Tilting for a living
Posted by gargamel_fk
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gargamel_fk
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Poker Journals
Tilting for a living
hey guys,
After a long struggle with myself I decided to start a blog. I am almost 29 currently living in Medellin,Colombia. However don't plan to stay here for a long. Before I had been living in Thailand for like 8 months and honestly plan to go back there.
Currently my main game is nl200 and there is no sign that with how I play now I will move up any soon. Entire graph I have on my PC. It is like 20% nl50, 45% nl100 and 35% of nl200
Have been working with Jared Tendler for a long and lately been also thinking about it. There is the issue that I need to be despeerate to be motivated. So there is the same pattern I make the money am one step to play midstakes I go on a degen streak or just stop play and take an extended break from playing. Rise and repeat :/ .
At the same problem I have very poor habits when it goes to play and working on my game. So I want to start to be more involved here on Runitonce and work on my game more. I haven't been discusing hands with anyone for a long time and it is something I need to change.
Firstly I need to lear how to fold. I have this paranoia that everyone attacks my Capped ranges and try to bluff me off my hand.
Against a compotent reg. Guess thats why he is better than me.I have this deep believe that everyone tries to bluff me off and I am capped so they will attack me wide etc. etc. The reality is that after I x/call the flop and turn is a blank the Reg will just realize his equity on the turn and won't try to bluff me on a card that change nothing. But Hey I can't help myself and have to call down because "everything missed". Like LOL
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7.5bb/100 over a sample size that large is nothing to scoff at! Add some RB and I'm sure you are winning more than most people. So on rough days just think back to your graph and how it will all just even itself out in the long run.
With regards to spending check out a book called 'The Millionaire Next Door'. Really helped put things into perspective for me from a financial stand point.
on the spending - I only think of myself as a successful poker player if I grow my BR every year. So BR = money won + any investment growth(i.e. interest, dividends....) - money spent. money spent is a HUGE part of this equation!
Budgeting (poker players most feared word, lol) is something you REALLY have to get under control. Doesn't matter if you make as much as Phil Galfond. Just look at Antoine Walker and countless other people who had incredible salaries. As simple as it is the consumer culture just doesn't seem to understand, Spend less than you make... and Invest the difference. Another great book I recommend is Millionaire Teacher (he's a bit extreme), but you get great insight on how to build wealth.
thanks for your feeedback guys. Just spending is one side of the problem. The other is that I need to be desperate in order to grind. I love poker but as an intelectual challenge. I like to think about poker and improvig my strategy but the playing itself is like "meh". So I will procrastinate and waste time when bankroll is safe and when situation gets bad then I start to play again. Same for changing rooms I never play for long anywhere. It is like I play somewhere for 2-3 months learn how the regs play and get bored and switch because I don't feel excited about playing anymore.
Anyway I took spending under control although living in El Poblado is fairly expensive (defiinitelly 2x compared to Thailand). Have to address my no playing issue too and get better at grinding more.
Maybe get a simple part time job to cover the basic costs of living so that when you get to grind it's with 100% focus instead of being forced?
@bdon22 you misunderstood me. It is not I feel pressure while grinding for the money etc. It is more that there is simply not enough challenge in play. I feel kinda stuck huge winner on nl200 but don't have a bankroll to play higher and I need a challenge to get better without it I get easily bored. I still make aroud 10k$ per month while playing which is more than fair. Just feel bored with poker thats all
Oh, first world problems then :P
Awesome graph keep it up!
I see what your saying here tho, sounds to me like you could set some goals/target for motivation.
Or try to make a schedule for the x hrs of play you want to get each month.
GL anyway!
Yeah there is like a plateau problem. I mean I make enough to have a cofortable life and travel around the world but because I have been spending too much I need like 2 months of grind to have a comfortable roll to grind nl400+ exclusively. So I feel kinda stuck and there is no challenge just grind and I can't get myself motivated for it. I can play just a little and be ok.
There is clearly a goal problem when I am satisfied with what I have and just can't push myself to get better.
Why not make a goal to crush NL400 the same way you crush NL200? At least that will give you some incentive for 2 months to grind NL200 enough to make a BR for the next limit.
Or you could scare yourself and try to imagine 5-10+ years from now. Will online poker even be around anymore? What if this gold mine only lasts for a few more years? Don't you want to get as most out of it now while it lasts so that later on you won't have to work a real job?
Yes and I am fully aware that it isn't logical. In a way there is the problem with love for the game. It is the same as with my studies I graduated with honors from very good university and had a future as a barrister. However I was very good not because I liked it but because I didn't wanted to be poor the way my parents were. So wanted to get more from life.
