I also made one really big mistake earlier this week at a final table. I punt a lot but typically final tables are where I do well but this was just gross. I just spent like 20 minutes trying to locate the hand but couldn't find it, so I'm pulling all the numbers out of my ass here but roughly like this:

First hand of a 9handed big field final table. I'm joint cl with the villain, we both have 55-60BB when more or less everyone else has 15-25BB. I don't really know if he's good, he's some reg who typically plays higher than me, I see him around and he's generally pretty splashy, 3bets infinite, floats way too much, his fold to cbet is 18% over a pretty big sample. I had been playing weak/nitty in the last 2 tables with him present.

Anyway so first hand of the final table, I raise AQ UTG to 2,4x. He calls in UTG+2 or +3, everyone else folds. Let's just say that the pot at this point was 100k we both have ~550k behind to make it more readable.

Flop AQ4r (100k) I bet 36k, he calls in rhythm
Turn Q (opens bdfd) (172k) I check, he checks back. I think this is a good/standard check: he has some KJs KTs I assume he now bets, he should bet his KQ QJ, and vs AJ AT AK I don't think I'm getting 3 streets.
River 3x (172k) I tank 5 seconds and bet 58k, vs him I like my logic here, he's the kind of spazz who spazzes and turns stuff into a bluff, like if there's anyone in the world who's going to read my line as Ax and turn his AJ into a bluff it's him, plus obv I can just get called too. He raises to 240k. This was the first time he had flatted me pre from non-BB, and there were a bunch of shorties behind, I had a nitty image so basically it's a good spot for him to just flat AA (I would as him). I don't know what the hell I'm going to get called by if I jam - KQ bets the turn, set bets the turn? I was slightly unsure of what to do and didn't realize I have no timebank until I saw the meter go down so I had like 1,5 seconds to press something and I just sort of panic clicked call. He had KQ. Obv I don't know if he'd call a shove, it would be pretty optimistic, but still the lesson here is that I have 2nd nuts, it's a lolmtt, people don't fold, I should just shove.

I guess still having nightmares about raise-folding AQ on 22QQA in a 5k EPT a few years ago 300BB deep contributed to my uncertainty here. (I also misplayed that hand pretty bad.)

Very weird couple of days, I was planning to play Monday through Thursday but haven't played a single hand or written a single thing all week. Just haven't felt like doing anything, I went to the gym and lifted for 25 minutes and was oi and went home, been mainly sleeping 14 hours/day and watching Netflix. I have no idea where this stems from but I'd better be back to normal tomorrow. I don't mind being lazy sometimes, we all need our days off, but what really annoys me that I haven't managed to do anything at all, even the type of stuff I'd like to do on days off such as seeing people. It's like all my life's energy got sucked out for no apparent reason, on both days I slept until 6PM, the day was already basically gone, I went out to get food and came back home to nap until the wee hours.

This is also something I always struggle with, deciding when to have days off. I always feel so guilty if I don't play/write unless it's some occasion that I need to take off. It's so weird because if this were a normal job, it's not like I could not go because I don't feel like it, and even if I'm not feeling like playing I'd still print at pretty much the same efficiency as when I feel like crushing. And when I don't work, I don't get paid, so I've basically wasted 48 hours of my life doing absolutely nothing when I already know I'll be taking 3 days off later this week for the festival.

In my defence, I have been working pretty crazy hard for quite a long time now, grinding 40ish hours a week + doing writing stuff and studying for ~20 on top of that. But for someone whose two favourite past times are his jobs it just feels so strange and pointless to take days off without a reason. I don't know how much I make on a weekday on average, but I'd guess 200ish (tax free) for a 5-6 hour session. So randomly deciding not to play even just for the peakest of peak hours cost me 400 euros, which would be completely fine if I was at least doing SOMETHING, literally anything like shooting hoops or getting drunk with friends, but I was just sleeping/watching old spaghetti westerns for no reason at all.

Now it's 4am, soon I'll be watching people go to work at five in the morning as they go every day, earning significantly less than 200 euros for an 8-hour day, without a chance to stay home to watch Netflix. And who knows how long we'll have online poker for, maybe in a couple of years I'll be doing the same, cursing all the days when I could have printed 1/10th average salary in a few hours clicking a few buttons but chose to watch three movies in a row instead. I'm the worst.

You really are the sausage (the wurst - get it? )

Fwiw it's more than normal after an extended period of hard grinding and otherwise being productive to hit a low and not do anything. Beating urself up over that is pointless just fix ur ryrhm and try to see if u can be more productive then rather than waste brain cells lamenting the fact that u haven't been for two days

Can fully relate. It's not a bad life, is it?

