Douggyfr3sh

A change of approach
(weekly? update)

What's up everyone!

I think it has actually been 2 weeks since my last update. I have been playing very little over that time. Lost around 2 BI over a handful of hours.

My net profit for all of February was - $1113. This mostly came from 200NL, with a few ill-advised 500NL shots in there. To be honest, I think I've played quite poorly for most of this month.

However, I have been making huge strides in the personal development/self-improvement department. I am feeling really good about the way things are currently going in my life. Losing at poker doesn't matter, really (especially in the short term).

What I think does matter is my approach to the game, and how it makes me feel. Since I started working with a mindset/performance coach, it has become pretty clear to me that my relationship to the game really needs work. I have a tendency to push myself way too hard. I work a ton of hours in a demanding career, and then try to compete in a difficult game at night, often drained of energy before the session even starts. I do have a great pre-session routine and do workouts/cold plunge etc- but that cannot make up for being over-tired, burnt out, etc.

I got obsessed with poker after the first couple times I played way back when I was 16 years old, and the only reason was because I loved to play. Over the years I think I've built up some poker trauma and often find myself not feeling good in the middle of a session. Beating myself up with negative self-talk, and unconstructive criticism. On one hand this can be motivating and lead to positive change, but on the other hand I am doing well in most other aspects of my life, and I don't really need to make money from poker right now. I definitely don't need to add more stress and pressure to my life - have a lot going on. What I need is to get back to a place where I am playing simply because I enjoy the game and the challenge, and enjoy improving at something competitive and engaging. I need to view the game differently, and not worry about winning X dollars next month. So, I am changing my approach for March.

For the month of March, I am completely getting rid of any volume or profit goals. I want to just take a month to play when I feel like it, study when I feel like it, and just focus on enjoying the game. TPLancaster commented something along these lines at the start of this blog, and I think they were right. My main focus is going to be holistic self-improvement and reflection. I am excited to have my next session with my mindset coach (Paul Salter) and to keep doing work on myself. I have already made huge changes, very hard changes.

I have not mentioned this yet in this blog - and actually haven't really told anyone in my personal life except for my Wife and a few close friends - but here goes:

For a very long time now, I have been heavily addicted to Kratom.

If you don't know what Kratom is, a quick Google search will tell you all you need to know - but to quickly explain: Kratom is a natural plant medication/drug/supplement whatever you want to call it. Here in the states, it is legal in most states, and highly illegal in others. Where I live, I can go to the store just down the street and buy it as much as I want. I started taking it to address severe back pain (which I am still struggling with) and it is the best thing I have found to help with the pain - but I have become far too dependent on it. So 2 weeks ago I decided to quit. I got to a point where I was taking 20-25 capsules every single day. I went 6 days without taking any, and felt like absolute shit for most of that time. I could barely sleep, felt like I had the flu, and was irritable all the time. Over the last 2 weeks, I have gone from 20+ capsules a day to not taking any during the week, and only taking one dose on the weekend, just one day a week. I started to get over the cravings and withdrawals this week, and I am really glad I made this change. I had to take a step back from poker to do this - but I am ready to get back in and play.

Instead of taking drugs as a band-aid for my back pain, I finally went and saw a doctor. I got a referral to OMT (Osteopathic Therapy), but they can't get me in until April. So I will suffer for a while longer and do the best I can to address the pain with ice baths, sauna, etc. I have tried tons of solutions over the years: chiropractor, yoga, hot yoga, sauna, acupuncture, strength training, etc. All of these things help a little bit, but nothing has resolved the root cause. It's time to get serious about fixing this problem so I can move forward and be the best version of myself.

I have a little whiteboard in my home office which I update each month with new poker "guidelines" for the month. For March, here are my guidelines:

• Play when you feel like it.
• Quit sessions when you feel like it.
• Study when you feel like it.
• NO volume or profit goals.
• NO pressure.

I am also gonna move down in stakes. My goal for this month is not to necessarily become much better at poker. My goal is to change my relationship to the game, and get back to loving it like I used to. So, when I play, I will be playing 1 table of 50z (fast fold) 6max, and that's it. I have to repair my logistical approach before I can move up, play more, and win consistently.

(>'.')> Just be a chill guy. <('.'<)

BoldPlayer

Yes, I have been thinking about playing more 6max and actually my last 2 sessions were 6-max. There are tradeoffs. I believe the full ring games are softer and lower variance, but they are also pretty boring, and IMO optimal strategy for full ring is VERY different from 6max, and involves doing a lot of things that are far away from GTO, even preflop.