The same applies for poker. Have a friend who grind MTT here with me in Colombia. He plays every day almost long session simply because he loves the game. So the grind problem doesn't exist for him the way it exist for me. So I used to have a passion for the game for what it gives me but not for the game itself.
So knowing how much I could make in the next 2 years or so is like an idea but it doesn't materialize in my brain. Almost like because I can't touch it I don't feel it. So while I know it intelectually it doesn't change the way I feel and ultimately motivation and desire are emotion based....
So there is little going on for me lately. Recognized an issue where I can't motivate myself to grind. It is not on a priority list. I talked about it on my last session with Jared Tendler that sometimes I even purposely put my roll in danger so I would have a motivation to grind. Part of it is that I don't have goals in poker. Some people want this or that and I just don't. As long as I can support myself and traveling thru poker it is fine. The thing is that in the back of my mind there is this voice about how much I would be able to make even I grind anything close to reasonable volume. In a way when I am not in immediate danger I just don't play. But it is hard for me to believe that fish/bad regs will keep playing forever and there will be always money to be made. I tried shit ton of stuff and I keep failing.
Gl man, which sites do you play on ?
Pretty much everywhere except for Stars mostly because I would have to start there from bronze star... So would need to grind firstly for a couple of months to get decent rakeback. Other than that mostly some smaller sites with decent rakeback e.g. microgaming.
It is good here in Columbia now because in Thailand you would miss the peak European time and at the time I had been there bodog88 withdraw from there (they have poker only for Chinese now). So was struggling back then. Now with the time zone I am in I can play wherever I want. It mostly depend on what time is it and where the traffic is. Sometimes I play early sometimes later in the day but never at night.
Gl man! I love Medellin best city in South America by far. Hope you are enjoying 'Las Paisas' Oh and nice graph!
I do enjoy them. Definitely the girls here are extremely hot and lovely . The problem is that none of us speaks Spanish even a little bit. South America is a great place to live BUT you need to speak Spanish well. It was definitely a mistake to move here without knowing Spanish. It is not Thailand where quite a few can speak English and on top of that there is a huge community of poker players. There are already some poker players here too but except for one HU guy who seemed cool and smart the others are the degen type of guys that just try to play poker for a living many of them strugling but desperately trying to keep playing because they want to keep "the poker dream" alive.No one here can talk any English except a few and we live in El Poblado which is the richest neighborhood here. Additionally since we had came here it has been raining every fucking day. It is insane. So we thought about moving e.g. to Cartagena. Another option is Lima,Peru. We will see where to stay I guess.
Yeah I lived in Guatemala for nearly two years and speak fluent Spanish, you should definitely take classes it is well worth it. In fact, when I started learning I got classes of a really nice Colombian girl called Claudia in El Poblado. If you're interested you can find her at the 'Black Sheep' hostal. I would recommend it even as something to do away from poker to be able to switch off. Anyway, Cartagena would be nice but expensive I'd imagine, I wouldn't be so sure about Lima though. I have been there a few times and didn't really like it. Northern Colombia along the coast is beautiful and I would say your best option if you are looking for good weather. GL
So it has been like the worst 40 days since I don't remember when. Whatever could go wrong it did. Got sick couldn't play that much, have been losing pretty much everything where they don't have range they have nuts. Had problems with finding new apartment and the girl I was hoping to be back with in Thailand is no longer into me :( .
oh and I have like 10k $ stuck at a poker room that stall me with paying it out. So I am really badly fucked....
So things are much better now. Got my money since yesterday we have got finally internet that works without disconnects so situation is good.
Need to focus on grinding more because it has been really bad and last 3 months I managed to play like 85k hands which is like ROFL.
Part of it is the reality I need to face that there are some regs at least on nl200 that are just better than me and cause me tons of problems. Even if they are not better they just make my life miserable while playing.
So the plan is to analyze at least 2 regs every week 1 really good one and one that puts ton of volume and plays a lot simple because the nitty break-even regs will be the easiest to exploit and profit from. Against the very best one I want to make it so I would limit my loses.
Another thing is to improve my play mostly from blinds because this year I have been losing significantly more which shouldn't be the case because people didn't really get better from what I see.I have a ridiculous fold to cbet there OOP and overall overfold way too much. Thats something that has to be adressed. Simply as much as I don't want to admit it I play poorly wide range vs wide range.
It's been a while since my last post so decided to write things down. Most of the time I would focus on how badly I run and how many mistakes I made but instead I want to focus on what have I learned from the 4 months I spent in Colombia.
