Demondoink

Gotta respect the bluff!

Action turn!

The power of now

This year, so far, has been a bit of a strange one. My poker volume hasn't been amazing, but I have actually been pretty consistent in playing and I grinded both SCOOP and WCOOP for the bulk of both months. What has cost me volume is the fact that 500z continues to rarely run, and even getting volume at $500/$1k/$2nl tables can be a bit of a challenge on Stars recently. I played $5k a couple of times in September and then I've never really seen it run again (on Stars) since then. This has meant that I've even had to play some 200z recently just to increase the hands per hour, which isn't ideal given I could be shot taking $5k right now.

Of course I could be playing on other sites, but I still greatly prefer Stars to any other site out there and I also like knowing which player is who- something that I have no idea about on other sites, for the most part.

I've made a small strategy tweak this year because I wasn't overly happy with my win rate for the previous two years, and I also felt like I was giving too much respect to other regs in some regards (but I don't want to get in to specifics).

Anyways, overall I am feeling pretty good on the poker front and I'm much better this year at shifting my poker logic from one stake to another- something that I struggled with in the past. If I was playing a session then I would tend to just play the same (roughly speaking) on all my tables. Whether that be the $2k table or $500nl. It can be difficult to think simultaneously on 4-6 tables about your poker decisions, while also trying to take on spot from the $2knl perspective and the other spot from the $500nl (or perhaps even 200z) perspective.

At the moment I feel like I've trained up my brain pretty well this year to the point that I can think in different ways while playing hands at the same time, at vastly differently skilled stakes.

I guess what a lot of this boils down to is being present or not. When we are grinding a session, the bulk of our decisions are somewhat automated- we know (roughly speaking) our 3bet ranges from every position. We know (roughly speaking) our 4bet ranges, our SRP opening ranges and our bb defence ranges. We know what boards to big bet and what boards to small bet, we know what boards to range bet and which boards to split on. We know who are the nitty regs and who are the bluffy regs. We know x combo makes a good bluff on certain board textures, but how y combo is a much better river give up.

Most of our in game thinking is about maintaining focus, making small tweaks to our strategy based on our opponents, or when we play a weird spot that we have basically never studied before. The vast majority of our game is done on auto pilot, assuming we have reached a fairly competent stake level where we have a good understanding of pre flop ranges and how the post flop game is supposed to function.

However, it can get to the point where too much is automated, and not enough of our game involves actually thinking. When we are playing the same style at a stake 1/10th of our higher buy in, then this is more to do with automation than logic. Logic would dictate some sort of adjustment in our strategy, but automation dictates that we play the same way, regardless of the stake. Of course this is the exact same when we play against different player types. Some guys are capable of bluffing in most spots, and other guys are nitty pieces of crap who have never shown down a river bluff in their lives. Yet we project bluffs on to both of their ranges, and we click call with our second pairs...

I've noticed that the same happens in our daily lives. Much of our daily lives are automated. We have managed to formulate a 'good strategy; when it comes to daily living. Perhaps this involves waking up at a reasonable time, having a healthy breakfast of (in my case) porridge oats, some sort of milk (typically coconut or oat), frozen berries, peanut butter and maple syrup. Sometimes this changes a little and I might switch the frozen berries to a cooking apple (stewing the apple first then adding the porridge oats at the end of the stewing process). Or perhaps I may add cocoa powder to add a different flavour dimension, or protein powder if I've been at the gym the previous day, or plan on going that afternoon. Sometimes I will mash up a banana and cook it with the oats- my chef friend showed me this, instead of cutting it up and topping the oats after they are cooked. Or maybe I will lose my mind and add a couple squares of dark chocolate to melt in to the porridge oats as they cook on the stove.

However, either way, I know pretty much what I am going to eat for breakfast every day. I have refined my porridge cooking from brick hard, clumpy oats cooked in the microwave, to smooth, creamy perfection, cooked on the hob. My porridge strategy (like my poker game) has been refined to the point where it's 90%+ automated.

The issue is that with automation comes predictability. We know what to expect, meaning there is very little fun involved, and very little room for novelty and creativity. When we play poker on autopilot, we lose the joy of finding a funky line, of pulling off a creative bluff or of making a wild hero call. And in our daily lives we can know what to expect before the day has even begun.

We know what we are eating for breakfast, with the exception of protein powder or not. We know what workout we are doing at the gym, we know what way we will walk to and from the gym, we know our methodology of study, we know what we will cook for dinner, we know what time we will start playing poker and we know the way that the day will pan out- perhaps with the exception of how our poker session will go!

Of course some of this automation makes sense, we don't want to wake up every day and have no idea what to eat for breakfast. Spending 1-2 hours walking around shops trying to get creative ideas for a good breakfast recipe. We don't want to show up at the gym and have no idea what we are striving towards- are we trying to put on muscle, build strength, improve our cardio or simply use exercise as some form of meditation, to cleanse our minds of the daily worries of life.

There is a thin line between too much automation and too little. We want to play good poker, while maintaining our capacity to find creative plays and make good deviations. We want to get in a good workout and progress towards our physical goals, whilst also maintaining some sort of novelty in our workouts. We want to walk around the city in an area that we enjoy, whilst also avoiding taking the same path every single time.

Over the past year or so I have been focusing a bit more on spirituality again. I have meditated most days for the past 5-6 years, and while that has helped me greatly when it comes to improving my confidence and overcoming insecurities and fears, I feel like it kind of stagnated and I wasn't really getting any better. It helps each day to a certain extent, more so to cleanse me of some negative thoughts etc, but my mind is still restless and I still think too much of both the past and the future. I wanted to be more present in my daily life, so that each day, even if it was a day of 'routine' where I was going to be playing poker etc, maintained some level of novelty and excitement. I don't want to know exactly what I am eating today, exactly what I am studying, exactly what time I'm playing poker, exactly what workout I'm doing and exactly what TV show I'm watching after the grind has completed.

So I started reading the power of now again. I have read it once or twice before, but probably not for a couple of years. The book talks about having an outer purpose (goals, destinations, achievements) and also an inner purpose- which is essentially to remain present in each moment.

Sometimes I find myself doing things as a means to an end. I will watch a film, but I am already thinking about the ending and what I am going to do when it's finished. I start a poker session and I'm already thinking about what I am going to eat afterwards. I step foot in the sauna, and I am already counting down the minutes until my fifteen minutes is up (which is why I now sit in a position where I cannot see the clock).

It's funny cos I talked about the book 'the wisdom of groundhog day' earlier this year, and how I wanted to apply some of the lessons within that book to my own life. I ended up buying the DVD for like £1, but it was tinted a weird shade of green when I tried to watch it on my PS2, so I never watched it. I had seen some of the film on Youtube years ago, but never the whole thing. Anyways, I am on Prime last night after my session and browsing the suggested films- most of which are James Bond, and up shows Groundhog Day! The film expires in four days, so needless to say I watched it right away.

I think it's actually the best every film, at least that I've seen, when it comes to meditation, being present and enlightenment. Phil goes through all the different stages of living when he realises he is stuck in a time loop- the initial fear/shock, then lust/greed, depression/hopelessness before eventually becoming grateful and fully present and appreciative of each day.

Initially he is Punxsutawney just to get the weather report over with. He is doing his job as a means to an end. His mind has already left the town before his body has. However, at the end he is fully present. He doesn't see people in cafe's, in shops, on the street etc as NPC's, he sees them as human beings who have likes and dislikes, dreams and goals, hobbies and interests. He sees them as people who are important to others- whether that be their spouse, partner or even a friend or family member.

I think most of us are like Phil at the start of the film. Perhaps we aren't as cynical as him, perhaps we treat others with more respect etc, but most of the time our minds are on to the next thing before we have finished the current thing. We look forward to holidays that are months away, we dread getting up in the morning for our run, or we watch a TV show whilst simultaneously scrolling on our phones.

What I've noticed since I started reading the power of now again is that I start to notice things again. Normally when we look in a food cupboard, much of the 'food' doesn't even process as food in our minds. Perhaps they are weird ingredients that we have never looked up a recipe to cook with. Perhaps it is something that takes hours to cook, so we leave it for another day. We use certain spices and sauces regularly whilst consistently overlooking others. Things become props in our lives that we don't even notice, because we are never truly looking.

