Gl gl

In the past, every 1-2 hours for a cigarette. Now, every 2-4 hours for a short walk. Sometimes I split the day into two sessions with a long break in between to chill, read, whatever.



Thankyou thankyou

He can be a bit results-oriented in his analysis sometimes, but his videos are generally very good and give a pretty good idea of the mentality of your stereotypical 2/5 villains. If you can part with the money I'd suggest subscribing.

Yo ECGrinder are you going to be at FW tomorrow? I'll be there grinding 1/2, would love to say whats up and grab a drink if you're around. PM me.

Subbed. GL bro. Another one of the cubicle boys in hell. Wish I had the Moxy to do what your doing.

Sure man. I'll be wearing a kings hat and/or some black audio technicas

Thanks m8. One life

In Between Months

Whats up 2+2! I’ve been hanging out at home for the last three days, taking a bit of a break from life in general. My activities consist of drinking beer, hanging around the campfire, chain watching TV shows until the sun comes up, and reading philosophy & poker articles from the archives. I have an inexplicable sprained ankle injury which sadly prevented me from adventuring into the wilderness for a deeper break from daily life. I’m hoping to have recovered in a couple weeks, and will plan an excursion into the White Mountains before winter becomes more deadly.

The end of October completes my first month playing $2/$5nl (First session was Oct 6). Including the first 3 days of November, I have won $8,955 over 173 hours. My bankroll is lying at $13,500, three buyins away from completing my first goal of building a 15k bankroll. Just a little more work to push this over the edge, and I can start in on the second goal of separating money into a life savings account. My winrate so far is $51.79/hr, well within my goal of sustaining >$30/hr.

Daniel Negreanu said that his wife once asked him what his poker bankroll was, his response: everything we own. These accounts that I am developing are really just imaginary mental walls between sums of money that help with planning, mental strength at the table, and a best attempt to mitigate the variance of life. Also, the $15k poker roll and $6k life savings are nothing but a landmark starting point for me, they represent one step on the path towards becoming a successful poker pro and both accounts will grow significantly.

Goals For November

Monetary
$8k Month

Increase and concentrate play volume:
In October I averaged 40hrs/wk, I would like to increase this to 50hrs/wk in November. Additionally, I would like to concentrate that time to an average of 5 days of play. This will minimize hotel expenses, and allow ample days off so as to hopefully not burn out towards playing poker.

Better my game
Simply put: become a better player, take every edge, destroy the bad, good, and excellent players, build stacks.

Outside of Poker
Increase erudition, particularly in the area of philosophy, the romantics, the classics. Expand working vocabulary. Enhance problem solving skills and mental agility through mathematics and mental games (like Sudoku). Increase health through regular weight lifting and the occasional cardio, eating well. Attend more social activities outside of poker, visit friends in different cities, party, date more, etc. Go Hiking and Backpacking. Spend quality time with family. Learn web development and programming. And the big one: avoid wasting time; participating in any activity that I don’t value (most TV shows, facebook, youtube, sleeping all day, drinking without adventure, lame conversation, lame X girlfriends). Poincare didn’t fix spelling errors and grammar mistakes in his essays, he didn’t believe it was worth his time. What a boss.

Back to the Woods, back on the grind.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6PndcJnv4

Awesome job! Do you have any regrets about anything so far that would pertain to this journey?

Great month man

Thanks man. I've been thinking about your question and will continue to give it more thought. Right now I can say that my biggest regrets pertain to wasting time and time management failures, along the lines of what I was talking about in the last paragraph above. I feel like I could be farther along this path if I was more disciplined in the past. Coinciding with that I have let some aspects of my life outside poker slip, such as dating and relationships. Balancing these things enough to be happy and maintain a good mental state is extremely difficult when trying to tackle a goal as big as this one within poker. Sacrifice and balance are key to success and happiness, and I am always working on getting better at handling these two.

Thanks! Going to try to do even better in November...

You are kicking ass and taking names, well. done.

if I may add something though. What are your Thanksgiving and X'mas plans? that may put a damper on how much you can grind this month and next month and even add additional stress. You might want to think about possibly lowering your goals this month money wise as to not add too much stress and also to properly balance.

In any event, this is a great thread and I wish you continued success. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders and you are taking advantage of a lot of what 2+2 has to offer.

Keep kicking ass and taking names...

The mental barriers for your money is a good concept. Plus you can change it as you need to and align it with your current/future goals. Do whatever needs to be done to help you achieve your current goals and in the formulation of your new ones.

Keep up the good work, stay hungry, stay focused.

Thanks man! It's been a hell of a month and I'm pretty psyched about the next two. I'll probably take 2-3 days off for thanksgiving and 3-4 off for Christmas, and drive up to Boston to spend them with my family. Probably New Year's Eve and national hangover day as well, no plans yet though. Would be nice to have a gf by then!

Just played for 5.5 hours +$1157 profit. Was making $1 bounty bets with LC the action player for each time we felted the crazy Asian shortstacker. I won, but definitely had the worst of it.