Yeah sure, and it's pretty standard to struggle with this stuff for most human grinders (aka those not called Lipo/Jdawg etc) from time to time. I guess what I hate is that I'm never capable of seeing this in advance. Like, I could have just decided to take two days off on Sunday night and taken a trip to relax in the countryside or a boat to Estonia or anything. Instead I didn't really decide to skip either of the days at any point, but just randomly withered away until it was too late to start playing. But whatever, back at it today.

These kinds of spots actually offer some interesting philosophical questions as well. Back in the day, when I was at my prime when it came to skill vs field and longterm printing probably close to $100/hr, I lived in this penthouse that was a 45-minute commute to the city centre. Every day I went to the city to pick up food and stuff, often in the heart of the winter walking through snowstorms and freezing my ass off at train stations etc. It was funny because I could also have just taken a taxi that would've cost 25-30 euros and taken 15 minutes. So I'd have saved 30 minutes just cabbing it up for the ride back, been significantly more comfortable, and in that 30 minutes of extra grinding I'd have earned more than the price of the taxi ride, not even close. Yet I never took the taxi in my 2 years of living there because I'm used to being poor and I don't do stuff like ride taxis for no reason, it just would have felt so wrong. Even the day after I'd won almost 50k in one session online I still took the train just because I know taking the taxi would've made me feel so guilty, no matter how illogical. I think this case of random days off is fairly similar.

I love this thread and your thoughts, keep it up!

Retirement fund week 8

Monday -
Tuesday -
Wednesday 6h -289
Thursday 4,5h +28
Friday -
Saturday -
Sunday -
=10,5h -261


Retirement fund deposit: -
Deposits total since 1.5.2016: 1329,00€


First losing week, boo. Well, "week", essentially I played just one session on Wednesday, bricked it, the Thursday one was just like six tournaments that I played while making a stream for a Finnish site. Could pretty easily have avoided having the dreaded first losing week, but in the end decided against it and just didn't play. I think I needed a small break quite a bit more than I realized until now that I'm more refreshed mentally. I'm feeling really good now and will be firing on all cylinders from tomorrow onwards (gotta write my piled up creative writing course stuff today).

Last week was fairly interesting in other aspects of life though. As many of you know, while Helsinki is my hometown and the only place I refer to as "Home", I spend the vast majority of my time elsewhere. I more or less only come here for the summer, and sometimes for a week or two in the winter. On average I'd say I spend maybe 12 weeks a year in my hometown (the only exceptions have been when I've had a girlfriend that's landed me stuck in here). While I always complain to people about the weather and list it as my biggest reason why I always want to get out of here, my real problem might secretly be how small Helsinki is. The city is reasonably big in size, but the population is very scattered, and in reality if you're a young twenty-something you basically operate in a very very tiny area (like two suburbs next to each other), everyone knows everyone, and it's just completely impossible to not run into people you don't want to run into all the time. It happens both physically (in my first week here I ran into three different ex-girlfriends completely randomly in the middle of the day), and in the sense that whenever you meet new people, you always have 27 mutual Facebook friends with them, and it's not just a good thing unless you've lived the life of a saint (which I certainly have not). I wouldn't say I have any big unsolved dramas in my past, but that a lot of stupid ****'s gone down over the years that I would love not to revisit, but it's hard not to when certain people you've made the mistake of befriending in the past are still in the same circles as you, and know everyone you know and ever will know because the circles are so damn small. Anyway I had a pretty bad case of this type of drama early last week, just a completely stupid blast from the past type of thing that put me in a really bad mood for a few days. I don't want elaborate further, especially as it involves a few other poker players, but it was something that most certainly was initially my own fault, but that I had also put behind a long time ago and genuinely thought I'd never have to deal with again. Sadly certain other people don't appear to share this view and since everyone I know live within like 1km this whole ordeal was thrown in my face again. Dealing with the same crap again basically just made me think how ****ing sane and at peace with everything I'd been since last summer (when I last spent a long period of time in Helsinki), and how I just don't need any of this bull**** drama in my life. I came pretty close to just booking a flight somewhere else to get a break from my break in Helsinki. It's a rare thing I'm not battling with these feelings by July every single summer that I spend here.

On Friday I went to a festival with an old friend, it was raining the whole time. Not just light summer rain, but as in the kind of rain that closed down both of the main stages of the festival because it was too dangerous to play, stormy winds so strong that it was raining sideways, etc. I made a mental note to start browsing for flights to get out the second I get home. ****ing Helsinki. Where else does it rain so hard that you need a ****ing canoe to go to a festival? (Seeing Explosions In The Sky live made up for a lot, though.)

