Hi Guys,

Here is my 2014 PGC thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...014-a-1431069/

If you don't know me, I am a US resident playing 2/4 - 5/10 NLHE. I also help manage and coach the cash game side of the ImaWhale Staking Group along with 2p2er "skraper".

My grind improved a lot in 2014, and this year I'm looking to continue on with the processes that helped me grow, and looking to focus more on my work ethic and volume.

My primary goal for 2015 is to play 1000 hours at the tables. Given the time I spend coaching and managing the stable, this is an aggressive but attainable goal. I have a variety of other goals, and I will discuss them along the way, but this is my overarching annual goal that will shape my grinding process this year.

I don't tend to post daily graphs or HHs or discuss much poker strategy here. I do tend to use this as a vehicle to more fully explore various components of my mental game and improve my overall grinding process. If that is of interest to you, there may be some content in my 2014 thread you'd like.

Subscribe and 5-star me if you like the thread. Best wishes to everyone in 2015!

oooh 1st sub. Love your approach to and the game and gl in 2015!

Good luck Dan.

Good luck Dan, going to be a great year.

-Shane

Good luck and look forward to watching your progress.

Sub again this year. Enjoyed last years. Best of variance to you!

Thread last year was great! Subbed.

Gl man! Subbed again!

Gl dan!!

Congrats on a great 2014, and great getting to work with you! Looking forward to a great year following along and learning from your journey!

In! Gl this year Dan

Gl!

Gl sir. Enjoyed the last one.

Subd

Sounds interesting. GL and subbed.

Gl, loved lurking your other thread

Thanks man! Keep on crushing!

Thanks!

No doubt, looking forward to a banner year for both myself and the stable.

Thanks, likewise!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing you break into the midstakes this year!

Thanks!

Thanks! Glad we have you on board and primed up for 2015.

Thanks, you too!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks! Feel free to post as well

grudgingly subbed...

Subbed. GL Dan!

Got off to a good start yesterday. I played 5 total hours and felt like I was on top of my game. I happened to run poorly, which is never fun especially when getting back into the swing of things, but I was in a good place mentally to handle it well.

Focusing on the overall goal of 1000 hours is already helping my mindset a bit. I used to play WoW back in the day (nerd alert!), and I feel like I'm starting some epic rep grind or something along those lines. I need to put in 1000 quality hours, and if I do that everything else will take care of itself.

5/1000 hours
0.5% complete

lol thanks

Thanks!

Good Luck and Happy New Year!

Thanks! And congrats to you on what is perhaps life's biggest accomplishment/joy in 2014!

I think I've lost every session so far this year. I feel good about my play and my processes, and I think I'm making the best of the situations I'm getting on the whole. I'm sure there have been some misplays, but I feel good about the quality of my grind right now. I'm sure the results will come sooner or later. Talking the rest of the night off to regroup and I'll be back at it again tomorrow.

12/1000 hours
1.2% complete

Another losing session. I feel frustrated, since I'm trying hard and not getting the results I want. I need to shift my mindset to feeling good about doing the right things instead of feeling bad about the short term results. I almost quit my session early a couple times today, but decided to try to hang in there and inchworm my C-game and was able to settle down and play solid so I feel good about that. I took some time to gather my thoughts and look over some hands, and I know that if I continue with that process over time it will help me increase my expected hourly earn, so I can feel good about that.

I looked over some hands I had marked for review, and I in a couple spots I can see that I hero folded a hand that was a bit too high in my range. I think some of that is subconsciously wanting to shield myself from further downswinging, and trying to avoid tilty loose calldowns. When I could see that I should have called in a couple spots, I had another strong emotional reaction despite being away from the tables - since now I have evidence in front of me that despite trying my best, I'm still misplaying some hands in the face of negative variance, and again that feels like another failure.

However, I need to inject logic and remember that misplaying hands for a wide variety of reasons is inevitable. Inevitably I won't perform my best due to reacting to negative variance, due to lack of focus or distraction, due to reacting to positive variance, due to lack of sleep, etc. When this happens, it's a chance to improve how I deal with the situation, both the short term aftermath and preventing in in the future.

Now I have a short term technical focus of being careful not to hero fold the top of my range in spots where I might be prone to subconsciously overfolding to avoid further downswinging, especially when I am high in my range and could be perceived as slow playing and they have some reasonable bluffing hands.

On the mental side I will focus on improving my ability to keep making solid decisions and sticking with healthy grinding processes while experiencing negative results.

Creating these learning focuses helps me improve, and is allowing me to benefit in what ways are possible from the tough start.

I'm going to avoid playing tonight, do study group tomorrow, and grind again tomorrow night. I'm going to stick to a healthy daily routine and not try to force extra volume or shy away from volume as a result of variance. I'm going to feel good about the positive things I'm doing in the face of a tough run, and embrace the fact that mistakes are OK and chances to grow/improve - as long as I actually do follow through and examine the issue.

I've put in mostly high quality hours this month, and the overall frequency of my C-game has been fairly low and the quality of my C-game has been reasonable, but I just need to continue to improve on both of those things. To improve the frequency of my C-game, I need to be more self aware of bad thoughts and stay on top of correcting them during session before they build up to prevent it from happening in the first place, and also I need to slow down and pause and inject strong logic and break if needed when I get frustrated to make sure I get back on track more quickly. To improve the quality of my C-game, I will keep in mind my learning focuses when I do feel I'm not in the zone, and make sure I stick to healthy schedules and processes.

For those that don't read my PGC regularly, this may sound like quite a bit of rambling on about a few days of grinding and generally over the top in some ways, but I think being self aware and digging into the root of things and putting effort into collecting my thoughts and mental state helps me improve, and writing things out in this PGC is the process I use to do that. Just even in the time I've been writing this post I can feel myself feeling better and more at peace with the situation, since I feel like I'm taking some sort of action to try to address things and giving myself some direction to improve and move forward.

15/1000 Hours
1.5% complete