I know I answered this post above, but wanted to revisit it because, well, when I first read it I almost felt guilty.



Guilty that I had been putting in countless hours of grind, countless hours of study, and despite all of that hard work, I had zero dollars to show for it. Despite all of my experience in the game as a player and a backer, I don't think I was fully prepared for the variance of MTTs -- at least not for peak hour/large field sessions, which is now my main grind.

When I had some time to sit back and reflect, I realized how silly it was to be ashamed of the hard work. Sure, it hadn't translated into real money (yet) but I did have a rather sexy EV BB/100 and I had to remind myself that the binks would eventually come. And this weekend, I got a few. Most notable one was the $215 6-Max Saturday Scuffle, as I shipped that for a shade over $14k.



Wasn't an easy FT, but got a lot easier once 2p2 hero and all around crusher Pads went out in 4th. When I told a horose of mine about the bink, he jokingly told me he hates me and I told him to wait until my next bink. An hour or so later, I won another $7k.



I'm done for the month, will do a monthly recap when I get back from this short vacation -- I'm off to Seattle for two days to watch beisbol and chill. No button clicking for 2 days!

Forgot to mention, also had two other horses win the $109 Builder and $215 Builder this week. Plus, a fourth horse just shipped the Warm Up for $40k.



Heeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaat

it is a tough grind, not for the feint hearted thats 4 sure, heard about the big day you guys had thru one of your horses

which does show hard work wins in the end....... well mostly ;P


have a fun holiday and good to see the grind machine bink the 215, and no deal, what a boss

whats your ABI, and highest game you play on the weekly? (the 550 bounty builder?)

Haha thanks. When we were 4-handed, Pads suggested a deal in chat and I'd have taken him up on it because my GF was serving dinner at that time. No one else seemed interested though and since we'd have to play it out for bounties anyways, I might as well just ship it.

$530 BB is my highest game and even with that one I try to game select, so I'll play it 2-3 times a week, max. Have a few others in the $200-$300 range, but I believe my ABI for the month was ~$70.

Monthly Recap Post!

So after a volatile January, a disappointing February, and a rather short March, April is the first month of 2018 that an independent observer would consider to be successful.

MTTs


MTT SNGs


If I include all the other additional poker stuff, total profit for the month is $20,400. It's the first month where I've come close to my equity projections and I'm hopeful that this result is the norm, not the outlier. Other good news -- EV BB/100 was ~13 for the month (125,000 hands).

Now seems like a good time to re-visit one of those yearly goals I set in December.

This has proven to be difficult.

I'm struggling to find the 'best' time to squeeze in my workouts. By the time I finish my session, it's near dinner time and the GF wants to hang out, so that doesn't work. I should be going *before* the session but I can't bring myself to do it. Some mornings I'm too tired, on others I wake up too late and feel pressure to start grinding. Bottom line is I simply don't want to go at that time but it's the logical choice. Have to force myself to go and I'll likely be offering some freerolls in the near future to provide extra motivation.

And nutrition? Fuuuuuuck. When my GF met up with me in Taiwan, I was so lean that she said I looked like I was dying. When I responded with "We're all dying" she quipped, "Yeah but you look like you're actively dying."



Since then, I've eaten nothing but garbage food. Stuffing my face has been quite fun, but overeating + under gym-ing has taken its toll on my body. Probably put on about ten pounds and none of those gainz are things to be proud of. Will have to rededicate myself to eating reasonably well or this could spiral out of control. Feels like I'm two months away from turning into White Goodman.



Off to bed now, hoping to get an early start for tomorrow's big Sunday/SCOOP grind as I'm set to play ~$7000 worth of buy-ins. May has been great to me so far and I see no reason that it shouldn't continue except for the fact that I probably just jinxed it.

Decided that from now on (Barring injury), I'll be going to the gym in the morning *before* I start to grind. I firmly believe that this will not only have a positive impact on my health/fitness but it'll help me be more clear/focused for the decisions ahead -- definitely something that can come in handy at the tables.

Will be bumping the thread with notice of my failures and offering $25 freeroll each time I fail to the poster who quotes that post of mine and replies with something motivational.



Somehow didn't jinx it -- While on the day of that post I did lose a bit, it wasn't too bad given the amount of buy-ins I had on the table.

