my name is Martin, I am 27 years old Czech living in Bristol, UK and this is my story (if you dont feel like reading this, go to TL;DR below).

Like lots of other players with their blogs here, I also played poker for ever as loosing recreational player thinking I am decent at poker. I played online a little bit but never studied, had a coach, made and effort or applied myself to the game as my view was that the only people that can beat the game are extremely smart. I thought of myself as an average idiot thus not being able to win at poker. Ever. This view has changed by lots of random events seemingly connected by the same theme.Things like listening to the Joe Rogan´s podcast when the subject of discipline and hard work came up. It has never occurred to me, that the people at top (of any field) are not the smartest ones. They are the ones that worked hardest (also they were lucky, had good timing and lots of other qualities but that would be irrelevant without hard work). Stories about Connor McGregor´s work ethic and dedication/obsession that made him successful and lots of other ones made me realize something. They all had the same key elements. Hard work, dedication, sacrifice, persistence, tenacity. Around that time, I decided to visit local casino to play some cards for fun an I got an idea. An idea I got after seeing the atrocity of a skill level in a 50£ tournament and I noticed that one of the exceptionally bad player was playing online poker on site Grosvenor casino and was talking about winning money. I thought to myself, that if he can do it, maybe I can too. The original plan was to have fun and play some tournaments after work or on days off. However, for some reason, after playing poker on and off for about 7 years I completely fell for the game this time. I played more and more, studied more and more, moved from Grosvenor poker to PS and realized that poker is becoming bigger part of my life then I had expected. After binging one bigger score after Christmas on PS, I finally had the BR to pay for coaching, to buy some more software and really dedicate all my free time to poker. I thoroughly enjoy studying, analyzing, watching videos, listening to podcasts and talking to people about hands and strategies and ideas in general.
All this gave me an idea. Can I do this full time? There is only one way to find out.

My current situation is that I work as a waiter in TGI Fridays on average about 30-40 hours a week. I will continue to do so on these hours for another 18 months or so. After that, me and my girlfriend are moving back to Czech Republic. The plan is that after these 18 months of playing, if poker seems like a viable career and shows financial potential I will go for it and play full time when we move back. If not, poker stays as hobby. I am aware of the current Czech legislation which is that in Czech Republic you cant play MTTs, only cash or certain SnG. I plan to live near borders with Austria and play from there. I would rent and office or small apartment and use it as work place.

That leads me to my next point and that is why am I writing this. What separates me from most of other players is that I don´t do anything else. I don´t drink, I don´t go out, I don´t have any other hobbies, I don´t like doing anything else and everything I do is in one way or another about poker. I love it. I absolutely love it. I realized that being disciplined can change everything (thx to Jocko Willing). It also helps that I live in foreign country so I don´t have that many distractions. I am on the introverted side of a spectrum so being kind of isolated is natural to me. The only thing I make time for and the only thing I make myself take days off for is my girlfriend.

I want this blog to do two things. First, I want it to be my journal that I can go back to in future. Secondly, I want to attract like minded people so that I can surround myself with positive, motivated people and share knowledge, enthusiasm, stories and poker life as whole. If I can achieve that, I will consider this blog to be successful even if it doesn´t get that many hits. I will update this thread every month with my progress for another 18 months regardless of if people are reading it.

I will be publishing my monthly goals and challenges that I set for myself, I will be posting thoughts or interesting things that are going on and everything I will feel like sharing with you. I am happy to answer anything I can. I welcome any feedback, any ideas that you might have, anything that will inspire conversation that will make us better.

Here is some poker info and my uptodate graph:
PS: surda89
888: psisekspisek
PP: spisek






I look forward to talking to you guys

Alright, so for this month I set myself these goals:

• Watch at least 15 educational videos
• Have at least 5 coaching sessions
• Play at least 300 MTTs
• Work on PRF ranges and have structure for them
• Give Primed mind a go
• Create a blog
• Work out at least 10 times
• For every unfinished session go for 10k run

If I manage to reach all of my goals, I usually set a reward for myself that I get at the end of the month. It is paid for from poker money (other than that, I keep my personal $ and poker $ strictly separated). Its usually something small.

For this month, If I succeed I will put aside 200$ to have work done on my sleeve tattoo I started last year

Also, at the end of the month, I am going to Coventry for a week, where Goliath under the Grosvenor casino is played. If anyone is going to be there, we can meet and talk if you would like
I grinded out 3 tickets so I will be playing up to five day ones. Hopefully it does not come to that
Here is link to the event: http://www.gukpt.com/2017-goliath/


Gl at the table guys

Blog is starting of well, I wrote it yesterday night and today this happened, good start :P

Nice result to get the thread going!

