Thanks! GL to you too.
Yeah, it's an interesting thought. I think it might have a lot to do with where you come from to start with. I've always been quite emotionally active and I think playing poker seriously - and then professionally - brought into focus for me the idea that I would have to work to curb that aspect of myself in order to prevent tilt and succeed in the game.

On the other hand, poker attracts a lot of people who, for one reason or another, have grown up or already become somewhat emotionally withdrawn (usually because of negative emotional experiences), and are attracted to the logical, mathematical nature of the game. With these kinds of people, success in the game starts to bring with it new, positive emotions, and as a result of being what you might call 'emotionally inexperienced', certain people don't always respond well to that, or at least aren't always aware of how their responses come across to other people.

I think being hyper-self-aware is a characteristic of mine that serves me pretty well in poker. I'm very self-critical at times, but it keeps me moving forward and improving, and it also helps me to be image-aware at the tables, and above all, helps me to get along with people and avoid getting into pointless disputes and rivalries. I think there are a ton of regs out there who massively hurt their bottom line by either making bad plays in an effort to outplay other regs, abusing other regs in chat (which is basically asking for them to play back at you way more), or simply acting like a douche on forums, and making it impossible for themselves to ever make money through coaching or sponsorship.

I guess what I'm saying is I want to be a nice guy, act like a nice guy, and have other people's impression of me reflect that. It's +EV in poker and in life.

^ great post

That posts makes me feel like a bad guy . I rofl about too much in the chatboxes trolling people just for a laugh(most people, like yourself understand Im joking like when I said I reported you for bullying me) but I should probs stop doing it as backfires sometimes when people don't have a sense of humour. Good post tho! GL

Awesome post. Nice guy ftw!

Glad you enjoyed it.
Haha, yeah I think even if people understand that you're joking, there's just not really that much of an upside to it. It's never been something that has really added to the enjoyment of the game for me, but then again you only have to play about an hour of live poker with me to know that I'm socially ******ed and couldn't give good banter even if I wanted to, lol.
For realz. #teamniceguys

I think Matt secretly wants his karma to bring him a bink in the 7 mil gtd sunday million, so he just pretends to be nice
Joke obv. Good post man, and on a related note, are you preparing yourself for the upcoming Sunday Million?

Haha. Rungood karma is the best reason to do anything.

I don't think there's really anything you can do to prepare for a donkament with 35,000+ runners. I expect to play well on the day, and I just have to hope I run good. I'm probably doing the opposite of preparing, if anything, as it's my Mum's birthday on Sunday itself so I'm taking the week off and heading down to see the family tomorrow evening. Will be back just about in time for the Sunday Warmup.

Personal happiness is important though. Like all the messing around in the chatbox with people having fun is good and makes the grind less boring and cheery and if I get the occasional person throwing a hissyfit, so be it. It's good fun for me to joke around and be happy.

Right, and if it adds that much to the enjoyment of the game for you, then by all means do it. It just doesn't add any enjoyment for me personally, and there's no doubt it takes focus away from playing hands. Then again, so do a bunch of other things that I do regularly, so I guess the whole thing is pretty irrelevant and I'm probably being a hypocrite.

Hey guys. I don't know if anyone's particularly interested, but I think for the next month or so at least, I'm gonna be posting some updates on my fitness and weight loss goals. I think one of the reasons I haven't really achieved any of them to date is that I've been giving poker precedence over them, and one of the ways in which I've been doing that is by posting about poker all the time, but never about my health.

I'm 6ft 1in. In summer 2010 after spending 3 weeks volunteering in Russia working 16-22hr days in the middle of Russia's biggest heatwave in a thousand years, I weighed around 170lbs. Right now, sitting at my computer in Southampton, I weight around 215lbs. I think my high point was around 225lbs sometime in late 2011, which meant I put on 55lbs in a year and a half. I haven't really thought about it in those terms until now, and when I do it's kinda scary. It coincided with a really unhappy time in my life, which makes perfect sense, and a time when I was in a job that I really hated and spending most of my time with people I didn't like. I was doing zero exercise, and eating terribly to compensate for the lack of enjoyment I got out of anything else in life.

Fast forward to now - I'm really happy playing poker full-time, I have a great life outside poker despite not having a particularly big circle of friends since I left university, and everything is going well. I'm exercising 3/4 times a week, with a gym routine that began at the beginning of this year as follows:

- 1km run as a warmup
- A small amount of weights work on my back and shoulders, just to prevent my shoulder injury from flaring up
- 1km cycling
- 1km rowing
- 1km cross trainer

Each 2 weeks since the beginning of this year, I've been upping the distances by 0.5km, and when my first session of March rolls around (on Monday - will be away with family over the weekend) - I'll be hitting 3k/3k/3k/3k. I've also been intensifying the workouts by doing them all while wearing ankle weights, wrist weights and a weight vest - this started with the weights at 1kg/1kg/2kg (ankles/wrists/vest) for January, upped to 2kg/2kg/4kg for February, and will up again to 3kg/3kg/6kg for March. At this rate, by the end of the year I should be able to do 10k/10k/10k/10k with the maximum 5kg/5kg/20kg weights on. That would be by a ridiculous distance the best shape I'd ever been in, but I'm not sure yet whether it's realistic. Needless to say, I look like a complete tool at the gym wearing all that crap, but whatever.

