i definitely have noticed the same avoidance behavior when i am running poorly or playing poorly live.

if you want to discuss any live poker spots from your session tonight, definitely feel free to message me on skype!

Betterment looks cool, I wasn't familiar with it. The only thing is I would be very careful with any fees associated with it. Over a 30 year period, two funds with identical performance, except where one has an expense ratio of 0.5% and the other has an expense ratio of 1.5%, the difference in profit is staggering.

DISCLAIMER
I'm by no means a fiduciary, and I would not even called myself a well informed investor. Any advice taken from me should be taken with a grain of salt.

I'm a big fan of Vanguard and highly recommend them.

Poker players don't get 401k plans, since we don't have employers. We can still get great retirement savings vehicles through Roth IRAs, though. However, the MAXIMUM annual contribution to a Roth IRA is $5500. That's $458.33/month.

If you start with $0, contribute that $458.33/month every month for 30 years, you will have invested $165,000. Assuming a 6% annual growth rate (which is slightly conservative but reasonable), the value at the end of 30 years on your investment will be $460,000. People are living longer and longer, pensions are largely a thing of the past, and who knows about Social Security etc., so having a retirement plan is more important than ever. Maxing your annual Roth IRA contribution for 30 years will put you in a very solid position of financial security. You can't enjoy a lot of excess on that nest egg, but if you live frugally, convert a bunch into an annuity, you will be assured you never run out of enough basic income to survive at an old age.

That's basically my baseline minimum I'm committed to saving, come hell or high water. I'm set up to be billed monthly for it, so it's just another bill I have no choice but to find a way to pay. Anything I can save on top of that is gravy.

I don't have a big nest egg yet, and some of the "better" mutual funds require a minimum investment, so I'm not as diversified as I eventually intend on being. But, for now, I can still have a very solid foundation just by splitting between stocks and bonds.

The best mutual fund you can get, in my opinion, is a simple market index fund that mirrors the S&P 500. The S&P 500 outperforms the vast majority of mutual funds anyways, but more importantly since it is UNMANAGED the expense ratio is WAY lower. Remember that $460k nest egg? If we say 7% instead of 6% annual return, that changes to $560k. A full $100k extra in your pocket if you can cut out 1% of unnecessary fees!

So, I have 60% of my contributions going into VFINX, a US stock market index, and 40% going into VBMFX, a US bond market index.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fun...FundIntExt=INT
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fun...FundIntExt=INT

Eventually I will have some foreign stocks and bond index funds in the mix, and likely a bit of gold/commodities and a bit of real estate in the form of REITs. For some funds, you get better deals with a larger minimum investment, so I can't get there for a few years.

Programs like Betterment can automate this asset allocation process for us, which is great, as long as it's not taking money out of our pocket - since we can definitely do it ourselves for free. If you have $25k+ in savings already, you can get a firm like Stronghold Financial to manage your money for you for low cost. If you are just starting out, Betterment or similar software might be right for you, or might be siphoning away a bit too much of your growth, but BY FAR the most important thing is to JUST GET STARTED. If you already have an IRA, it might be a good time to consider rolling it over and making sure you are getting the best return and lowest fees possible.

In terms of oil, I'm not viewing that as permanent retirement savings, but more short or medium term savings that I feel comfortable keeping tied up for a couple years if needed. I purchased ETFs in a normal brokerage account (like TD Ameritrade, ScottTrade, etc - I use Vanguard). The main difference between that and my Roth IRA is tax advantages. Remember how much of a difference that 1% annual return made over a 30 year period? You can see why avoiding unneeded taxes on the long term money is so very important.

Here's what I got for a short/medium term oil investment to sweat:

40% http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USL
40% http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=oil
20% http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=uwti

I think the first two have certainly some risk, but are less risky than the third.

I feel very confident about the long term investment strategies I'm doing with Vanguard, but I want to stress this oil stuff is purely speculating on my part and should not be viewed as part of a retirement plan or what not.

Anyways, I've been meaning to post something about savings and some retirement savings basics for a while, and I think I got a good amount of the info I wanted to share out there. Hope this helps someone, or sparks someone to get more educated or passionate about savings!

http://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-G.../dp/B00MZAIU4G

Just found this thread, wow, just wow. Great graph and very detailed mental game thought processes.

I'm rereading The Mental Game again, it's so easy to just rush through the material and assume that you understand it. I dont think I put in anywhere near the amount of work that OP did with his mental game.

