CD9K

Hi, I'm good

I play Coinpoker challenge for fun+to learn+ I think I'm a slight winner in some lineups

Obviously this will look like cope but I think I ran really bad in the challenge, though I did make some mistakes deep. I did however run like 100k over EV and have won more on ACR this month so it's not as bad as it looks (-125k$ Coin, ~ +150k$ ACR)

One thing that's a bit annoying is I faced some RTA accusations and other ghosting accusations in the past few months. So I tried to play fast but I've heard that a lot of people (think or are) exploiting timing tells on me

Also, a lot of HS guys work in teams, share reads/showdowns/notes etc. But I have only ever worked solo, is a bit of a challenge in theses games

But yeah, learning a lot from this games and a lot of self exposure involved

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn't manage to get rid of my old phone, and as you've said yeah ended up switching to the brick only sometimes. I found adding in the friction of having to swap SIMs to have 4g to be able to check social media/messages meant I'd check my phone a lot less.

That's a nice idea regarding the photos yeah - There's a few good tools on a normal phone you don't realise you miss (digital train/bus tickets/railcards, loyalty cards, maps, QR codes, etc)

I agree with your whole post essentially, it's a very well written take haha

One effect I kind of considered was that by removing high dopamine distractions that I get hooked on I'm able to get bored more often which leads to: more creativity + an urge to try new things (actually led to me finally getting around to starting a week of bjj/wrestling)

Small mistakes like floating too wide I don't beat myself up over
It's when you're regbattling that your whole year is decided by these minor moments where you lose focus and make a larger mistake - I could benefit from simplifying my strategy a bit to play longer sessions yeah.But this recent shift to significantly lower tables+hours has been really good for playing almost exclusively A game, I think over time I can increase it back a bit

I have a cat yh, I didn't know my post gave the impression I was unhappy haha but that was not the intention

Thanks mate, those are some relevant links for sure

Though I don't really have any problems with productivity, if anything I need to do less to do more

So I don't find the topics in the links too relatable, although yeah it would sometimes be nice to be a machine and maybe some of that is ingrained in me somewhere, definitely something interesting to think about

The little bit I wrote about insecure overachiever is a common archetype that I fall into, where there is probably some deep guilt/feeling of not being good enough that manifests itself as overworking and sort of encompasses this whole sphere of productivity/self hacks?

Energy and distractions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for the support Sam =), I think with this stuff where there's no concrete answer I don't like to throw my hat too much into it (especially in the case of these books where they've written about it better than I can). Yeah I did see that thanks + fan of your vids mate

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

IGOT:

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

'Tartar Steppe' that relate (spoilers);

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

there are bots and some potential rta but, I think still beatable and former is more of a problem at midstakes/lower (especially since people at those stakes have a harder time spotting the bots ? / their strategy) - Still its not an ideal grind its probably one of toughest games

none of the above, I cant really divulge tbh anyways as I try to stay away from strat talk in general (esp in public like a podcast etc, where some opponent can understand deeper how you think about the game) - It was something I was doing exploitatively that wasn't good. But one thing I can share was that I was overfolding to 3b pre exploitatively, but I think that exploit is a bit overdone nowadays/isn't great vs pool anymore

Also I've started playing more shortstack and that's helped redline especially in bombpots

Graph 6max since last post

stakes

It's been a bit of a hard year, I gave my ignition account away, withdrew my roll from GG (after the superuser debacle) and lost my balance on stars (depo limits + withdrew bit too much+downswing), so I'm resigned to only playing ACR/live..
In the middle of the downswing I was kind of obsessing with poker trying to find root cause of the lossrate, refusing to accept that certain parts of my game that I thought were good weren't anymore - In the end the data trumped my feelings and I made some changes that feel really good

On a soft skills side, I also stopped checking session by session results and focusing purely on process. I've even changed the way I play my sessions now to focusing on only playing my A game (rather than playing best timezone), I go to the gym+sunlight before I play every session and I only play 2 tables max (down from 5/4) for 1-2 hours before I take a break (since 90%+ of my vol is regbattle)

Not sure if this volume will be conducive with making $ but it's helping me improve my 6/9max for live and is a healthy process

For first Q: I meant that the necessary skill to beat 200nl is close to that of 1000nl with a recreational - enough so that to maximise $ if you're comfortable should just select as high as you can, there's not a big difference between the best 200nl reg and the mediocre 1000nl reg.

I didn't take in Marinelli's point enough and it should be something to consider when deciding your risk tolerance/BRM - If you have no outlets in life in which you express your creativity/competitiveness outside of poker then you shouldn't ruthlessly table select and forget why you started playing the game in the first place.

