Hello everyone reading this..

This will be a personal motivation thread for me to write down my goals and thoughts about poker and non-poker related stuff.. Maybe even get some discussions going with fellow 2+2'ers.

I'll start off by telling a little bit about my poker history (for now I will keep my personal life a little vague. Who knows, in the future I might change my mind and open up more..)..

I started playing poker about 7 years ago and after 1 year I was making a living out of poker. I started off playing tournaments and after a big downswing I got to frustrated with the luck factor and the insane late and long hours.. So I decided I was going to make the switch and start playing cashgames.
I jumped in the z500 pool around January 2014 and after 200k hands I had a winrate around about ~0.5bb/100.

The best part about switching to cashgames was that I really started to enjoy poker again. I had so much new stuff to learn and I am still learning new stuff everyday.

After switching to regular tables and I got some coaching, things really clicked. A few 'aha' moments gave me a few new insights and suddenly I started winning more regularly.

My last 150k-ish hands;




My life philosophy
Don't live to work, but instead work to live..
This, to me, is the most important thing. Poker is a hobby, a job and a means to make money. However, personal relations, health and personal development are more important to me then playing poker.

I enjoy doing sports, playing guitar, working self-development and travel a lot. I love work on myself and become the best person I can possibly be. However, sometimes I do get lazy.. Hence this thread, to try to spice things up a little and get some extra poker motivation and a proper warming-up/cooling down.



My goals for this month:
[ ] Play 25 hours per week (starting tomorrow; 9 hrs done far because I just got back from my holiday)
[ ] Play with more focus on all tables (meaning no skype, strong music or browsing internet of answering whatsapps etc.)
[ ] Review my big pots at the end of each-session. Including holdEq/Flopzilla
[ ] Start with teaching/coaching; I enjoy the process of learning things to people
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes daily (I'll write something about this somewhere this week)
[ ] Play the guitar, daily, 1 hour minimum
[ ] Start writing a song for my dad
[ ] Write twice a month something I consider interesting in my PGC thread
[ ] Post weekly and daily goals.g whatsapps etc.)
[ ] Review my big pots at the end of each-session. Including holdEq/Flopzilla
[ ] Start with teaching/coaching; I enjoy the process of learning things to people
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes daily (I'll write something about this somewhere this week)
[ ] Play the guitar, daily, 1 hour minimum
[ ] Start writing a song for my dad
[ ] Write twice a month something I consider interesting in my PGC thread
[ ] Post weekly and daily goals.

Something went wrong when posting my goals and making the lay-out..

So here are the monthly goals;
My goals for this month:
[ ] Play 25 hours per week (starting tomorrow; 9 hrs done far because I just got back from my holiday)
[ ] Play with more focus on all tables (meaning no skype, strong music or browsing internet of answering whatsapps etc.)
[ ] Review my big pots at the end of each-session. Including holdEq/Flopzilla
[ ] Start with teaching/coaching; I enjoy the process of learning things to people
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes daily (I'll write something about this somewhere this week)
[ ] Play the guitar, daily, 1 hour minimum
[ ] Start writing a song for my dad
[ ] Write twice a month something I consider interesting in my PGC thread
[ ] Post weekly and daily goals.g whatsapps etc.)




The daily list will most likely be the same, most of the days I'm actually playing. But for track record keeping. I keep posting them anyway...
For today. My goals will be:
[ ] Play 4 hours
[ ] Play 1 hour guitar
[ ] Review big pots
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)
[ ] Post one hand in this topic

Starting off with yesterday's goals
[x] Play 4 hours
[x] Play 1 hour guitar
[x] Review big pots
[x] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)
[ ] Post one hand in this topic

Yesterday's grind was a hard one.. Kept loosing my big hands.. Overall felt I played really well. Most of my focus on the game with little distractions. I ended up playing a tournament, but ended up loosing nutflush vs straight flush.



Motivated to grind again today.. Goals for today will be more-less similar.
[ ] Play 5 hours
[ ] Play 1 hour guitar
[ ] Review big pots
[ ] Don't do anything else but play, when playing (no skype, whatsapp etc..)
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)
[ ] a yoga session before dinner
[x] Post one hand in this topic


SB is a fish, CO is a reg playing 27/21. 31% RFI in CO.
Hand Converter by Pokerhand.org

UTG: $1,266.28
UTG+1: $857.70
CO: $741.62
BTN: $666.11
SB: $504.03
BB: $591

Pre-flop: Dealt to BTN J 9
(2 folds), CO raises to $18, BTN calls $18, SB calls $15, (1 folds)

Flop: ($60) 7 9 4 (3 Players)
SB checks, CO bets $28.50, BTN calls $28.50, (1 folds)

Turn: ($117) Q (2 Players)
CO bets $78, BTN calls $78

River: ($273) 9 (2 Players)
CO checks, BTN ??????????????????????

273$ in the pot, 541$ behind. What would be your game-plan, sizing and why?

[x] Play 5 hours
[x] Play 1 hour guitar
[x] Review big pots
[ ] Don't do anything else but play, when playing (no skype, whatsapp etc..)
[x] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)
[ ] a yoga session before dinner
[x] Post one hand in this topic

Finished the grind today. Pretty happy with my play. but in the last hand I couldn't resist trying to make a hero bluff vs a fish. Which was absolutely horrible.... Small profit for the day but nothing too interesting. up for the month now.

The hardest part is keeping top focus all the time. Almost impossible for me, but I feel it's improving every day, thanks to meditation. I'll write a small post about meditation soon.

pretty hard to not do something else while you play during the periods you are card dead pre flop

Yeah i agree. But i also think, forcing ourselves to stay focussed without distraction increases our edges a lot.