MTD Graph:



Biggest score in there is from when I shipped the Hot $22 for ~$6200. About a week earlier I had finished 5th in the same tournament after AT < A2 (vs a former horse!) so it felt great to 'redeem' myself and take this one down. Volume is a bit lower than usual because I've taken off 4-5 days and cut back on MTT SNGs but I think I'll be able to get in ~1500 games when the month is over.

Note: I'm making an exception for Sundays, as I normally start so early that the gym isn't even open!

The humbleness reeks off you, made it, still playing the HOT $22 like the rest of us. Sh*t, even I rarely play HOT $22, I typically wait for HOT $55, a decent mix between price, field size and odds to eventually bing a top 3 there :))

What's the deal with you and horses? I thought human slavery is prohibited. What r the deal / cut / poker format(s) & horsee requirements ?

True, plus you'll start your grind with already a task completed which only motivates more to complete another task+it won't sit in the back of your mind while playing poker meaning more space for focussing on the task at hand: binking MTT's.

KUTGW

At the time, that was my biggest score of the year. Until today...

Bricked most of my Sunday schedule, but remained positive/upbeat and all of a sudden my below avg stack in the $215 Builder became a boss stack. Rode that to the FT, knocking out several players along the way. Unfortunately I couldn't close it out, as I lost three massive all-ins to the same guy (AK < AT, AK < AQ, AQ < A5) who went on to ship it. Finished 4th for ~$18k and while I'm a bit glass half empty about not taking it down, I recognize that:

a) Winning $18k is a fantastic outcome
If you had told me when I woke up today that I was going to win $5k, I'd have said that would be a great day.

b) I definitely ran well to get there
Sure, I ran like crap at the end but all of the bounties I accumulated came from winning all-ins, and I surely won more than my fair share of them in terms of cEV.



Was going to take tomorrow off because I woke up super early today, but I've got a Day 2 to play so I guess I'll be grinding.

Congrats!! Hard work pays off! (In the MTT case, it's actually extremely hard; you're enjoying it, though, and I'm glad to hear that.)

W.r.t. gym timing, I haven't had much first-hand experience of physical exercise since the 2000s , but what I've heard is that it helps wake up (is a good substitute for caffeine), and getting oneself to function properly in the morning is a serious issue for people of late chronotypes ('owls') like, apparently, me.

Don't you have a 24-hour gym in your area? If not, do you have enough room for some training equipment at your own place?

Sorry guys, in my excitement to post about the Sunday score, I forgot to respond to some posts in here.

Still putting on my pants one leg at a time!

Moving up/playing the highest has never been a goal of mine, most evident by the fact that I played $15+1 SNGs for years despite having a five figure bankroll and one of the best winrates in the game. I never wanted to be the best, that sort of endeavor sounds exhausting. Would much rather print less money at a more consistent rate and focus more on enjoying life. It's part of why the MTT grind has been somewhat frustrating for me, as the money is far less consistent and a decent % of the days end in heartbreak. I dunno, I guess I'm just wired differently than most people.

I'll be putting up a new 2p2 thread soon with all the details of Psyduck Staking, just waiting on approval from the moderators/marketplace first. Have ~20 active players right now and looking to add a few more to the group but I'm much more particular with the application process than I once was, so we'll see how many potential horses become actual ducks.

Definitely helps to get my workout finished earlier in the day. Only been doing it for a week or so but I can already feel a difference in regards to my mindset/mental clarity.

Thanks!

I'm still loading up on caffeine, but exercise *does* have a similar effect on helping me feel more 'awake.'

Don't have a 24-hour gym nearby and I doubt the GF would approve of me turning our living room into a home gym, so I'll have to make due with the relatively spacious gym in our condo complex and the Steve Nash Fitness down the street.

I really love you replies to me and other people, classy. 5 stars on forum posting.


I think I won't apply on staking tho', because what else feeds the ego more than climbing to $500nl zoom and crushing it so hard, just so hard. Then you can say you did it all by yourself.

We need more food pics in here

Hey man. Long time listener, first time caller.

Firstly, congrats on all the recent success, and GL on day 2 of the $1k main.

Do u ever find it difficult to find the motivation to grind day after day or is it always there?

That's true, but be careful -- doing something for the sake of ego can often take you down the wrong path, especially in poker. The first time I ever bought coaching was in 2016 and by that time I had already been playing professionally for ~9 years. I wasn't avoiding it for ego, per se, but I just thought I didn't need it because I was one of the best regulars at my games and making consistent income. Ultimately I bought a few hours from a fellow Spin regular because he was arguably the best at what I was worst at and routinely put me in tough spots. His advice was super helpful and it made me wonder how much better of a player/how much more money I would have made if I had decided to invest in coaching hours a few years earlier.

