Hey guys, I know that you are not going to read this thread if I will not post any pictures
So here u go- prove that this journal is made not by total donk:


I am 29 year old and play poker full time for couple of years. I play online poker since 2007. I have two kids and wife. That is definitely very bad for poker (provides a lot of stress and takes a lot of time) but... It is very good for life

So it is very important for me to try to reduce stress that I get from family, DO NOT bring poker to family, treat poker like a business, improve discipline, try to fight various forms of tilt.

It is not fresh start- I was able to increase my time that I spend for poker 2x, reduce time that I waste, getting my discipline better. But I still have a lot of leaks and I want to fix those. I believe that writting journal can help me. So I will not put here exact goal (Or I will not put it now but maybe I will add it later) And just try to share my Ideas that I pick up from various books, articles and discuss about that.

Also It is possible that I will be posting session emotion review and how variance or other factors affected it.

K, gl for me. Biggest accomplishment would be if I would be disciplined enough and not quiting witting this or any other blog

FIRST!

Few days ago I was surprised to find something- On sundays i perform much worse than on any other day!


(last 6month data)

I was thinking why it is so big difference. I exported date to excel, filtered out sundays only and I found that there was huge of streaks where I wasn't winning (a lot of 4-5 sundays in a row). I wasn't tracking session journal so I couldn't find why it was negative result at exact sundays but now I can try to guess why:

a) If we go to visit friends or have some other fun we do that on saturdays. We consume alcohol for sure. So maybe even when I don't feel any influence but on sunday my brain doesn't work good enough.
b) Sometimes we make mini vacation and we do that from friday to sunday. We come back on sunday and it is very likely that I was driving a lot. Also I feel guilty that I didn't grind that weekend and I have set some hours as a goal for every month. So after weekend I am tired but come and grind. And it is possible that I grind more than usual.

So even when it looks like that sunday is great day to grind cuz there is a lot of recreational players that plays mtts and switches some cash game but my results are bad. From now I am going to pay more attention what happening.

gl dude!

keep up the good stuff!

Mario

This thread has potential. Looking forward to it.

i like it. very interesting. gotta post some session graphs and reviews tho!

K, so it will be first entry about my session.

PRE (did that or wrote down this before session):

Food: It was something like 4PM and I didnt eat since my breakfast (at 11AM) So I was a little bit hungry. I decided to eat only one banana cuz serious meal would affect me very negatively. Also I decided not to drink hot tea (I always do that before session) cuz my stomach was almost empty and that wouldn't work well too. So I just took glass of water and went to grind.

I have some wrist pain so I was very happy to find that I found those exercises:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyMN...layer_embedded
I did that before session and it was awesome session! Didn't feel any pain.

So I wrote down tiny plan:
- Do not Play HU (do not start or try others to start HU tables). That disbalances me a lot. Also most of the time I am just in warm up mode at start of the session so I do not play my best. Also For last 5 or even more sessions I was on tilty mood and more than 50% of those sessions I was chasing my loses at those sessions (luckilly got all my loses there).
- Play only really good 3/6 tables
- Session time 120-150 minutes.
- Topic for the session: "Think about different kinds of fishes and try to indentify what they are going to do".

SESSION:

Session was really ugly. I got sucked out a lot and my good mood didn't last long. So After few bad beats I've started to tilt:
my tilt:
- Started to call wider (3bets, 4bets). Even called 4bet with 5Ts and 68s
- Started to 3b/5b wider (still pocket pairs but in spots where I think it is -EV)
- I was doin't those calls instantly. I use hotkeys and I was calling faster than thinking about.

Still my mindset was much better than few days ago. I am happy with this fact. I would give me 6/ for mindset and tilt control in this session. Not that great but not bad either.

What about pre session plan? Very soon I went on that tilt and then was chasing for loses. So I forgot my topic and almost didn't pay additional attention for fishes. Also I played more tables Than I expected (~13 on average I guess) so It was harder to do that.
Pretty happy that played good tables at both limits - 2/4 and 3/6.
Session length wasn't important for my anymore- I was chasing for loses. So luckily I got my money back pretty fast and session ended after 157 minutes of pain



Right now I feel good, fresh. Also I am happy that I was forced to think what I am going to write in that journal So I was more thoughtful, payed more attention for what I feel.

K, enough for now. Time to play with my kids!

i think it`s very valuable to write down -esp. here in public, what leaks got into your game while tilting - good way to work on it!

chasing losses... i think most of us are doing it , even thou we know or SHOULD KNOW losses in 1 session, day, week whatever don`t matter.

it`s ALL 1 BIG SESSION.


gl , gogo!

Fpr every month my plan is at least 80 hours. In this month I made 60 hours only and going to take at least two free days so it will not easy for me to grind 20 more hours. So today I was forced to choose- one study or one grinding session. I've chose grinding. I had to do some stuff today so right after that I came back at home and started my session (That was ~5PM). I didnt make any pland and also didn't do any kind of warm up. Thats terrible.

At start of the session I luckboxed some, run good and had nice amount of money. But then I got 1 bad beat and played hand that I am sure it wasn't good way to play (still it wasn't very big mistake) and I went on big tilt. Spewed some stacks with pocket pairs BvB where I knew that my plays are -EV. Also did some questionable 4bet call and bluff stuff. Anyway with that broken mindset I couldn't stop cuz I need to get back loses Again and again and again - same mistake.

