Second week into WCOOP 2022
Second week in the series and I’m still feeling well. I wasn’t running as hot as the first week but my energy and sleep is on solid levels. Having said that it starts to feel like my poker brain needs a break - the first thought that pops up in my mind after waking up is usually some spot from the day before and with playing many days in a row the frustrution and irritaition of anoying spots and bad runs is increasing. For that reason I’m gonna take two days off - Friday and Saturday and just chill, get a massage and sauna and going to a reaggae music festival in Florianopolis on Saturday to get ready and fresh for Sudnay grind and Monday’s day 2 in Colossus 400$ on GG Poker.
The vibe in the grind house is still amazing and two guys got a 20k score each on the last Tuesday.

What went well?

• Improved my activity levels and managed to hit very high readiness and sleeping scores every single day
• Improved in feeling unfair and as a victim by using breath exercises and self support

What could I improve?

• Take it easy at the end of the session and drop the table count rather than keep registering everything and re-entering a lot
• Let go of emotional attachments to the highest buy-ins and expectations in deep runs
• Be more present in difficult spots to access my best decisions rather than getting irritated I ended up in an impossible spot

GL all

Last weekend of the series
The series are slowly coming to an end. So far it was quite a rollercoaster for me with a pretty good start, then swinging a bit down and then facing a very stressful challenge last Wednesday when I experienced pretty rare technical issues - all of a sudden the connection of pokerstars started dropping and all the tables were lagging. Other sites were working just fine and other guys from the grind house had no problem with stars either. When I tried to logout and log in I couldn’t. I would connect after some time but I couldn’t play - I saw my cards but under my nickname was written ‘sitting out’ so every hand was automatically folded and I was slowly blinding out at all three tables from pokerstars while playing other 6-7 tables on other sites. I blinded out early game of 109 4-max WCOOP, Big 55 and deeprun with last 140 players in Mini BB HR 55 - the immediate $ lost of this isn’t so horrible but it was very challenging for my mindset as I kept trying to fix it and use most of my concentration for that and became very tilted by the unresolveable situation. Such a situation is not so different from having a bad beat as it is outside my control and I should keep the focus on tournaments and spots I actually have control to make a decision. So even though it wasn't a long session I felt drained after and I brought some of that negativity to the next grind on Thursday, when I ran bad, made many mistakes and overall played one of my worst sessions ever.

The past is over, reflections were made, lessons were learnt and now is time to put max focus on last weekend of huge fields and guarantees.
No expectations for result, the goal is to give my best in every aspect possible and treat every situation as a professional:

• The spots against top players
• The deep runs
• The final tables
• The losses of my biggest buy ins

GLGL

Great job impressive.

Have you used / do you use any software for learning ICM and stuff like that? Im mainly playing cash games however this inspires me to try MTTs

Gl

Thanks! ICMizer is probably the software that helped me the most to built ICM knowelde, besides running push/fold short stack $EV spots you can also use a very user friendly ICM trainer for bubble, late game, semi final and final table and calculate the risk premium from that as well.

WCOOP 2022 reflections
The winter series are over and it’s been quite a rollercoaster for me. With the skyrocket starting to swing down for almost the rest of the series with a couple of big chances that were close to reach but missed in the end.
Huge field tournaments (1500 entrants avg) and I reached my highest ABI of my career, mainly due to playing as high as $1k and 400-500$ flights. Objectively I didn’t run that well in the highest range of my buy-ins but with all honesty there is as well a ton of work to be done to improve in those tuffer fields. Both technical wise and mindset wise - I felt a pressure and emotional attachment in the highest tournaments and it’s something I need to reflect on more (I will write a post about climbing up in stakes).



What went well:

• Balancing of grind, study and rest
• Reflecting on table count, volume and playing hours and adjusting accordingly

What could I improve?

• Staying present in difficult spots and put the effort to solve them to the best of my ability
• Self support and letting go in deep runs
• Handling expectations

Overall it was a great experience to share a grind house with my teammates. I learnt a lot in terms of technical poker as well as mindset and lifestyle choices. Even though I ended up down, these four weeks of intense grind opened my mind and uncovered a lot of areas for improvement and at the end of the day that’s my ultimate goal for every day - looking to improve.

Moving up in stakes - Pressure
‘Ignore the $ value and only focus on making profitable decisions’ is easier said than done. Everyone who’s aiming to move up in stakes in poker will face challenges on the way in one shape or another.

