Nealy's back. Started playing poker again 9/10/22 after about 4 years away from the game I love. Played a few live sessions in that span, but Covid put an end to playing at the casino in Milwaukee. Ventured into chess some during the pandemic. Got Covid myself in August. Was stuck at home nearly 2 weeks feeling blah. Towards the end of those 2 weeks I opened the Masterclass app, in which masters of all varieties have made video lessons for Joe-Schmoe like myself to hear their take on their area of expertise. This time I watched one of Phil Ivey's vids. I don't even know if I got thru the entire video, but I do know that I said to myself: "That looks fun! I should play some!" Shortly after watching that video I started playing on Ig again. Here are my results from 4 years ago:



My results from 9/10/22 to now:





Obviously I'm not a crusher. I have a busy life outside of playing cards. Have a 9 year old daughter and pick up some OT at work. Poker is just a fun hobby--a great mental outlet. My job is somewhat boring and I like to have poker as something to turn to during downtime. Another thing I should mention is that I like to stay physically fit. Here, I'll be setting both poker and exercise goals as I think being fit boosts poker performance. Sure, you could argue that if I spent any exercise time on studying and/or playing poker instead that I'd have better results, but that's no way to live. So here we go:

GOALS: 11/27/22 thru 12/31/22

[ ] Study poker 45-90 minutes each day except days in which I work over 12h

[ ] Play 10k-15k hands

[ ] Run 100-150 mi

[ ] Do Core Workout 1 2-3 times/wk @ < 10 min each

[ ] Do Core Workout 2 2-3 times/wk @ < 10 min each

[ ] Do Full-body Workout 2-3 times/wk @ 30-60 min each


So there we have my goals. I do tend to pick up extra hours at work as I mentioned above. That may interfere with reaching some of these goals, but the money associated with working OT is important to me. I like the idea of having these wonderful goals to work on during my limited time away from work and parenting. I will at minimum update after 12/31/22. Not sure how much I'll update between now and then since my time is so limited.

One last thing I want to mention. I recently picked up the book Atomic Habits as well as some other material on motivation and habits. The concept of just showing up, of just getting the workout or study session done regardless of feeling motivated or not sticks with me more than anything else from that material. I want to keep that idea at the forefront as I work thru these five weeks: Do it regardless of how I feel.

Hello Nealy!

How is your journey going?

Journey is going well. Close to on track w/ all goals except the Full-body Workout, which requires me going to the gym. I knew going into this that if there'd be a goal that I didn't reach it'd be that goal. The problem is that I have NOT developed the habit of going to this particular gym. I recently bought a membership there. It's the gym with the biggest dudes (and dudettes, non-binary persons, etc) in town. I'm built more like a Kenyan marathoner so it's a little intimidating stepping into this gym. Bought the membership because it's a 3 min drive from where I live. The way forward is to practice going during off-peak hours. Also, instead of 30-60 minutes my plan is to start out with as little as 15 minutes. If I can develop the beginnings of the habit of just showing up by the end of these 5 weeks I'll be happy with that. Also, between work (picked up a couple h of OT last week), parenting, running, the core workouts (which are going great btw), playing poker, and studying poker--I do worry some that going to the gym might just be too much. I'm putting studying at least 45 min above everything else and have been really happy that I've stuck with that. Been enjoying it. That's it for a quick update. Thought about putting up the actual numbers (miles, study time, hands played, core workouts done), but I'll save that for another time. Long story short, on track with my goals (except FB Workout) and am enjoying the process.

GL Subbed!


How do your contruct your study sessions? do you follow some sort of structure?

During my play sessions I jot down hands that I want to go over or at least look up (I play on Ignition so you can see what Villains had after 24h). My study sessions mostly involve going over these hands. Most of them I just look up what Villains had to develop intuition for how the player pool plays, but some of the spots I study more in depth with Flopzilla, GTOWizard, and/or CREV. I usually set a stopwatch so that I can measure fairly precisely how much time I spend studying. If I read 2+2 or listen to a poker podcast or book I do NOT count that towards my study time. I want to ensure that I get this harder study in and if I were to count all the softer study I do then I probably wouldn't get much of the study I described above in.

Welcome back sir

Subbed. Are you still playing any chess? Feel free to add me on lichess if you ever want to play a quick game and get some feedback. https://lichess.org/@/Gertrude1951

I love chess and recently found myself watching some gotham chess vids once I heard about Hans Nieman beating Carlsen, cheating allegations, etc. Otherwise I've been out of the chess loop. Maybe one day I'll play a game or two with you Gertrude, but for now I'm gong to keep my focus on poker.