Anyway I've managed to handle my tilt, Tightened up and started to play well again. I got my money back and quit finishing 130 minutes session. I guess that will be ~6-7th session in the row where I am chasing my loses. Still I am very happy that lately I started to manage with my tilt and bad play problems and recover. And I am doing that even without stopping grind.

Here is my session.


It looks like that in work days at 4-6PM time I get a lot of really nice tables. It is very nice spring and it is strange that people are still grinding and wasting money online

K, time to chill with my lovely doughters. Two awaiting tonight

P.S.: Didn't do real mindset analysis yet but I hope I will be able to find time for that and work for improving.

Few hours ago I've finished my session. Decided to make one big session instead of two 1.5 hours sessions. I do that somethimes. Both choises has benefits and drawbacks. Anyway it was standart session. Didn't tilt and felt pretty good. Won some blah blah blah.- Isn't worth of writting about it. Just 8/10 mindset mark for it.

Anyway there is one more thing- Tomorrow is wednesday! Im pretty sure that this thing doesnt say anything to u! Wednesday is free day for poker. In Jared Tendler book I found suggestion to make at least one day per week free for poker. Before that I didn't do that, didn't have specific day for resting. Sometimes I was grinding a lot days in a row and overburning. So I've decided to make that day wednesday. Here is reasons:

Friday-Sunday- grindaments. A lot of fishes should be chilling there So I need to grind. It is possible That I should rethink about sunday cuz database analysis says that it is only my losing day. (Im pretty sure that it is not just variance but some real reasons)
Monday- I have poker group meeting so I cant take free day. Also it is semi free day cuz I grind just once.
So I decided to take middle of other 3 days and took wednesday.

I was doing that at least for few months and I c great results. Not monetary results- I just feel great, I have day for chilling, Thats great! At first when I've started doing that I felt strange. I didn't know what should I do and how should I use my spare time. I developed so big habbit of working or studying poker everyday that it wasn't easy to change that. So at that day I was trying to avoid PC (only do things that provides pleasure for me- movies, photography). And I wasn't opening any poker forums, any poker news sites I wasn't even using skype cuz there is a lot of poker buddys.

Anyway result is great and I recommend everytone to do that.

kkk. 3 AM here. Time to sleep and... ENjoy my free day!

gl!

hah I like this thread, think ima follow!

Any chance you could post 1 hand per session that was an interesting spot where you owned or got owned and explain thought process?

If you did that would be awesome and help us lower stakes guys learn some while enjoying reading your thread. Plus when you help our games we will root for you more! Please no coolers or bad beats we see enough of them in everyone elses threads!

do u think it`s a big difference if u take that wednesday totally off poker - or only a day away from the tables?

A lot of time passed since last post. That happened due 2+2 hacking stuff. THat wasn't good for me cuz I was forced to stop writing my mindset journal.

I was thinking and trying about a lot of stuff and I can't lay down just in one post so maybe it will be written in the future

I was kinda sick last week so almost didn't grind. But now today I tried to grind and I was forced to quit cuz started to tilt.



I know that this post is worthless but I should make it to start writing this journal again. Now I am too upset to write anything good or detailed.

Few days ago I was talking to one HSNL player about concentration. He told me that he is rearanging tables, even HUD lay out to keep him aware and not autopilot. I suggested him having cold shower before session and he told that he liked that a lot. I used to do that when I was making experiment and grinding in very early mornings (4-5AM). I did that 3-4 years ago and USA players was still playing there so it was not so bad pool wise. But it was amazing how cool it was to grind with fresh mind (now I grind after all day so I am tired) and also calm atmoshpere when everyone is sleeping affects very positively.

So I was waking up early and taking cold shower and that provided a lot of energy for me. So few days ago I told about taking cold shower for that buddy but I was dumb and didn't think that I can do the same! Lately I am recovering from ilness so it is pretty difficult to keep conctration for me. So today when i discovered that we don't have hot water I was forced to take cold shower! And voila- I felt so great and so keen that It really helped me while I was grinding!



Still prety good session was just result of variance, But this time I took some notes and I should find out how to fix my leaks. Right now It seems that Downswing provided me fear- I saw that in my stats and in:
* checking lobby. When I started to grind I decided not to check lobby at all. But very soon I started to check it.
* Protecting results. At the end I quit cuz I wanted to protect results. I knew that my mood will go down if I will lose more so I didnt want that. It is bad that I am still evaluate my session basted on monetary results. Also I was going to have 150-180 minutes session cuz I need to reach 80 hours mark at the end of month and now it is 25hours only and also I am going to have at least 3 free from poker days, but I played 102 minutes only

So my plan now is:
* reread chapter about confidence (Jareds book)

P.S.
One of my goals r not to bring poker in my family life. I am pretty glad that in that ****ty month I didn't gave any hint for them that I kinda bad, sad and results are not great. Also I am not going to show that I am happy due poker results now too.

P.P.S.
A lot of years everytime when poker milestones was running I was trying to hit one. This one I didnt try that and just was grinding. And actually when milestone hand was dealt I even didn't understand what is happening and what is that strange sound.

But then understood and here is that funny hand:



I was credited with 1070$ and that guy with 27o got ~3,5k $ bonus

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