Also playing some lower EV lineups end up pushing you to improve/keep you curious and increase your longevity in the game which net increases your earnings too (if you're not too -EV in the lineup, which is mostly the case)

Should be a by person case though, if you feel burnt out/don't want to play volume then try diagnose the problem / if you feel overly stressed out by regbattle variance then stay away from that etc

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

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

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

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

Some other stuff I forgot to mention;
-Its shown in experiments that humans tend to over estimate their confidence interval on a prediction by 22x avg (so if you ask someone to guess number of balls in a jar then their confidence in the accuracy of that guess, their confidence is 22x higher)
-Problem with binomial curves is that it results in people trying to overfit small samples to a curve and derive meaning from it

These 2 applied to poker:
1) When playing a new format or stake be very conservative in your risk of ruin calculations. Be particularly careful about over narrating a winrate for yourself based off meaningless samples

Fat tails/Black swans

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

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

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

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

I'm not great at PLO HU so it was probably just a mistake =)
davy is top 6max nlh reg

Thanks mate, going to write a longer form post with some replies to points in this soon

Thanks mate that’s a very valid input, I think I’m still going to play HU and battle but just a lot more conservative on the br stake wise

Risk of ruin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting choice to play mixed games, I always thought it'd be my most fun prefered format but thought there was no where to find volume for it on main sites. Aren't the games pretty solved and bottable on HS though?

Something to think about, as a US player the global network PLO sounds really good, ignition was good but recently a lot of collusion gone unchecked, maybe not so much at lower stakes

Also something to consider is that if you look at poker as a market: All the formats are declining somewhat in terms of reaching a point where game is solved and there are no edges, but the games with least computability are going to decline the least, that'd be 5c and 6c PLO and maybe some misc draw games idk. If I was to pick a format to study from ground up right now it'd be PLO5c>PLO4c, they seem to have a lot of recreational growth both online and live in America (especially Florida and recently Vegas I hear)

Thanks mate =) yeah the sunrun has been unreal, also that's interesting hadn't heard that about 4handed+ games ty

In the first email they asked for some basic info about what time I usually play, then the 2nd email was about filming my play with a link, the link was apparently a phishing link, I didn't click it

Pretty scary that these hackers could have my address/full name/know what time I play? I think there's a chance ACR got hacked around Christmas day, their servers were bugging out and a bunch of funds got frozen

Maybe a bit but some of the regs are known guys on stars etc, also I’ve just been asked by acr to record myself playing so they do seem to have decent security

EDIT : lol just got a follow up email from acr saying the first one was a phishing email, luckily i didnt click any link

thankss, On ACR and cant remember who exactly

Had an interesting year, my biggest and most frequent losing months as well as my (by far) biggest winning months in my poker career to date. Went from an avg month of maybe +/-15k (with a couple +60s) to +/-40k avg (with some +100s) lol

High stakes variance has had its tough moments but looking back I’m decently proud of how I got through them. There were even moments where I briefly considered giving up to focus on uni and a lower variance life 😅

My online results weren’t amazing this year, my winrate was lower than I hoped at 1k 2k but I was regbattling a lot and kind of lost my main source of wr ignition (I believe games there are rife with collusion and rta now, so after a small sample I quit the site and focused on trying to find vol at 2k+).But then funnily enough my December sunrun was pretty much 80% regbattle at 5k and some micro amount of 10k, just running really good making some 0ev river catches that were correct (had a funny random punt hand that comes to mind:

SBvsBU SRP: I XC70%, XC turn i think pot or small overbet, river xc polar jam on T85hdh Jc4c with 65dd , in solve it was 0ev catcher rest of 65 were -ev except dd for some blocker reason, but IP bluffed some K6xx .

We kind of get paid as poker players to take on variance, and everyone has their tolerance, those who push past that tolerance at the level of HS where it can become really painful are (hopefully) rewarded. Although I must say per hour the EV of grinding a lot of volume at 1k could actually be bit better than HS online

I think I will make a new blog post like demondoink for 2024, and I have a lofty goal for 2024 not certain if its achievable but I want to try have 1m $ winnings =)
I have some ideas of how I’ll do it, also if anyone has any blogpost suggestions let me know.

Boring life gym stuff
Gym has become the best part of my day for a while now, I’ve started to track my macros for first time since going to gym for last 1-2years, I have decent gains but I definitely plateaued in strength gains/stopped being able to overload on some lifts from not enough volume/desire.
So I’ll add a small gym progress to my blog, ending 2023 1.34xBW 5x5 squat, 0.89xBW 3x5 BP, 0.59xBW 4x5 OHP. Haven’t DL’d in ages have been moving bit away from heavy compound towards machines as it let me overload a lot safer, my progress halted a bit when my squat was beginning to give me lower back pain