Great to have a reference point, even better to see hardwork being paid off.

a bit tl, dr though :P.
GL OP,
5*

Fwiw oil is an etn and uso is an eft
Etn oil can go under if barclays goes bankrupt
Etf uso will issue k1 for taxes and also buys front month contracts so it can be affected by contango where oil etn wont be...

Spy is solid

Consider Dumping the bonds.. Bonds prices are going through a rough patch these few years and when int rates go up eventually they are getting slammed harder...

Look this stuff up but just a heads up..
Gl

Thanks!

Thanks, I appreciate the insight. Will give me some stuff to read up on.

Oil is killing it today! It seems there is a military conflict decreasing middle eastern oil output, which is helping push the price per barrel up.

I found some good investment forums over at bogleheads.org in case anyone wants to post questions or just browse.

Oil hasnt even started to killit yet... Wait a year when it quietly hits 85/brl again before u sell

Ya I'm planning on hanging on for year or two most likely. I don't think it's fully bottomed yet, but hopefully we're close.

I've been running kind of cold in my last couple live sessions. On the whole I've been playing well and doing a good job of trying to improve my live grinding processes. I haven't been forcing it and have just been staying solid while still picking up what pots I can and quitting appropriately. One thing I've been doing well is:

This is simple but effective. Similarly, most people tend to find if they are feeling depressed and keep slouched shoulders and a hung head they will keep feeling bad, but moving around and getting into a more positive position tends to help us snap out of it and feel better. I used to think in the past this kind of "faking" was just lying to yourself, but now I understand it's not really lying to yourself at all, it's taking action to control your emotional and mental state.

I've been trying to push this playing live. It definitely has helped. I've been able to handle the variance a lot better and stay in a good grinding state throughout. One thing I caught myself doing was kind of huff and puff sigh folding a garbage hand after being card dead for a long time. Having the mentality of "oops I need to make sure to not react like being card dead is bothering me, otherwise it actually will bother me and I can improve the quality of my grind by actively trying to remain upbeat and alert and positive."

I need to to get back to the online grind, though, and am looking forward to it. I got some new mods and configured Placemint yesterday, so that should add some convenience.

great post session esp mental stuff man. I need to learn from you more! I used to work on my mental game as well actively but now its out the window and you make me feel like I should start working on it again. it's definately deteriorated since my mental game prime!

Thanks!

I played a lot yesterday, and for most of the day I felt like I was in the zone and playing my best. I ended up playing too long chasing a huge whale at 5/10, but did eventually quit at a reasonable point. On the whole I am happy with my grind.

One thing I was focusing on was trying to simply keep a positive attitude. It's basic, but it gets lost in the shuffle sometimes. Here are some things I noticed myself doing when I was playing my best (a partial zone profile):

- I was alert, energetic, and had a positive attitude
- I was thinking ahead about future streets
- I was unafraid to pull the trigger
- I was focused on doing my best
- I was unaffected by minor variance, and only a little affected by larger losing pots and regrouped quickly
- I didn't look at my cashier at all

By the end of my second session my quality of play had deteriorated, but I was also down to playing just 2 tables both of which had big fish on them. I have to evaluate more how I feel about that process. On one hand, even though I was on my B game or C game due to being tired, I cut tables and had good reads on two whales and was just there from them. On the other hand, I don't want to reenforce bad habits or processes, and be okay with finding justifications for playing too long, but I do want to build habits of playing in the zone.

I'm a little more tired today than I would like to be, and that is a good indicator that I pushed it too far. I think sticking around a while longer for the right fish is good, but I needed to cut it off about 45-60 minutes before I did. Back at it again today.

Hey,

I think during long stretches of runbad+ card deadness I sometimes have an issue with forcing action and probably lose a ton out of my winrate from this. Did you work on this? if so how?

or any recommendations on how to improve on this aspect?

Thanks for post #177 re: your portfolio--there's a lot of helpful and interesting content contained there. Related question: what are your thoughts regarding target date retirement funds? I am opening my first IRA now w/ Vanguard and am trying to figure out my initial asset allocation. Part of me wants to just put it all into the Vanguard (target retirement) 2050 fund, but I'm apprehensive since I believe if I went down this route I'd want to put 100% or near 100% of my retirement investment into it or else it'd defeat the purpose. I know Bogle himself is a bit hesitant to recommend them b/c it's difficult to account properly for the future of Social Security.

Thoughts?