Saturday was day two of the festival, I woke up pretty hungover and we were going to go back there pretty much immediately. Then I remembered that my friends from northern Helsinki where I grew up in were organizing a strange pub crawl in the weirdest, tiniest ****holes of bars you will ever set your foot in. The suburbs in northern Helsinki are pretty hard to describe to people who haven't lived here, but the best way to describe these bars is that they are really not even bars, because they are in the middle of nowhere and there's just not enough business for them. So they operate as crappy pizza places that also serve beer, are always empty, accommodating only the neighbourhood drunks. If you're a person under 35 living in northern Helsinki, chances are you'll never set foot in a single one of these bars, because the actual nightlife is 30 minutes south by bus.


This is where I grew up. There's a river and lots of forest in one direction, in the other there are a few grocery stores and a couple of these bars, a hairdresser saloon and a post office and not much else.

All the spots in the crawl were within a walking distance from my childhood home. We randomly decided to stop by with my friend before going back to the festival. We arrived at the first place at around 3PM on a Saturday:



We were the first ones there, drinking those hard-to-down first drinks of a hungover morning in broad daylight, in a completely empty bar where the lone clerk was eating pizza behind the counter. Then a few people I know came, and then more people, and more people. Some guys from my old football team I hadn't seen since 2006, people I went to school with, some very good friends I clearly don't spend enough time with, some old hook-ups but none of them hostile. We had initially decided on going back to the festival at 5:30PM, we then postponed it to 7, then 9, and all of a sudden it was 1AM and I was dancing with ~60 other people on tables in an otherwise completely empty Indian restaurant/Pizzeria/bar combination that usually has the charm and ambiance of a gas station, drinking free shots poured by the bartender, making new friends, greeting and hugging so many faces I hadn't seen in forever, telling stories. I spoke in length to some girl who's friends with my friends, who's a stewardess stationed somewhere else and who also only comes to Finland for a few weeks a year, and we had so much fun connecting about what it's like to be a foreigner in your own country and all the weird/stupid Finnish traditions that are impossible to explain to foreigners. I had somehow never met her before, but we had the exact same mindset because we came from the same, strange background, knew the same people, and despite having spent our adult lives in completely different societies, creating a makeshift dancefloor in a northern Helsinki pizza joint was the most natural thing in the world to us. She made me feel at home in a strange way; she said something about how Home doesn't have to be a place where you're meant to be physically most of the time, maybe it can just be where your roots are, no matter how hard you've tried to cut them off in the past. In that moment I looked around, I watched the pub crawl dj who had dragged his gear into this ****hole playing his tunes as enthusiastically as if he was headlining the EDC, I watched my friends fall over from chairs and tables, I watched regular customers turn around at the door in horror wondering what the hell was going on in their normally peaceful second living room, I watched people mingling and rekindling old relationships, catching up, talking about the same school we all went to. It was evident that everyone was having a great time, it was just our group and no one else as if it were a private party, and while many of us had fallen out of touch over the years, none of that mattered right now. Everyone was everyone's old and new best friend, as if no time had passed since we last intruded these bars in 2008. Back then we were barely eighteen and both hopeful and fearful about the future, ten years later many of us were married, some of us had spent their lives elsewhere, and most of us were just as lost and confused about what the future will bring as we were a decade ago.

Early in the week I was looking forward to the festival, because it was the only escape in sight from the drama that goes hand in hand with this city. I never even made it to the festival on Saturday, because I was having the best time I've had in forever, in a completely quiet residential area in the middle of nowhere a stone's throw away from my childhood home, having completely taken over what the poor pizzeria owner must have thought would be another quiet night selling a couple of pizzas and microwaved Indian dishes to his six customers. I was Home.

tldr, gimme a new book to read instead

Retirement fund week 9

Monday -
Tuesday -
Wednesday -
Thursday -
Friday -
Saturday 4,75h +20
Sunday 7h +287
=11,75h +307


Retirement fund deposit: 61,40
Deposits total since 1.5.2016: 1390,40€


Well that was productive, lolz. Seriously though, muchos of my lack of volume is thanks to my bank. 3 weeks ago my Mastercard (only card I use, also the only card I own that can be used for ATM withdrawals) got skimmed and I had to order another one. They say it takes a week. I call a week later, they say maybe 2-3 more days. I call another week later they say it's been lost in the mail, no worries we'll send you a new card with express delivery, takes 3 days max. It's been another week... I was trying to tell them that I'll be happy to come pick up the card from anywhere, I live in the same city where these cards are printed, or I'll pay for Fedex, but no. Only mail, and they've lost it twice now. It's funny how difficult life is without a credit/debit card, especially as a poker player. I can send bank transfers to sites but most of the sites where I play on don't have direct bank transfers so it takes 3-4 days for the money to get through. So this whole time I've been busto on like half the sites and the rest barely have games going because it's summer. I've been able to register ~30% of my normal volume per session and thus haven't been the least motivated to play. Did hammer through book #3's final edits and factchecks though this week so pretty much worked a full week.

