Dan Self

Are you setting the right goals?

Goal setting is something which gets talked about a lot at this time of year. In general, goal setting has become more of an 'in topic' in recent times.

I've always had a pretty mixed relationship with goals. For some things, they can be pretty useful, but I think they can also be detrimental; especially when it comes to poker.

Here's why you shouldn't be setting volume goals this year.

Finally got my first YT video uploaded!

Check it out here :)

Road to HS Day 34 - Time for Some Real Talk/Going Busto

Screwed up the recording of this vid so it's in two parts.
Part 1
Part 2

Things aren't quite going to plan atm, so needed to rant/vent about them a bit here. Need to shift my focus slightly, but still planning on seeing this challenge through.

Profit: -$995.65
Total Challenge: -$2310.17

Road to HS Day 33

Recap

Profit: -$524.77
Total Challenge: -$1314.52

Maybe a bit of misunderstanding here - results on 200 Iggy are 6ish bb/100.

Road to HS Day 32

Recap Video

Profit: - $381.53
Total Challenge: -$789.75

thanks next1up ! GL GL for your year

New Year Run Good - Road to HS Day 31

Profit: $971.25
Total Challenge: -$408.22

Video Recap

Phil's Tweet

Youtube Video reviewing 2022 and 2023 plans coming shortly!

Last Session of the Year - Road to HS Day 30

Profit: -$25.45
Total Challenge: -$1379.47

Video Recap

Road to HS Day 29
Profit: $541.16
Total Challenge: -$1354.02

Video Recap

Road to HS Day 28 - Still Ain't Winning
Profit: -$853.16
Total Challenge: -$1905.77

Video Recap

Road to HS Day 27 - Lowest Point of the Challenge So Far

Profit: -$394
Total Challenge: -$1052.61

Video Recap

Road to HS Day 26
Profit: $256.91
Total Challenge: -$658.61

Video Recap

I'd like to take this moment to thank the Ignition player pool for playing so face up

Updated vid so it actually has sound lol

Road to HS Day 25
Profit: -$747.25
Total Challenge: -$915.52
Video Recap + HH

I'M BACK

Check out my video update here

Really wanted to post here more, but at the end of the day, I have so many things going on that writing out posts regularly dropped down the priorities list.

Since the start of the month, I've been on a challenge within the Nachos CFP to reach HS after 3 failed shots at 500NL. I'm going to be posting all my video updates here from now on as well, and hope that I can give something back to this community which has given me so much.

You can also check out the spreadsheet tracking results for the challenge here.

Looks like RIO doesn't like green box emojis :(

Better late than never for an April recap I suppose... Let’s kick off with some metrics for last month.

Progress to high stakes: 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ (-0.46%) $10k/$50k BR

1k Revenue per day (sailing store): 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ (+1%) $65k/$365k

First international kiting competition ✅

Not the best month for me income wise, but had a heap going on on the kiting front. When I started my journey to trying to qualify for the Olympics in kiting, I knew that I was up for a big challenge. I’d never kited before, and I have just over two years to become one of the best in the world. To try and quicken my learning curve, I was going to have to throw myself into uncomfortable and challenging situations frequently, and consistently surround myself with the world’s best. April was the time to put that plan in to action, and I raced in my first international event which featured all of the top names in the kite racing world. Although I was nowhere near competitive, I was pretty happy to be within 10 minutes of the world’s best after only 100 days on the water. I spent nearly every day in April on the water, meaning it was pretty hard to achieve much in other aspects of my life.

With long hours on the water during the kiting competition, I was trying to use all of my other waking hours on getting in poker volume. Ultimately, I think the fatigue from all the training was leading to really unproductive poker sessions, and very little study due to wanting to play as much as possible. After my last post, Aquila asked me how I was going to break up all the things I wanted to achieve, and I think at the end of the day, I’m going to have to have different ‘focus points’ during various periods of the year. As Naval said ‘we should work like lions, not like cows’. In the past I think I’ve been very prone to working like a cow, and this was repeated throughout April. Going forward, I think my modus operandi will be to have ‘blocks’ of time where I spend most of my energy on poker, and blocks where most of my energy will be on kiting. This isn’t to say that they will be completely independent, but more that I won’t be trying to spend equal energy on each, or at least more energy than I can productively spend in total. The last couple weeks have been purely focussed on poker, and my sessions already feel way more energised, despite my results not quite turning around yet. I’ve got a few more days where I can focus on poker, then I’ll be getting in to more of this! (click the link to see me avoid a classic kiting start line crash)

Most people don’t really commit to their goals. I used to be one of those people. There’s something powerful about telling everyone what you’re going to achieve before you do it. Conor McGregor is a perfect example of this. He told everyone that he was going to be fighting in the UFC, and that he would become the great athlete we all know him as today. When you wholeheartedly believe in what you want to achieve, the opportunities you need to get there become a lot more obvious.