Also, I'm curious why you seem to be adopting an especially risk-averse stocks/bond ratio given you won't be retiring for some time (granted, looks like you are investing in some other, non-stock equities). Seems like you're going against the grain, but it also seems like you've done a lot of thoughtful research so I'm sure you have good reasons and would love to hear your thoughts.

It seems like you are halfway there just by being self aware that this is an issue. I would write some sort of statement about why that is a bad habit and why it hurts you and what is instead a better habit you could replace it with, and then read that statement as part of my warmup every session and even set a timer to remind myself to read it every 20 minutes during session for a while until it became more engrained in my normal thinking.

I'm going to be adding more stocks this year in the form of more S&P 500 index over the course of the year. I'll end up with a higher stock ratio than today, but probably will still be more bond heavy than you might think. I'm not certain that's best, but over on the Boglehead forums they recommend the general rule of thumb of your age in bond % allocation, and I think the idea is to help minimize risk and also to weather different economic climates better. It doesn't always work this way, but sometimes when stocks go down bonds go up and vice versa. I'll end up with less bonds than my age, but from what I can tell they still have a good place in a balanced portfolio.

So I was looking at a lot of different stocks recently. There are a lot of companies that I want to buy stock in, including (but not limited to) McDonald's, Coca Cola, Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, Cisco, Verizon, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. There are so many I want. Then I looked at the top 50 holdings of the S&P 500 index again and realized, DUH!, these companies are all near the top of the list and weighted fairly heavily in the holdings. I kind of already knew that, but it was a mini lightbulb moment for me just to reenforce the notion that I don't need to be trying to pick winning stocks, just investing in the index gets the job done most likely better than I could, and even if I somehow have an edge over SPY (which I doubt) it would be minimal anyways. It's fun to read about different stocks and such but I need to not get carried away and remain smart and disciplined.

Poker Stuff:

Sunday I played a tournament. It took a long time, and I ended up playing a 8 or 9 hour session. The last few hours I had to cut out cash entirely. The night before, I had played a bit too late, and I felt the "hangover" at the start of Sunday afternoon session. I didn't start out playing my best, but got into a good zone before too long and was really happy with the quality of my play. At the end of the session, though, I was VERY burned out. I couldn't sleep very well that night, and I just felt sort of fried and zombified and the impact lasted a couple days. I need to be mindful of this when structuring my sessions or when chasing late night whales, and be more aware of the potential impact on the next day's grind if I push a session too long. With the tourney, I didn't have a choice, but it just illustrated the concept for me to an extreme.

I took Monday night to spend time with the girlfriend, Tuesday I played live, and yesterday I just took a night mostly to myself. I'm ready to get back to the online grind tonight. In my Tuesday live session, I sat down and got bad beat for stacks in my second hand at the table. I was a little rattled, mainly because I didn't do a proper warmup and was a bit rushed getting to the poker room on time to get a seat. Those warmups are really important and not to be trivialized. I got myself back on track pretty quickly though, and was happy with my ability to shake it off and focus on acting like it didn't bother me at all and soon enough it didn't actually bother me and I was in a good grinding state. I ended up playing well in session and dug out a very small winner by the end of the night.

Hours Played:

Online: 243.5
Live: 36.0
Total: 279.5

279.5/1000 hours
27.95% complete
(pace: 252 hours)





I'm happy with my live results despite the poor hourly. I've run pretty poorly in a few of those sessions, and on the whole I'm improving my live poker grinding processes, which is the main thing. I need to be mindful to not get too carried away with the live hours, though.

Nice work man and keep it up, reading your blog is so inspiring, I am probably speaking for a lot of people when I say I learn a lot from you!

Really nice thread, man. Best of luck

Thanks dude I really appreciate it!

Thanks!

That is a sexy 40K hand stretch.

I wanna say THANK YOU TS for this thread and for your thoughts. like 1 year ago i find your post about EV line and it was clear GOLD for me (any thoughts about EV from today?). and yesterday i found this thread and i really enjoy it. great mental game posts. cant wait for updates! gl at the tables man. keep up the good work. u r pure inspiration!

Thanks guys! I'm definitely on quite a heater!

So I've been playing some more live, and I have a variety of thoughts I wanted to write down and sort through:

1) I need a better schedule. I am sort of just playing live right now when I feel like, and that has been a bit too much. I play in a home games sometimes on Wednesday nights with some friends, but that is very small stakes and just for fun and I don't count it as work. Historically, Tuesday has not been as profitable as some other days of the week for me online, and the live game I want to play seem to be best on Tuesday and Thursday, so I think I will start treating Tuesday night as live poker grinding night. The game starts at 730pm, and I will plan on generally quitting between 12am and 1am for a roughly 5 hour session. Mon/Thu/Fri/Sat will be reserved for online grinding, and Sunday night is typically date night. Treating the live grind with a schedule and routine like this will go a long way towards ensuring I am treating the process with professionalism, and not just "taking a break from real grinding" or what not.