I guess they'll have to order me another card when I call them tomorrow, that had better come pretty soon. My Netflix, HBO, RIO, HRC, Sharkscope, etcetc have all ran out of subscription, I'm paying for food with dirty coins like a hobo, life is falling apart pretty swiftly it's kinda fun tho, in a way I like being poor. Not long-term, but many of the most fun times in my life have been when I was living on a $10 daily budget or less. But yeah after 3 weeks it'd be pretty nice to be able to live like a normal first world ******* for a bit.

In other news finally got to move into my apartment for the rest of the summer, this place is super neat, 160 m2 in the city centre with a sauna.

I guess I'll be taking another 3-4 days off until I hopefully get the card, yawn

Also, one of my funniest memories from when I was working as a journalist:



Setting Ziigmund on fire. This involves a pretty funny backstory where he only accepted to do the piece on the condition that we would quote him WORD FOR WORD (we had no idea what he wanted to say). We accepted, and the quote was basically him ripping on another poker player for borrowing viagras off him to get it up even with the dirtiest of sluts. We printed it, and those were the only sentences accompanying this picture.

Well, this thread has now officially busted my over/under line for how long OP would stick with it. yay!

I used to have poker related dreams pretty often, but these days almost never. I had my first in a long time last night, it was pretty funny and very real, almost like one of those lucid dreams, like I remember very vividly being extremely present in the moment, having quite a lot of free will and control over my actions and being able to observe my surroundings.

I've somehow made it to the WSOP ME final table, I'm second in chips with like 100BB. The chipleader opens and I flat 99 in BB. Comes 99x, I check, he bets, I call and wonder why my chips feel oddly sticky. Turn x, I check, he bets, I grab chips to call and notice that my chips are made of chocolate, and it's melting in my fingers real fast every time I'm touching the chips. I try to gather the chips to call, but I fumble and the chips halfway melt. I get panicky about the fact that my chips are made of chocolate, especially since I realize I have no memories of how I made it to the final table. I look at the paytable, it feels very real, I look around, yes this is definitely the Rio (I went to rail the WSOP ME the year when Gregy won (#weneedit) and it was the exact same). I just manage to cut enough chocolate chips to make the call without the dealer noticing despite the chips being halfway melted. River x, I check, the guy overbets me allin, I call, and the dealer says "you have to push the chips past the line for it to be a call, sir." I try to push the chips, but they are melted, and the second I touch them they just turn into melted chocolate lava. The dealer says "you can't call allin with chocolate, where are your chips?" I say "I really don't know, all I have is these?" The dealer says that yeah we use chocolate chips this year, but they have to be intact to be used. There are a few bits and pieces sticking from the pond of chocolate, and I try to point at them: "Look, it clearly says 25k in that corner". The floor is called.

Sadly this is when I woke up, and we never found out if I was disqualified or not.

Literally laughed out loud at dream. Bad news is he probably had the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich draw.

Been getting ****ed every day, still don't have a card to xfer money with, all my daily games are dead because of soccer/summer, been only getting fractions of volume in and running superbad, can't remember when I last had 3 losing days in a row, must have been in 2014 or something. Just really getting screwed on all fronts. But it's striking how amazingly soft the games (what's left of them) are currently, every session recently I've ran SO bad, like I don't even remember fting anything late into session and I always assume I'm down like 50 buyins, and still I always find myself next to breakeven. In my specific games this feels like the softest period in years, I don't remember games being this soft during previous WSOPs, it's like as if all the regs left, and because of that half the tourneys don't run, but the ones that do are just you and a bunch of epic spastics. As a result of this observation I think it's time for me to explore some uncharted waters and get in the games on 888/Party etc to pump up the volume. I hate breaking routines and I hate playing on those two softwares, I hate having $ as currency and losing money to exchange bs etc... but right now it seems like I have to get in there because the games are too soft and otherwise I'm not getting volume in at all b/c my usual games are dead.