Today goals are a bit small because I have some social plans in the morning and in the afternoon.. My GF works a regular 9/5 job (8-5 actually...) So I try to play within the same rythm as much as possible even though its less +EV...

Today's goals:
[ ] Play 4 hours
[ ] Review big pots
[ ] Play 1 hour guitar
[ ] Start writing a new song
[ ] Play a 2 hour session with full focus.
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)

It's weird to see how much impact structure has in our lives. If my day changes slightly I really find it hard to get meditation in for example. Even though it's only 10 minutes and every time I do it, I'm grateful.


This is a spot that came up today that I thought was very interesting. betting leaves us super exploitable so I think checking is a very good option and bluffing from villains perspective is a very good option with certain type of hands....

Interested to see opinions from other 2+2ers to see what they would do in this spot and what sizing's they would choose

BB: $725.90 (121 bb)
CO: $600 (100 bb)
SB: $612 (102 bb)
UTG: $1,195.92 (199.3 bb)
MP: $600 (100 bb)
Hero (BTN): $615 (102.5 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with A 4
3 folds, Hero raises to $15, SB raises to $61.80, BB folds, Hero calls $46.80

Flop: ($129.60) A 7 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($129.60) K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero: ....

I would just go for 1 fairly large street of value, like close to pot, can add some total airball with the same line

Practice what you preach... sometimes harder to do then to write down. I skipped my meditation session, only 10 minutes. But i did get 5 hours of play in. Somehow I feel a little lame about skipping a 10 minute relaxation session. But well.. Goals are there with room for improvement.

To reflect on yesterday's goals
[x] Play 4 hours
[x] Review big pots
[x] Play 1 hour guitar
[x] Start writing a new song
[ ] Play a 2 hour session with full focus.
[ ] Meditate 10 minutes (headspace.com)

Today and tomorrow are my day's off. But my GF had to do some things for work as well, so i squeezed in a small 1 hour session. Focussing fully. Which I think I managed to really well. really played my A game and that feels good.

I'm trying to find some fun hands to post. But most hands are pretty common. I hope to find some soon to make this topic more interesting..

A new week has come and it always gives me motivation after a few days of rest. Normally I have two full days off.. but this time my GF had to do some work herself, so I grinded 2.5 hours in total, up 2.5 bi's.. which is always a nice bonus.

I decided to stop posting daily goals. Since I think it's not an effecient use of my time and I rather write about more interesting things to read, then checkboxes and goals that repeat itself almost daily.
I think I might set some monthly goals, which does keep things more interesting and gives me a good point to focus on.

The month so far:


For this week..
I will start off with my eyes only focussed on my goals up until Friday. I have a lot of things I love to implement in my life (like reading more, doing consistent yoga and meditation, play guitar, study poker and have a good life with the people I love around me).. But there is so much I want, that I mostly get lost in where to start... So for this week. I will try to get a rythm/goal going.

Wake-up
15 minute yoga
1 hour (max 2) playing guitar
study or play a bit of poker
Make some Lunch
work 2x 2hours poker
(around 7pm) Open for me to do whatever I want to do..

I have to make some choices.. reading or improve my guitar skills and for now, my priority clearly leans towards guitar playing. So I don't mind giving up on reading for now. I should have plenty of time in the future to work on that.

Only day that would be different is on Wednesday. I mostly go indoor climbing with a buddy of mine. So that day I'm not sure yet what I want to focus on this week.. Playing guitar or grind the extra hour. But let's see on Wednesday.

For today. I will restudy my CO BTN ranges and also take some filtered hands from my DB and evaluate my skills and build more confidence in those spots. Especially in the hands where I have to call-down.

you could be reading right before going to bed though, pretty easy to implement in routine, relaxes your mind so you fall asleep easily after, could just read 20-30 mins

A quick reflection on the week so far.

The grind has been extremely tough. I haven't run this bad since a long time.
It makes you reconsider things and eventually doubt if the plays you are making are the right ones. It's not the easy folds or the easy call-downs. Most of it consists of the mediocre hands and questioning yourself if your call down frequencies are correct or if you make bad adjustments given how you are running.

I have to get some motivation to start studying more seriously again and study the actual hands that I'm questioning now. So next week the focus will be on 2 hours study in the morning and 4 hours of playing in the afternoon.

I will focus my study on frequencies for hands that I marked. Second I will look at some specific spots and how to adjust best to them.

In total I'm down about 30BI's and running about 15 under EV.

On the upside, I'm only down 2bi's for the month. Which makes me extremely happy with my overal mindset and the control I manage to keep while grinding.

The month so far:

Ill write a small update on how things have been.....

Result wise; extremely bad.. See here the graph so far for the month.


But the upside is that I feel like I got my mojo back... more then I have had since a long time.
I've been studying 3 hours a day for the last week and feel like I will manage to continue this rhythm... I really see the things I have to focus on and dig into to improve my game. Which is exciting and fun..

I've been loosing 11 days in a row. I won't bother posting much hands here. Maybe later if I see this thread get's some followers who are interested in them.. But also because I want to avoid this to become a page where all you see is coolers and hands that I got sucked out on.

The goal to write something informative for this page this month, I didn't manage... I hope to that next month.

My main goal for February is putting in a bit more volume then I did in January (2 holidays didn't helpt either...) and I will do that mostly by adding some night time grinding to my schedule (which I normally avoid, even though it's higher EV then the day-time schedules).

I've got one more session to come before January is over...
Let's hope we can turn things around for February and get out of this downswing..