2) Also, this will keep me limited to a more healthy amount of live play. I think with too much live play, I start to have old bad habits creep in, such as poor eating or lack of exercise or bad sleep schedule, etc. Some part of my brain associates regular live grinding with that unhealthy lifestyle, as that is what I have done in the past and why my brain is expecting. By sticking to mostly online grinding and a structured approach to live, I will get back into healthier life habits and also start to associates more positive habits with live play over time as well.

3) I often at live become too hyper focused on my own possible physical tells. I'm not sure how to mitigate this and could use some advice. Sometimes when I have a big hand my pulse quickens, and way too much of my mental thought processes are focused on "ok calm down and breathe evenly" or otherwise moreso thinking about my own physicality than the strategy of the hand. I think when I'm feeling totally freed up to pull the trigger and make my best strategic decisions, I am not thinking of my physicality at all, and probably having my thought processes kind of show through. When I get in a big hand, I kind of get into this defensive shell so to speak, and I stop truly observing what's going on around me. I don't feel like I'm calmly observing my opponent, I'm more just concentrating on staring blankly and not giving anything away and this process of "putting on my poker face" seems to kind of shut down my mental thought processes. When the hand is over, I kind of come out of this shell/trance or whatever and start interacting with my environment normally again. I want to work on feeling more comfortable with my decision making at the table.

4) Also, when I get in this mode I am not THINKING AHEAD or CONSIDERING MY ENTIRE RANGE properly. Sometimes it's moreso literally along the lines of "I hope the turn is not a spade" or "ok just keep breathing evenly and cut out the chips and slide them in like I usually do with my right hand". I really want to think ahead and think of my range like I do when I'm playing online. I think I put way too much emphasis with trying to act in tempo at live, and if I pause and contemplate a decision I shouldn't worry that it will give anything away, or worry if other people perceive me as slow.

5) I need to more fully release my ego at live poker. I am viewed as a solid player by the local community, but not a top player. I don't talk about my online results and don't really discuss strategy at the tables. However, sometimes when people categorize me as a straightforward nit that is easy to play again, and marvel over the skill of more LAG regs, I do feel my ego wanting to validate itself. One part of me wants to show them they may be underestimating me, which could lead to senselessly showing cards or even trying poor bluffs just to try to prove myself in some weird way. Also, another part of me is concerned that I ACTUALLY AM IN FACT playing too nitty and defensive and scared money, and tbh at times this has definitely been true. I think we don't really worry about what people think of us, unless some part of us inside has fear or doubt that what they are saying may be true. I can be aware of my tight image and use it to my advantage, but I want to do that for the sake of profitability and I do not want my actions to be motivated by looking cool to others. It's fine if people don't think I'm that good. I'm there to make money, and also to grow and improve as a player. My progress is NOT measured by the opinions of the locals in the game.

6) I want to more actively hand read the pots I am not involved in. WAY too many hands go by where a big bet goes in on the river and I realize I have no idea what the action was leading up to this spot, and I'm wasting so many chances to get valuable reads by not PAYING ATTENTION. If I'm writing a note or thinking about a mental game issue or something healthy, that is fine, but if I'm just kind of spacing out or watching the TV and waiting for my next hand that is not a good habit.

7) I want to start PGC'ing about my live performance when I get home on Tuesday nights and also recount a couple HHs. Also, that will be a good time to collect my thoughts and update some notes on various players in the game.

Blogging this all out has been helpful. Even while writing some of this, I am rolling my eyes at myself because I can see my inner unpopular child self wanting to look good in front of the cool kids or whatever. It's good for me to get these thoughts out, and give me a framework to work more effectively on my live mental game moving forward. As I improve I will build a better stable confidence base for myself.

Thoughts/comments/advice appreciated!

Cliffs for myself for future live warmups:

- Work on breaking out of my "mental shell" when involved in pots
- Release my ego and do not let the perceptions of others influence me
- Think ahead and consider my whole range
- More actively hand read in pots I'm not involved in
- Be unafraid of losing and pull the trigger
- Take notes to review in post session review and PGC at home