I think I would play KK type hands both by checking and by betting. Maybe checking when I have a diamond and betting when I don't. I'd really need to range everything out to know if its actually the best strategy but I think its somewhat close to how I would actually play it and at least a reasonable way to play.

Great thread man, I haven't seen anyone else put in this kind of written work to their mental game besides myself before! I have hundreds of pages of mental game notes written down and stored in my closet haha. It truly helps make sense of everything and I find myself constantly going back and re-learning things from MGP as well as comparing to old notes.


Also nice results crushing MSNL, solid play!

Thanks!

Hearing that people enjoy reading my thread always serves as a bit of extra motivation to keep going. Glad you like it!

I would be very interested to hear some of the weaknesses you've worked on. Which parts of your approach were similar to mine? Which parts were different?

Did Pure Cardio on the 3rd and forgot to post it. This was quite intense. At the same time I found it easier than the other workouts. I think it because the structure of the workout is such that I'm near exhausted about a third of the way through and just sort of go through the motions for the remainder. I think that this may become the hardest work of the bunch as my stamina increases and I am able to go hard through the entire work out.

I started live journaling during the 30second breaks between stages. The number of 'official' breaks varies between workout. Pure Cardio only has 3: After warm up, after stretch, after workout but before stretch. Plyo has 5 or 6: after warm up, after stretch and after every circuit. I will sometimes pause the video during the break to get everything written down, which may add up ro 30 seconds to the 30sec breaks tho I haven't counted. I try to scribble down my notes as quick as possible so as not to 'cheat' and get too much extra break. I note these pauses as a Journal Break as opposed to an Extra Break in which case I had to take extra time to get get my breathe or energy back. My hope is that I won't have any Extra Breaks any more. I'm also looking into trying to find some type of speech to text gadget that would allow me to take audio notes during the break without pausing video.

Notes from Day 4 - Pure Cardio





Just finished Day 5. Felt very good through out the workout. Still need to get stronger in all the workouts but I felt WAY better and recovered MUCH MUCH quicker than I did the first time I did Plyo.

Notes from Day 5 - Plyo

I know you guys are mostly here for the poker but I'd rather post my physical stuff here too rather than creating a second thread in the workout forum. Hope its not too distracting

- Forgot to note this in journal, but my foot cramped up again towards the end of the workout. During the stretch I took my shoes offs and it seemed to help a lot, which lead me to search google for better shoe options. I've been wearing running shoes, which are not designed for the type of side to side movements that Insanity often involves. Suggestions varied a little, but the top choices seem to be the Vibram toe shoes and a few different types of Crossfit shoes. I'm leaning towards the Vibrams right now.

http://weaktight.com/6542295
I guess its standard. I felt a little face up in game tho. I probably check back most of my Ax on the flop.

http://weaktight.com/6542303
I don't recall my thoughts in this hand, but I can't figure out why I checked rather than lead turn. If I was going for a c/r I don't like it, I think I have some worse hands that can c/r bluff to balance my 88 or AJ c/r. I definitely think this hand should be in my turn leading range

http://weaktight.com/6542309
Weird line by villain, but this is the exact type of hand I expect him to have here. I also think he is the type of guy who will become a non-believer if I 3bet turn. But he gave me great odds so I peeled. I may have had some plans to lead or c/r brick rivers but I don't like it. I think I should lead on an 8 and c/decide based on sizing on 9/T rivers

http://www.pokerhand.org/?6656127
WPN hands seem to not work on weaktight hence the pokerhand.org link. This hand seems OK vs an aggro-fish but I remember in game being on river and having no idea what the flop action was. I think if flop checks thru its a slam dunk river call. As it is I think its still a call but its closer. Only marked the hand because of the mental lapse in game of not keeping up with the action.

Day 6. Exhausted. My arms are shaking a little.

Day 7

Ditched the live journal in favor of a heart rate monitor.

Here are the heart rate zones they suggest on the Insanity website.



They actually don't tell you which zone you should be in during the workout, but I tried to keep it at the upper end of the Threshhold Zone (also called Z4). The interesting thing was that my body was probably being pretty honest with me during my previous workouts. Everytime I started to feel completely drained I would check my heart rate and it would be right around 180. So I would take a quick break until it got under 170 and I would start back up. This resulted in breaks during nearly every exercise for at least 10-15 seconds. But I felt like I was able to really get my form right when I came back and push hard instead of flailing around. There were only a few times where it was muscle fatigue rather than heart rate/cardio exhaustion that make me take a break (push up jacks and form(?) jacks). For those I just need to push my muscles a little harder each time until hopefully I can do them all the way thru.

With the method the hope is that each day I can get a little farther into each exercise before my heart rate spikes into the unsafe zone.

I also switched to the Vibram toe shoes today and can say that they are WAY better than my running shoes. No toe/foot cramps at all. I did notice that my calves worked much harder with these shoes. Thats probably a good thing for me because I've always had very skinny calves and could use the extra workout.