SO I will launch myself a bit of a mini-challenge which is to be playing 90 hours of poker during 1.7-12.7. This doesn't seem like a lot, but I already have two days when I will be able to play absolutely 0 poker (a bachelor party and a wedding), and as a result of those also two days when I will incredibly hungover. And it's summer, so a bunch of other stuff will likely come up. Best case scenario is 9 hours/day if I manage to play every day, if not then I'll need to play even more each session. Also I'm old and tired and not used to playing that much really. But I gotta get in there, and I'll be offline for the next 2 weeks after that at least, and coming back in August I assume all the pleb regs have lost their money in Vegas as per usual and will be making the grind slightly tougher.

Not going to do any freerolls, and if I don't reach this I won't be super devastated, but found it worthy of posting to hold myself slightly more accountable on the days when I feel like unregging all after 4 hours, which is basically every day.

Man this football stuff is really destroying my livelyhood, thank god it's over after next week. I had no idea how bad it would be. Today I counted and 33 of my everyday tournaments got cancelled because of the football. THIRTY-THREE. I play maybe 55 tourneys per session, so it's pretty bad. In 2014 the World Cup had 0 effect because the games were in a different time zone. In 2012 I think I was in Vegas? Or at least I can't remember the effect of the Euro 2012 in any way. Maybe it's just because I played on Stars back then and it was 2012. But damn all my money sites are just dead, I had to fire a bunch of PLO cash tables (only form of poker I won at today) just to get anything going at all. It's really ****ty that I have to play higher than I'd like to and get so much less volume than I'd want now that I'm actually here trying to get some volume in.

Then again, it's pretty dumb to complain about POKER TOURNAMENTS NOT RUNNING I guess. In the grand scheme of things that's pretty minor. Life's good. But I'm not going to conclude the aforementioned 90 hours/10 days grind, it just can't be done. I tried all weekend and I got in 7, 9 and 7 hours in per day, at half my usual tables, and just gave up because it was pointless. My time's better spent doing literally anything else than whacking five tables of 10€ turbos at three in the morning. So **** that. I think I'll play Monday-Tuesday because there's no football games, and will take Wednesday-Thursday, Saturday off (wedding stuff, luckily the games run on those exact days except the final is on Sunday I think?).

Also, I honestly played super terrible all weekend. It just tilts me so much to play on 888/Party and have a suboptimal amount of tables. It's childish and pointless, and I wish I could be more mature about it, but I like my routines and I hate when this kind of stuff happens. GIVE ME MY 20€ 4MAX 800€ GTD AND 20€ PLO 600 GTD.

Was 1/10 in three different tournaments with 1000+ first today, really the best sweats I've had in forever, and did not finish in the top 7 in any of them. Took coolers/beats in the final tables, but then again I played like a ****** and got lucky so many times on my way there, so should really just be grateful about only booking a small loss playing 60 abi today. Although that was mainly thanks to winning 6 buyins at PLO50.

Also was 2/17 in a mass field multi-flight 10€ 6m that was also over 1k up top, had 60BBs at 30BB average and got 16th. Really not sure about the last hand. I can't be arsed to dig it up basically it's 5handed, I've been playing super spastic, my stats were showing something like 60/48/20 for the table (everyone was a nit). I had 3bet the same guy's open in the previous hand, and now he opens UTG (=HJ) with 55BBs, I flat SB QJs (BB was a fish playing 22/3/0). Comes QJ5cc, I cr his halfpot cbet, not very balanced but hey it's 10€ 6max vs some 15 ABI reg and I'm running so laggy. He calls. Turn 5x, I bet 40% of pot he calls, river some superbrick, we have 70%ish pot behind. He has no 5x, so I only lose to AA, KK, or the extremely blocked QQ JJ 55, but it's so gross when I do lose because it's such a soft field. Wasn't too sure about it but jammed into AA anyway. ****ing nits, should be made criminal to have AA there.

Come to think of it, holy **** I had a lot of spots today. Could easily have binked like 3k without noticing. But I really played bad and didn't deserve **** all.

So whatever. Failures upon failures but as stated, life's good. I guess July is just doomed to be a nonexistent grinding month and I'll get all the monies in August.

I've been hitting the gym like a mother****er these past couple of weeks, feeling strong / somewhat in shape. Feels good.