For me personally, this is a constant challenge as I have started on micro stakes almost years ago and aim to keep increasing my ABI. Here’s a funny observation:
‘Alright, now focus, don’t f*ck it up, this is the most important tournament of the session with quite a lot of money on the line, so better avoid making punts and mistakes.’
Something along these lines would be going on in my head every time I play higher than before. During the last series I noticed similar self talk when playing 500/1k$ buy-ins and I realised that I was in the very same spot a couple years back when I played Big 22$ and Bounty Builder 33$ for the first time and felt exactly the same stress and pressure.

Pressure

• It is the natural response of the human mind when being put in a challenging situation. It is a very counterproductive tool. (The challenging situation being playing the tournament itself, therefore it is a constant state of mind as long as the tabel is on the screen)
• Being in pressured, stressful situation usually triggers the fight or flight mode and will lead to response depending on one’s archetype - risk averse person will end up playing way to tight and giving away EV by not bluffing and bluffcatching enough and the risk taker might end up spewing hsi stack in completely unreasonable spot.

How to go about it?

• Be aware of your archetype and in unclear spots go the opposite way - in my case it’s the risk averse archetype for the most part - therefore, whenever I am in a spot when it feels very close to bluff or bluffcatch I should take the riskier decision.
• The main goal is to make profitable decisions which will make money over time, the immediate result doesn’t matter - remind this to yourself and keep it in mind
• Feel and live the challenge - 90% of the spots in the higher games will be exactly the same as in the lower games, great! I can be confident it is the right game for me to play; 10% of the spots might be very difficult ones, facing tough players and feeling like being exploited, great! Now I can change the gear of my poke brain and try to solve it to the best of my ability and if I’m lost or make a negative EV decision, I can mark the hand and improve my game in a certain area that I never could’ve done unless playing this high.

So when I look at my poker journey until now as a whole I can differentiate between two states of mind whenever I play higher than I used to

1. Pressured, risk averse, emotionally attached, looking for uncontrollable outcomes that I can blame and feel like a victim - which causes playing my B or C game, missing many data points and idiciations, creating story narrative and justifying my plays on subjective feelings rather than well grounded knowledge
2. Being ‘in the zone’, being excited about the challenge, sticking to my standard play most of the time, using my intuition in some spots where I don’t have vision and being happy about whatever outcome it brings, being grateful and see it as an opportunity to battle very good opponents to learn from them

Making peace with variance
For poker players and especially for MTT poker players variance is an inevitable part of the process. Having only profitable months and a graph aiming only upwards sounds like a dream but is rather a utopian idea. The truth is that variance is actually necessary and is what makes the game profitable for professionals. All this is very easy to forget in the storm of thousands of hands every week.

Let me get back to the graph with a line going up. I’m sure there are many crushers whose graph looks exactly like this, so that is not to say it is impossible. It is, however, under one condition - enough sample. On a low sample a graph like that is pure luck. Here is a way to seeing the bigger picture and visualise variance:

Zoomed out:

• Focusing on the process rather than the short term results
• Being consistent with lifestyle (sleep, nutrition, exercise), studying and playing volume
• Evaluate every session/week/month based on those parameters above rather than $ results
• For that reason ideally not checking any short term $ results
• -> this is the recipe for skyrocketing graph over long term

Zoomed in:
If you take big enough sample of this type of graph and zoom in - on any part of the graph, you will see the variance - I call it the ‘graph’s teeth’
Let’s say you have all the aspects for a long term success on point. With all the rational points kept in mind, there’s two ways to go about it during the process:

1. Getting angry about the graph’s teeth and wasting energy everytime a big flip on semi-final table is lost, getting 3-outted in a spot for a chip lead, getting a cooler on major final table or bubbling 5 tournaments during one session, whatever it may be.
2. Making peace with variance and accepting everything that is happening at any moment with the intention of playing to the best of the current ability, learning and improving.

All this is much easier said than done. But it is absolutely crucial for success in poker, because the feedback loop is very long and therefore hard for the human mind to accept and understand.
The big danger of not understanding this is that:

• A poker player with an optimal lifestyle, study routine and volume playing a profitable winning strategy may feel like he needs to drastically change his attitude or even a technical aspects, when on a downswing, while the reality is he just needs to get through the graph’s teeth.
• A poker player with a suboptimal lifestyle, study routine and volume playing losing strategy, may feel like he’s in a perfect place and doesn't need to change a thing, while on a heater.
• Both will end up losing in the long term.

Lately, I found myself taking many bad spots very personally, blaming the poker gods and feeling like a victim of variance. That’s why I put my thoughts on this page.
Let’s make peace with the variance again and the results will naturally come.