Thanks for reading, happy holidays

December graph to date
By stake
Year to date graph excluding HU (HU EV positive but down on 5k I believe, dont have main PC to post but will reply later to this comment with it)
By stake
As you can see pre RB (35k usd) I was on track for a bad year online till last couple months, madeup for by 3/4 months of live trips. Sidenote PT4 numbers aren’t 100% accurate, bunch of acr hands get missed and some app game hands have wrong currency so I was up more in PT4 before last couple month sunrun

Net profit for year including live (including travel expenses and profit splits) is +$391,000
(177,540 from online NLH including rakeback and HU, -30k online PLO)

Hi, thanks man that's a great take =)

I like your way of weighing decisions but it can be hard in practice and always easy to be too hard on yourself after the fact

Been having a great month poker wise, running good online recovering my HU 'downswing' and had a short successful live trip playing mix of 10k NL to 100k NL... Though I did run at least 2buyins behind EV at 100k NL as well as losing 200bb KK v AA

Have a lot of thoughts about the live lifestyle, I went with the intention of maintaining my good gym routine+eating habits but it quickly fell apart due to logistical issues.

Something I've noticed in HS live pros is that some of them stop thinking about anything except their next session, the adrenaline from playing such high stakes in a fun environment is pretty unmatched and normal life can be quite dull in comparison.

Also, I remember Stefan saying something in his blog about how he thinks it's bad to get staked for stakes above 10k NL as it's just a rabbithole and you lose motivation for your main game 5k NL. I can fully see what he means now, since I've come back from this trip I'm for the first time ever struggling a little bit to motivate myself to study/regbattle online. I also feel quite rusty in general, maybe its not rust though, maybe its an uncertainty about my actions that before I was autopiloting from constant exposure to sims, not rust but a more conscious thought about every hand akin to how I was playing live.

At one point during my trip I was really close to having a panic attack from lack of sleep and built up stress but managed to pull through with a hot shower+meditation. The mix of lack of sleep, a higher than my average intake of caffeine and a lot higher stakes led to a rather unpleasant elevated state of alert/heart rate, I think a lot of people would've been pretty anxious in my shoes though.

So going to try and catchup with my routine here and figure out what I want to work on in the time being, maybe I'll pursue my endgoal of being a HU NLH/PLO specialist a bit more as it's quite fun

Recent online run

By stake

Live results small sample

I had a couple powerful discussions about some of these topics with an old friend and my therapist - that helped me realise that it's not really that I don't have empathy for others but more that I feel I don't have agency/control over the situation. I feel that I can't have an impact and that there's no value in discussions about things we're not taking action on, but I need to realise that even a discussion can motivate someone down the line to take action - and to not be part of the problem

Today I want to ask a couple questions to myself and the reader:
Why do we play poker?
What is success in this field or life to you?

At the moment I’m studying at University alongside poker which is fine, I’m handling both decently well. But I do feel pressure from people around me to give up on poker and live a normal life, to fill the role they want me to, or fill the role society wants me to. That could and is likely all in my head

But I have an opportunity to potentially play Nosebleeds live cash staked and make infinitely more than I would online but it means quitting uni completely halfway through the course and a fair bit in ‘debt’. It essentially means going allin on poker and isolating myself from the things that I’ve built around me (my relationships and healthy routine).

Part of my brain weighs the options and feels its stupid to not take that opportunity as its like a football player being signed to Barcelona and just staying at their local team. But part of me also sees people with ‘success’ who say a lot about these topics (some of its bit conflicting):

1. The idea that the person who flies in a helicopter to Mt Everest and takes a selfie is not as fulfilled as the person who climbed/no-one cares
2. The things that you think serve you in your 20s often don’t serve you for life. On that note also, it’s likely that its not money I want to attain from Poker but success/competition, maybe for validation of myself/from others.
3. Something I don’t put nearly enough value into is family/relationships/society at large to be honest. I have some very strange conscious biases to be a bit selfish with some things. I feel no desire to vote, I feel no desire to learn anything about Ukraine or Gaza or Covid. They don’t feel in my realm of agency or importance. Sometimes I talk to women about these issues and if I reveal my true stance even slightly it outrages them, their level of empathy is mountains higher than mine on most topics. But on some things I feel I have higher empathy than others, particularly towards looking after my family/close ones financially and sacrificing for them even if they have done things that some people would cut them out their life for. I often feel guilt for not being as good of a son/brotherI could be and that drives me to act better but only out of guilt, not really because I feel it helps me/is something I care about
4. Try to live so that you’re fulfilled in health, relationships, wealth and spiritually. Taking that opportunity might not be the highest life EV to max out on those compared to staying and playing online, i might end up alone and depressed etc
5. Lastly its a fairly irreversible decision, I wouldn’t really be able to go back to University and complete a degree. But anyways I have close to no desire to do underpaid work for some evil corporation or pay tax to a deceitful government

Might’ve exposed myself as a sociopath/psychopath here idk

Anyways gl at the tables