Ending my 5 weeks of goals early.





Hit my goal of playing 10-15K hands. I obviously ran really well. It was a lot of fun working on my game w/ the study-45min-a-day goal. I came close to meeting this goal, but on 2-3 occasions I just didn't do it. Was tired, thought my life was too poker heavy, etc. I regretted NOT meeting the 45 min mark the day after each time.

In regards to my physical activity goals I ran 39.5 miles--well short of my goal of 100 miles. I did 10 Core 1 Workouts; 5 Core 2 Workouts; and 1 Full-body Workout.

Going forward I want to shift some of my time and energy toward physical fitness. I love going to the gym and can almost find it addictive. I still plan on doing some poker, tho I think 30 min of study/day (except when I work 12h or more or play live poker) is a better fit. I think I ought to shoot for averaging at min 2k hands/week. I want to do all this--work, parenting, hit the gym--while at the same time still progress at poker.

My Goals December 25 thru March 4:

[ ] Play 2-3K hands/wk

[ ] Study 30min/d except when I work >=12h or play live poker

[ ] Run 10-20 miles/wk

[ ] Do 2-3 Gym Workouts/wk

[ ] Sleep >= 63h/wk

I know these goals do NOT seem much different than the previous goals. However, this means fewer running miles. Core workouts are out, tho I'll still probably actually do them. The adjustment in study time I look forward to. There were a few days in which I was tired from working 11h, doing some parenting on top of that and still pushed thru 45 min of study. So on these heavy adulting days 30 min is a better fit. I'll still go over the 30 min mark where I have the time and energy. The 2-3K hands/wk I have mixed feelings about. Obviously I love to play. I feel like I have to get this minimal amount in to continue to gain experience. Plus, my favorite way to study is to analyze hands that I actually played. It's just going to continue to be a grind. As in my life is busy and junk like Netflix, Facebook, junk conversations w/people, etc. are out. That's ok. I'm enjoying living this way.

Last thing, I plan on updating this thread weekly in order to help myself stay on track.

Last minute addition: sleep >= 63h/wk. Nine hours/d may seem excessive, especially given my busy schedule. But my poker game is better, my work game is better, and my parenting game is better w/this amount. I will be happier and it'll give me the sleep needed to recover from workouts as well (brain workouts too). I'm excited to actually track it and work on this goal in addition to the others.

Week 1:

[ ] Play 2-3K hands/wk========================================(810 hands played)

[ ] Study 30min/d except when I work >=12h or play live poker========(0 (that's ZERO) study)

[ x] Run 10-20 miles/wk========================================(ran 12.72mi)

[ ] Do 2-3 Gym Workouts/wk====================================(0 gym WOs)

[ ] Sleep >= 63h/wk============================================(61. 75h close!)

Worked a lot of extra hours and made it to the casino to play live. So despite NOT meeting most of my goals it was a pretty good week. I have it in mind to play live weekly in 2023. 2nd time I've gone and played live in the past couple of months and I've crushed it both times. Population seems super soft. Want to keep experimenting with live. Prefer it over online. Lot of fun w/the banter and whatnot. Still plan on playing online too tho. I enjoy online as well and want to keep gaining poker experience in general.

Going forward if I turn down the OT at work that'll help free up the time to play live. I don't like giving up the OT $, but if I give myself a chance here I should be able to win the same OT $ and then some by spending those h at the casino instead.

I can't get over how much fun playing live is. I've probably played live <50 times in my life to give an idea of experience level. It's always been fun, but it's even more fun bringing a little stronger poker game. It makes me think about quitting my job and just playing poker for a living. Natural to think about, but NOT going to suddenly leave my job that's worth 115k in 2022. Added up the health insurance, the PTO, pension, etc. recently and that's what my job is worth. It can be boring at times, but a steady >100k/year...I'd have to crush poker at a very high level to beat that. On the other hand YOLO and fun. Just some thoughts. For now my number one objective is to get as much live play in as I can to gain experience. I'm going to continue with the same weekly goals for now. I'll never be able to meet all of them in a week tho if I play live. So at some point I'll adjust them so they fit better.