The difficulty of the whole thing is, despite the improvements that I've already made in terms of general fitness and motivation, I'm not losing any weight. It's pretty obvious that my diet is the problem, but I don't even eat that badly either. I have maybe 2/3 takeaways/pizza meals etc per month, I barely drink any alcohol, I gave up eating pasta midway through last year, and I don't eat chocolate or drink full-fat Coke. It seems to me that the major complication to my efforts is the simple fact that for 8 hours or more of each working day, I'm sat at my computer playing online poker. This is something I can't get away from, and it's something that comes as a direct result of my commitment to succeeding in poker.

It may seem on the face of it that succeeding in poker and losing weight/getting fit in the process are two fairly incongruous goals. What I aim to do over the course of March and beyond is to prove to myself that that's not the case. I've tried all sorts of different motivational tools and tactics to persuade myself to lose weight, and I actually did lose 6lbs in the first two weeks of this year (before putting it back on again obv), but none of the methods have ever stuck for me, and I'm still at 215lbs where I've been for some time. I do believe that if I can get 50lbs of weight off, I can keep it off, so my challenge for the next few months is to push myself and get to that point - if I do, I feel comfortable that I'll be able to maintain that weight easily, and shift my focus at the gym towards actually putting on some muscle and/or getting into better than average shape. I've literally never been in better than average shape, so that would be nice.

I'll endeavour to keep you guys updated on how it's going, because I know a lot of people in poker set fitness goals that they find difficult to follow through with, and sometimes it might seem like sacrificing one's health is something that's necessary if one wants to be a professional poker player. Hopefully for me, that won't be the case.

EDIT: I should have pointed out that I think diet/fitness issues are 1000% more difficult for MTT players in poker than they are for cash players. Cash guys can grind 4hrs, go to the gym, come back, grind 4hrs more. If you're an MTT player and you're not playing sessions >4hrs, you're basically never going to make any money.

invest some time for researching LEANGAINS.com(or rippedbody.com - same concept but easier information on that site).

Eating lifestyle which fits for lifelong period and super comfortable while letting enjoy all sort of foods.

Ur a nice guy ginger. In MTT its really easy to come off as arrogant or a ass.

Pretty sure I do from time to time, u deffo seem to be humble and I respect that and been thinking a bit about how us poker players (mtt in particular) carry ourselves.

Definately felt like I learnt something from your outlook as well so thx

Might make a rambling entry in my own PG&C on it tonight actually

good reading ginger see u at the tables alot, u play well keep up the hard work and the good updates

gl

Thanks for the tip man, I will definitely check those sites out.
Thanks bro, I replied to your PM. Look forward to chatting with you a little more.
Cheers man, GLGL to you too!

Good post again, gl with losing weight whilst winning at poker. I try and go 2 runs/week which are about 3miles(5k) and try to do situps and pressups in the 5 minute sync break. Running and situps definitely toned my torso up and lost the puppy fat I had from MTTs.

Getting into this late but have subbed. GL with the rest of the year.

Thanks man, tyty. Yeah I have a really terrible metabolism and put on weight really easily so it's been tough so far, but I feel good about this month. GL!
Thanks man, GL!

Update-wise, I shipped the Big 20 on .fr for about 3k tonight and came 2nd in the storm 5r on there as well for 1.2k, so a nice tidy winning Sunday. Amazing how huge today was on Stars, really encouraging. Looking forward to the rest of the month with FRSCOOP, FTOPS and MicroMillions all ahead!

GL all!

Just shipped the 5r 2x turbo for 5.3k, feels good especially after I botched a deal negotiation!

Nice!

How's the scoop on .FR going?

Going to play the €20 100k guar on sunday.

Wish me luck. And GL to you too.

grats on the score but where is the review for February

Prob a stupid question, but how do you cope with downswings? I am asking cause I just saw your graph and you started the year with a nasty ~12K(?) downswing..
Congrats for the score

Grats! Deal didnt work out?

feb recap needed

It's going okay, currently ITM in the 15eur 4max but I think that's my first cash. I built stacks in a couple others but got coolered a couple times. They're huge fields so it's tough to get deep.

GL bro, here's to running good
It's below. Sorry I forgot about it! My goals have gotten a bit lax. And thanks!
Thanks man. Honestly the best thing I can say about downswings is that it's all relative, and it's all about experience and expectation setting.

Firstly, it's all relative because a 12k downswing for me might be about 400ABI at the moment. A year ago, however, it would have been about 800ABI, so it would have seemed bigger - however, at that point I was playing mostly turbos, so I should really have been more prepared for a swing that big as they're pretty common in turbos, especially big fields.

Secondly, I've been through enough downswings now and got to a point in the game where I have complete confidence that the downswing will end. Part of the reason people hate downswings is the uncertainty - they don't know when they'll next win something, and winning is their lifeblood. At this point after having achieved a lot in the past 6 months or so I have confidence that any downswing I go through will end soon, and I have the knowledge to change the games I play, drop down in ABI, etc etc if I do hit a downswing.

Finally, it's very simple - I know downswings are going to happen. I don't fight them because it's absolutely impossible to avoid them. Jared Tendler uses the analogy that if you watch a weather forecast that says it's going to rain, and then you go outside and it's raining, do you get mad? No, because you knew it was going to rain. You know variance is going to get you sometime, so why complain when it does?

Hope that helps. GL!
Yeah I pushed a little too hard and got a little too ambitious. It's all good when you win anyway though
And here it is!



Volume suffered because of a couple of breaks I took to go see family etc, and because my sleep pattern was kinda messed up at some points. Obviously really happy with the results though, so it's all good. Like I said above, I've been pretty lax on my goals, but I'm not gonna beat myself up about that too much because I feel good and things are going well regardless. Can't complain at all.

Very solid! Seems like you are really crushing the games. Good advice about downswings as well, read that also in Jared's book hehe. Keep it up and gl in march