-if you have a feelings for a girl either stay with her or leave and move on. I lost countless hours and days being pissed and frustrated. I would miss her but couldn't let it go and the situation was getting worse and worse and it was an emotional rollercoster. Not only that but I couldn't enjoy Colombia thanks to that because my thoughts were still in Thailand.
-never ever move to a country when neither you nor the guys you are living with don't know the native language. Colombia is great country but coming here without a language was just a total disaster. We had problems with everything we lost like 1.5 month thanks to internet problems when we would barely grind and we were overpriced for everything because we didn't know the language. Again huge mistake.
-either live with people that have the same goals as you or live on your own.
I am not assertive enough and it is difficult to state my opinion so It is hard for me to say what I really want. It was always very difficult for me to say to the guys sorry I want to live on my own and even when I somehow did they would always convince me to change my opinion. So there was one of friend who hit a downswing here but he got crazy. Started to berate us, was looking for fights (both me and the other friend had almost fights with him). Moreover it made us really anxious because he got unpredictable.
when he left which was like couple of days ago suddenly we grind considerably more and play a lot better.
I just can't afford living with others. I can meet with them, go for a party but that's it. After the whole fiasco when I searched in my memory I realized that the biggest volume I would ever put was when I was living on my own in a nice apartment.
-Don't underestimate Variance ever.
I had this one time when I almost lost my bankroll like 3 years ago it took me hell of a time to rebuilt from scratch. You need the money to make the money. And you need a lot more than you think you do. When I came here to Colombia I thought I have sufficient bankroll but it turned out not be the case. Real life problems combined with how I run lately took a lot from my bankroll and made it very difficult to play A-game.
-Diet is the most important thing
I am overweight like pretty much all of my family. Have extremely poor eating habits. Thanks to a friend it changed during my stay in Colombia. I sleep way better I play a lot more and I am happier and feel a lot better (and it is huge given how badly everything went lately).
I spend countless hours working on my game, working on my mental issues e.g. with Jared Tendler but there wasn't anything which would have a greater impact than changing your diet.
Invest your time into biohacking and research for dieting. It is relatively easy to fix and the impact on your life will be huge.
-Live in a place that you like but also where your living costs are small
I felt so much better in Thailand because I could live for like 1.5k $ and have a great life. I didn't have to worry about grinding etc. because I always knew I will make enough easily. In Colombia my costs of living increased significantly adding the downswing etc. and I need to save. In Thailand I always knew I can afford going out etc if I wanted.
I know that sometimes I complain too much but I need to vent somewhere. I have been losing and losing a lot and I seem unable to win anything and I am terrified. 3 years ago I got busto running hundreds buy-ins below EV where at the end I couldn't play at all.
And now I am scared like shit that the story repeat itself. I don't have good days I have bad days and terrible days and disastrous days.
I am terrified and at this moment I don't feel like a winner at poker at all. And I don't know what to do.
It has been a while since I last posted. A lot happened I moved out from Medellin and I am back in Thailand. It took me couple of days to adjust everything but a friend of mine sent me my bike and my aeron chair from Chiang Mai lately so my comfort of living increased a lot.
I would never guess how much I missed the chair after seating on shitty chairs for a while you do feel the difference. Definitelly worth the money.
I live alone now because thats what I wanted for a while. For a long time my biggest strenght was my skill and my thought process. I would be quite lazy and wouldn't grind a lot but at the same time when I would play I would destroy the games.
What I learned from a good friend of mine that numbers never lie. Here is the graph from 2013 when I wasn't living with other poker players:
Now is the graph from 2014:
When you look at this the difference is easily noticeable. That begs for question what has changed. The reality is that I moved to Thailand and started to live with 2 other players and they just weren't good at poker.
They both would make the money from grinding a lot rather than having superior skill and I just adapted their way of living. The end result is that I basically lost 2014 poker wise. I will probably never be a huge grinder but I also lost a big chunk of my skill in 2014 and thats not something I am proud of.
I stopped working on my play I stopped improving I would stop being creative and would stop making moves and would adopt their way of thinking instead of sticking to what was working.
So lesson learned. Even lately one of the guys I was living in Thailand asked me for help skill wise but I can't afford that and I need to focus on myself and improve.
The whole moving back to Thailand and living on my own was done for the sole purpose of finally refocusing on myself.
On the bright side it seems that work and analyzing my thinking process and my opponents pays off. Hopefully that is a lesson learned and I won't lost a year again.
So far this month:
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