I think the main good reason to play online full ring is if you play a lot of live cash, as it is closer to the same format/meta and gets you more practice with common situations. I am not playing any live cash right now, but I may start doing 1-2 sessions per week soon.

I think actually this month though, my volume will shift more towards online 6-max. We will see how it goes ;)

I am working with Paul Salter, who works with Eliot Roe and his group of performance coaches. We have only had one session so far, but I already feel like I am getting a lot from it, and would highly recommend him if you are looking for someone to work with. After the first session I spent probably 3-4 hours the following week on some mindset "homework" he assigned, and he is in constant contact any time I need anything from him. Great guy.

Not Ideal.

(weekly update)

Results: -$289.24
Volume: 9h 9 mins
Study: 4h 26 mins*

I've had a bad week. Results aren't great, but more so, I have struggled a lot this week with lack of sleep and back pain. This weekend I had a really hard time sleeping due to pain and some drinking. I received a bottle of whiskey as a gift on Valentine's day, and did some damage to it Friday night - before and during playing. However, Friday night was also a decent session - I won nearly 2 BI.

My first session with a mindset and performance coach was good. I feel like it is going to help a lot. I received a lot of homework (mostly poker related), and that has been the majority of my study this week. It forced me to sit down and reflect on how I approach poker, and what things need to change to get me where I want to be.

While I am not on track to reach the goals I set out, losing money doesn't affect my life basically at all. For now, I still plan to continue on this path, and will keep roughly the same goals for next week.

I have been thinking a lot lately that I should just abandon playing at all early in the week. Instead of a handful of short sessions and a few slightly longer sessions, I think just playing 2 really long sessions on the weekend might be optimal. Games are much better, I feel more relaxed playing knowing I don't have to be up early the next day for work, and that frees up more of my weeknights for study and other pursuits outside of poker.

I am going to try to implement this - but next week, I am going to a comedy show on Saturday and probably can't play. Still, one session of A-game poker in softer games is probably better than 5 sessions of mediocre poker in tougher games, even if that means much less volume.

Targets for next week

• Study 4 hours
• Do not force any sessions, even if that means I don't play at all.

(>'.')> Put yourself first! <('.'<)

Meh.

(weekly update)

Results: - $94
Volume: 13 hours
Study: 4 hours

I am feeling unhappy about my results and on-table performance this week. However, I am feeling good about getting in 4h of quality study, and staying consistent with my exercise all week. I had a few days this week where I went through way too much mental/emotional struggle just because of losing. My worst single-session was just over -3 buy-ins, which is nothing and shouldn't bother me, but it did.

I also spent way too much time "multi-tasking" during sessions. A lot of watching YouTube videos while playing, which is very much not ideal. Actually, I think it is impossible for me to play my A-Game while doing anything else. I need to be fully focused on the tables.

I really believe that my A game is already enough to crush the 200NL FR games, but the problem is not playing my A game often enough. I think my B game is probably break-even at best, maybe winning like 1-2bb/100, and my C game is losing. I would be better off playing less volume and having it all be A-Game.

This week I reviewed every pot from past 1-2 weeks where I at least saw turn, and lost. I also reviewed some winning pots too. I feel like the study I did this week was really good, and will help me to make some adjustments.

Main thing I need to work on is my relationship to the game and how I handle results. It's silly to get upset about any single session - especially since losing really doesn't have any impact on my life, but that has been a challenge for me. I hired a mindset & performance coach and we have our first session together tomorrow- so hopefully that helps!

For next week, I want to try again to not play until Thursday-Sunday, or maybe even just Friday-Sunday. I failed to do that this week (played at least 1 short session almost every day). I think I would be better off to do study-only Monday-Thursday. Games are best on Fri-Sat evening anyway, and I can use the other time to level up my game through study and planning out some standard lines and heuristics.

Targets for next week

• Study 4h
• Avoid playing Monday - Wednesday

(>'.')> One brick at a time! <('.'<)

Slapped by Variance

(weekly update)

Results: - $118.37
Volume: 13.1 hours
Study: 1.1 hours

This week I got in solid volume, but did not study enough. I spent all of Saturday smelt fishing with friends (something I've not done before). Had a great time, but got kinda drunk and was mostly in recovery mode Sunday. Next week, I need to make study more of a priority. I hope to spend a good amount of time Mon-Wed studying, and Thurs-Sun playing. No plans for the weekend at the moment, which I am happy about. I want a low-key weekend at home!