For example, I have a small basket of books in my living room next to the TV, but I almost never look in the basked and instead I go to the library for a book, or buy one from a charity shop. The other day I actually seen it as a basket (instead of a prop in the background) and I took out a small book and started reading it again.

Anyways the point I'm trying to make is that when we spend most our daily on auto pilot, we don't notice most things. Strangers are merely NPC's who we rarely interact with, books gathering dust tend to gather more dust, weird ingredients lie in the cupboard until they go out of date.

My aim is to be like Phil at the end of the film. Appreciating each day, interacting with people whether a friend or a stranger, noticing the small things that we tend to take for granted on a daily basis, and living each day as if it of vital importance- which they are! I may have an outer purpose (whether that be poker related, fitness related, relationship related) but my inner purpose is the most important one. That means being as present as possible on a daily basis. This presence will lead to a much more fulfilling life- one that enables me to escape auto pilot and who knows, perhaps even take porridge off the breakfast menu for a while!

GG.

super1234 Yes that makes sense. Personally I would like to switch to a more 'early' wake up time in the future, but as long as I play online poker in the UK time zone then I will be waking up between 10am-12pm. It just doesn't make any sense for me to wake up at 8am if I'm not starting playing for another twelve hours.

I was just throwing up a random photo of Jocko's watch for motivation, not really for anything else. I agree that getting eight hours sleep (for me) is vitally important. Some people can sleep less though and feel just as refreshed.

Aquila Hello mate. It doesn't have to be the 'next year approach', but the reality is it will take a while to sell the house etc, so there is literally no chance that I will have moved out of here before the end of this year.

However, I do think there are some merits to the 'next year approach'. The reason that we make goals for the new year is because we want to change in some way. Of course in an ideal sense we could just change today or tomorrow, but starting in a new year kind of gives us a great 'blank page' to begin on. We can easily recall (in the future) when we began our healthy/spiritual/social/career journey if it begins at the start of a new year.

Also, Christmas etc are in December, so it's easy to go off the rails a bit in terms of our health/exercise etc and put on some weight, or drink too much alcohol. Which means that January is kind of the ideal time to begin our health/fitness journey as there are no holidays or reasons to get drunk for at least a few months until Easter or whatever.

Personally I don't drink alcohol or eat more around Christmas time (actually I'm still trying to put on weight anyways) but I am just playing devils advocate and why, for many people, waiting until the new year to start their goals makes sense.

I don't know your sleeping regime, but I guess 4:24 is closer to the
time you go to bed than your waking hours :)

Hahah yeah you are correct! Typically I go to sleep between 3-4am, but I don't really need to stay awake the late so I want to get it closer to 2am, or even 2:30am so I can wake up around 10:30am each day. I have no intention of waking up at 4:30am each day (cos I usually don't start grinding until 8pm or even later) but I like mixing it up every so often and I want to experience different days and not the same day over and over.

For example when my brothers were over for the Summer we played golf on the Saturday, and then decided Saturday night to play at 8am again the next day. They have normal sleep patterns, so waking up at 7am wasn't difficult for them, but I do not! So I probably got 4-5 hours sleep, but it was fun to get up early for a change and throw my body off it's normal routine.

It was pretty cool finishing our round and it was still not even 12pm yet.

What is important to you? In no Order:
- Poker
- A social life
- Sports

Yes that is accurate! I completely agree with you about enjoying the small things in our daily lives, but I think that we can have micro goals (for example appreciating the company of friends/family, talking to strangers in our daily lives, stroking a dog, sitting in the sun etc) and simultaneously have macro goals- training for a marathon (or a triathlon), getting to the nosebleeds, travelling to different continents, learn a new language etc. Imo it doesn't have to be one or the other.

We can be present in our daily lives and appreciate the small things in life, but also try to have 'bigger' goals (not that they are more important, but just that they will take more time/money/effort to achieve).

I do meditation (most) days so that I can be as present as possible in my daily life and not waste time or take it for granted, but I also enjoy setting bigger goals so that I have more purpose behind my daily routines etc- for example studying most days so that I can play $5k+. If I lost track of my macro goal of playing higher stakes, then I wouldn't even bother studying.

That's not to say that moving up in stakes will change me in any way, it's just that I play this game because I am competitive and I enjoy the challenge. And of course also because I am good at it and it's my job.

I've read a lot of books over the past few years that have enable me to focus more on the present moment and on my daily life- the power of now, the wisdom of groundhog day, the law of attraction etc, but I will still read books on procrastination (the now habit) and on how to improve my productivity. I will still read books on world class sports coaches (Phil Jackson eleven rings) and watch old highlights of Tiger Woods winning the Masters in 2019. Then the next day I will start off with a twelve minute meditation and talk to my neighbour.

We don't have to limit ourselves to being more present to enjoy the small things, or more disciplined to enjoy the big things- we can do both!

Which is why I enjoy setting goals/targets each year. It means that each year will be different in some way and they won't all blend in to one. For example in recent years I can say in 2023 I bought my first house, in 2022 I ran my first marathon, in 2021 I lived with my best friend and my brother, in 2020 I had my best ever year at poker, in 2019 I went on a month long trip to Canada and America.

Life isn't a box ticking exercise, daily life matters, but so do new experiences and new challenges! I don't want next year to be similar to this year, I want it to be different. And in the process I want to be present in my daily life so that I never take a day for granted.

How much money is our youth worth?

I was listening to a podcast with Jimmy Carr and at one point he discussed life, and more accurately our youth. He said something along the lines of- in thirty years time we would trade our entire material worth to come back in time to this point in our lives. It is so easy for us to take each day for granted until one day we wake up and we are thirty years older, having spent that duration of time mostly living on auto pilot.

Recently I've been having a lot of conversations with people, whether that be friends, family or even acquaintances, getting their advice on what I should be doing next. The vast majority of them are in agreement that a move abroad (most likely to Australia) out of my comfort zone is the best move. The main issue with that is that I could no longer play on Stars- a site where I've probably put 90% of my volume in on over the years.

However, what exactly is the point in earning money?

Is the point to earn enough money so that we have freedom to do things that we otherwise would not be able to? So perhaps that would enable us to travel for a year, or shift towards more of part time schedule, or perhaps change career entirely. Or is the point of earning money merely to add more zeros to the end of the numbers in our bank accounts? Or is the point of earning money not so much about the money itself, but more about the process? We know that money isn't easy to earn, and we know that humans (especially guys) require a purpose in their careers in order to feel fulfilled.

I'm not exactly sure. But we also need to think about what Jimmy said, that time and life is something that you cannot really put a price on. Our hourly rate when coaching may be x amount of dollars, and our hourly rate at the tables may be y amount of dollars, but how much is living in this current period of time worth? How much is being in our twenties and thirties worth? How much money would a guy in his eighties pay to switch places with us?

Lets say our target in our life is to grind until we hit $10m, well would we take $10m right now to switch places with the eighty year old? I highly doubt it. Which clearly highlights that our age and youth is almost priceless, yet we often take it for granted and just allow the years to drift by as we sit in front of the TV or the computer screen, or as we stare in to our phones for hours at a time.

At the start of this year I wrote down around twenty experiences on a list that I wanted to do in 2024, and I am ashamed to say that I have done only five or six of them so far. Whenever we go in to a new year we swear that this year will be different, but how different does it actually pan out being? Perhaps we start the year off hot by going to the gym 5x per week, by doing dry January and by going on Holiday to escape the cold weather. We read several books and we tell ourselves that THIS is the year that we finally break in to high stakes and beyond.

But then auto pilot kicks in. We start going to the gym 4x per week, then 3x per week, then it becomes a struggle to go at all. The motivation to study and grind slowly decreases, and we start watching Youtube instead of reading our books.

Before we know it, this year appears eerily similar to the last. We want to shot take, but we are in our comfort zone at 500nl and don't wanna risk that 5bb/100 WR. Summer comes and goes, the sunshine and weather that we have been longing for for months is now turning to rain and snow. Next thing we know the Christmas decorations are starting to appear, and we start to think about how next year is going to be different. We break out the notebook and construct a list of goals for 2025.

