Used to study IT/Corporate Systems Management but now study(ing) philosophy. TBH I'd rather castrate myself than grind on ACR and Stars have said they will probably exit the Aus market along with 888 so no real options. We'll see what happens though.

Good luck will follow!

+1 to cutting down on partying. Doing the same myself this year, been out once which was to celebrate passing some exams. Not finding it as hard as I thought I would.

Appreciate it mate. <3

Yeah I'm stupidly bad at this sort of stuff. Need to pull my finger out and start doing it properly.

Cheers, have PM'd

Fun thread, am in a similar position to you with regards to life/poker so I will be following with interest.

With regards to studying as an end in itself, do you think that uni arts courses represent good value for money? Philosophy was a component of my degree and whilst I found parts fascinating and some of the professors inspiring so much of the subject is just reading and thinking that I don't think I necessarily learnt more than I would have done if I just decided to study the subject on my own, especially given the high quality of free online resources.

Anyhoo, good luck.

Philosophy is something you could very easily learn at a tertiary level from your own research. Value for money is hard to say because I'm not ever planning on paying any of the money for uni but I'd lean towards probably not.

GL mate! Subbed and excited for you to reach your goals!

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I think value for money for a university course is hard to quantify. I studied politics at a decent university in the UK.

Has the knowledge imparted to me increased my earning potential? No.

Did I pick up skills from studying that were transferable to my job? Maybe, but not worth what the course cost.

Did I have to have a bachelors degree to get my job? Yes

Do I think my university/course looks good on my CV. Yes

Did I have the best 3 years of my life and meet friends I still see almost every day? Yes!!!!

University was awesome, it depends on what you want to get out of it though. I got a piece of paper that declares I'm competent enough to survive what was an intellectual challenge that was only as hard as you wanted it to be and that let me get this job. More importantly I met my best friends both in and out of poker, got to go all the things I love as much as I wanted for 3 years and lived an essentially stress free life.

I basically agree with your post, although I think a few of the reasons you either only apply to one's first undergraduate degree or suffer some level of diminishing marginal returns once you're onto your second or third degree undergrad degree.

Fair enough, I don't know many people who have done multiple undergraduate degrees. All of my above experience is from the perspective on someone who only did one


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Yeah I could have been clearer.

Nice looking thread, in for the ride. glgl


I feel a little out of place being that I'm from the other side of the world from most itt (USA vs UK/AUS) but we play the same stakes/games and I enjoy hearing about/being jealous of your ability to not pay for higher education.

Have to pay for it here in the uk. 9k a year tuition plus whatever the rest costs, housing, food, having a life etc.

Heard US sucks for it though, especially if you go out of state or come from abroad. I considered it and sometimes wish I'd crossed the pond even though I had a great time.

Good to have ya with us mate. And yeah the thing re higher education - your uni fees become a debt that you begin repaying to the government after you earn 51k or more p/a. So if you never earn that much, you never have to pay it off. Technically with poker I'd earn $0 as far as the ATO is concerned. We'll see how it plays out.

Tuesday, 24th January | +$48 | Variance: 6

Annoying day this was. Went to the casino, was there for 1 hour and 36 minutes and was up $568. The table was pretty good - not amazing but pretty good.

Then I left for a homegame and lost $520 here - pretty much all of which was vs the spazz who called my shove pre $600 deep last time I played here with 89s. Basically, there was a couple main hands that destroyed me on this day - one bad runout for my bluffcatch, leading to me folding, and one great river for villain's bluffcatch, and yet me still bluffing river - which was a mistake.

Should have just stayed at the casino game lol. Kind of annoyed with myself for this bad bluff but sall G - just need to make sure I don't do this again. Cbf posting hands.

Going to shoot for some volume today and tomorrow and maybe Sunday. I'm up to about 50 hours so far this year, which I'm pretty happy with tbh. Stay tuned for tonight's debrief.

Also I'm looking for an app other than Poker Income for Android that I can use to track results with. Don't really want to pay to unluck more cash games. Like obv it's +EV but I'm still a nit so.

NSFW

Is Poker Journal available for android? That is what I have used in the past.

Honestly I think $30/hr is pretty ambitious with that rake structure you mentioned. $11-$15 max? I pay $5 +$2 in S.Florida. If we both win 2 pots per hour, your paying around $10-$12+ per hour more than I am.

