^ This is what my friends and my therapist say although I wasn't convinced about it. After some reflection, I think they are right even if my relationship with the game was really a loved/hated one.
What I believe is that poker is my true opportunity to change my life and yet, I haven't dedicated enough time to it, probably due to my self-sabotage mechanism being afraid to win at the game of life.

I've opened up a bunch of blogs before, with different usernames, in order to get a fresh start every single time, a start that didn't happen. I will link my previous blogs in my next entries but for now, here's a recap.
I've played for many years, small stakes exclusively, with mediocre results. I got lucky though, I never studied consistently and I've managed to stay afloat in some way.


Results in BBs


Results in $


Stakes breakdown


Roughly 6 years ago I've got sick with an unknown disease and I began to withdraw my money in order to get cured, while motivation and health declined really fast like my money availability. Right now I'm doing better but I still suffer physically every day.
What I did (and still do) is playing low stakes, a vicious cycle that I try to break for some reasons I cannot or I don't want, the mind could trip us up.

After years of failures, because playing millions of hands at low stakes is a failure, I have to step back and take an honest look at my journey and my life. I don't like where I am.


The last 2 months were a little bit better, but I don't feel I'm moving forward at all. I continue to feel stuck and completely apathetic


I'm the only one to blame for this, but I don't move my ass as I should, cannot pinpoint why, and here's the reason why I opened up this blog, to fully expose myself, and my weaknesses and allow others to help me out.
Deep down, I do think that I'm the only one who knows better, but let's face it, results are telling me that I'm wrong. I don't have any socials, I tend to talk about myself as little as possible so other guys cannot attack me because I know they would highlight all my ****.
My big, fragile, ego is afraid of being judged so he avoids confrontation completely. I need to accept that what I've done since then was wrong.

Even if I write to get help, I know I'm the only one responsible for his own salvation, so I would love to get help, but I have to acknowledge that it will be a gift, not something due. I've found out that talking to me in 2nd person seems to be more effective so I will do the same even here.
I will try to be more sincere and vulnerable as possible because I think this is the only way to change for good.

Thank you for reading this
GL

solid results so far imo

Not sure whether beating low stakes poker are solid results, but thanks for pointing that out

What’s the story behind those NL10k “shots”

Unfortunately, only play money

I'm posting my blog link in Discord and here you can find the Notion page, which is an enhanced version of the first post.
I'm going to include the Notion link in every other entry, which seems to be liked by many users.
https://www.notion.so/I-Choose-Poker...7523a74a877a43

Nice results brother!


look forward to following your challenge

Hey RedLinePhoenix

Man, what you are saying on your post also hits so hard with me as well. I have also started a number of blogs in here but I didn't commit to it as well. Same exact boat as you, I feel like I have not put in my 100% to it even though I have been playing for a long time seriously. Until recently, I did not realize that my resistances of the mind were the things that held me back.

I love the reasons you stated on why you are opening this blog. I am sure it will be an eye-opening process for you to show your vulnerabilities. I too am committing to my blog right now for my own process.

I wish you luck in your journey.

Please don't. Once is plenty. I'm pretty sure the owners of the site would much rather you not send people to some other blog site. Thanks and good luck!

Ty a lot, if you want we can have a chat on Discord, hit me up if you are interested



Ty bro, ty very much gl to you



Ok I don't want to spam or something, the link I provide are just a visually better looking entries, but I see your point

Make Peace with it



Everybody's a wizard in a bull market

You recall a quote like that regarding the trading world. Every trader that rides the bull market considers himself a genius, how wonder? It might feel pretty good to buy something in an exploding market and it is only about skills right? What happens when the **** hits the fan though? Because it will.

The same thing happens in poker, you guess, to everyone, even you.


You were pretty lucky the last 3 months and now you have lost a good chunk in just a few days, have you thought the sunrun would last for years? So naive…
Mental toughness shows up when everything is crumbling, not because you have lost one session or you got coolered once. No, real mental toughness is the ability to cope with bad things, happening all at once and/or for a prolonged stretch of time.

You are always mesmerized by players who log a few hundred of hands per day (not even all days) and talks about how their mind was strong during those 300 hands. But let's be honest you do the same. You hate when your peers whine, you know full well how detrimental is that characteristic. Probably you hate yourself, even more, knowing that you have the same blame, you don't whine in public but you do alone in your room, but it's easier to point a finger toward other people instead of looking at your weakness.
Instead of judging others you should take an honest view of yourself and realize what a big ego you have and this is preventing any step forward.