1) get to high stakes 2) go to the gym 5x per week and get shredded 3)...

WAKE UP!

Tomorrow I will start the day off by ticking off one of the things from my 2024 experiences list- by running before light. I literally don't think I've been on one run all year, so running even 5km will probably be a struggle, but my alarm is set for 7am (according to my watch the sun is rising at 7:49am).

Actually my mood has been a lot better for the past week. I think I may have had some mild form of depression, but then I realised that I've not been getting much sun and I've not taken any vitamin D etc supplements since before the Summer. So I went and bought a multi vitamin (iirc I had this issue a couple of years ago) and I actually feel really good tonight. Also I've been making plans with friends/family for the coming weeks, so my social calendar is a bit more full after the extremely anti social WCOOP grind.

I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders after deciding that I am leaving Inverness, and tbh I'm just gonna sell the house to get it off my hands and then (hopefully) go to Australia for a year. I might even go to Thailand at some point- both to visit (I've never been to Asia) and to get my Pokerstars fix!

Anyways next year WILL be different from this year. No more auto pilot bullshit and taking time for granted.

When the alarm goes off tomorrow morning at 7am, it will be a new day- both physically and metaphorically.

GG.

Jeff_ Exactly! That was one of my main focuses earlier on in the year too- to focus more on having fun each session instead of taking them so seriously. Obviously I have my moments where I get annoyed during a session, but I think that overall I have had more fun at the poker tables this year than I have in a while.

In a weird way I think it would be cool if online died, cos then we would be forced to come up with other ways to make money, whether that be grinding live or switching careers. I am not saying that I want online poker to die, but every professional athlete calls time on their career at some point and then has to find something else to focus on. Sometimes that is coaching, sometimes it is punditry or analysis, and other times its just doing something new and completely unrelated. I think it would be boring to do the same job for 40 years, even though I still enjoy poker and online poker for now.

Do you think about GG or apps? For playing higher than stars. GG has
5k games very often and being very good reg you have a great chance of
doing great. Some people took a lot of money from it and showed very
nice results.

Thanks man I appreciate that :) I play a little on GG at $1k, but probably haven't played in a month or so cos I was playing mtt's and then took a week off since then. I am still trying to figure out if the rake is beatable there, do you play much on GG? I'll probably just shot take $5k on Stars in the meantime, and then play $1k on GG until I get a decent sample size and figure out if I can beat those games pre RB. I might play $5k on GG if I run up more of a roll there, but atm it would be risky to play that stake with my current role on the site- and it's very difficult to deposit more from the UK if I were to go busto.

Tbh I know literally nothing about the apps and have never played on any of those sites. I'm a bit of a fish when it comes to adding new sites, hence why I have mostly just played on Stars throughout my career. Though its definitely clear that adding in these sorts of games would increase your annual profit/income.

Aquila Hey man, how's it going? Thanks for commenting and I appreciate the advice!

The annoying thing is that I like the area and I want this move to work. I think it makes sense to put some of my poker profits in to buying a house so that I can save on rent and also so that the house will increase in value over time. However, it was probably just the wrong place to buy in, in all honesty.

I would definitely advise you to go to Australia for 1 year. The
number of hours of sunshine alone could have a very positive impact on
you. I think it can be a great country for sports enthusiasts.

Yeah I think it would be a good idea to mix things up for me and get me out of my comfort zone, while simultaneously improving my daily quality of life with the improved weather and being around more people of a similar age etc. I doubt Australia is somewhere that I would live long term (I like travelling and it is so far from everywhere) but I think as an experience and to get me out of this rut I'm currently in, it could be a good move for me.

But I wouldn't buy a new house or apartment beforehand. What if you
want to stay in Australia? Or you think you want to go to xy. Your
life situation can change “radically” very quickly (partner or
something else). I would think that it would be easier for you not to
have any extra luggage in mind.

That makes sense too. My thinking was that I don't want to come home after being there for a year and have nowhere to live, and be back at my parents or renting again, but yeah perhaps its not the best idea to buy some place else and then move in case I decide to stay there longer term or perhaps even live in another country afterwards- I think it would be cool to live in Japan for a bit, for example.

What options do you have to play online in Australia?

I think I can play on ACR and I suppose other sites like Coinpoker- which I actually intend on depositing on to at some point. I definitely can't play on Stars, but I know of a fairly well know high stakes cash reg (who posts Youtube videos) that grinds GG from Australia, even though you're not supposed to. Presumably through a VPN. So perhaps that is an option too.

If I were to start playing live I could just play shorter sessions or play a few days per week. I'm not ruling out live tbh cos at least playing live is more social than online as you are around other people. Also I have very little experience live, and playing there could increase my confidence so that I could eventually play in some higher stakes cash games further down the line in the US or Canada or whatever. Cos atm I wouldn't be comfortable playing much higher than 5/10 or 10/20 cos I know that I have a tendency to give off live tells.

Anyways I am going to think things over and make a decision in the coming weeks/months on what to do next.

Oh and on a 'positive' note, I ended up doing my annual tax form tonight that I've been procrastinating on for months. I have a procrastination list on my phone where I write down everything I am putting off and delaying- typically more daunting tasks.

As I wasn't playing poker tonight I told myself I need to do at least one thing off the list, so I tackled one of the biggest ones, as it took me a couple of hours to complete!

Days where we perhaps may not be in the best mindset to play poker are great opportunities to catch up on things we have been putting off for while imo. It doesn't matter if we are on soft tilt if we are filling out a tax form, but clearly matters a lot if we are grinding poker.

Then when I go back to playing poker again I will feel much freer to grind as I won't have these tasks lurking at the back of my mind that need completed.

Time for a change

Recently I've not been overly happy. It turns out that moving to Inverness was definitely not the right move for me, and now I am kind of stuck with a house that is in the process of getting decorated, in a place that I no longer wish to stay in. In all honesty if I could move out tomorrow I would do so.

For the first six month I was pretty happy- I was living in a new place that I had never really explored much before, I was able to focus on my online grind after spending the past year house hunting and I had my own space after basically living with other people for my entire life (bar around a six month period when my flat mate moved out of my flat in Edinburgh).

However for the latter six months (I've been here just over a year now) my mood has slowly been getting worse and worse. Towards the end of my stay in Edinburgh I experienced these same negative emotions, so I paid attention to them and moved out, before going over to Budapest for two months and then house hunting when I got back. Now these negative emotions are back, and are probably worse in all honesty.

I just started listening to a podcast tonight on 'diary of a CEO' with 'the brain rot doctor' and (although I've on only listened to around 25 mins of the podcast so far) in it the doctor talks about how important it is to listen to our emotions when we feel them. Our emotions serve a purpose. He talked about how some forms therapy can be detrimental.

For example lets say that someone goes in to therapy and talks about all of their problems to the therapist in a venting manner. Often this will feel like a weight has been lifted off of their shoulders (at least temporarily) but they will then soon go back to having the same emotions soon afterwards. They have not solved the problem. Instead he says its important to pay attention to your emotions because they are trying to tell you something. If you are feeling crap then it's probably a signal that something needs to change. You (or perhaps someone close to you) just has to figure out what that 'thing' is that needs changed.

In my case I have discovered that their simply aren't enough people of a similar age up here. They tend to move away from the area (if they are ambitious) at around 17/18 after high school and usually to one of the bigger cities where they can attend University (there isn't one here). Then because there are more jobs in these big cities, they don't tend to move back- unless perhaps they are starting a family or something and wish to move somewhere with more affordable housing and in a nicer, more scenic area (like the Highlands).

This is not a good place for a (relatively) young, single guy to live. This is a middle aged+ city imo.

Compare that to Edinburgh and where I lived which was basically in a student/young professional area (we were like 10 mins walk from the Uni) where you were surrounded by people in their 20s/30s etc. There were very few families cos the vast majority of the housing in those areas were flats, which aren't really big enough to raise a family in.