Haha, agreed.

Haven't had much in terms of food adventures since I've been back in Vancouver, but that should change tonight as I'm headed to the Richmond Night Market (It's a Taiwanese style night market) and will be eating many of the things featured in this article.

http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/best-...ht-market-2018

I'll try to snap pics of my favorites, which include:

Churros
Chicken Satay Roti Cone
Mini Donuts
Salmon Poke Bowl
Garlic and Pepper Chicken Wings

Starving myself all day so I can go hard and not feel too bad about wrecking my diet in the morning.

<3

Most mornings, I wake up and am eager to start grinding. I still enjoy the 'puzzle' aspect of the game, putting together all of the information I have in an attempt to reach the correct decision.

However, I do get 'burned out' occasionally, and sometimes it's because of negative variance. After a couple rough days in a row, it's natural to want to take a break from what feels like has become a worthless endeavor -- although part of me also wants to grind *more* and chase the losses. Since grinding MTTs full-time, that burn out feeling is a bit more common. I think it's because of a few factors:

1) Less consistency in terms of results
2) More overall hours played
3) Fewer breaks

Playing SNGs/Spins was far superior to MTTs in all of those categories but alas, those days (at least for now) are over for me and I have to adjust. Been doing that by taking more days off per week, lowering table count towards end of my sessions so I have fewer decisions when my brain is tired of making decisions, and working out in the morning in hopes that I feel better throughout the day.

So far, so good.



Pretty excited about Day 2, I've always been a low stakes balla so this $1050 MTT is one of the highest buy-ins I've ever played. Don't really feel nervous though, probably because it's still far from life-changing money (~400 left) and I've got low expectations given my stack size. Going to try and spin up my ~15 BBs, but it feels like I've already "won" by cashing, and whatever happens next is a freeroll.

Annnnnnnnd gg

Managed to chip up quite nicely and then went rather card dead for the next couple of hours. Thought I had found a sweet cold 4-bet shove spot with KQss in a Button/SB/BB confrontation, but SB snapped AQo and it ran out KxxJT.

While I wish I would have "held" there, I've been all smiles since busting it in ~110th place. As I had said earlier, I had very low expectations coming into this and that score makes this past weekend barely profitable. Taking off a few days to rest, recharge, and enjoy life as I've been grinding quite a bit during SCOOP.

Caught a nasty flu bug and have been out of action for the past two days, but feeling better now, enough to put in shorter-than-usual session. Should be back to full strength tomorrow and just in time for that Sunday grind!

May ended up being my most profitable month of the year (so far) but I still feel that it could have been even better. If I would have played a few more days and ran a bit better in some high equity spots, I could have had an absolutely epic month. But I think that's how it's always going to feel in #MTTlife and I'm still in the process of tempering my expectations.



Games: 1096
Profit: $35,049

While I'd like to play more, I do think this sort of volume is likely better for my overall sanity. It allows me to squeeze in a few extra days off, have more time for review, and handle more coaching/stable related duties. And on that note, I now seamlessly transition to plugging my new staking/coaching thread.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...aking-1713599/

Until yesterday, I hadn't added anyone to the group in nearly a year because I wanted to wait until I was sure that I could handle the extra workload that comes with new horses. Hoping to find a few more like-minded individuals who are willing to put in hard work in pursuit of their goals, and at their core are good people.

Oh, also -- I haven't gone to the gym today. I suppose I could say that I'm still in recovery mode, but honestly I think I could have made it to the gym this morning but used my sniffling as an excuse.



Might still go today but the rule was before the grind, so I lose.

Whats your table count, how many hrs and days do you play to get that volume? GL, enjoying the thread.

just ****in go man, don't start thinking about anything and go, once you're at the gym you don't have much else to do but workout

Ye thinking f going and then canceling last minute is the worst u can do. Vamos bro science

Agreed, go to the gym. It's better going after your grind than not going at all...

don't need to go to the gym if u just do enough cardio a week to keep yourself healthy

You lose even more ev by not going on the days when you are not sure if you should go and end up not going. You still get all the regular benefits (exercise, calories burnt etc), but will feel much better about yourself and your day when you got over that laziness and got your ass to the gym and put in that damn workout despite of whatever your excuses were.

That feeling is you reward on those days. Works for me every time when I'm feeling hungover.