises. One might say what is the point of calling the 3bet if you are just going to fold top pair on the flop? But when you are right you are right!

AQh vs KJs Not sure if this is actually a GTO fold or not, but when I squeeze preflop and narrow ranges so much, a lot of the off suit broadways just fall out of range. Then blocking the backdoor flush draws and also the fact the pool flats AK here about half the time instead of 4 betting. Probably a call vs his sizing? Just don't think pool bluffs enough.

Had about 8 of these hands for a single session that was semi annoying but after downloading the hands I'm glad I made the right decision about 85% of the time.

KQd vs airball The times I did get bluffed was for a large sizing. This is a pretty unique spot facing 430% pot vs a complete airball bluff. Respect to this guy for having the balls to actually pull the trigger. I still think I have enough AX to actually call off here and just over fold KX. Also almost never face this action, so don't really need to really worry about it.

Anyways off to Mexico and then I'll probably grind a bunch to end the year and give one final update. 2022 I'll likely make a new journal chasing $100k or something. Not exactly sure what I'll do it. Lots of health and fitness goals as usual. Have a few days off to think about it all.

Good Luck and Happy Grinding.

Oh, one last thing I did start shot taking 200NL again. Here is the break down of the stakes for me this month.

Monthly results based on stakes

Not sure I can fold the Q10 hand to one bet! But think you’re probably right MW, pool are generally going to be honest there.

KQd hand, I think this is really rare as you said and you wouldn’t need to worry about it.

Enjoy the break mate

Small update as I am back from Mexico. I have played another 10k hands roughly since the last update, but have to wait to download the hands in order to share the updated graph. Mexico was a very humbling experience. I wish I was a better writer to give it justice on how humbling it truly was. I took only a few pictures and will share some below in this little collage I put together. Other pictures I can't really share as I don't want to invade people's privacy by sharing their faces.

I drove down to TJ Mexico (7.5hrs) from where we live with my GF and her parents to visit their family on her dad's side. Hasn't seen them in 16+ years, which despite some of the pictures below his family is doing much better now than they were 10 years ago. We rented a 2 bedroom air bnb for roughly $70 USD a night. I guess the first part of the humbling experience was realizing I take internet and reception for granted. Of course I can always change my phone plan or pay a little more to have these services but chose not to have them while I'm on vacation. The usual youtube, reddit, sports streams, or just browsing the web that I usually do was no more for those four days.

The airbnb had a tiny living room and tiny kitchen. Didn't use the kitchen at all while we were there as we wanted to try the food in Mexico obviously and spent most of the time visiting family. The first night we came back from visiting family we decided to watch tv. Another thing I take for granted. In the air BnB was a small maybe 27" tv but at least it had Roku setup, so we logged in and watched Black Widow I believe it was. The next morning when we woke up I heard my GF's mom scream! Apparently the hot water doesn't really work well lol. So as we tried to freshen up had to go mostly without hot water as its a small building and shared with others in terms of plumbing. Also probably a bit of "tmi" but I was worried about going to the bathroom there because there were signs up about putting toilet paper in the toilet. I didn't want to risk clogging it so waited until we were at their family's place or a costco we went to near by.

Some of the pictures below you can see their family's driveway. They own some land where almost the entire family lives, not sure how many people, but quite a bit and everyone chips to and does there part to get by. The point of the trip was to visit the family for a 50th anniversary party they were having. They had some tacos catered in one of the pictures below you can see a lady making the tortillas. The lady was an absolute machine, just did not stop working the entire time they were there. Just kept her head down with her hair tied back and just made hundreds of tacos a long with another lady. The airbnb was only about 1.5 miles away from their place. Despite the short distance you can see how crappy the roads are in some of the pictures below. I actually bottomed out in my car a few times from all the pot holes or speed bumps you can't see on some of these dirt type roads. Despite their family not having much they are all very loving, friendly, as the hospitality is off the charts! The weather wasn't the best as the rain was off and on whenever we were there, actually got a little muddy walking down their driveway to see a pig they have.

Another one of their family members we went to visit lives way up on this hill. Not sure how long she has lived there for with her kids and dog, but when they first moved there it was just a little shack with dirt floors. Didn't have plumbing or any utilities, as rough as it can really be. This was probably the most humbling experience for me as the dog is probably just old but doesn't look well fed. When I went to get something out of my car the dog actually jumped in the car wanting to go with me. There were actually quite a few stray dogs there wondering the streets for food. Anyways besides the dog being too skinny imo the kids don't go to school, maybe age 8 & 9 years old. Not sure if its because of covid or because they need to try and work to help the family. Seems like every family sells food there to tourist or other locals to get by. My GF told me a story how her aunt when they moved there struggled so much where they were literally starving. There was one week she had to send her kids down the street to a neighbors house in order for them to eat. For a while they were just eating tortillas some some peanut butter as its all they could afford. Over the years they kept working though and managed to have actual flooring when we went and appliances. Outside the house it doesn't look like much, but inside its actually really nice, still some work being done but they have come a long way.

The last humbling experience of the trip I had was crossing the border. As we crossed there were tons of people working at the border crossing selling stuff to Americans as they went back home. We saw a couple of kids, really young maybe 9 years old, they had a speaker with some music playing and they were dancing to try and earn money for their family. Another kid a bit older was doing some juggling on the side. I have a lot of respect for these people, a lot of homeless people you see in America are just looking for hand outs. These Mexicans though were all hustling to try and make ends meet. All seemed very happy despite having very little in terms of materialistic things.

Overall, I am now more grateful than ever for the things I have in life. From the hot water, to internet, phone, smooth roads, AC/Heat, plumbing, nice bed, and many other things such as washer and dryer. Hopefully can make the most out of 2022! When we came back home took a nice long hot shower, bought a brand new TV, bought my gf a new phone today, and got some groceries for the first week of 2022. Where I don't plan on eating out and just enjoying some home cooked meals.

Also side note I'm at peak profit for the year! Had a downswing that started Back on Oct 10th and was finally able to recover yesterday back to peak profit for the year. Will share my yearly graph after I finish downloading all the hands tomorrow. Hard to see the downswing really because of playing multiple stakes, but mainly took a hit at 200NL, then dropped down to 50NL & 25NL to make the money back and still shot took some 200NL when I got my confidence back recently. Maybe later I'll see if GF took some other pictures I can share. Bit of a long post, thought it would be a bit shorter honestly. Hopefully some of the pictures help for those who don't like to read.

Also small shoutout to demondoink who started playing sodoku and mentioned how it helps warms up his brain before poker. My gf got me hooked on it and I must say it really does help get your brain working as a pregame warm up. Maybe this is how I recovered from my downswing?

One last update before 2022. I'll also be starting a different journal for 2022 with better goals and more focus. But wanted to share my monthly results and yearly results for 2021 where I started playing on ignition in February 2021.

December results

Results by Stake

*Didn't share the regular table results or 5NL zone results but if you must know I lost on 5NL over 2400 hands lol. Then regular tables I have less than 1k hands combined all stakes.

Wishing everyone a blessed 2022!

Keep crushing and Happy New Year!

Hell of a graph mate :) I knew you'd crush with your workethic!

We should all be grateful for the things that we have and take for granted.
Hope everyone starts 2022 with a huge upswing,in life and on the tables as well