Anyways I'm not saying I want to move back there, I am just pointing out the huge difference in the demographics of people I am living around currently compared to a couple years ago.

One of the reasons I decided against moving to the Isle of Skye was because I noticed (while walking around) that there was a distinct lack of younger people. I ended up speaking to an Irish guy in the gym (he was probably in his twenties) and he confirmed my suspicions and said there weren't many younger people and told me not to move there lol. I guess I just wish I had done more research before I moved up here, but because they had a college I just assumed that there would still be a good amount of younger people up here too.

My intentions with this post aren't to rant or complain, I just want to outline my thoughts and one of the main reasons why I have not been posting on here very recently. Also, hopefully this post will force other people to think twice before moving to a town/city that they haven't done a ton of research on- especially if you are moving by yourself. I think that the vast majority of places can be good if you are living with a close friend or partner, but if you are living by yourself (and also working from home as a poker player) then we have to make sure that we are in an area where it is relatively easy to meet similar like minded people so that we avoid becoming socially isolated.

So I've decided that I'm either going to rent out or sell my flat. Originally I had planned to wait until the end of the year so that I could grind etc, but honestly at the moment I don't even give a fuck about grinding I just want to move to some place that I will be happy living in, so I might try to sell even sooner than that. The only issue is that the house is like half way through decorating so it's not exactly in pristine selling condition lol.

Just to be clear Inverness is a really nice city and the Highlands are amazing, but it's one thing visiting for a holiday and another thing living there (especially by yourself).

My brother lives in Australia and keeps on asking me to fly out there for a holiday. It was never somewhere that I particularly fancied travelling to, but now I am strongly considering just saying 'fuck it' and moving out there for a year. I have two other friends who live out there too. I wouldn't be able to play on Stars though, so I guess maybe I'd switch to other sites or even just grind live or something. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea just taking a year off poker as well, as I've been doing this full time for eleven years now.

The main issue is what to do with the house though so I have to figure that out first, and I'm also half way through dental treatment so I'm not exactly sure how that would work if I moved out to Australia lol. I'm also thinking about whether it would be better to buy a place somewhere closer to my friends/family here, in a younger demographic area, before moving abroad- so that when I do return I have somewhere decent to live in, instead of having to move back here or house hunt again.

Also, the other night I logged back on to Reddit for the first time in like five years (I stopped posting on there cos they temp banned me because I fought back against a girl who heavily implied that she hated men) and I read a couple of my old posts. One of them was titled 'I'm not chasing any more' and discussed how I am no longer willing to chase after girls who show a low/lack of interest. It actually proved to be one of, if not my most popular post as so many other people (both guys and girls) resonated with my message about how crap it can be chasing after people who don't really give a fuck about you.

Anyways the main point I'm trying to make is not related to girls (I think this post was from 2019), it's that we should apply this approach to ALL of our relationships- whether that be romantic or platonic. What I noticed was that I have been clinging on to friendships where the other person is often making very minimal effort, and where I am essentially the only person trying to arrange plans to meetup and hangout. Overall I don't mind organising plans, as some people just don't enjoy doing that, but the very least you can ask of a friend is a reciprocal effort on both sides where you both make effort to catch up and organise plans together.

After reading that old post its like something clicked and I realised that I was taking my old approach of chasing girls and now applying it towards chasing long term friends who make almost zero effort nowadays, simply because I have not surrounded myself with enough like minded people and I have prioritised the online grind too much. I make poker friends (like minded people) and then basically never see them cos we live in different countries.

So my next move, whether that be in Scotland or abroad, is going to purely focus on being around other young, ambitious, adventurous, like minded people.

Of course I cannot blame everyone else and absolve myself of all responsibility, I was the one who chose to move here for example, but I can hand on heart say that I always make effort with my friends. What I have to realise is that I am no longer a priority for them, and that it's time for me to move on and focus on creating a new social circle. Instead of chasing after people that don't reciprocate the same effort.

I will be back to posting more positive things next week, but I wanted to get this off my chest and explain why (perhaps) I may not be playing much poker this month.

GG.

Yeah there are a lot of factors, but I think that people will always find money to gamble with, even if they can't really afford to. I think that if it becomes very difficult for the average fish to deposit, then they just won't bother with all the hassle and will just spend the money some place else- whether that be on an expensive meal etc or by gambling at the casino instead.

If people have to send in six months of financial paperwork just to deposit, then they won't bother, unless they are a professional who's income depends on them playing.

Live poker will always do well imo, I just think that online has a limited shelf life with all regulations that most governments are putting on gambling. Which is why I think it's our duty to vote for political parties that espouse more freedom and making our own decisions instead of ones that strive to limit and control what the populace can and cannot do.

If we vote in governments that limit free speech, want to constantly increase taxes etc then obviously this will eventually filter down to gambling.

So if we vote in these types of authoritarian governments as poker players then we better not whine when it stops being possible to make a living online cos nobody can deposit more than $500 any longer.

Jeff_ Yeah the game wasn't amazing but it was definitely +EV to play in. Cos the rake is basically 0bb at that stake, and the rec (while not being terrible) was still definitely worth playing against imo. I think he was just playing okay cos he was winning, but I knew that if he started to lose then it would be likely he'd punt off his entire stack.

Anyways I quit the game cos I was on a final table (of the $33 bounty builder lol) and wanted to focus.

I agree it sucks that $5k games rarely run nowadays on Stars, but I always kinda figured that we had a finite period of time to play online poker in, so just have to make the most of it. If the games die and we have to switch to live or do something else, then so be it. It has been fun either way :)

With that being said, hopefully there are more high stakes games running for the remainder of the year at the very least!

How has your grind been going this year?

WCOOP wrap-up

I would like to apologise for not posting here in a while and slacking in terms of my weekly updates. However not only was I busy grinding WCOOP, but I also just had no motivation to post in all honesty. I didn't feel in the best mindset and so thought it would be better to get in to a better headspace before writing up my next post.

I said to myself at the start of the month that I was not really going to focus on tournaments, instead only playing them on the side of my daily cash game grind- and perhaps focusing exclusively on them on Sundays. However as the month wore on, I became engrossed in the mtt grind and basically just focused on them.

At the start of the month I was able to maintain my exercise regimen fairly well, and I was also studying more often than in the previous months. Yet as the month wore on I kind of just sacrificed exercise and study and just focused on preparing well for each session (usually with meditation and reading or perhaps a walk). I am not used to playing such long days and I guess it took a toll on me as the month went on. For example, on a typical cash game day I will study for around one hour and then play for three to four hours. Sometimes I will play longer depending on how the games are, but I am not a big volume player these days. But during WCOOP I was just grinding until I finished all of the tournaments I was in. Usually I'd aim to start at around 5:30pm and would grind until the early hours of the morning.

On Monday, for example, I ended up playing for just under eleven hours as I was going deep in a tournament. I ended up finishing second in it after losing a couple all ins heads up.

I've actually played $5k a few times this month too, and managed to make a little profit from those shots. Me and my friend have been discussing moving up and taking more risks quite a lot throughout WCOOP, so I kind of just told myself to stop being such a pussy and play higher stakes cash. I see guys whom I played against and, at the very least, held my own against move up and on to bigger and better things. Yet here I am, stuck within the comfort zone of $2k and below. It's not happening any longer!

Overall I ended up having quite a decent month. Including rakeback etc I made around $13.5k from tournaments and cash, which I was very happy about given the fact that I was down almost $13k at tournaments at one point and was literally losing at them for the entire month until the last couple days. But I finished strong with around a +$10k day on Monday (I got second in the Bounty Builder $33 for like $7k, and I also won just over half a buy in at $25/50) and then on Wednesday I had like five or six deep runs simultaneously- getting second in a GG tournament for $3k, winning a Stars $55 hyper for $4k and then having some other decent scores for a +$9k day.

I was really happy that I kept going until the end, cos usually I just kind of stop playing in SCOOP/WCOOP's after the Sunday, unless I have some Day two's on the Monday. However I decided to go until the final day, despite the much smaller guarantees etc, and was promptly rewarded with some positive variance!