Make peace with poker

Yesterday a close friend of mine told you to make peace with variance and you felt something deeply like something clicked. You felt different for the very first time since you started your career, somewhat changed but you don't know what. What you do know is that yesterday, you went to sleep without any grudge, without hating life or hoping for the worst things to happen to you.

You cannot always win in poker, even if you would love it that way.

Regulars and fishes try to win money, the same way as you do, you aren't entitled to anything. For some reason, you want to play a game where the reg isn't putting you in difficult spots and you want the fish to give away his money with no equity. This isn't the game of poker and after 13 years, it's better to make a peace with it.

What can you do in practice?

- follow your bankroll rules, for real, follow the and shot aggressively
- call out peers that drain your energy talking about bad beats
- avoid talking about bad run


Play more, lazy ass

Recently a guy posted his PLO graph on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comme...typoker_for_1/)

Ok this is PLO, with a different standard deviation than NLHE but it won’t change much, the graph shows 250k hands of losing/breakeven stretch.


One of the worst habits you have is to play less and less during a downswing, effectively increasing the time to get out of it. If you would be the player about and let’s say you play 20k hands per month, it would require one entire year to get win a dime again. In the meantime, you would hate life and every living being because you think all the other players are luckier.
Truth is, you have to grind it through, there’s no other way.

You have to imagine it as you are climbing a mountain, it doesn’t matter how many ups and down you will have as long as you get there. So if you are clearheaded you have to stick to your schedule and grind regardless of your mood, this will end early your downswing. If you play a little you could end up being on a 2-years downswing, but it isn’t the game’s fault it’s only yours.
If the swing is a dungeon that you must pass to continue your journey is better to clear it as fast as you can. You still have to pass through it, and you will suffer, but you can decide how long the agony would last.

You always longed to be a true professional, a real one, but you play 750 hands every day, but Sunday. This is not acceptable by any means. You can continue to do to that, but you have to acknowledge that you are prolonging your bad stretch artificially, and you have none to blame besides yourself.
Right now you play only 3 1-hour long sessions daily, you could increase the length, as you did a few times with mixed results, or you can add more sessions. The latter seems to be simpler and more effective since you will be under pressure more often due to the new aggressive shot-taking method.

Even if you aren’t playing that often you should realize that those 3 daily sessions are automatic right now, they are a habit installed that doesn’t require any effort. Remember how was difficult to play, back in the day, you have conjured excuses, but now you don’t, be proud of yourself.



Ultra aggressive shot taking

Your stable cleared you for NL500 a long time ago, actually, you reached the threshold by only playing NL25 and NL50, so it’s time to believe in yourself and make it real. You have fear of failing, you fear of letting yourself and your staker down, but you shouldn’t. In the worst-case scenario, you will build the roll again, from lower stakes, a level where you are a proven winner. Maybe you also fear moving up because you know it's like you have to move down again and this seems like you are failing.
What you are doing right now, playing lower stakes, keeps you in your comfort zone. You know that you won’t succeed, but at the same time, you know that you won’t fail, please realize how detrimental this is, you are capping your potential, please stop.



You have tried different methods, but you had found ways to avoid your rules, now try this way and see how it goes. Again, worst-case scenario, you will be back to NL 50.
Ideally, you would like to avoid checking your results completely but your method won’t allow that luxury. To mitigate this issue you will build a stat in PT4 that tells you what stake you have to play. You know that this isn’t a long-term fix, and you know that you will check your results, but don’t be too harsh on yourself, for now, just make sure to follow your rules

What a rough 500 hands there. Interested to find out how continuing to play (more) through it works out.

No Safety Net


This is an old post, I’ve reviewed it but haven’t updated it, so the content is exactly the same as years ago, tbh, it hasn’t changed much

Your family struggled with money since you were a kid, your father was blue-collar while your mother, decided to stay at home because she hadn't any willingness to work. With a single paycheck, financial problems were always present and you've sensed it at a very young age. You recall a recurring nightmare where you were in front of a huge pile of money and you had to move it, from one place to another, with haste because something was haunting you. When you woke up you were sweaty as hell and your heart was pumping.



Poverty molded your personality and this issue touches you very deeply. Homeless people are the ones with whom you feel more connection, it seems like you can feel their suffering. For that reason, you've always made charity to them, even when you were a broke kid. Many many times you've decided to don't buy your snacks and instead give the money to them.



Your life was miserable, your parents didn't provide enough food and didn't care. You had to cope with many problems while you were a kid with no experience in the world, it was devastating. Eventually, stress got the best of you, and you developed hyperthyroidism as a reaction, a disease that you were on meds for 14 years, but thankfully, you got rid of. Since your family was a mess, a welfare worker (don't know whether it is the correct term), was assigned to you, and gladly, he changed your life. You have begun to eat enough and properly, you also get new dresses instead of the old, patchy ones, and you've also got other perks as well.