$30/hr is not impossible with that rake, but its going to be pretty tough I think. I wish you good luck though!

@Parsons, I just bit the bullet and paid the $6 to unlock more cash games hah, cbf fkn around with it all.

@Mike yeah I know. I've been looking for some hard data on just what affect the insane rake in Australia has on achievable winrates but couldn't really find much.

One must remember though, although I pay way way more in rake, I don't pay tips or tax which surely accounts for something. But yes you're right, the rake situation is terribad and ideally I'd like to get to the UK sooner rather than later to avoid this.

Friday, 27th January | 10 Hours 32 Mins | +$751 | Variance: 4


Man the food rake at this casino is insane. I think I spent $40 on food this session and was hungry the whole time. Next time I go back, I'm going to bring some food/sandwiches or some **** because it's getting ridiculous. Obv I'm not taking food out of session profit or anything - it's coming out of my wallet, but it certainly doesn't contribute to my greater goal of actually saving money.

Speaking of which, the last 4 consecutive days I've played poker on, I've profited (one losing session last time but was countered by a second winning session for that day), so that's nice I suppose - even if it is completely meaningless in every possible way.

I'm now only -$694 for the year.

The reason for yesterday's varianceometer being a 4 was because I lost a 1k pot with AK vs AA on a king high board. Kinda gross and was pretty confident I'd lose to AA or top set or something vs this dude, but couldn't really fold. Was in the hole and pretty depressed about things and then I flop top set two hands consecutively and make money.

I've been real impressed with my table selection as well. Had 3 tables open at the cas last night and I found myself constantly surveying the other tables looking for any sign of weak players.

I went out to a rave on Wednesday to see Zomboy play:



Insanely good night and I really want to get more into the dub scene. So many good gigs coming up in the hardstyle/hardcore/dub scene and I could easily find myself out every weekend for the foreseeable future. Going out and wiggin' out on the d-floor is something I value very very highly in my life but unfortunately if I make a habit of this, it will simply take me much longer to get to Melbourne and move on with life. This means working full time (cancer) for a longer period of time and I want to avoid that. So essentially I need to properly cut back on the partying. Maybe once a month or every other month so I don't go insane. I would like to cut it out altogether but I don't think that'd be healthy. Being social and seeing friends and even just **** like going out for breakfast/catching up with old pals isn't something I budget for each week but it still happens and tbh needs to stop.

To add salt to the wound, the price of rent for me has been increased by 400% (in fairness, I was only paying a laughable $20 a week to stay at home but rents have now decided they want $100 p/w which is still cheap but it simply means I need to be more disciplined in my spending).

So I want to set some saving goals just to make sure I'm roughly on the right track. I have a little over $7k in liferoll and then my $1.7k working poker roll.

I think I can still save probably $500 a week from work but honestly it'll be a bit of a stretch and impossible prob if I go out that week. So basically, no going out lol. I want to see the $10k liferoll mark in 6 weeks which will be 11 March. I've picked this as a milestone because I've never seen 5 figs in bank account before lol and seems a fitting soft half-way-point of my goal of 20-25k.

For me, my only real weekly expenses are as follows:

Food: $75
Pay sis to food prep lol: $22
Petrol: $75
Tolls: $50 (to get to work)
Phone: $2
Coffee: $25 (have started doing this b4 work since I have to get up at 3:20am nowadays)
Weekend Breakky: $25 (this is a must-have for me as a foodie)

TTL: $274 - if we're parsimonious we can round this up to $300. Ofc some weeks there will be random expenses like car rego, website domain/hosting renewal, car repairs, fines, etc etc. But none of this includes going out on the weekend for a gig which can easily set me back $200 for a good sesh.

Anyhow, if I earn say $800-$850 a week, it shouldn't be TOO hard to put $500 away each week and save the $3k in the next month and a half. Ofc reaching this goal of $10k by March 11 will be contingent upon poker results. As always, I'll be dipping into this liferoll to supply a running bankroll for myself so here's hoping I don't lose too much?

So here's some monthly goals, I suppose! Except we'll call it 1.5 months goals since I'll evaluate the success of this on March 11.