Overall I would say that it took me a bit of time to get back in to the swing of playing tournaments. It probably took me a couple of weeks before I started to feel like I was playing well, but towards the end I felt like I had an edge on the regs, which was nice. I only play like $100 ABI tournaments cos I need to prove myself at these stakes before I move up, build confidence and gain an edge on my opponents, but for now I am definitely heading in the right direction!

Anyways, today I just caught up with some stuff around the house that I'd been putting off for a bit- doing the washing and especially cleaning the house. It was as if it had been covered in a layer of dust for the past couple weeks cos I've been having people working in the house throughout this period. So I gave it a thorough clean today and tomorrow I will get back to exercising again- most likely playing golf as the weather forecast is decent.

I feel very tired today and drained, so I'll likely take a bit of time off poker and then go back to focusing on cash again.

GG.

MTT results

Thought I was gonna win a stack here

Tournaments

On Sunday I played tournaments for the first time in months (bar the odd random Sunday Million entry). It's funny because in tournaments there is so much losing and busting, that you often think you are playing much worse than you actually are. For example after Sundays session I said to myself that I played terrible at tournaments (I was also playing cash at the same time, which I won at) but having reviewed my tagged hands, as well as all of my hands in the $1k 6max, I actually played pretty well.

Of course I am sure there were inevitable mistakes in other tournaments and in other hands that I did not tag, but it's funny how we often allow poor results (or lack of cashes) to talk us in to thinking that we played poorly.

The $1k 6max was a pretty fun tournament actually. I'm not sure if I would have bought in directly or not, but I managed to get in to the tournament from a $55 satellite. Obviously I should have a decent edge over the bulk of the field in this format, at least in a post flop sense, but it was actually nice to see on my review that my pre flop sizings/range construction etc were actually fairly accurate too. There is a decent bit of guesswork in game for me in terms of what goes in to 60bb 3bet ranges, 80bb 3bet ranges and bvb ranges from the sb (what hands I should limp vs raise for example) because I typically play 100bb ante-less poker.

Cash games are obviously an incredibly tough game to master, especially in spots like bvb or when you get deep stacked, but tournaments are so complex in the sense that stack sizes are always changing- which means you have to have vastly different 3bet ranges based on your stack size, and vastly different post flop strategies based on your stack size too. Top pair at 20bb is a fist pump raise/stack off, top pair at 100bb not so much. Then you have icm as well, that can completely alter a typical ChipEV strategy.

My plan during WCOOP is basically to play every Sunday, and then just play some tournaments alongside my regular cash game grind on other days.

I've started to watch Pads course videos again too, and especially the play and explains that help me to get in to the mindset for playing tournaments again. Personally I prefer to just use a solver for studying post flop, but watching an elite player actually playing and giving his thought process is very beneficial imo. Then I use GTO wizard to review hands and check pre flop ranges etc.

I was starting to lose interest in studying tbh. I think this was mostly down to the fact that I was almost always studying the same game (6max cash) and mostly by myself, but recently I've started studying with my friend again (1-2x per week) and mixing up my study- sometimes doing HU, sometimes tournaments, and covering spots at 6max cash that I often overlook.

Today was my day off from grinding, so I studied one spot in 6m for around 1.5 hours with my friend, then later on (after I'd been to the gym etc) I decided to review my hands from the $1k 6max mtt, which took another 30 mins or so. In all honesty I could have easily studied longer in the evening, but I didn't last too long in that tournament so I ran out of hands haha.

So perhaps if other people are struggling with the motivation to study, maybe it could be a good idea to mix up your routine and study a slightly different game or a different spot, or think about studying with other people (or perhaps by yourself if you typically study with others).

In all honesty I feel like I need a proper holiday in order to mentally reset before getting back on the grind for the remainder of the year, but I am getting some work done on the house atm and it's my bday etc soon too, so I'm not sure if I'll have much time this month. I have barely done any travelling this year (only to Germany for the Euros) but I think this will change a lot next year again. Then WCOOP also just started too, which means the cash games should be a little better than recently, and obviously some of the tournaments are worth playing too.

Anyways, this weeks post is probably not the most exciting one in all honesty, but I think this is merely a reflection of where I am mentally and the fact that I need a break.

Oh, and last week I played some $5k again for the first time in a while, so that was fun. Hopefully it runs more this month and I can have some more opportunities to grind it.

GG.

This river tilted me ngl

Fish (who typically 3bets garbage) hero folds! :P

RunItTw1ce This was more just a one off because I am friends with him and he asked me on to his channel. Maybe we will do another video together at some point, but it won't be a regular occurrence. I have no intentions of making a Youtube channel. Maybe I would make a training site at some point but obviously that wouldn't be free content.

I had nothing to do with the audio as it's not my channel. But I think he knows what the issue is now so hopefully there won't be any audio issues if we do another video together in the future.

Personally I'd say the video is still worth watching, even if the audio is poor. You can understand most of what is said if you turn on subtitles and listen carefully.

RunItTw1ce
Personally I would just pure raise ott vs this opponent with 87. Given the way that he just played the other SRP hand on a FD board (xr flop/x jammed ott) we can assume that he is capable of putting nut combos in to his turn x range- which decreases hands like 33 from his betting range. Also, the guy was using massive T sizings and in this instance he goes small.

So for both of these reasons (the non x raise ott and the small T sizing) I am just going to assume he has Kx or a bluff almost always and raise for value. Then if he jams I will just figure it out based on timing etc.

I think its very important against these somewhat erratic players that use lots of multiple different sizings and likely have big imbalances in terms of flop x raise frequency, T barrel frequency, how they split their ranges across multiple sizings etc to make sure we are exploiting/adjusting to them across every single street and not just on the river. So that means 3betting the flop more often vs their flop x raises, raising more ott when they use custom small sizings, calling more ott vs their double barrels etc.

Obviously folding/calling rivers is a good exploit to make against them as well, but I think its just as important to punish them on earlier streets as well so that we let them know they are up to no good and we won't just allow them to get away with murder with over aggression on the flop/turn.

I'm not saying Luke allowed him to do that, I'm just talking generally and how I like to adjust to these types of regs.

Nice video btw, was a fun one to watch!

kakofigueiredo Hey mate. I'm not sure if it's the best idea for me to discuss strategy with my opponents tbh, but if you ever arrive with this combo on the river then I don't mind the call as you obviously block AA/KK which will always take this line in my shoes. You could argue this is a better call than some random pocket pairs like TT/99 etc.

Sorry I haven't gone in to more depth on the hand but I think it's best if I keep strategy discussion with my opponents to a minimum, cos I already play against some guys I'm friends with (who I also discuss strategy with).

It's nice to play with you too and good luck at the tables!

BlankyLion Yeah. As in were you able to understand most of what was said in the video?

Also I don't know why but for the past couple of weeks I have just felt like talking about poker in my posts. I'm not entirely sure why, but hopefully this is a nice change haha :P

Challenging yourself

We all have our poker comfort zones. Some of us are 6max cash game players, and pretty much play this format exclusively. Others are mtt players, who are perhaps very good at normal tournaments but struggle a little more with PKO's (or vice versa). We may even be a heads up player who loves the purity that this one vs one format espouses.

If we are a professional poker player then imo we should have these poker comfort zones. We should have these formats that we specialise in, where we know we will make money in the middle-long term (and hopefully the short term too). The worst thing that we can be is a jack of all trades, master of none. A guy who plays every format but specialises in none. Are we even beating the game with this scattergun approach?

Perhaps that win in the 6max hyper is merely masking the fact that we are a losing player at cash games, spin n go's and heads up SNG's.

For me my poker comfort zone is 6max cash (with no ante's). In the past I would exclusively play zoom (firstly 100z, then 200z and finally 500z, as well as 1kz/2kz whenever they would fun in the future). I stayed away from regular tables and didn't even consider playing them until I had reached 500z and had hundreds of thousands of hands under my belt at this stake.

Why bother playing those slow, boring tables when I can load up 500z at any time of the day, join four tables and play 700-800 hands per hour?

Of course at some point after reaching this stake you have to acknowledge the fact that the only way to move up further is to start playing regular tables, because the frequency that 1kz and 2kz would run was not very high.