I've been thinking about staying in Finland a little longer this time and I think I'm going to extend until October. I'm liking it here now, and I missed the whole autumn last year because I moved to Malta on September 1 when it was still +40c down there, and that island doesn't really have autumn since nothing grows there. Just rocks becoming increasingly colder. I like to experience autumn every once in a while, so I think I'll stay. There's also no rush to get to Asia anyway, since their rainy season is exactly in autumn, and similarly the Aussie summer peaks only in December if I make it that far. So the current plan is to stay here until some point in October, then probably spend a couple of months somewhere in SE Asia and checking out Myanmar and Laos in the process, then Aussie for Christmas/New Years/Aussie Millions period. Then maybe NZ for a couple of months and back home next summer.

I turn thirty this December. Thirty. God damnit where the **** did all the time go. I really want to do some backpackerish stuff this winter, but am I even allowed at a backpacker hostel? Do I need to buy a fake ID stating that I'm 24?

Retirement fund week 10

Monday -
Tuesday 4,75h -113
Wednesday 5h -163
Thursday 7,25h +141
Friday 7,25h +8
Saturday 8,75h +304
Sunday 7h -126
=40h +51


Retirement fund deposit: 10,20
Deposits total since 1.5.2016: 1400,60€

GREAT THREAD....I been big fanboy for awhile...good luck!!!!!!!

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/ad...bler-25266.htm

Great read Miikka

Wow... my mind is fkn blown from this thread... + your story

Amazing

Chocolate chips story was great xD

GL mate

No weekly update since I played exactly 0 hours last week. Every day I checked, not half my tourneys were running, prizepools were super small and I was just really OI. Obviously it's still +ev to play, but I felt almost no guilt over skipping, it's the middle of the summer and if I'm ever going to take some time off I might as well do it now. I would've played yesterday (Sunday) but I was so hungover from Saturday's wedding that I chose to suffer in bed and watch the soccer final instead. One day after the euro champs ended, all my tourneys are back, instantly fired a session today and won 4 tournaments. Poker, I missed you.

Was a pretty fun week, we had a really fun bachelor party with people from all over the world, and an even more fun wedding. It did kinda suck to be drunk/hungover/both for ~80% of my waking time for all of last week but hey, good memories. Not that I would remember much.

I only have tomorrow left now and then I'm off to do some eurotripping. I won nicely today, I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to play tomorrow but I probably should since after tomorrow I have no idea when I'll be able to play next.

It's been nice to do some summer stuff, but I gotta say though, damn it's tough sometimes to read people's WSOP updates. I don't really have any big WSOP-related aspirations left, I'm 0/23 or so in WSOP cashes and it's kind of a fun record to have, much more fun than 1/24 would be. I think it's very likely I'll never play a WSOP again, but still, something inside of me just CRAVES that ****. It would be pretty cool to have infinite money and go there for a couple of weeks just to grind around the clock. People I know have won like 9 bracelets this summer too, as well as a zillion ft sweats. Idk, I guess it just hurts a little not being able to compete. But it's still a whirlwind I have no interest in getting caught in ever again unless something strange happens.

I spent a large chunk of the week reading. I've been pondering making some kind of theme posts about the books I read, but I haven't been able to find a good angle. I'm by nature a pretty critical person (as in, I tend to look for leaks [<-good for poker I guess], I like to rate things, one of my biggest dream jobs ever was a movie reviewer). I don't really have much interest in doing "this is what the book was about" types of posts, but I'm just not qualified to critique other people's works. Normally it wouldn't be a problem since obviously neither are 99% of people on this planet, but now that I'm officially a published writer myself I'd feel very weird/bad criticizing anything others have written. But I think it would be good for me to do something like that, still, so we'll see.

What I'm currently reading:

-Death of a Salesman / Arthur Miller (was originally a play)
-Modern Romance / Aziz Anzari (Bond18 recommendation, I think it's pretty great so far)
-The Rules of Attraction / Bret Easton Ellis (I'm mainly reading this because I'm working on a story with multiple narrators myself and I'm trying to get a feel for that style)
-What I Talk About When I Talk About Running / Haruki Murakami
-Burning The Days / James Salter (this I'm only starting now, but I have very high expectations)


Anyway I may or may not do some on-the-go TRs from where I end up next week and the one after that. First is Ostrava for the Colours Of Ostrava festival, then I don't know, I think I want to end up in Budva, Montenegro to see a certain person, potential pit stops include Bled, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Tirana, Zagreb and the Adriatic coast of Croatia. I might also just be extremely oi after 4 days of drinking at the festival and fly home and not see anyone. Currently I kinda wish I wouldn't have to drink for a while, and that festival is going to be soooo tough on my liver, and if I go on about meeting friends in random cities it's just gonna be a neverending bender. But I do miss eurotripping tho.