[ ] - Have $10k in bank account by 11 March
[ ] - Save at least $500 a week consistently for the next 6 weeks (i.e. above)
[ ] - Stop partying or reduce to perhaps 1 gig in next 6 weeks
[ ] - 16 hours poker per week (64 hours volume from today til 11 March)
[ ] - Spend more time reading in the library on rest day (Sunday) and less time hungover, sleeping, etc.

GL me and I suppose I'll possibly try to play some poker tomorrow but we shall see on that one.

Also decided I don't want to wait to start getting healthy/strong again. I have at least 6-9 months to kill in Brisbane so I may as well make a start eating right and putting some weight back on. It's not the BEST timing since I want to focus on getting poker in but I think I can manage work + training + poker and still get enough rest.

So the next however many months I'm in Brisbane (6-9), will be spent in a perpetual dirty bulk. Unfortunately, getting my food and supplement stack sorted will increase my weekly budget meaning I MAY struggle to save $500 a week since I'll only be working one job, following on from my previous post. That didn't consider the EV of my 16 hours a week poker volume which is an additional $480 per week on top of my $800-850 salary (assuming hourly is roughly $30/ph). So having $1,200 to $1,300 weekly income makes saving $500 a week seem much easier. Also in no rush to head to Melbourne, ideally 6 months from now but if it takes 9, then so be it.

Anyhow, I'm going to do my workouts mostly at home. I have two dumbbells, a barbell, squat rack, and probably ~60-70 kg in weight plates lying around. I've decided to do this because it's cheaper than signing up to a gym again and means I'm not spending time in the afternoons travelling to gym/mucking about - I can get home and get stuck into it in the back yard. I also enjoy getting some sun each day and working out outside will be great for this.

Due to ongoing knee injuries, I'm going to completely neglect training legs until I have access to GHR/calf raise machines/enough weight to DL which will be when I move to Melbourne and get a gym membership. So for the next 6-9 months, my program will be focused around arms, shoulders, chest, and back. Below is my current program that I started this afternoon and will continue in the afternoons after work. It'll change pretty frequently but this is roughly what I'll be doing for the first couple months. Everything is pretty light and endurance-heavy to get bloodflow and a good baseline of strength back.

Day 1 - Arms:
High rep:
Curls 3x(25+) e/a
Hammers 3x(25+) e/a
OH Extensions 5x(25+)
SL OH Extensions 2-3x(Max)
(high rep stuff for increased bloodflow to help repair/strengthen tendons for later arm wrestling goals)

Day 2 - Chest:
10-20kg Weighted Neutral Grip Pushups 4x(10-20)
Neutral Grip Pushups 1-2x(Max)
Wide Grip Pushups 1-2x(Max)
Narrow Grip Pushups 1-2x(Max)

Day 3 - Shoulders:
Superset:
Barbell Military Press 5x(10-12)
Dumbbell Flys 5x(Bloodflow Circuit)
Superset:
Barbell High Pull 3x(12)
Barbell/Dumbbell Shrugs 3x(Max)

Day 4 - Rest

Day 5 – Arms:
Barbell Curls 5x(8-10)
Weighted Seated Dips 5x(10-12)
Wall Hammers 3x(Max) e/a
SA OH Extensions 2-3x(Max)

Day 6 - Back:
Superset:
Bent Over Barbell Rows 5x(~15)
SA Dumbbell Rows 5x(10-20) e/a

Day 7 - Rest

Ideally I want Sunday to be my full rest day. No work, no training, plenty of sleep, relation, perhaps a hydrotherapy session, and plenty of eating + early to bed. Give my body a chance to catch up on recovery after a BIG friday/saturday working + grinding poker.

I currently weigh 86kgs which is very low for me (6'5"). When I was training last year I was at about 98kgs and had I not been injured, would have gone well past 100kgs.

In terms of weight goals, I think it'd be cool to be at 110kg by the time I move to melbourne. Ideally not tooooooo much fat but that's what the shred's for, right?

Nutrition:

First, supplements:

===== MASS GAINER =====

10kg, 120 servings, $176

3 servings per day, 21 a week.

5.7 weeks, or +$31 a week.

===== NIGHTTIME PROTEIN/CASEIN =====

5kg, 165 servings, $123, 7 serves per week.

23.5 weeks, or $5 a week.

===== WPC =====

5kg, 165 servings, $99, 2 scoops post workout, 5 days a week, 10 servings per week

16.5 weeks or $6 a week.