So then it was time to learn about seat selection. To become used the the table flow (which you never had at zoom) and how this would perhaps play in to peoples decisions at the table. You could see when the fish would lose several hands in a row (perhaps even a big pot) and you could now smell blood. They were likely playing tilted and so it was time to pounce!

When the reg 3bets you three times in a row are they playing too loose vs you, trying to exploit your preflop tendencies? Are they attempting to induce a spaz? Or did they just get dealt three good hands in a row?

There's only one way to find out I guess... 4bet!

Eventually we get used to these table dynamics. Perhaps we decide to start tables and so now studying bvb becomes of paramount importance- because you can't be weak in this spot when it happens so often three handed. Suddenly there is no fish to exploit. There are no weak regs at the table. It's just us and two other guys of a similar (or perhaps even better) skill level. The rake makes it likely that we are all losing to the house, but our determination to improve at this short handed format, the prospect of getting a seat when the fish joins, and perhaps a little ego thrown in there, means we will continue to battle.

Stacks will fly in. Bluffs will get through and bluffs will be called. Value bets will be snapped by station regs and tank folded by others. This feels like a completely different format to 6max- because it is! We have to learn, improve and adapt in an attempt to get the better of our opponents. The term 'battling' never felt quite right for six handed poker, but never sounded so apt for three handed poker.

Eventually this format becomes comfortable. We may not be the best three handed player in history, but we hold our own and keep spazzing to a minimal.

Our poker comfort zone has expanded, so now the question is...

What next?

In the past year or so I have been playing and studying a little heads up poker. When I say 'little' I definitely mean little as it's far from a priority of mine at the moment. However, what I realised is that by not studying and understanding heads up poker to an okay level, then I was leaving a lot of money on the table when, for example, a whale was playing in the zoom pool.

I have been challenged a reasonable amount of times over the years to random heads up matches from regs with fragile ego's, and not once did I bite or have any interest in playing them. I have nothing to prove at this format and I've never claimed at any point to be an expert at it.

And lets say we are two random 6max regs who are evenly matched in this format, then who wins? The house. We both lose to rake.

Anyways, I am sure there are regs who are experts and can crush other regs in this format and beat the rake, but I have no interest in being one of those guys and so I just want to learn the game to a decent level so that I am +EV in these soft zoom pools and winning vs a random 6max reg when the table breaks and we play a few hands against each other.

The same applies to tournaments. I have done some study on this format in the past year or so, but I will not dedicate the bulk of my study to this game as my main priority (at least for the foreseeable future remains 6max cash). However, it's good to know the basics (such as good pre flop ranges etc) and to slowly increase my understanding of this game, so that I can be +EV in most tournaments that I play- which tend to be big fields with big prizepools and lots of fish in them.

I know that my ROI is good in the $1k SCOOP main event, but perhaps it's not worth playing the $5k Titans on a Sunday.

Last night I ended up hopping in the $2k heads up zoom pool because there was a whale playing in it, another presumed fish (though he may have been a reg I dk) one or two weaker regs and some very good ones. Of course I realise I am losing to the very good ones, but that doesn't matter as I am still +EV in this pool.

I ended up winning a couple stacks in less than 40 hands, which was nice given that this is the highest buy in (of any format) that I play at the moment. I ended up reviewing my hands today with my friend and, surprisingly, my thoughts/plays were mostly in line with the solver- including some nice flop threshold defends which I was proud of as it's easy to over fold in this HU format with the wider pre flop ranges.

Anyways, it's just fun to test my brain and poker knowledge/understanding in different ways. It's pretty cool that many of the theoretical heuristics that I've learned from 6max can also be applied to HU.

Good poker is good poker. Blockers and unblockers will always be vital (unless you take a more exploitative approach of course).

I took today off (as usual) but I'll get back on the grind tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I will even play a little heads up or a tournament on the side!

GG.

$4k pot at HU

BlankyLion were you able to understand most of it?

My Youtube video with GWValueTown

Apologies in advance for the relatively poor audio quality, but we had some technical issues.
Here is the link though

video

Poker

I decided to write a post this week that is focusing on poker, instead of on other topics. I guess you could call it a mid-season breakdown. My volume over the past couple of months has been fairly low, however I planned on taking June/July off completely to travel etc (I only took June off) so I am happy that I've been putting in sessions even when I've not necessarily felt like playing. Every session edges me closer to my hand target for the year of 200-300k hands, even if its just 500 hands or whatever.

As someone who is not a big volume grinder any longer, I tend to focus on quality over quantity. If you have 2x the win rate of a fellow reg, then you can play 50% of the hours and make the same amount of money. Then you can use that spare time to do other things.

At the moment I am focusing a lot on my health, so that means 2-3x gym sessions per week, 1-2x yoga classes and 1x rounds of golf. So in a typical week atm I expect to exercise at least 5x per week, but potentially 6x. Because of the variety of sports I am doing, then I don't think it's possible that this will lead to burnout. However, if I were to go to the gym only 5-6x per week, I know for a fact that I would get burnt out at some point and then lose interest for a while.

Going to the sauna etc afterwards helps motivate me to go to the gym too, because I know I can enjoy that after my workout.

When I came back from Germany I noticed from some pictures that I was just too skinny. As someone who is pretty tall (6 foot 1) I only weighed around 67kg. So I decided to go on a bulk and for the past two months I have been eating between 3000-3500 calories per day, every day. I only missed one day where I didn't hit 3000 calories, and that was because I was on the phone for four hours and by the time I was done it was too late and I wasn't hungry.

So that was an important lesson- don't socialise! :D

I am now up to 70kg but my weight seems to have plateaued a bit which means I will probably have to increase my daily caloric intake to between 3500-4000 calories in order to keep gaining weight. It's cool though cos I got a PR at bench for the first time in like four years. I had slowly been getting worse at bench, or just staying the same. I watched some Jeff Nippard push/pull hypertrophy workouts, and started focusing on higher reps instead of my typical 5x5 strength focused workouts. I think because I am very skinny, that it's more important to focus on building muscle mass so that I can improve my lifts. Because my chest was very flat, and if you have very little muscle then you are never going to be able to bench anything decent.

Don't get me wrong, I am still not strong by any means, but I am in a competition with myself and just want to keep focusing on pushing myself in each workout, getting stronger and putting on weight.

In terms of poker, I will break down my three main goals from the start of the year and discuss how they are progressing.

1. Play 200-300k hands of online cash game hands.

So far I am on track to achieve this goal. In the past it was easy to play 400-500k hands per year when I was grinding 500z and could four table and play around 700-800 hands per hour, however these days I tend to play around 300 hands per hour. This is obviously, mostly, down to the fact that 500z has kind of died and only runs occasionally, so most of the time I am just grinding 4-6 regular tables.

My goal was to hit 120k hands by the end of this month (so that I could play 4x 20k hand months for the remainder of the year) and I literally just hit that hands total, so I am just ahead of pace!

Overall my result have been good so far, with a healthy win rate of over 4.5bb/100 pre rakeback. I tend to aim for 5bb/100, so that is pretty much bang on. Obviously this could increase or decrease by the end of the year, but so long as I am focusing on quality poker and trying to play my A game each time I sit down at the tables, then I should be achieving (roughly) this win rate.

2. Aggressively shot take $5k/$10knl when I am rolled to do so, and sell action if I'm not.

I have only played a few hands at $5k this year, and none at $10k so far. I could obviously sell action for these games and play them, but I always prefer to just play on my own roll. However, having set a 2bi shot take for when I reach x bankroll again, I am pleased to say that I am pretty close to that amount. Hopefully I will get there in the next month or so.

The issue that I have is that $5k rarely runs on Stars, and I'm not overly keen to shot take on GG given the high rake and the (probable) very low WR. So I am hoping that once I hit my target bankroll, there will be some $5k games running on Stars!

I actually done pretty well in my small sample size at $5k, but I just ran shit in even fewer hands at $10k which kind of scarred me a little I guess. I would have the roll to play both these games, but I bought a house etc so I've decided to be a little more careful since then and just move up slowly- once I hit my target BR again.