Anyway I'll be back within 2 weeks for sure and then (I feel like I say this a lot) I will REALLY grinddddd. Wseries will be in about a month from then, and if there's anything I want to be in shape for it's that. I like the late summer / early autumn grind too, it's among my favourite times of the year to grind.

Shalom!

Jelly of the Eurotripping enjoy it man

Also what is oi?

over it, perhaps

have a fun trip dude!

Gonna just wrap up the week pre-trip so I won't forget

Retirement fund week 10

Monday 5,5h +517
Tuesday 5,75h +72
Wednesday -
Thursday -
Friday -
Saturday -
Sunday -
=11,25h +589



Retirement fund deposit: 117,8€
Deposits total since 1.5.2016: 1518,40€
Total hours since 1.5.2016: 269,25


I added up my playing hours since I started looking into retirement, will start keeping track of those as well. So far 28,1€/h - tax-free that's still basically double what random people earn in Finland, or at least close (please don't come nitpick, I can't be arsed to google, all I know is that when I worked at McDonald's here in 2005 I was making 8,24€/h pre-tax and considered that huge ). I did lose ~1k to that internet outbreak earlier but then again that's sort of part of the job / happens to everyone so can't really count that. Honestly I think that hourly is roughly what I've deserved. It seems fairly obvious that the problem (if there is one) isn't really the hourly, I mean yeah I'd like it to be a bit higher and I think I have it in me to push it to the 35€ ballpark, but the playing hours. It's been 10 weeks so on average I've played 27ish hours per week. There's just no reason to not average at at least 35h minus holidays. A case could be made that I should even be hitting closer to 50 hours/week - there's no job for me that I could land (unless I write something that becomes a hit, which is more like a goal for 5-10 years from now) that could net me anywhere near what I'm making now. It's sometimes hard for me to see poker as "the opportunity of a lifetime", since I'm making so much less than I used to. Like, if someone had told me in 2005 that I could make TWENTY-EIGHT EUROS PER HOUR playing cards, I would've been like zomg give me a computer setup I'll play 80 hours a week until the well dries out. But having made something like 80€/hour for a few years there and having my long-term goals completely in writing and not poker nowadays, it's often hard to appreciate what I still have, which is honestly still ****ing great when you look at the big picture. It's just really stupid to not take advantage of what's left of the well, even that it's significantly drier than before.

I know that from a PGC point of view this is like the opposite of what people want to hear, because this forum is generally for motivated people who are striving to get better and climb the ladder, but honestly I think that 85% of what I need to improve is just doing this exact same thing more, and maybe 15% to study/improve my game.

I guess all the above is sort of obvious but I'm just writing it down for future reference. I will, still, give myself a break for playing less hours in the next month or so since the summer here doesn't really last beyond the end of August (if even that), and I'll be happy to make some monetary sacrifices to enjoy it. But in general I really need to step it up a notch.

I do miss steady grinding, I honestly felt pretty bad both of these days and ran really well, I didn't even build stacks and just randomly won all kinds of dumb small turbos and stuff. I've played probably like what, 8/last 30 days or something, it gets to you. I'm already a bit of a mental trainwreck by default and when I'm not feeling 100% in shape I'm just not really enjoying it. But give me a bit of a poker bender and I can't wait to get on the grizzle every day.

I'm gonna have to look and see if I could somehow find a place from somewhere in Helsinki for 2-3 months this autumn. I'd really like to be here, climb boulders (the climbing gym in Helsinki is far and away the best I've ever been to, and I have been to many in four different continents) and hit the gym a lot and just play a lot. But it's so hard, Airbnb is lolexpensive and generally only has options for 2 weeks at a time so you're moving all the time. And with all new students moving into the city from the countryside to start unis in late August it's the nut worst time of the year to look for a place. And I definitely don't want a longer term lease because I still have plans to get out of here by the time snow hits the ground. I think I'll even consider just paying some dumb overprice if I can find a place, I just don't generally manage to put in the hours and get into my best grinding zone anywhere but here. Perhaps the only exception was living in Mexico with poker roommates, it was inspiring to have people grind 6 days a week, you don't want to be the lazy guy.

Come to think of it, whenever I've had poker-playing roommates I've been super-productive pokerwise, so maybe I'll just crash some grinding commune somewhere for a couple of months.

Oh well we'll see, time to enjoy TAME IMPALA the day after tomorrow. Of all current musicians that I haven't seen live yet there is no one I want to see more than Kevin Parker&co.

We always have grinding space here sire, although wcoop is already booked.