Went for a 10mi hike with a friend yesterday. Been months since I got a good hike in. The weather was perfect for it(70F/21C), not too cold and not too hot.

Back to the grind today.

Nice looking hike. I just went on a hike yesterday in Golden CO with the same perfect weather.. not 10 miles though (had my 15mo old daughter with me)

I love getting outdoors on a nice day.

Where did you hike? Where you from?

We originally planned a 8mi hike but made a mistake at the only intersection on the whole trail to add 2 miles to the trip.

I live in Florida. A lot of decent trails within a few hours of my place, but every is FLAT

Day 8


Day 9


Definitely feel like the heart rate monitor is making a difference in my workouts. I feel less exhausted during the workouts but I also feel like I'm able to push harder. Having an objective way of decided when to take a break and when to get back in is helpful.

Day 10


Today's plan: Shopping. Meeting. Day 10. 2 hour grind.

thats really impressive man

good to see you are doing good

is that Mental Game of Poker 2??

Thanks.

Everything is from MGoP 1, still haven't read #2

Day 11



Tomorrow is a rest day on the Insanity calendar. I may decide to do the P90x3 Yoga tho. I tried the original P90x yoga, but it was 90 minutes long and I just got plain bored halfway thru. P90x3 workouts are all 30 minutes long so much more manageable.

god I might have to re read it then :P

good stuff

gl again

Been playing quite a bit on a site where I can't import any hands into HM (no converter exists yet) so my total volume is several thousand hands more. I'm down small on that site, just running into the top of ranges mostly.

Day 12



I went out over the weekend and drank and smoked cigarettes again. Took some days off to recover.

I feel like my lungs are going to explode and/or I'm going to puke. I pushed myself hard today and I had some kind of nasty spicy soup for breakfast instead of my normal apple and mild pasta type food. So that is part of why I feel a bit nasty today, but I think the smoking over the weekend is also a large part of the cause. I also have to take extra days off from Insanity after I smoke because I know that the first day after not smoking my lungs will be so bad that its not even worth working out.

The good news is that I was able to dig up some old Fit Test results and I improved or matched my previous best in 6 out of the 8 exercises. The results were taken from pictures I had taken on my phone that auto-upload to dropbox. I think there was one more fit test either 2 weeks before or 2 weeks after the 6/19 fit test but I couldn't find it anywhere.

I have 2 new goals right now

Goals:
- Decrease laziness/procrastination
- Remove smoking from my life

I think I need to attack smoking just like its a mental game leak, because it very much is. Its just that the game is life and not poker. I need to inject logic when I have the desire to smoke and also preemptively inject logic when I know I will be around my triggers.

Injecting Logic
"Smoking will feel marginally good now, but I will feel terrible tomorrow and it will lead to many long term health problems."

I need to say this to myself when I have the immediate urge to buy cigarettes or to bum a cigarette off someone else, as well as say it on my way to a party or bar etc


I will approach my laziness and procrastination the same way. I think one of the reasons my previous attempts to increase volume hasn't succeeded long term is partially because I was not attacking the root of the problem and I wasn't treating it like a mental game problem. I have developed a HABIT of being lazy and I need to replace that habit with a new better habit of being proactive. In other words, I have trained laziness into my Unconscious Competence and I need to retrain proactiveness into its place. I also think its important that I keep in mind that the opposite of being lazy isn't just being busy, its being busy doing the right things.

Injecting Logic
"Now is the time to work. The future is a fantasy."
"If I watch an hour of TV now I am giving away $186."

186 is my hourly since the start of the challenge and is a quite a bit higher than I expected. I haven't actually looked at hourly rate since the last PGC thread I made which it was more like $50/hr or so. Seeing that number makes me sick at the amount of time I waste watching TV or youtube.

Hey, first of all very interesting thread u got.
Would like to ask u 2 questions.

When you analyse a hand you talk alot about how many combos u have in ur range, i just wonder how u know how many combos u shld have in each spot etc. Like for example how do you know that when u 4b pre and double barrel u shld have all 16 combos of AK on A38T (just an example) how can i myself train to learn how to be able to devide ranges in a more acurate way? Like for me in the example i would say that vs an unknown we shld have all AK and some AQ combos and possibly a few KQ combos. But i definitly have trouble knowing how to know how many of each we have. (Again this is just and example i ofc know that pos, stake, image etc etc have a major role im just looking for how to learn to make an acurate range)

Second question, when do you feel that u shld play higher stakes? Like say ur a 600nl reg, and when a fish joins a 1knl table u just join the tbl as well i assume? But what if a fish joins 2knl? How much of a fish must it be? Where do u draw the lines and how big % of ur BR are u willing to put on the table if an opportunity of a bad player in a 6max table joins? Would u consider joining a 3knl table if a 80/2 whale sits and u got position on him (rest of table is mostly hs reg looking players?(what if ur out of pos?)

Thank u very much and gl!