Fast forwarding, at some point, you've begun to play poker and got lucky enough to win at the very beginning. You've started with ZERO, from freerolls, and made up a good amount of money, from which you have started to live on your own. You were very proud of yourself, you were confident and your future was bright, but something was always looming over you. You cannot address it because it wasn't clear and it isn't even right now, but you think is something related to your parents.

7 years ago you got sick, with an unknown disease, and you felt like drowning along with other several issues. You've started to play less and less and spent most of the money won on exams and cures, in vain.
You've met the best doctors and you still have no diagnosis, but one of them pointed out that it could be something related to your mind. A wake-up call that something wasn't right.



At the time, you didn't pay attention to the comment, but now you do. After you've done every tests that don’t highlight anything abnormal you have to surrender and be open to the fact that your suffering could be psychological. If you have to be fair, my disease started when you were experiencing many stressful events at once, alone. You think the recognition of being alone in life and having to count only on yourself was the culprit.

It was too much to bear. You've always felt that way, but suddenly, it becomes apparent.

In reality, You are not lonely at all, because you got friends that long to be with you, but deep down something is missing, and you think it is the lack of a safety net. You were able to sustain yourself for over 10 years with poker and you never were a financial burden for your parents. Right now they got 3k into their bank account, they accomplished burning 400k on nothing and I had to save their ass once. The problem is... they won't do the same thing for you, both because they don't want to and because they can't do it because they lack money. Being short on money isn't the only issue, they are children that never grew, unable to provide for me or them. They aren’t preoccupied at all, they don’t think about their future and your future.
The bottom line is that you've always felt I have no parachute, if you fail in poker or if you need any kind of help, you won't be able to ask. You know, because you've tried. You want to highlight that you haven't asked for money, or any help whatsoever. They aren't able to look after themselves and you cannot count on them.

Right now you've got little money on the side and you are staked for years now. The problem is my staker is going to close the stable down soon, so you will have to play with your money or look around for another stake, which you fear you won't find. It's kinda funny because you've played 4M hands with 5BB/100 profit and you still think nobody will be interested in you. This insecurity (for no reason) stems from your broken childhood.



You want to join a CFP but you are still behind schedule for that, you wanted to have a full year of expenses covered but now you've got 8 months. You think getting accepted into one of those programs will save your life, really. You will be part of a team, working together for a common goal, it will be a complete life changer. You want to show yourself want you are really capable of. you have opened up a journal 2 months ago, to open yourself up, and venting the problems which you've always hidden from other people. Right now you are running really bad for the last 100k hands and your confidence nosedived.

You feel like you are playing a video game with a single life, at the hardest mode. You simply cannot thrive, you cannot explore things in life, you are stuck, for too many years now. You've read a ton of self-help books, in attempting to fix yourself, but they didn't help. You had psychotherapy with a very skilled guy, but you've stopped it because you hadn't enough money.



You don't enjoy life, you try to save every penny and this leads you to a life of deprivation. You don't buy new clothes for over a year now, you don't go on vacation for 5 years now and I don't rest my mind since my birth.

Also, you totally lack vision, you don't have clear goals anymore which makes every day exactly the same as the previous one, an endless grind, a suffering. Even if you feel that way, I can assure you, you wake up every day, with a knife between your teeth, ready to fight again and again for a better future. You are astonished by that because, after many years of this, most would just give up and probably kill themselves. You really think the only difference between you and who decides to end their life is just chance, good genetics combined with winning the coinflip of the "resilience" perk.

You also feel a deep resentment for people that you know, who got everything in life with no effort and were lucky enough to have been in the right family. You've always wondered what would you be able to achieve with the right conditions. This envy isn't healthy, you know that and you hate yourself for it.

Meritocracy is your religion, you think people who fight more deserve better, the problem is life doesn't work that way. You know it, but deep down, admitting that will rend vain your efforts. You admire people who climb up the ladder from the very bottom. You want to do the same but you fear that you won't make it.

Thanks for reading

I used to have really bad tilt issues that were mostly based around entitleent i guess? and partly due to a lack of understanding of the game and the sick variance, but as time went on and my knowledge increased i am pretty much tilt free (of the monkey tilt variety anyways lol).

Listening to people wine about bad beats and running bad certainly is draining so i avoid it where i can.

During bad runs i think it's important to go back through our hands to see not only the glaring errors, but also where we have misse value by not betting or not betting enough etc.