===== PREWORKOUT =====

120 servings, $94, 1 serve a day, 5 a week

24 weeks or $4 a week.

Total Stack: $46 a week.

Pretty simple, cbf with creatine. $50 a week isn't too bad since the mass gainer will contribute a significant amount of my macros per week. Each serving is 300 cals (33 protein, 37 carbs, 5 fats) and I'll be taking three of these per day, so it's a pretty easy 900 cals.

Obv since we're bulking, we require a ****load more food than just gainers. Here's what I'm planning on eating during a normal work day which will start next week after I have a chance to go food shopping:

BREAKFAST:
- mass gainer shake
- 1 cup oats + milk + greek yoghurt + peanut butter + blueberries + honey + wpc, all jammed into a bowl. *Won't be pretty or easy to eat, but pretty important for me since I get up at 3am to have some pretty quick and easy. Dunno the macros or cals but will make sure the quantity is insane big.

As a hardgainer, the easiest way for me to actually put on weight is to eat more than necessary for a bulking diet. I imagine I'll be looking at somewhere around at least 5k calories a day.

DURING WORK:
- Peanut butter Protein balls, going to make a ****load of these for the week and keep them near me during work. Great way to get plenty of carbs and fats in and proteins in to keep energy up but also just because snacking whenever I get a chance is a good way to keep cal intake staggered and consistent.

DURING WORK BREAK:
(4-5 hours after starting work)
1x(mass gainer shake)
1x(chicken pesto pasta - literally just a ****load of chicken and pasta with some flavour so I don't get tilted eating this **** everyday). Chicken and pasta are obviously the nuts in terms of lunch type meals for bulking and I just need to make sure I spend my entire 30 minute break desperately stuffing my mouth with this ****.

AFTER WORK:
(About 3.5-4.5 hours after prev meal)

1x(mass gainer shake)
1x(chicken pesto pasta

PREWORKOUT:
(prob 40 minutes after prev meal)

2 scoops (alternating each week between caffeine and guarana to prevent tolerance)

POST WORKOUT:

1x WPC shake
2x Bulking Burrito (Wheat tortilla, brown rice, mince, black beans, taco seasoning, taco sauce, cheese)

DINNER:

1-2x Bulking Burritos
1xWPC Shake
+ Any other Available food around house

BEFORE BED:

Casein shake

Weekends I imagine will be pretty similar. I only have 3 different meals because it makes meal prep easier and quicker and hopefully I don't get too bored of it too quick.

Fitness Goals: 3 months, 12 weeks, BY 1 May 2017

[ ] - 100kg BW
[ ] - Get plenty of sleep
[ ] - Stick with it/continuity/don't get injured/sick

That's it really. No idea how much all of this food will cost me but tbh don't care too much if I'm spending $100 on food + $50 on supps each week - it's really a pretty small price to pay.

Also doing all of this will help force me to be less social so I go out less and spend less on drinking and that's always +EV i guess.

GL me.

Solid goals! I had a knee injury years ago which stopped my training. I started training again at 62kg (5'11) and am back to 67, aiming to get back to 75+ by spring.

I'm a habitual meal skipper so I've been working hard on making sure I eat at least three times a day and I've cut alcohol almost completely out. It suppressed my hunger, made me lazy and never work out.


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Now that I think about it, 100kg without training legs might be a bit much. Let's shoot for 95kg instead.

Yeah dude it's literally all about eating. Doesn't matter what you do in the gym. Also eating 3 times a day generally is never going to be enough to put on any mass. I'd shoot more for 5-8 times a day if you can.

It's a pain in the ass for me doing a physical job 8-9 hours a day but im just hoping I can snack enough throughout the workday to get them Cals in.

GL with your goals too m8.

I'm suprised I don't see eggs in your diet. They are the nut high in term of nutrition and cost. That's what protein powder is, except eggs are way more natural. Get a ninja blender and throw your berries, banna, milk, oats, and 2 or 3 raw eggs in there.

+1

Yeah I'm generally no stranger to eggs but the reason why I decided not to include them this time round is because I have typically gotten bored of poached/scrambled eggs for breakfast very quickly, they take a while longer to prepare, clean up etc. Hassle. I also can't use the blender in the morning at 3am as a courtesy to others who may be sleeping. I've been looking for ways to get eggs into the meal plan but tbh will be very happy if I can avoid eating them, despite how good they are.