Made one hero call with QJ on a J96 flop. Preflop raiser made it $20 and we saw the flop 6 ways. PFR checked it to me in the cutoff and I lead for $75 into $120. The btn SNAP jams for $300 more, folds to me. I had already seen this player make ridiculous over jams with naked flush and straight draws, and open jam QJs pre for $400. There are a lot of draws on this flop, and I figured he could control himself if he flopped a set so I called it off, and was shown 66. Oh well, I think this is okay here.

Oh yea, $14,700/$15,000 in my box. What up!

Great job sir.

liking the graph!

Thanks man.

I'm going to try scheduling my sessions for the next four days to make sure I get 10hrs. I'm thinking start every day at noon, play ~5 hour morning session, 2 hour break, and a ~5 hour night session such that I always play at least 10 hours.

What is your experience with the afternoon/morning sessions and how much success have you had with them? Are they profitable? What adjustments do you make when you play them as opposed to a Friday night game?

Lets get some chip porn ITT ASAP...

Unexpected interruption of the grind...Woke up at 6am this morning, unable to walk and in too much pain to go back to sleep. Looks like my progressively worsening ankle injury was not something I should have ignored for over a week, lol.

Doctor's best guess is that it's lime disease, so I'm at home waiting for them to analyze vials of my blood. Should be 72hrs maximum. Until then I'll be walking around with a cane, drinking beer and eating pain meds, and reading lots of poker strategy. I think I'm going to use a free trial for one of the training sites and video it out for a while.

Lost close to $1k yesterday, was very card dead and ran into a couple cooler spots. One of the best yet, my flopped set lost to two overcards going runner runner flush in a 3bet pot. (I had 95.7% equity on the flop).

I have noticed that I play significantly better while winning than loosing. I am not prone to any dumb tilty plays or varying my play a lot, but decision making is just easier and tends to be more accurate when you are in the good headspace that winning provides.

BR $13,700

I don't know, it just seems like a douche move to take peoples money and then snap a picture of your newly acquired cash.

Adjustments should be made at the most specific level possible: the opponent in the hand with you and the particular table that you are sitting at. Regardless of the location, time of day, day of the week; the way that your game plays is dictated by the collection of players that happen to be there. From an overall viewpoint, the collection of players there on weekend nights tend to have a higher percentage of weak recreational players, as you would probably surmise.

EC, love the thread. Hope everything turns out well with your health. Not trying to scare you, but I've had a family member with Lime disease. Take care of your health first and let the rest fall back into place. Keep the updates coming!

Watch Underneath our skin. Documentary about lyme disease. My mom had it, she had to get blood tested twice before they found it. It's a pretty tricky bitch.

Good luck with the lime disease! Just had to get tested a week ago myself, got lucky! You're looking good as far as poker goes though, nice job! I really like your writing/thought process and how it's backed up with philosophies outside of poker. It's a nice change of pace!

I enjoy reading your posts. Hope you're feeling better soon!

Do you play much graveyard, weekends or otherwise? I'm a night owl so that time works good for me. I would expect even weaker players, or am I wrong?

ECGrinder, your post is an inspiration. I am currently in a weird life spot where my company might be out of money soon and I am considering a path somewhat similar to yours (although with a lot more travel). I am a little less than twice your age but your milestones still give me a decent place to start and your stories give me many exhilarating and sobering experiences to draw from. Sorry about your illness and I hope you get better and hope to see you on the felt.

Also, there are a lot of of great poker books out there but I have found the following poker tools the most useful:

Bart Hanson's Seat Open poker podcast: Usually about an hour per podcast, weekly. I have learned to plug many holes in my game just from listening to this podcast while I'm working out and have increased my later street value betting efficiency by leaps and bounds. Incredible value for just $9.99 a month--as a subscriber you can also download all of the previous episodes.

Joe Navarro's book, "Read 'Em and Reap.": This book of live tells is written by a former FBI interrogator and breaks down human behavior to how comfortable a person is in a given situation. There is the thinking part of the brain which is adept at lying (bluffing) and the animalistic part of the brain which reacts involuntarily to fear and anxiety which cannot be controlled. I try to skim this book before every tournament and it blows me away how many players give off at least something at the table. I can even see a number of these reactions when watching well known pros on ESPN.

Take care of yourself and feel better man.

The first test was minor positive for lime disease, waiting on the results for the western blot which is more accurate. not so worried, started taking the medication tonight.

First day back at the woods tonight! +$650. Going to grind a lot and hit that $15k this week. $14.3 now.

Going to start posting pictures in the blog. prepare for some epic sh**t.

Thanks man. Will do!

I'll check it out

Thanks for the good luck! Glad to hear that you enjoy my musings on subjects outside poker. It's important to have a diverse lifestyle, poker is only a piece of the puzzle.

thanks man! I typically play until around 3am. I believe the games remain good until the sun comes up, but I am never up that late. As long as your sessions aren't from 6am-12am I don't think you can go wrong.

Glad you are enjoying the thread! Adventure and risk taking is something you probably won't regret. I hope to do a lot more travel in the near future, especially once I lock down the milestone goals I started the thread with. Thanks for the book and podcast recommendations, I will certainly check those out over the next couple weeks.

thanks!