After failing to qualify for the Olympics in 2020, it took me a long time to figure out what I want to do with my life. I had the opportunity to pursue a career which would see me making a well above average salary straight off the bat, but I hated the work. After listening to this podcast, and going through the process of defining what I want my life to look like in 10 years time, I knew that a ‘normal life’ wasn’t for me. I knew that I needed to take control of my time to be able to do the things I love day in, day out. So here’s my commitment to the world and the RIO community about what I’m going to achieve in the next 10 years.

• Compete at the Olympics at least once
• Reach HS to give myself the ability to travel the world, live in great climates and live on my own schedule
• Start new online businesses to allow myself to diversify my income away from playing poker
• Grow my sailing/kite surfing store to $1k revenue a day to cover all expenses involved in getting to the Olympics
• Surround myself with those closest to me, and people who help me become the best version of myself.

I know that sounds like a lot, but with good time management, and more importantly, prioritisation, I think they are all achievable. With that out of the way, I want to ask everyone who reads this what is it you want to do with your time on this planet? Once you have an answer, I hope you can have the courage to relentlessly pursue it, and not let anything hold you back.

Thanks :) Let me know if you ever need any advice with it

Nice pop off this month mate. Hope the warm up routine treats you well!

(As you probably know) I use GTO Wizard pretty religiously, and started using this warm up every day before playing

So I play full hands against the bot for 20minutes (roughly 40ish hands) where I'm at the point of now hitting 85-90% accuracy with sticking to RNG numbers. When I'm really unsure about a spot, I'll usually follow my curiousity and try to figure out why the solver is doing something different to the action I took.

Then I'll do one range construction for a spot I know I'm leaking in - for example, I've been doing SRP OOP PFC vs 1/3 cbet on the 'easy mode' for a bit over a month now. I'm getting around 70% accuracy, but super hard to get the exact frequencies right with which sets/2p raise more than the other on each texture etc etc

Finally 5 mins drilling another specific spot I'm looking at - recently 3BP OOP PFC vs 1/3. So in total, the whole warm up would take about 35mins, and doing that 5-7 days a week adds up massively in terms of GTO progression

Thanks man! Happy to see you coaching for RIO now after everything you've given to this community :)

Really happy with the CFP, there's no chance I would be getting the results I am now without joining. In terms of the profit split and coach/content access you get, there's probably only one other 'large' stable I can think of which may be better.

yes, of course you're right. I think you know what I meant

The bread is neither here nor there for me, I'd say Germans might be a little too obsessed/picky with their bread, but I'm just fine with my 'normal' white 'toast' ;)

No, no typo there.

Can you elaborate on the "consisten approach to strategy"? :)

In nearly every spot of the game tree, I know what I'm going to do to basically any action villain takes before they even act. Most of this is a result of the baseline strategy we implement at Nachos Poker, but also as a result of studying GTO daily by playing against a solution in all spots.

Also, what's your take on Germany, you lived here for a while right?
How did it hold up compared to Australia?

It's a nice country, and a bit cheaper to live in than Australia, but I can't really deal with the weather. I want my life to revolve aorund plenty of sunlight and time spent in the sun, and German winter isn't really conducive to that... It's also not ideal for online poker, both with taxes and extra rake/limited access to good sites

yeahhhh boy, let's get after it!

Thanks my man <3

Thanks for the sub :)

Here's the easiest advice I can give, and it requires 0 strategy upgrades.

Don't play zoom. I remember when I was grinding 5NL reg tables on ACR, and I was obsessed with getting to 10NL because at that point I could finally play 10NL Blitz. I thought that once I could start playing zoom, I'd be able to play a huge amount of hands and move up way quicker because of I'd be able to have a decent winrate in that format. The fact is reg tables are going to be higher EV in nearly every scenario, and when all regs are struggling to beat the rake as it is, you need to be able to game select and ensure you're playing against players who are losing enough to compensate for the higher rake. You also need to make sure you're playing on the most +EV site. Not all player pools are made equal, but you also need to take RB/rake into account when considering which site to play on.

I think the point above sort of answers your third question.

To answer your first two questions, the main issue was that I had no consistent approach to strategy, and was essentially winging it in every spot. If you have a well thought out framework to apply throughout the game tree, playing becomes 10x easier. As a bit of a guide to where one of my main upgrades came from, my fold to river bet in the 2nd graph is nearly 50%. In the second graph, it's 27%.