The week was going well and was up a good bit going into the weekend, but had a brutal session Saturday where I lost about 5 buy-ins in just over an hour. I may have made some mistakes, but this was mostly horrible variance. I lost 3 all-ins with 85%, 65%, and 48.5% equity, all pretty standard spots where the money just goes in. The result really didn't bother me at all, and I reacted to it better than I have in the past. After that, I moved down from 200NL to 100NL, and won a few buy-ins back to end the week.

I noticed myself sometimes giving up on a few pots that I probably could have fought for more, and that is going to be the focus of my study for next week. I want to look for situations where I can win more with red line. I also called in spots where I was able to narrow my opponents to pretty much an exact holding (and was right), where I probably could have just folded sooner in the hand.

Targets for next week

• Study at least 4 hours, focusing on Turn+River in non-shown-down pots
• No volume target for a week: I will play when I can, but not gonna force it
• Get better sleep

(>'.')> Going with the flow <('.'<)

Hey! Looks like you are closing down this blog - I couldn't help but comment :)

I just read the original post, and was thinking to myself "this person is very disciplined and has a great approach to the game, they are gonna make it".

Then I scrolled down to see that you made it from 5NL -> 200NL, which is not at all surprising.

As someone who started in poker long ago, way before solvers, it's interesting to see how different the possible (optimal?) approach to the game has become for new players who are hungry and motivated.

Well done! I am sure you will continue to climb, your work ethic is commendable!

January Summary

Just posting a quick summary of my first month playing after the time off.

Cash
Profit: $886.38
Hours Played: 60.78
Hourly: $14.58

MTT
-$632

Not a great hourly, but I am feeling pretty good about these results. I think next month I am going to make some adjustments to my approach to the game. Mainly, I want to stick to only playing one session per day, max. I have noticed that I very consistently am a bit on the fence about playing a 2nd session, and it almost always goes bad. I lose back what I won in the first session. I think part of this is due to the time I start playing- I generally seem to get on decent tables in my first session, but when I start up a second one, I am often starting tables playing HU or battling with regs 3-4 handed to get tables going. I don't mind playing regs HU, it's actually pretty fun. But I think in my second sessions, my WR is lower based on the pool and I also am just playing worse.

Also, I have -$500 in losses in this sample from sitting $2/5 and losing an AI in 3 hands in a pretty sick FH over FH spot, and some losses from playing the Zone games. I think being more disciplined with my game selection and play times is the biggest improvement I can make for next month. If I had made zero game selection mistakes this month, it would be at least a + $1390 month. But hey - at least I came out ahead (just barely) despite those errors.

Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to register several MTTs this month, most of which were $109's. 2 of them I couldn't even finish playing due to software issues. It has recently been exposed that there is mass cheating and collusion going on in these MTTs: stables are late regging at the last moment, all getting seated together, and colluding to ensure they all cash. They are also allegedly card sharing. Hopefully, this is enough for me to stop being a dumbass, and focus entirely on cash games next month.

Overall, feeling good about my decision to put some time & effort into poker again.

Goals & Adjustments for next month
- Do not play a single MTT
- Only play one cash session per day (max, some days will not play)
- New volume goal is 10h per week. If I go over that, cool.

Yeah absolutely. Small companies can have problems too. But I work at a company with around 8,000 employees and we are experiencing growing pains. Very under staffed and often feel like meetings are very contentious. I kind of hate it at this point.

I think I am going to email my manager and explain how unhappy I am and the reasons why, and see what happens. I don’t really think things will change - but I will give it a chance. Most likely I will no longer be at this job in 6 months.

If you would be interested in chatting sometime, shoot a DM! Seems we have a lot in common and both trying to play Poker on the side with a job. Maybe we could share some ideas and help each other with the grind!

Thanks for sharing, really enjoy these posts. Book sounds interesting, adding it to the list!

Emotional Rollercoaster

(weekly update)

Results: + $643.53
Volume: 10.3 hours
Study: 2 hours

Felt a little bit like I was on an emotional rollercoaster this week. Not actually because of poker, that went quite smoothly. But because of my job. It was a really tough week and I was quite frustrated with various aspects of work throughout the week.

I am getting pretty sick of some BS going on at work. Working at a large, soul sucking and soul-less corporation can sometimes be pretty draining. I feel like I am being asked to take on more and more, but not getting any more compensation for it. My team is severely under-staffed, and we never have enough time and resources to get our assigned work fully completed. It kind of sucks to always feel like you are never doing enough, and the mountain of work only gets bigger.