Nice understanding of the human mindset and very recognizable for me as a low stakes mtt player
This mindset was holding me back a long time.
At my regular stakes I keep playing my normal game. But adding some bigger stakes, was a mental issue for me. I began with overadjusting. Sometimes I played tighter and sometimes overaggressive. And therefore I got absolute murdered at the bigger stakes at my buyin range.
Realizing that I had this mental issue gave me the change to fix this and play my normal game and immediately better results.

Gl, very impessive journey!

My goals:

1.Move up in stakes and crush 200$ games in daily schedule and 500$ - 1k$ games during the series
-Getting more and more comfortable playing 200$ buy-ins and adding some 250$ and 300$ to my daily schedule. During the series playing the best 500$ and 1k$ - it is an area where I put the most focus mindset wise right now and planning to keep doing that.

2.Reach 200k$ profit in one year from today (12.11.2021)
Still missing quite a big chunk to make this real. With higher ABI the swings at higher and low volume during summer months didn’t help either. No stress though, MTT poker has ups and downs and big scores can come any time.



3.Upgrade my understanding of GTO concepts (yep, it’s true until now I was going on with pretty much basic theory concepts and exploitative strategies only)
-This is an area where I am starting to put more and more focus as it becomes necessary in many parts of the game tree against very good opponents. I’d say I improved a lot since last year but definitely still have tons of work to do.

Not stopping, on my way up. LFG

may i ask you whats the 2 last numbers on your HUD ?

and btw nice blog , its the best one i read so far

sure, it's aggresion (on winamax this is pretty useless tbh as it needs a bit bigger of a sample) and 3bet number

Small stakes, high BI Sunday bink & stoic wisdom
It’s been a while since I shipped a tournament and even though I am grateful for every deeprun and final table score, there’s always the lack of satisfaction even if I finish 2nd place in a huge field. ‘In it to win it’ is the motto. This was a fun one. Sunday's PKO run, where I was very lucky throughout the whole tourney but also it was one of my best sessions in terms of mindset. I managed to stay calm and patient, manage my table count to the deepruns and be patient and relaxed with my decisions and the outcomes I faced.



Most day of the week I listen to short passage of stoic wisdom (Daily Stoic podcast by Ryan Holiday) and the last I listened to really resonated with me - it’s titled ‘You Make Your Own Good Fortune’
The idea is that in everyone’s life there’s time where everything goes their way, they are lucky and fortunate, kinda the exact opposite of Murphy’s law. Which of course does not last forever. But instead of looking at it as: ‘I was once a fortunate man, but at some point fortune abandoned me,’ we should see the fortune in our good character, good actions and good intentions, in how we see the world and what we do for ourselves and for others. So instead of being fortunate meaning being lucky it’s more of gratitude and acceptance.

GL

October sum-up and November goals
Pretty tough month in general. Didn’t manage to make that many deepruns as usual and neither did I run that good in those I made. That caused quite a big swings, therefore a big mindset challenge. I also discovered some obvious leaks, therefore it’s time to start working on my game even more. But besides the results here’s a a sum up of how it went the last month:



What I did well:
Got back to my top performing lifestyle (sleep and readiness scores on my oura ring were through the roof)
Go back to my study routine (47 study hours, even with first week off due to travelling)


What could I improve:
The main adjustment for next month is to lower my table count from 12 to 10 as standard
The reason for this is adding some higher buy-ins in my daily schedule (Bounty King 315 and BB HR 530 on GG) and as well to put more focus on quality rather than quantity in order to battle the downswing
Stick with registration hours and table count rules
Study at least 60h
Play at least 500 MTTs
Devote at least 1h/week for mindset

Edge of the tables: 4. Exercise
Pretty simple and straightforward one, but yet very effective.
As I learned there is a lot of scientific evidence that proves the benefits of regular exercising. Besides the longevity, improvement of metabolic functions and many other long term benefits, there are short term and immediate effects of exercising that can undoubtedly bring edge to the poker table:

• Endorphin release - these chemical improves mood a trigger positive feeling, which is a great way for overall mental health and good mindset for a poker session
• Dopamine release - releasing the chemical of motivation with a way such as exercise can help to stabilise the dopamine levels during the highs and lows which a poker rollercoaster can bring (a bit more detail about dopamin above in my Edge of the tables: 3. post)
• Improvement of concentration and energy - paradoxically by exercising we burn calories, which makes us more tired in the moment of performing but at the same time increases the energy and concentration levels later during day (there will be a sweet spot, different for every individual)
• Improvement of cognitive function - some types of exercise will better cognitive warm up than others, what I learnt the best are tennis, swimming and running as it requires the brain to keep coordinating the movements of right side and left side of the body

I think it’s important to mention that the time and intensity of exercise is something to consider and will depend on one’s shape and readiness on the exact day. I have a friend who would do an hour long, very intense heavy weight crossfit session and feel great to play poker after that, while for me what works best is 15-20min intense exercise, mostly I stick with swimming or bodyweight HIIT but sometimes even a 10min walk in the sun is a good way to go. Obviously I wouldn’t recommend anyone to run a marathon and then expect to perform the best at the tables. There are limits to everything (except the pot size in NLHE).
Personally I found this a very effective way to boost my energy and performance for a session!