Just a quick update. Went to a couple casinos over the weekend to play live 1/3 and 2/5. Was a LOT of fun despite losing a couple BI's overall. I think poker is a different form of fight club. Now remember, I'm still pretty new to live poker. I witnessed a lot of verbal bashing, Villains going to war w/each other. I made a good hero call in one hand and Villain was a little upset about it, lol. Makes me want to come up w/better comebacks, but in general staying quiet, not saying much is probably best. In the hand I hero called I had top 2pair on a QTxKT board w/no flush possible. Villain could have had just a T to have me beat so afaik KQ is just a bluff catcher here. V could have had trips, a straight, or a boat. But he said, "I can't believe it took you that long to call. I didn't know you were that strong." I replied that I was just a slow thinker. I didn't want to talk poker strat much per Tommy Angelo's Elements. Seems to be much better to keep people guessing about where your game is at. Anyway, later I thought that saying, "I can see you're still really upset about it. You know, that's a sign of poor mental health. You should go see someone about that. I really think you could use some therapy." Once again tho, it's probably best to just continue to focus on the action.

So overall I put in 2 sessions. A 7h session and a 19h session. Ran on an average of 4.5h of sleep or 9h of sleep between Friday and Saturday nights. My game seemed pretty on thru the first session and I won .5BI. Made one big mistake that cost me .5BI. So should have won 1BI on trip 1. Drove the 2h home and did a second trip in which I played 19h straight. I really wanted to get the raw exposure, the experience. I did. Of course I didn't play well. I had even done a 8.5 mi run in between trips running on the 4.5h of sleep. So the whole 2nd session I yawned occasionally. By the last couple hours of it I was a mess and in meltdown mode.

In the end I'm really happy where I'm at. I'm stoked to do more study. In addition to being tired I ran into some better players than what I had been running into. I was actually happy about that. I want to improve so I like the exposure to players I can't just run over. I know in general if you want to win money and one day post a nice giraffe you'd better play at tables you can beat. For now tho I'm happy that this exposure has me seeking out new sources with which to study and work on my game.

Also, going forward I will implement a bottom of my range IRT playing while tired. If I can't follow the action it's time to go. An example is the V to my right posted a 6 dollar straddle and I limped in with 3 dollars. I think this should be the bottom of my range. Can't pay attention it's time to power up with sleep.

IRT results on last week's goals and new goals going forward I will get back to these things later. Still recovering from the brutality of it all. I'm sure most people would be tired after all that. I drove almost 500 miles on top of it all. My daughter was at a girl scout camp over the weekend and I made sure to check up on her there. But it required a lot of extra driving. I would have probably just stayed at the casino the whole time (probably would have napped in my car) or gotten a hotel room. Anyway, it is a lot for any human to take on and I'm still recovering. I noticed I have been just a little agitated and it's not like me.

Gotta say the running tho is such an outlet for me. I run in the woods w/o any earbuds. Just a man alone w/his brain out in nature running. Nothing like it. Did 8.5 on Saturday, 8.5 on Monday, and 9mi today. Been really getting into it. Good for processing poker and life thoughts.

Drove down to Chicago again for a 3 day trip to play poker at Rivers Casino. I booked a room at a Motel 6 which is 7 min away from RC. It was the dumpiest motel I've ever stayed at. Wouldn't have been such a problem if I didn't have any issues sleeping, but I did. Lots of noises from neighbors and planes landing at O'Hare flew 100 feet above where I slept about every 5 min. Was the crappiest bed I can remember sleeping in too. I like the experience of it all, but it's just not wise to play poker on 3h of sleep. I work some crazy hours and often run on little sleep. I take pride in being able to function thru a grueling schedule. However, I need to take sleep seriously around live play. Think it's the multi-day thing more than anything. Got a good night sleep prior to leaving on the trip, got 7.5 hours the first night (was pretty interrupted by all the noises tho). Then Friday morning I only slept 3h and then played 10h. Part of it was that I wanted to get a lot of hours of experience in.

Lost another 2.5 BIs (500 buy-in). Down 1.5 BIs since I started playing live again which is nothing. I have the life roll and whatnot to give myself 30 BIs, which is what I've theoretically done. I don't think it's necessary to bring all 30 BIs to the casino tho or even to keep it on hand. Just sort of the amount I'm willing to give myself to give live a shot. I've moved up the stakes playing on Ignition w/30 BIs and it's an amount that I'm pretty comfortable w/ tho more is even better.

To me it seems likely I'll be able to beat live long-term if I put in the study work and figure out the sleep aspect of my game. Live plays differently than Ignition and I've been trying to learn the differences as fast as I can. I would say in general the live play I've seen recently is softer than 100NL Ignition, but it really varies between players. I've sat at some uber-soft tables in which I was clearly the best player at the table (NOT a brag, just saying it was that soft). I've also sat at tables with players better than me at live poker. That tends to hit my ego buttons and make me want to outplay them, which is a good way to burn money. Sigh.

Still on this poker journey. Heard more rumors of Potawatami in Milwaukee opening up a poker room this spring. That'd be a 1h 15min drive instead of a 1h 50min drive. Much more doable.