I am only playing on Bovada right now, and the software has been shit recently. The first two sessions I tried to play, I kept getting disconnected. The third time, I could not even get logged in. Customer support is totally useless, and no matter how many issues they clearly have with their software and servers, they always blame the customer and claim that "you must have had network issues". This is totally to be expected and is common for Bovada/Ignition, so not surprised at all.

Fortunately, I didn't give up when I could not log in, and eventually found a way to get into games by playing in a browser. I do not get to use a HUD or tag hands for review this way, which is not ideal, but at least it allowed me to play. I had a few nights I REALLY wanted to play longer, but was tired and stuck roughly to my bedtime so that I could be well rested and get things done at my job, and also play the next day.

Outside of poker/work, I stayed consistent and did all my workouts again. I am starting to see/feel some changes in my body from consistent exercise, and that feels good. It's something I can hold on to and be happy about when work is shit and I can't get in much play.

I hope to get in a little more volume next week, but can't be sure I will be able to. I am very seriously considering leaving my job soon. Sick of being so unhappy with it and don't see things changing any time soon.

Don't get me wrong - I am not delusional enough to think I can quit work and just play poker. I would be leaving to find a better job where employees are more valued, at a smaller company. I spent most of today reflecting on that, and looking at open positions I may be interested in. I have many valuable skills and a lot to offer, and if X-CORP is not going to reward and value it's high performers, I will find somewhere that will.

I am super tired and should probably already be in bed, and have 4 hours of meeting hell first thing tomorrow morning.

Targets for next week

• Aim to play 12h (may not be possible)
• Stay consistent with workouts
• Download and review holecards-up HH
• Spend a few hours looking at job market, possibly draft an email to my manager about unhappiness with the job

(>'.')> Just keep showing up! <('.'<)

A Light Week

(weekly update)

Results: +$467. Won $576 in cash, lost $109 in MTT.
Volume: 6.35 hours
Study: 2.6 hours

This week was very light on volume, because I had family come to visit and stay with us all weekend. That is generally when I will get in most of my volume and also a chunk of my study.

I only played 4 really short sessions, and fortunately they were all winning sessions. I played around a 65/35 split of 100NL and 200NL (more 100NL). The games have been good, and I feel like I mostly played at or around my A-game, except for today's session. My brother in law and his wife came to stay, and last night we got pretty drunk and went bowling, and I got shit sleep. So today after some light exercise and a bath/rest, I played about 90 mins.

One logistical error I made this week was to register a $109 MTT on a weeknight. My plan when I registered was actually to play 2 MTT + 4 cash tables and have a long session. But pretty much immediately after I regged, Bovada software started freezing/crashing and generally having issues. I ended up finishing the MTT on my phone, and didn't last long. Probably kind of punted on my bustout hand.

I am OK with this light-volume week, since we haven't seen my BIL for a while, and did not get to see them for the holidays. We had a great time.

Didn't get in a ton of study, but I did review every hand I had marked and found/fixed a leak. A note on my study hours: I only count the time I spend at my computer reviewing hands/running sims as "study time". I probably spent close to 2h watching poker videos, and another 4 hours listening to strategical poker podcasts this week, but those activities don't count towards my "study hours".

Outside of poker, I am very happy with my fitness this week. I was very consistent and did 4 strength training sessions (which is my weekly goal), and did sauna/cold plunge on all of those days just before playing. Work kind of sucked this week - was a pretty stressful week, but am happy that I showed up every day and stayed committed to my exercise and logging what I eat. Today I installed a wall track for my MaxPro (if you are interested in fitness, this thing is the nuts when it comes to working out at home with limited budget/space). So now I can do a few of the exercises I haven't been able to.

I am looking forward to the upcoming week! I do have plans on Saturday again, but am planning to mostly play Saturday (on top of short weeknight sessions).

Targets for next week

• Review all tagged HH from this week
• Look into different HUD options - kind of want to get H2N to work (using PT4 now)
• Consider getting some hotkey/auto bet sizing software (Jurojin or equivalent)
• Spend some time reviewing downloaded HH with holecards. Focus on hands that went at least to turn but not to showdown

(>'.')> Go forth and crush! <('.'<)

I don’t agree with most of this, but it is a reasonable opinion to have.

“Good money” is subjective. I believe a small side income can be earned from poker, and around 20h a week is what I have available to put into the game.