I should play some $5k, at the very least, before the end of the year.

3. Keep working on my MTT game, get my first six figure score.

This isn't looking promising. I've put literally zero effort in to my MTT game, and have barely played a tournament for the past couple months. I played the Sunday Million yesterday, and that was my first tournament in a while. I think I will start adding a couple tournaments to my grind on a Sunday, and just hope to get a random bink in the process. I think it actually helps me to put in more cash volume if I'm playing mtt's on the side, cos then I know I can't stand up and quit the session until those tournaments are over.

I always say each year I will focus more on mtt's, but then I get engrossed in my cash game grind and tend to just focus my study and playing time on that instead. I'll add a little mtt volume on the side, but I have no intention on giving it any more focus than that.

So there you have it. One is progressing well, the other is on track, and the final one is at the mercy of the poker gods- if they wish to bless me with a random six figure mtt bink! Tbf there are a lot worse players than me who have won a lot more than me at tournaments, so you never know!

I am channeling my inner Chris Moneymaker.

Oh, and I done a poker hand analysis (my first ever public video) which should be released on Youtube within the next week or so. I was a little nervous as I've never done anything like this before, but I think it turned out pretty well and hopefully my analysis was decent. It's on a friends channel, as I don't plan on making my own one- at least for now.

GG.

Bluffing credit in the bank gets you paid

Live_your_dreams85 Thanks mate, I appreciate that :)

Trying to slow down time

Last night I was at my Grans and noticed that James Bond 'Thunderball' was on TV. She doesn't have any wi-fi, and I don't have normal TV, so whenever I visit her it's a good opportunity to get off things like Youtube etc and instead (whenever we are just sitting around) watch a good TV show or a movie.

Ever since I was a kid I have enjoyed watching James Bond films. My Grandad (on the other side of the family) would often watch them, and I remember buying him 'Goldfinger' for a birthday/Christmas on VHS, so we would often watch it together whenever I went down to visit him. He would always sit in the exact same chair, so I had to find an alternate piece of furniture to perch myself on.

Unfortunately he passed away a few years ago, and I'm sure that VHS got thrown in the bin when the house was cleared out.

Thunderball was released in 1965, almost sixty years ago. Not far in to the film you are introduced to one of the women that Bond would be trying to seduce over the course of the movie- Domino (Claudine Auger). She is absolutely stunning in the film, is very likeable and does a good job of slowly turning from the 'bad' side over to the 'good' side by the conclusion of the film.

Normally when you watch a film it is from fairly recently, so pretty much every actor is still alive. However, being almost sixty years old, means that many of this cast have passed away. Sean Connery, probably one of Scotland's best ever actors, died a few years ago. I noticed that Claudine Auger has passed away too. It's quite weird watching someone who is young and beautiful in a film, but who has subsequently died from old age.

It kind of brought my own mortality to the fore. She was only around 24 when the film was released, which is younger than I am, but she has grown old and passed away in the subsequent years.

When we look at old people we may think that they have always been old, or perhaps that they have simply been around for an eternity and the gray hairs and wrinkles are an inevitable result. However, they were once babies, they were once high school kids, they turned 18 like us, they turned 30 like us. We have much more in common with them than we think, even if we may take our relative youth for granted as we disregard any worries of growing old in the near future.

A photograph, a recording or a film is amazing in the sense that it freezes us in time. When we get our photograph taken as we turn 18 we are forever 18 years old in that picture. We may grow old, but that picture never changes- unless it is destroyed. Claudine Auger is forever 24 years old in that film, even if she has grown old and moved on.

It actually made me think of the Black Mirror episode named 'San Junipero', which I would recommend watching if you haven't seen before.

I have just taken a week off of poker, in order to go and see some friends and family. One of my friends recently had a baby, so I went to see him. My parents bought a new house, so I went to see that. I played golf with my friend at his course in Edinburgh, and I went to visit my Gran for a few days. I even managed to go and see a Rangers game with my brother- which was a ridiculous 2-0 loss to Dynamo Kyiv.

Now, I thought there was a reasonable chance that we would get knocked out by them- though I, and the bookmakers, still considered us to be the favourites. However, one of our players was sent off for an absurd second booking, after winning a header and getting booked for an 'elbow'. I really didn't appreciate the way that the Kyiv players were rolling around the floor throughout the match, seemingly attempting to get at least one of our players sent off.

The referee duly obliged, and after that sending off (the tie was evenly poised at this point) it was really only a matter of time before they scored. I was very annoyed after the match, but this year I have decided that I will not allow sport related frustrations to fester for long- because life is too short! Perhaps I will still be pissed off for an hour or so afterwards, but then I will do a meditation and clear my head, then focus on something else. In the past it has ruined the remainder of my day, and perhaps some of the next too, but now I choose to feel the negative emotions, accept them, and then move on.

I think that people who don't truly support a team/player will think that to be this emotionally invested in something that you literally have no control over is absurd, and I'd probably agree, but this is what you sign up for when you choose a sports team- or when they choose you. Pain and elation. Usually more of the former than the latter, but we stick around through blind loyalty and a seemingly never ending faith that our team will succeed.

Throughout this trip, I made sure to make the most of each day and have plans for each and every day. Even on the drive back up to Inverness today, I decided to stop off half way home (the drive takes around three hours) to hike a Munro. It's only the second one I've done this year, but I plan to do a few more before the year is out.

I wrote in a previous post about time, around four months ago, that one of my goals was to waste less time on things like chess (I've never played it since) and try to be more conscious and less on auto pilot. When driving home, example, this means sometimes stopping to hike a mountain, visit a town or just take a couple photos from a nice viewpoint. It's too easy to auto pilot drive home, tell yourself you will stop by those mountains/towns/viewpoints next time, and then never stop the next time either.

I have noticed recently that if you consciously attempt to get out of your unconscious, auto pilot daily/weekly etc decisions, that these conscious 'decisions' will compound. So when I study a new poker topic, I am more likely to do a slightly different gym workout, or walk home a different way, or put on a film instead of watching Youtube, or stop off on my drive home to Inverness to go for a hike.

During the first hour of todays hike, as the path twisted and turned uphill, I was checking my watch every few minutes to see how much time had passed. The watch faces reading didn't please my calves, as it read only 2-3 minutes more than the previous check.

Now perhaps you could argue that I should be more present, and not check my watch, which I agree with, but either way those minutes were drawn out. As my calves ached, the wind pounded my face. I was simultaneously sweating and freezing at the same time (your hands/face get cold from the exposure, but your body often overheats while walking uphill as you wear a jacket/rucksack etc).

There were so many different sensations going on in your body, that you had no option but to be present. Five minutes walking up that hill can feel like an eternity, yet an hour mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or getting in to arguments with (probably) bots can slip by as if it were merely a few seconds.

The seconds, minutes and hours pass by regardless of what we do, but we can, at the very least, try to slow them down as much as possible by being more conscious and having new experiences as often as possible. Oh, and hiking a (small) mountain in very windy conditions will also snap you out of it!

Just make sure to pack your hiking boots with you so you don't have to do it in trainers, then drive home with soggy feet :)

Competition

I remember as a kid reading about how Colin Montgomerie (a Scottish golfer) would just go down to the range and hit balls for hours in an attempt to get better. For some reason, this always inspired me.

When I was at high school I was very lazy- I didn't study at all, I was always late for school and I didn't really have a passion for any subjects. I did quite like English (which is essentially reading books/writing, not learning the language) and History- which was probably because my Dad was a history teacher haha.

In the end my grades were okay. I got some B's and C's, which weren't good enough to get me in to a good University, but were good enough to get me in to a more mediocre one. This led me towards studying a course that I wasn't really interested in, and thus dropping out after a year in order to pursue poker.

So in a sense you could say that my high school laziness was a blessing. Without it, there is very little chance that I would have dropped out of a degree that I actually enjoyed, in order to take a punt on poker.

The degree that I applied to do at the good University (which I didn't get accepted for) was for English. So it's kind of funny how, despite not knowing myself at all at the age of 17/18, I still knew that there was a passion for reading and writing within me. I think that is one of the reasons why I write this blog. I enjoy writing and having to be creative in terms of coming up with knew ideas, while trying to knit everything together in to something that is somewhat enjoyable to read for whomever reads each post.