Good luck with your journey brother

The headcoach/owner of my stable guaranteed that I just had a stretch of bad cards, and yet... I still feel like total garbage

Ty for you warm words <3

Yeah i know that feeling. Sometimes i just feel like a total noob lol. I'm sure you're strong minded enough to work through this bad patch.

GL

November 2023 Recap


Monthly graph (BB)


Monthly graph ($)


Stakes breakdown


Toggl report

Another month passed and it wasn't much different than the other ones.
You are embarrassed about your results, but probably even more by your professionalism. For some reason, you think you are allowed to call other players out for their low volume while totally overlooking the fact that you are lazy as ****. It's the true reality, you don't have a job, so you can take advantage of the poker opportunity to the max, but you choose not to.

Instead of putting in volume and study time, you prefer to comment on others' player decisions, you hate this attitude but you continue to do it. Maybe it's time to stop and focus on what truly matters, so stop pointing the finger at other people and turn it around to yourself.
You aspire to be a full-time pro, but you can't even manage to log hours, you dedicate to poker less than a part-time job.
This gotta change, really quickly.

Some days ago a player told you to quit the game because you have so mental issues that you cannot succeed. He told you that you should be better off working in construction for a fixed hourly than playing poker. At first glance, you thought you didn't take it personally, but in reality, you did.
You hate people telling you what to do.
You welcome advice, even if you tend to take them on a personal level too, but someone ordering you something makes you pout.


You don't want to quit poker, in fact, you still choose poker every day, but you continue to do the same errors over and over again, without pondering.
In the previous post, you highlighted how something changed in your last month, and how you felt different, bullshit. Nothing changed, you are the same as before and this makes you depressed. You savor an improvement only to get swept off your feet abruptly.

15 years ago you used to skateboard a lot, you had fear of your own shadow and it was very complicated to get better initially. Everyone told you that you should quit because you weren't good at it. At the time, instead of pouting, you channeled that anger into something tangible. You spent countless hours practicing, recall it, recall how you breathe skateboarding.
Every day was a chance to get better and practice until you mastered something. At the end of your journey, you had even 2 sponsors, you were proud of yourself.


Now you recognize the guys you were told to quit were the first that was unable to do anything. They can't even do basic tricks, but they were very good at criticizing you and others.
You are the same as those you hated, you don't know anything about poker, and you aren't a professional at all, but you feel obliged to have an opinion on the other (way more successful) players. It's a terrible attitude

You think regulars soulread you and the fish outplays every single time.
You have played millions of hands and you still second-guessing every decision, now you have lost 15 stacks and you think you are going to lose every session since you will broke. At the conscious level, you acknowledge this is true madness, but your subconscious is convinced that you will crash, and probably die.


This dualism, this eternal fight, makes you really tired and makes you feel dumb, but you can't help yourself.
Your therapist and everyone around you tell you that you make giant leaps forward, but you don't see any. Actually, you think they pity you.

You understand that you see only black, you want to see a different world, you want to have a different attitude, but you are wearing glasses that taint the world. You don't see a world in color, you see it in shades of grey.


A friend of yours purchased RIO's Game Plan and he was so kind to ask you whether you would like to watch with him. You were glad to since you are so broke that you couldn't afford it.

You felt embarrassed at the "Evaluate" section, you realized you don't know anything about poker, you didn't care to study, and for every point you gave a 1.

You don't even know how were you able to survive till now.
But there's good news though, you are a blank slate, you know nothing. You don't have room for improvement, because this would imply that you already know something, you just don't know your potential and this is good. It could be very high, but you don't know... yet

In the next posts I want to illustrate my plan to get unstuck for good

Ty for reading guys ❤️

you know i feel you mate , so lets tackle 2023 and let´s show that there is another way

Seems like you're going through a pretty swingy time by the looks of it. Poker can be a joy to play when things go our way, and a real grind when things aren't. I'm currently going through a rough patch and confidence is really low - ya know when we don't get paid off or we seem to get raised post flop nearly every hand by villains that are ABC and always have it... Just keep working on your game OP . Goodluck in 2023!

You are a great guy, ty for this and I hope we will crush together this year


Well... poker isn't that hard at least for me and at my stakes, but what really interferes is my real life, I need to get handle on this.
I wish you the best and I will be following your progress in your journal

I'm also a keen reader and have a goodreads challenge of 52 books for this year. I find that reading helps keep that balance when things aren't going that well with poker. What stuff do you do to manage tilt etc?

I don't have any relevant issue with tilt tbh, my tilt comes from RL issue, but at the table I've never shove a stack for tilt. Maybe I play suboptimally when things aren't going that great, but overall, I think my execution is really solid