Will I get to 500NL? Almost certainly not.

Will I make 20k? Maybe. It will be tough. It is a pretty ambitious goal.

Will it matter if I don’t? No, not really. But that is what I want to focus on, and I believe it’s possible (it won’t be easy).

Hey! Thank you for the comment, and Good Luck to you as well!

Large Leak Identified

Decided to post a quick comment. I played a lot yesterday, and lost a chunk. I ran very far below EV, but also made some mistakes. Then today, I played a short session and lost a bunch quickly, mostly due to stacking off with AA vs a set facing a turn XR.

I knew immediately that I should have folded, and really villain messed up by making a very unbalanced turn XR on a dry board. I should have capitalized on that mistake by folding - they allowed me to lose the minimum, but I am bad at folding AA postflop.

I stopped my session immediately and started to look at some DB filters - and it's pretty clear that I am calling Turn/River raises in spots where I should just fold. Fortunately, this is probably the biggest leak I have at the moment, and it's an easy fix. I am about to review every hand so far this month where I faced these actions, and going to try to drill it in that I should be folding these spots.

There are at least 1 or 2 bad beats here (the 500NL spot was losing with 2nd nut FH vs quads, in a spot where we win a lot even if villain is only jamming FH+), but for the most part, there are a lot of errors here.

Thanks makes sense. Wondering if we should use a larger cbet size with the plan to mostly jam turns. I expect most of the field to be pretty inelastic with flop draws, probably going with like 50-60% on flop and jam turn outperforms the 1/3-JAM line

Semi Pro

I'm making a big change. Starting next week, I am transitioning away from full-time 45 hour work weeks and will be working only 20 hours a week, so that I can focus primarily on poker.

I'm pretty excited for the change, and the thing I am most looking forward to is getting decent sleep and having a more consistent sleep schedule for the first time in a long time. I've been pushing myself really hard (too hard) for a long time, and this change has been a long time coming. My new work schedule is Tues-Fri, 10-3. I'm hoping to get 7+ hours of sleep every night, and to start every day with a hike and meditation.

My schedule will roughly be:
-Monday- Study day
-Tuesday-Friday - Cash Game Grind/light study
-Saturday- day off, optionally play some hands
-Sunday- MTT Grind

Cash isn't going great so far this month, and I've sort of sabotaged myself by playing some Zone (fast fold) and giving back a lot of my profit from the reg speed tables. I'm down around 3BI net for the month. I'm hoping that next week I will be able to get in some solid volume, and that going forward my quality of play will increase given that I will be more well rested and less over-worked.

January

For this month, my plan is to almost entirely play cash. I am going to allow myself 4-5 bullets in satellites to the $535 monthly milly running on 1/30, but aside from that it will be all cash.

Volume goal: 20k hands
Study goal: 40 hours
Study Target: Review EVERY 10bb+ pot played
(The Marinelli method)

These goals are achievable, but with my full time job and schedule they will take a lot of discipline and strong time management.

I’ll likely post an update at the end of the month, and may or may not post between now and then.

GL All!

On Game Selection

Lately, I have been playing almost only
Cash games, and played almost no tournaments the last month.

However, in my last 3 sessions I have played 1 tournament + 3 tables of cash. Bovada is running the holiday series, and there have been some big weeknight events. I feel very grateful to be in a place where i get to play the 1 highest stake tournament of the night + cash (and in my opinion this is very good game selection).

My last 3 were a $500, a $325, and a $218. I cashed all three in 15th, 27th, and like 22nd.

I would estimate that when I am on my A game, i can make about $15 per hour per table at 200NL. So to register a tournament, my hourly expectation needs to exceed that benchmark.

Some Math:

$500 MTT. If I assume a 30% ROI (very reasonable IMO), that is a $150 expectation. If I expect my average time at table is 4 hours, 150/4 = $37.5 per hour for the MTT, far exceeding my hourly at one cash table. Extrapolating from this, it probably makes sense to play any $300 and up, and it gets close around the $162-$218 buy in level. $109’s and below will generally make no sense to
Register from a pure $EV/hourly rate perspective. There are other things to consider, like the long term EV of keeping my MTT game sharp and staying practiced in that format, and what I enjoy more/what makes me happy to play.

Having said that, I think basically sticking to $218’s and up is my plan for going forward. I’ll be playing very few MTTs and embracing variance, but firing the occasional
1 table to stay practiced and mix things up.