Weekend playing marathon continues
My usual playing schedule is from Friday to Monday but this week I had to extend it. All the fun started on Sunday when I made a final table in GG Masters 150$ and finished 6th for almost 14k$ and also qualified for day 2 in Winamax 250e PKO HR. On Monday it was a juicy session again as I made it to day 3 on Winamax with 30 players left and shipped BB 109 on stars for 9k. Tuesday I played only the deeprun and busted 18th after 2 hours of playing and took the rest of the day to relax and recharge to get ready for Wednesday grind - normally I’m off or studying but I qualified in Mystery bounty 20eur 600k GTD on Winamax. Fun fact - I have never won a single mystery bounty yet in my life and I played some tournaments of this type. Who knows maybe I won’t be a mystery bounty virgin anymore tomorrow. The field is still huge so I decided to play a full session today.
Let’s have some fun. GLGL

Lol. That sounds like a good User Title

Nice results.
GLGL!

Evaluation of the goals from starting the blog a year ago
Before going to the goals, just a quick update on my mystery bounty virginity - I did it guys! It was rather fast and clumsy but it made me feel great! No big expectations for the first timer and humble acceptance of 40eur bounty. Remarkably it was the only one I won and I managed to play for hours and get from 1k runners left to around 150 left. Anyways I heard the second time and forward it’s just getting better and better so…

Here are the goals:
1.Move up in stakes and crush 200$ games in daily schedule and 500$ - 1k$ games during the series
-Feeling great about that, I got a couple of titles in 215, 250 and 320 and I’m not stopping here.

2.Reach 200k$ profit in one year from today (12.11.2021)
I’m a bit late for this and missing quite a big chunk still. I decided to give myself more chances to reach this (with all honesty this is the less important goal for me, but do it for fun) and extend it to the end of the year. The idea is to set new goals for the new year and have a more memorable deadline not to miss it again.



3.Upgrade my understanding of GTO concepts (yep, it’s true until now I was going on with pretty much basic theory concepts and exploitative strategies only)
-I work with a couple of GTO tools for learning now and I feel I’m expanding my knowledge little by little. Again, not stopping here.

GL all

Good reads: 2. E. Tolle - The New Earth
This is another book that is and most likely always going to be one of my all time favourites. It is simply filled with the presence, peace and wisdom of life.
It gave me a new way to see the world and myself. I once listened to an audiobook and once read the kindle version. Time to time I listen to E. Tolle’s teaching on Spotify where he goes deeper to some of the concepts from the book.
I think soon it’ll be time to re-read this piece again and that’s really my intention to do every year or two because it’s helped develop myself in my personal and professional life and most importantly caused at least a partial ego dissolution. Powerful stuff. Simply a must read.

“The ego isn’t wrong, it is just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously...Above all, know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. ”

“There is the dream, and there is the dreamer of the dream. The dream is a short-lived play of forms. It is the world – relatively real but not absolutely real. Then there is the dreamer, the absolute reality in which the forms come and go. The dreamer is not the person. The person is part of the dream. The dreamer is the substratum in which the dream appears, that which makes the dream possible. It is the absolute behind the relative, the timeless behind time, the consciousness in and behind form. The dreamer is consciousness itself – who you are.”

November sum-up and December goals
November was a very productive month. I feel very great progress in terms of fixing my leaks and discovering new areas. Results-wise it was great, also I had a bunch of big deepruns and got close to some huge scores. Performance-wise it was a bit of a rollercoaster. Mostly coming from mindset issues and pushing myself to my limits when not necessary. This reflects in my goals evaluation and will in my December goals as well.



What did I do well?
Study and fixing technical leaks
Lowered my table count to 10 as standard

November goals:
Stick with registration hours and table count rules
-This seems to be the main driver and/or the result of bad performance. When I don’t have some deepruns I feel like I need to maximise my registering hours and table count. On the days when I performed very well I managed my registration and table count very well and the opposite when I performed poor.