I don't think it's something that I would like to pursue as a full time career, it's more of a hobby that is fun to do once a week or so. Perhaps one day I would like to write a book, but in my current state I wouldn't be qualified to write one on anything, bar perhaps 500z lol.

So with that inspiration from Colin Montgomerie in mind, I would go down to the range and hit balls myself, in an attempt to improve and (hopefully) cut down my handicap. I remember one time, going down to the golf course when there was around a foot of snow and chipping on to a green. I had to clear the snow so that my balls weren't simply absorbed by the thick blanket of snow. White golf balls won't show up well underneath white snow.

I ended up getting to around a 10 handicap, but towards the end of my playing days as a junior I was regressing and was definitely higher than that- probably 12 or 13. I ended up quitting the game aged (roughly) 16, and only really played once or twice per year for the following 10+ years, until I joined a course this year.

Despite struggling for motivation at high school, it was strange how reading something as simple as a guy going to a driving range and practicing for hours at a time, resonated so much with me. Perhaps it was not so much that I was lazy, it was just that I was uninterested in the subjects at school.

Looking back, this was almost like a seminal moment for me. It was the first time that I derived some sort of excitement about grinding, about practicing, about improving myself so that I could both beat my previous self, and beat others in the process.

Ultimately, I would end up taking this competitive passion and willingness to learn and improve, and apply it to poker. Studying is never something that has felt like a chore to me, I have pretty much always enjoyed it. I love using a solver and learning new concepts that will give me better clarity in game. I enjoy putting in the hours off the table so that I can excel on them when I sit down.

Poker is a game where you are competing not only against your opponents, but against yourself. You may try to adjust to, or exploit your opponents, but you also strive to make fewer punts yourself, and to maintain a better equilibrium with your mood and mindset while playing.

It really is a beautiful game, and has forced me to be introspective in so many ways, which then snowballs in to other facets of your life so that you can improve there too.

The driving range, however, can become a lonely place from a social standpoint. For a while you may have a buddy to practice with, or a sibling or family member. You may just enjoy putting in those hours by yourself, with the company of the birds chirping, or the crackling of an old mp3 playing out of your Sony Ericsson phone.
However, your friends are going out this weekend with some alcohol that their older brother bought them, to find the most solitary field within walking distance that is unlikely to attract the attention of the public or the police. What do you do? Do you continue to put in the hours in the range, or sack the medal this weekend and drink a 2 litre bottle of Strongbow in a field?
The choice is an easy one.
The Strongbow may taste like acidic cat piss, but it does the job. The golf can wait for another day...

At around this age (16) I essentially packed in the golf and the football (though I did start playing five a side football during the week instead). In Scotland we have a big drinking culture, so most people would start drinking with their friends at around age 15 or 16.

Looking back I don't even regret it- it was fun. I think that its important for kids to be kids, to have different experiences and to grow in their own time. From a productivity standpoint, I should have stuck with the football/golf etc and avoided the drinking, but from a social standpoint there was a clear winner. I would play for that football team with two of my best friends, but when they decided to pack it in then I was always going to follow. I would play golf with my friends, who were two years older than me, and my older brother, who is three years older than me. But when they turned 18 they were no longer juniors and thus weren't members any longer. It was time for us all to move on and try out fields, parks and when we eventually turned 18 and could legally drink- bars and clubs.

Some of my favourite memories were going out to a student club on a Tuesday, to a night aptly named 'skint' (skint is a slang Scottish word for having no money), getting drunk, chasing girls, getting in to stupid disagreements or fights, posing for a group photo for the guy walking around with a camera, walking to the nearest kebab/pizza shop for some food then trying to find an after party, heading to the casino for some drunken poker, or calling it a day and getting a taxi back home via the McDonalds drive through.

However, these nights out could not go on forever. We would get older, and soon enough it was too weird going to a night club full of 18-20 year olds. People got in to serious relationships and some had kids young. Others moved away or just lost interest in the clubbing scene. I moved away and left for Aberdeen, and then Edinburgh. These weekly and often bi weekly nights out now became birthday nights out or leaving nights out.

As the social calendar slowly cleared, it was now time to get back on to the proverbial driving range and take things seriously again. No more drinking and no more hangovers. Plenty of time to study and grind, but less time to go to bars and clubs. More time to travel, train for marathons, workout at the gym, read books and listen to podcasts.

We are constantly told that we need to prioritise productivity, to become better versions of ourself and make more money than we did last year. We may follow inspirational guys like David Goggins or Jocko Willink, which inspires us to put in that extra hour of study, head to the gym even when we don't feel like going, avoid that pizza when it is calling our name or snub that invitation to go with your friends to the club on Saturday- cos you have to stay fresh for that Sunday mtt grind!

We write 5-10 goals for 2024 and almost all of them are monetarily focused, health focused or productivity focused. How many of them are socially focused? Do we just forget about our long term friends now we are in a serious relationship, now we have kids to look after? Do we set out to meet new people and make new friends? Do we set out to work on our social skills?

I feel like I am at the point in my life where it's time to prioritise my social life again. Imo this game, at least for me, is not sustainable long term. I don't think it's healthy to work from home by yourself for 30-40 years. Sure if you live with someone it will be better, but then you might get sick of one another. Humans are social creatures and it's important to remember that.

When I look back on my life thus far, the best memories I have are with other people- not from grinding online poker and winning a big tournament or a big cash game pot. Sure, I love this game and always will, but it's still a mean to an end. The money that I have earned from poker is so that I can travel, have new experiences, go to sporting events, hang out with friends and family and play golf (or yoga/football/tennis/hiking etc).

Currently I am looking in to going back to University next year, and I think that it's highly likely that I will go through with this. I am not saying it's 100% certain, but within the past few weeks it's become abundantly clear to myself that I need to make a lifestyle/career change for my overall happiness. Even if I commit to doing something else, I obviously won't quit poker, it will just become more of a hobby again, or something I do when I have time off- perhaps playing live poker for a couple months when I have time off over the Summer. I'm not sure.

My intention with this post is not to attempt to talk anybody out of pursuing poker as a career, or telling anybody that them playing professionally is wrong or a bad idea. I think it has probably been the best possible job for me over the past 10+ years, however, that doesn't mean that it's the best job for me for the following 10+ years.

When I look towards the future, I get excited about meeting new people, making new friends, finding a girlfriend, travelling, learning new skills, hiking and camping in the mountains, playing golf in the sun (my days of chipping in the snow are behind me) and having new experiences.

I am much less concerned about winning x amount of money at poker or shipping the WSOP main event- though I would obviously not turn that down!

I am not going to completely rule out sticking with poker, or coming back to it full time if I do decide to pursue something else for a while, but these are my thoughts at the moment. I won't mention this topic again for the remainder of the year now, so that I avoid sounding negative or like a broken record- cos I do look forward to grinding online full time for the remainder of the year.

This quote always sticks with me, from one of my favourite films 'in to the wild'-

Happiness is only real when shared.

GG.

Winning a stack at $2k

I almost timed out here so had to just jam lol

Yeah I might share a photo of me in my kilt haha :P

I think that we will always have highlights in our lives that we are able to recall much easier than the more mundane weeks that we spend at home playing poker etc.

However, that doesn't mean that we cannot break out of autopilot and create some more memorable moments today or this week. We probably remember the weddings first and formost because they are rare events. If taking out the bins only happened once every five years, then this would become an extremely memorable moment too.

Of course there are other reasons that make weddings memorable (such as two people committing to spend their lives together, seeing friends that you haven't seen in years, great food, fun dancing etc).

What I cant remember is what I have done on the job last week or on
the poker sessions I have played.

This is why I don't want to do the same career for 30-40 years, cos it can just become a blur and you feel like you are living the same day or week on repeat. However, if you change occupation every ten years or so, then things will always remain fairly novel and interesting.

Lol I just spent over an hour writing a post and then accidentally clicked back and lost it all. Brutal bad beat. Might write another post tomorrow or just skip it this week now.