I want to play Goliath now! Didn't realise it was this month.

GL with your goals.

Why did you initially move to the UK?

I always wanted to move abroad and after finishing my University in Czech and working full time for a year, I decided now is the best time to do so.

It´s great here and we like it but I dont feel like I want to have family here, hence the moving back to Czech Republic

Based on the skill level at satellites it´s going to be super fun. For 120 pounds I think its worth playing at least on Friday One bullet and one dream to take it all

Subbed. Nice intro, i will be following your journey!

Dedication, physical and mental, is a big part to this game, its also a bit of a trap though as to not get burned out.

I couldnt aggree more that hard work is a "must" if u wanna succeed in anything in life, but do not lose sight of your "bigger goal" along the way. It is nice to break down your goals (as u did) and go 1 step at a time, this will help a lot as u are in for a tough ride..(aren't we all )

Anywayz good luck buddy and stay true to your goals and yourself!

Cheers!



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Much appreciated man!

small one but I want to celebrate every victory

title cought my eye, in for the ride now!

Welcome my friend first update is comming


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I have posted this in MTT community section but I am going to put it here in case it gets more attention here.

I am interested in how to properly measure how well or how bad a MTT player runs over certain period of time. The reason for this is that I would like to roughly know how much of my good or bad run is variance and how much of it is my good or bad play.

I am using PT4 so any advice how to go about it is much appreciated

Only came because i imagined hot ladies etc etc. Sticking around thou!! GL thanks for sharing

Cool. I think you can make it quite far, quite easily, when you dedicate a lot of your time to poker and you take it very serious. Even in 2017..

Good luck.

I am sorry to disappoint you mate. I will be adding some pictures from When me and my gf travel so that might be the closest thing to hot ladies


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Thank you, the kind words are much appreciated!


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So atleast 2 hot ladies then cool, thanks.

<3

Not really from our travels but delivered as promised

that's hard to messure. running in tournaments aint like running in cashgames for example. i mean, u might be winning 14bb/100 per month and be loosing because distribution or cooler spots when u re deep in tourney and shortstacked or whatever... it's funny really,i had 4 month span with like 12bb/100 and -11000$. It was just - I come to final 3 tables and U SHALL NOT PASS happen and thats it. It's not 'seeable' in the tracker program bcs it might be spot when u shove bvb 13bb with 99 and bbs got JJ... so what I do is I look hands manually from the deeps and see if they are played good and thats all that matters to me. Anyway those graphs aint so reliable nor winrates are so what I suggest is that when u look at your evbb in tournaments look from 5th+ blind level because thats where it gets more important ( lets say bb400 on stars ).

anyway,subbed in and gl

Thank you for the subb buddy, much appreciated.

I read that to accurately measure how good or bad one runs is really hard if not impossible but different people have different opinions of how accurate it actually is. My main goal is to improve and thus I was curious if I am making mistakes in some particular stage that would show on graphs.

Hey guys, here is my July sum up. It´s little bit late as I was in Coventry to play Goliath but about that latter. Lets start with online poker for last month.

Online

After having three profitable months in a row, July was a loosing one. My biggest mistakes during July was not handling downswing as well as I should and getting tilted so I will keep an eye on it this month. I feel like I have made a step forward in ICM situation so I feel more comfortable in turbos and hypers. Other than that, I had couple of FT´s, where I finished between 5th and 9th so had I have one more score, the month would be profitable. I feel like I ran bad but after looking into it, it seems like I was not running as bad as I thought. That being said, I do not really know how to precisely measure whether I run good or bad so I just focus on playing my current best and studying as much as I can. The variance is out of my hands anyway.

I have put in 80 hours of play and 39 hours of study in the last month. I will try to favor playing this month as I think by playing more I will get better faster




Live

Now for my live experience. Goliath was a ton of fun. The field was super soft which makes my inability to advance into day 2 even more frustrating. I fired 7 bullets, 3 of those were tickets. I ran very bad and was not able to get more than 50k stack in any of my bullets apart from one bullet (25k starting). The first one. Here, I have made huge mistake.
This was my first live festival so I did not know what to expect. On my first day, I had 50bb stack with 30 minutes left to play. My strategy for the day was to have at least 30bb for day two and if not, I would rather surrender or punt the stack and come back next day. Well long story short. I lost the stack in bluff, where I was pressuring very weak player. I thought that if I could get that stack on my first day1, I will be able to do in in another 4 day1´s for sure. Well, I was wrong. After this, I went on **** run and could not get any stack going. Obviously I have made mistakes but in the most important hands for heaps of chips, I just could not win flips or hold better hands.