U lil fker never came over

I'm back from the festival. We had one day of okayish weather (18c and cloudy) and three days of ridiculous rain and like 12c. I only packed shorts and t-shirts so I was very cold the entire time, and unsurprisingly I found myself very sick on the last day. It probably didn't help that I drank around 100 pints/shots etc during the festival either. Understandably I didn't exactly feel like riding trains through Europe in 39c fever, so I just booked a flight home and now I'm here. I feel a bit better already but will likely need a day or two more off still.

Not much to say about the festival (Colours Of Ostrava), it was pretty well organized, the only thing besides the weather that sucked was beer. They had a deal with some terrible local beer called Radegast that may be the worst beer I've ever had, and it was the only beer sold at the festival. I drank an insane amount of JD shots to get rid of the terrible Radegast taste in my mouth. Tame Impala were amazing as expected, I only caught the tail end of M83 but that was enjoyable too. I'd say the highlight was ANOHNI, though.

For those who don't know, ANOHNI is the new project of the singer formerly known as Antony (from Antony and the Johnsons), where he collaborates with Hudson Mohawke and Oneothrix Point Never, and the result is a crushing, beautiful portrait of the reality we live in in the year 2016 called Hopelessness. His (nowadays, her) voice is one of the most memorable from the last couple of decades. Their stage show had her entirely covered in a burkha-like costume, and singing against a background video of crying people of all ages, sexes and races that were lip-syncing to the lyrics. It's amazing how his/her voice fit all of their mouths perfectly, without seeing inside the burkha and just staring at the video you could easily imagine the sound coming from Naomi Campbell's or some 80-year old guy's mouth. It was all very touching, especially as the gig was right after we learned about the Nice attack.

I'm just going to leave this here, I don't see how this won't end up the most relevant and hauntingly beautiful song of 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pei4SnavUk

____________


Anyway, so back to the present. Pretty much the first thing I did upon returning to Finland (and knowing I couldn't go to Serbia/Croatia etc as I had planned) was buying flights to Kosovo. Yes, Kosovo. It actually only cost 80 euros for a flight down there, which is pretty insanely cheap from Finland. I'm going to do a tour of the Balkans with a few friends in early September, which is honestly significantly smarter than what I had originally planned. I have an apartment in Finland that's perfect for grinding that I've already paid for until mid-August, and it'd be pretty dumb to not use it for grinding, but I have no accommodation for September so it makes way more sense to ditch my stuff somewhere and travel then. There's a heat wave about to hit Finland late this week so it's good to be here now, but it will without a doubt be pretty cold already in September, while it should still be warm then in southeastern Europe. So now I can just book an Airbnb here until the day I leave for Kosovo, and spend as long on the trip as I feel like.

My friends had already planned this trip and I signed up last minute, so I'll be following their plans for the first 10 days, which includes:

Day 1: Pristina (Kosovo)
Day 2: Pristina (Kosovo)
Day 3: Cross the border to Macedonia, exploring lake Matka/caves/canyon
Day 4: Skopje (Macedonia)
Day 5-6: Belgrade (Serbia)
Day 7-9: Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Day 10: Dubrovnik (Croatia)

The latter is pretty touristy, so I think from there I'm just going to split with my friends and head to either Split (heh) to meet my friends who live there, or alternatively go see another friend in Budva (Montenegro), or both. Not sure what I'll do after, I'd like to go to Albania too, so maybe I'll go Budva->Tirana and fly home from there. Anyway that should make for a really fun, slightly out of the box trip. The only problem is this might overlap with pretty much all of WSeries and FCOOP, but my friends could only do these dates so Kosovo it is. Oh and, I'll also have a full day in Oslo on the day due to a 9-hour layover.

Since I have this in September, I'm now 100% going to stay in Finland for the next 6 weeks. I have two festivals here, both in mid-August, but apart from that I have *nothing* I need to do, nowhere I need to be, and it's such a relieving thought. I can actually get on the grind and otherwise just relax and enjoy the summer. I've been thinking about what I wrote before about hourly rate/lack of hours before and I really want to start pushing towards 40-hour weeks. This week is already half-wasted, I don't think I can possibly be fit to play until Saturday or mayyybe Friday, but from next week I'm really aiming to get 40 hours a week in. I have no idea how I'm going to do it if the heat wave is actually finally coming (summer basically has yet to start in Finland), but **** it I'm going to try. Gonna do some extensive studying too and post some hands in the very near future. But now I'm back to reading books until the blankets, so until then, arrivederci.

Oh and blakkman, I was supposed to come over ~today from what we talked before, but the above is why I couldn't. I'm leaning pretty heavily towards actually spending a month or two in Vienna after the Balkan tour, so if you're still there in the fall we'll have a lot of time for beers!