The nice thing about sticking to these levels is also that the fields tend to be much smaller. That reduces variance and increases cashing frequency, and also carries with it a lower average hours per event. The combo of bigger buy in and lower average hours to cash means a heavily inflated hourly for the times I do add an MTT.

Another additional benefit for me is that I have a job and don’t want to be up late just to mincash a tournament unless that mincash is very significant, and there’s enough money up top to risk being very tired for a few days. I can’t count all the times I have been ITM in the nightly $55, with a decent stack, and still wishing I hadn’t registered it. It’s just not worth the sleep sacrifice. Since weeknight $300+ events are fairly rare and only come along during series on Bovada, I can justify giving up sleep when they do come around. I can add in a few sunday MTTs to stat sharp between series, and continually grow my bankroll in the lower variance cash game streets.

I’ve done a lot of work and made a lot of sacrifices to get to a point where I can justify this type of game selection, and I’m really excited to proceed through 2022 with this plan. See you in the 500NL streets soon!

A Losing Year

This year has been pretty rough results-wise. Heading into December I’m having the first losing year i can remember. Pretty sure it’s my first losing year since I started taking the game seriously like 8 years ago.

If i try to determine why, it’s fairly clear. I started off the first several months of this year playing higher stakes MTTs than i have before, playing mostly only $109 and up and playing lots of $218 and $500’s with some online $1k’s sprinkled in there as well.

Later in the year, I made the switch to online cash, and jumped straight into 200NL where I think I was a slightly losing player for a while. It’s annoying to lose, but it’s really just a minor bump in the road.

On the bright side

Despite having a bad year, I’m actually feeling really good and optimistic about my future in poker. I’m starting to win at 200NL, have changed up my schedule and am living a significantly healthier lifestyle than I was at the start of the year. Financially I am in the best place I’ve ever been in.

Lately I’m trying to prioritize things like consistent and sufficient sleep, daily meditation, doing fun/enjoyable things that recharge me, and exercise over maximum volume. Somewhat ironically, I think prioritizing these things will eventually lead to much better poker results than pushing myself to the limit and maximizing volume would.

Big goals

My poker goals for next year are pretty simple. Mostly they are goals I can fully control, except one which is a little bit of a moonshot:

-20k hands a month - 220k for the year (one month off)

-Minimum 5h study per week

-Meditate daily
-Exercise daily

-Reach 1knl and beat it over 50k+ hands

*That last one will be tough. But I’mma do it.

Liked the analysis on this one.

Personally haven’t played short deck and have no intention to, but still found it interesting and useful to hear you discuss short deck hands on T4 along with the vanilla NLHE discussion.

Entertaining intros + good analysis is a great combo and really liking watching these as a post-session wind down

Sugar and spice and everything nice in this video

Jungle == the new bond

OMG please keep it up with the intros. So goood! And love Jungle’s style with the analysis as well. Great content!

This is amazing. That intro!!

0 for 16

After week one of the USPO going pretty well, week two went about as badly as it could. I did not cash a single event, and finished 10-20 from the bubble in several of them. I fell off the leaderboard and didn't win any of the prizes. On top of that, I missed the main event, because Global decided to randomly end late reg at level 5, instead of level 6 like literally every single other rebuy tournament on the site.

I had an extremely frustrating Sunday grind. Aside from missing the main on Global, Bovada went down and the tournaments I was in on there were ICM chopped. Of the tournaments I did play, I went 0 for 16, without a single cash. This is not purely variance, and in my opinion, should basically never happen. I played really bad poker, that's all there is to it.

I did everything I could to prepare. I exercised, prepared healthy meals prior to playing, meditated before playing, had an idea which events were on my schedule, and have been doing some studying throughout the week. I'm really not sure why I played so poorly, but my guess is that I've simply been playing too much for the last few weeks and need to take some time to relax and recover a bit. I've also probably had a play/study ratio that is a little off, and need to put in a little more work off the tables.

Now that the series is over, my schedule is going to shift quite a bit and I am going to be focusing more on cash again. I will only be playing MTTs on Sundays for the next several weeks, and grinding cash otherwise.

I'm also hoping to make some changes off the tables, and want to start doing more strength training and get back to consistent morning meditations. More on that in a future post, GL out there!!

I think using a 95% range to make your strategy more resilient and less face up is a good idea.

You can also adjust and tighten your opening range as soon as you show down one weak hand. You are then winning the adjustment game and re-exploiting your opponents adjustment to your initial exploit in a way.