Study at least 60h
-In my study sheet I ended up on 62h and feel like I covered everything that I have planned. Started doing short study sessions 1-2h on playing days in the morning after my morning routine either alone or with my peers reviewing hands

Play at least 500 MTTs
-ended up on 600 which is 20% above my goal therefore indicates an alert for me that I might be pushing too much - not in terms of playing days but more with registration hours

Devote at least 1h/week for mindset
-Total spent 2.5h for mindset work which is a progress but not enough to fulfil the goal. I need to reframe the time spent on this because I often feel like I would rather do some technical studying instead, but this is something that will undoubtedly increase my EV, especially in the long run. I have plenty of materials and areas to investigate for now.


December goals:
It will be a week or two off the tables during Christmas as my family is going to visit me in Mexico, therefore lower requirements for grind and study and more days off.

Registration and table count
-week days:

• Start playing 11-11.30am 8 tables as warm up
• Peak 12.30-4.30pm 10 tables
• Ease off 5pm 8 tables - register only table filers
• Cooldown 6pm 6 tables - no more registering

-Sunday

• Start playing 10-11am 8 tables as warm up
• Peak 11.30-4.30pm 12 tables
• Ease off 5pm 8-10 tables - register only table filers
• Cooldown 6pm 6 tables - no more registering

Play at least 300MTTs - focus on quality rather than quantity

Study at least 30 hours

Time spent on mindset at least 2h

Happy new year everyone!

Last couple of weeks I wasn't too active due to Christmas holidays, family meetings and getting back to my routine and to the tables. In general, I will be less active here in the upcoming months as I have got some work on the research side of things and still be busy playing and studying. However I will still post from time to time and the aim is to map my mindset journey and obstacles that I'm facing on my way to the high stakes.

I kicked off the year in a style and hit my record score so far. Funnily enough it was the exact same tournament that I hit my biggest career score a year ago - 20eur multi-day PKO tourney on winamax with 1m GTD. Last year I finished 6th for a bit over 20k eur and this year improved by 3 places and a 30k euro. Next year I’ll do my best to finally ship it.

Nice result.

My congrats!

Operating on 2 levels during a poker session
Playing a MTT poker session requires hours and hours of concentration and logical thinking. Analysing different spots and putting effort into making profitable decisions is obvious to be the key driver for a profitable strategy. That is operating on the logical level. But that’s not the whole part of the equation. We are not robots or zen masters and we face annoying spots, triggering situations and unlucky outcomes, which brings us on the emotional level. The conscious and subconscious, objective and subjective, at least to some extent. There is no separating line between those levels and often they are blended together and affected one by another.

So when a triggering situation takes place, an emotion arises and we are threatened to get trapped at the emotional level, risking making suboptimal and costly plays. It's a good idea to have a plan on how to go about it.

Firstly, it is necessary not to identify with the emotion. This of itself is not an easy thing to do at all and it can be practised not only while playing poker but in everyday life. Perhaps it is appropriate to feel angry, but for how long is it actually appropriate and what purpose does it serve? Be aware of the emotion. Feel it both - physically and mentally, and give it respect.
There is an underlying reason deep in our subconscious mind for feeling that emotion. Rationally, losing is just an event. But on the emotional level it doesn’t seem like that.

After recognizing the emotion and the mental state it brings us to, we realise that this is not a desirable state to be in. We want it to go away. This is the key part, because it is very counter-intuitive and completely against logical thinking.
To make it go away we must not try to make it go away. We must respect it, sit patiently with it, and make it feel safe. The emotion is a living thing. It has a need that is not being met. It represents a part of ourselves that was wounded in the past and hasn’t yet been integrated.

This is extremely challenging because while the emotion arises and gives us the opportunity to do the inner work and embrace the self-compassion, at the same time there are many decisions to be made that require operating on the logical level.
Very often our protective system and logical mind are happy to suppress the unwanted emotion and jump back on the logical level. For that matter there is often a tendency not to stay in that uncomfortable emotional level and look for any excuse to escape instead of risking facing the scary emotions and problems from our past. It may be the highest EV thing to do in vacuum as it will allow us to solve the spot, but can leave the risk of completely burning out in a few months.

Should we sacrifice a little bit of EV in the short term by autopiloting and making decisions just by our standard default knowledge or gut (instead of trying to solve a spot to our best ability), for long term healing process, relaxation and integration of our wounded inner parts?

For me the answer is yes and the plan is to make it my challenge, get the reps in and embrace the self-compassion.

Any update?

would love to see you come back and keep posting, hope you're well. thanks for the necro bump, great thread.