I ended up being really frustrated and let down with myself. I was kind of depressed and considered, if its even worth it. The painful thing was looking at pictures of people who made it into day 2 and seeing the horrific players having stack while I was playing 10 hours a day from Monday to Friday and not being able to advance.
I thought about the whole experience and now I consider it success. Not from poker point of view, obv, but because I gained great amount of experience in this single week, which will be helpful later down the road. I also realized, that during my 40 hours of **** run, I have rarely got tilted or frustrated while being at the table. Every time I did, I brushed it off and got motivated again and this mental stability and durability that I showed is what makes it positive in my view. I used to have great problems with tilting and giving up easily but not a single time I gave up or had loosing mentality while I had at least a chip. Yes, I was angry once I got knocked out but I never went "**** it I just shove and go home". I stayed positive and did my best. As long as I do my best and play my best that I can at the time, It is a win for me.
It means that the work and hours I put in studying poker and mental game is wort it


Coventry casino

Last months goals:

Watch at least 15 educational videos - Done
Have at least 5 coaching sessions - Done, had 7 of them
Play at least 300 MTTs - Done, 339
Work on PRF ranges and have structure for them - Done, I am now more sure about what to open and where
Give Primed mind a go - Done, Its not something I find useful right now
Create a blog Done
Work out at least 10 times Done
For every unfinished session go for 10k run - Done, finished all of them.


I have seen positive influence of this blog very shortly after making it. It pushed me to complete all my goals because the thought of not doing it was embarrassing. I did not want to fail right at the start and this pushed me forward when I was sick or tired. Also, I got into study group which I was trying to do for a while and I hope it will go well
So even though I had loosing month online and my live MTT was bust, I feel pretty good about July and think that things are moving in the right direction. In direction of being full time pro in 17 months.

Thanks for reading

Goals for August:

• Watch at least 10 educational vieos
• Have at least 5 coaching sessions
• Work out at least 10 times
• Aply logic and stoic mindset
• Be active in study group
• Try to find micro limit fish and coach him - the best way to understand something is to try to teach it someone else
• DO NOT EAT SUGAR at home

If I had "find a cure for cancer" in my goals, giving up sugar and sweets would be still the hardest one, by far.

This month´s reward is taking my gf out to her favorite spot for dinner out of poker money

Wish me luck.

Sup, can I get your opinions on this hand?

We are on last 3 tables in 5$ FO, we have been very aggressive, especially from later positions. No real history with Villain as he has been on our table for one orbit at that point. The hand is here:







My logic was a follows and I want you to check, if it makes sense

I could easily have any Tx here, all of the available sets, one combination of two pairs and all overpairs and since my range is uncapped, I dont really see my opponent c/r here with Tx. Unless its AT. In my experience the average player will c/call those hands. Since top pair is likely not in his range and considering the fact, that in his eyes I might be missing this bord a lot together with the fact that my cbet looks weak and I have a very vulnerable stack, I decided to shove on him with my GS,BDFD and one over. I have reasonable fold equity and I really felt like my logic was sound.

All thoughts are appreciated

The following, as a micro stakes mtt reg, is my 'ideal' logic in these spots.

1) With no history, I think it's kind of hard to assume Tx isn't in his raising range. This deep into tourneys people do silly things out of fear of making mistakes/busting before FT. I think you'll see a lot of Tx hands hit top pair out of the blinds and just want to take down the pot before they have to deal with over cards out of position on turn and river.

2) If he isn't raising Tx hands, what does that leave? Pure bluffs, A8, QJ/J9, 76, two pair and sets? Maybe some GS's himself?

You have fold equity vs pure bluffs. Probably the GS's too. I'm sure you'll get called by A8 from time to time. Everything else is calling you, leaving you are in bad shape. I don't think you're getting pure bluffed often enough (this deep in the game) that your fold equity outweighs the loss when you are called.

3) If you include Tx, you could argue for some added fold equity but it's mostly still the same.

4) From his perspective: he gets a mathematical profitable call with almost anything preflop vs your min raise. All he has to do is wait for the times he hits flop. Pretty sure he can just wait for 2 pair, FD, OESD or better and its still profitable with a lot of hands. 3200/17200= 18.6%. 73s on average makes 2 pair, FD, OESD & GS+pair 18.6%. What I'm trying to say is there is no need for him to make a pure bluff play here and most people won't even bother. This takes away a lot of the fold equity you thought you had.

5) Your steal and Cbet didn't work this time. You still have 18bb. It's fine to just move on to the next hand.

Not saying it's necessarily a bad unprofitable play. I just think it's unnecessary and adding a lot of variance.

Having said all that, I've busted 4-5 games in 20th-30th in spots like these the last few days. :-/