By year-end would be good

Done

No sir!

Thanks!

Ty

Since completing SNE I have played a grand total of four tournaments: three $100 HU Hyper SNGs, and one 6-max play money SNG. Won all four so saved my heat for the right events. No need to play this Sunday now.

Who need to win a major if you can crush play money instead

Absolutely - risk free victories!

Since last post I've played 1-2 more HUSNGs and continued the hot streak. Just been very busy off the tables catching up with friends and family, partying it up, enjoying, as well as plenty of non-playing work. I'm hoping to get back on the grind soon. SCOOP is huge but in my current timezone it's just a nightshift to grind anything decent. Getting back to the UK on Thursday so from Friday onwards it's time to vamoooooo.

Still not been grinding much at all, although I played four SCOOP events (two $215, two $2100).

Highlights= earning 6 KOs for $6150, ensuring a good profit despite non-cashing the $2100 event; being in reasonable profit for the series.

Lowlights= getting 4bet by 24o and defending, then defending flop, then shoving turn and getting called down by 4th pair for a monster pot deep in the same $2100 event (4th pair was good, and he shipped the event); coming 33rd in the $215 turbo zoom, after pussying out in a standard triple-barrel spot on the river when villain showed down with ace-high to SCOOP a huge pot. Quite possibly made that decision given demons from the previous day's shenanigans.

In other news, it appears that $1K 6-Max Hyper SNGs have been released. I'm not sure what exactly that will mean, but it will certainly mean something.

Been a long time. Pretty much been away most of the period, relocated to London, lots of stuff happening off the tables etc. etc.. June would have been a great month to take advantage of WSOP (or better still be at WSOP), but alas ready to get back into it when that's all finished. Looking forward to grinding a decent amount, nothing too crazy, and planning to mix things up a bit. I'll also be putting in some sessions on $1.50 6-Max Hypers unhidden from search to show basic strategy in action for some students. Asides from that, my staple grind will be $60-500 6-Max Hypers (maybe mix good $1ks if things are going very well), and perhaps a pinch of 18-Man Turbos and high stakes MTTs to keep things interesting on a Sunday.

Off the tables been training pretty hard, last year I did some intense training for a couple months, managed to bulk 10kg in just over 6 weeks and improve CV with regular cycling, running and swimming. Then early this year got severe food poisoning a couple of times in Asia and a shoulder injury got progressively worse so lost most of the gains. The good thing is previous training doesn't go to waste when muscle memory kicks in, so already after a few weeks of decent training getting back on track. If anyone is interested in that kinda stuff and wants to share their targets/ask about what training I'm doing feel free!

gl man

you havent missed much, games been pretty mediocre most days,

i know what its like keeping the eager to grind after you put in an effort for a goal, hard to get it back, goal orientation is good obviously so you havent put in the title, but maybe you can shoot for more if you got 1m vpp pretty quick

Thanks man, yeah you're spot on. Once you finish something pretty intense, and something which you have revolved your life around to quite a large extent, once it's over you certainly have a release and find it hard to get back to that intensity. My reasons for being off the grind for so long are mostly separate from that, i.e. moving continents and launching a new business, but those things aside I'd have still been slacking compared to before.

Goal orientation is a bit like signing a contract with yourself and on PgnC declaring it to the world to hold you to account should you breach it, whereas without this, there is no formal accountability, and psychologically we find it harder to be self-disciplined.

Having said that, I remember a while back watching a TED talk about research which found those who state goals to their friends tend to succeed in those goals less often than those who keep it private. The theory was that once an individual proclaims the goal, subliminally they get some sensation of having already accomplished it - which is counter-productive to actually achieving the goal. I'm not convinced by that but from personal experience have noticed pros and cons of both approaches.

From an overall perspective, I try where possible to train my discipline without crutches - so that means forcing myself to achieve what I need to without getting recognition or having anyone even aware of what was the goal. I believe that builds an even stronger mental discipline, because you train a mindset which is not contingent on so many external factors to influence it positively. Also, in a world where everything is public, it is nice to reserve some private endeavours.

Obviously this can come across strange in a PgnC thread, but for me a PgnC thread is for sharing a journey with a community which can relate to and enjoy the subject matter, given that for most of our friends/family, this stuff is completely alien and means very little. On top of that given my coaching activities it is advantageous to be active in the community, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. I also hope to get to know some other players on the circuit better for when I travel in Europe/elsewhere for EPT/Pokerstars VIP Club events, UKIPT, WSOP etc.

i thiink what you say makes sense but there is a difference between stating you are going to make something happen and acutally keep a detailed journey (pgc) about it. The first being way more likely to overestimate what you are gonna achieve and less positive effects of stating it where a detailed journey can help you, motivate you etc

I think there also might be a bias about people speaking up. Everbody knows the people in their life that are all talk but never accomplish what they are saying they will.

Goals have to be difficult but doable, and i think 2m vpp is probably good for this with the sidestuff you have going on. Otherwise i think you should shoot for a milly more

Disregard what i said btw, games ahve been awesome today haha

+111111111 post

Played a bit last week. Really got into the action yesterday loading $200-1000s. The first two hours were pretty painful, the next two hours a complete reversal. Stories are always told better in garphs:

Been a while since my last update here. Since then I've been grinding a bit and pretty busy off the tables too. One of my goals has been to get a good MTT score under my belt, kind of as a challenge to myself and also to prove my credentials there. SNG players (especially of the hyper variant) tend to get painted with a brush that they are push/fold bots. This is absolutely true, but hopefully we have more than one string to our bow

Well, at first things were not going well at all. Many deep runs: $320 6-Max MTT 12th, $109RA Turbo 10th, $55 Hotter 17th, $109 Turbo 24th, Big $55 67th, two EPT London package bubbles in pretty sick fashion, blah blah blah. The biggest below EV week of my career on SNG/MTTs, was then followed by the biggest win of my career just over a week after. Running 50 buy-ins above EV in one evening on 6-Max Hyper SNGs was a good omen earlier in the week, and then the grand finale was finishing 3rd in the WCOOP $700 6-Max PKO for $82K. Between SNGs, MTTs and students it was a six-figure week.

The end of this tournament was pretty tilting, because with one hand before we were to discuss a deal I got caught up in a huge hand I could have folded preflop, was forced into a big pot line, and then took a dubious (IMO probably super bad in practice, not too bad in theory) river raise to lose over 80% of my stack in that one hand. So with that one hand which could have been a trivial fold preflop (although I had good, legitimate reasons not to, based on my knowledge at that time), instead I'd squandered $30K+, just like that. A combination of bad luck, ill-judgement and benefit of hindsight on reflection.

Anyway, I think this last fortnight is representative of the career of a poker pro, and many other pursuits in life. A number of things have came out of the experience for me: things can get really ugly, but you can be knocking on the door of success; you can be on the brink of what you consider the pinnacle, but in reality it's almost always unattainable, either because you cannot be perfect, or life does not only dish out good luck; hard work, self-discipline, and strong mind can achieve a lot. Overall, you have to give your best, but also be at ease with whatever happens, whether the depths of failure or the heights of success. For me personally, it includes understanding my limitations and accepting that I will always make big mistakes - when I least want to and where I feel like I can avoid them. Equally, we should not lose sight of the things we do well, because many of those things are not trivial, and we could easily have missed out on them were we less committed to succeeding.

Really I should have just posted this picture: