Thank you for the kind words. I've always been a ponderer so it feels good for me to contemplate poker and life sometimes. It's good to know that others are doing the same. Good (making your own) luck to you.

April to May

I finished off April with a nice week of mostly winning sessions and then won again tonight to start off the new month on a positive note. I'm somewhere around two thirds to three quarters of the way out of the big downswing I created in February/March and I'm happy about my progress there. I'm also at around 400 hours of poker for the year so far after today and am very proud of myself for that.

I'm playing very clean poker right now. The extra hours I devoted in the past month to starting hand strategy in all forms of poker has been good in many ways. By cutting some of the fat and taking away as many neutral and slightly -EV spots as I could find, my edge feels bigger, my expected variance should be lower, and I'm creating easier scenarios for myself later in hands since I'm playing better up front.

I've also been running way better than I was before, and the relief I feel about this is palpable. There's so much psychological value in being able to play a couple sessions close to one another where I start off winning and get to relax for the rest of the session, play free and easy, and not worry about whether or not I'm going to get slaughtered for a big number before the night is over. I wasn't acting like a jerk or doing anything that was bad for the game or anything, but all the losing probably did make me a little quieter and less fun to be around overall, unless everyone around me was really unto dark humor. I feel more like myself now as I haven't been getting buried at the start of every session lately.

Going forward I'm tweaking my schedule a little this month in preparation for WSOP. I plan to play fewer sessions of mixed games this month while adding a few tournaments to my schedule. I'm normally a fiend for mixed games but there will be so many options during WSOP that I don't mind cutting back for a month. I'll also probably be playing fewer hours overall this month so that I can go swing dancing with my girlfriend once a week. It's a lot of fun and we haven't been going as much lately so I'm choosing to make that a priority, especially since I'll be gone most of the summer for poker.

Overall I feel good about things right now. I'm excited for more playing, studying, writing, and enjoyment of the life I've made for myself. The busy season is near, and each day I start thinking a little bit more about Vegas and the WSOP ...

Awesome updates!

In regards to the working out before playing, there's definitely something chemical and beneficial in getting blood flow to the brain on the day of playing that it seems best to do so before a session. I'm not an expert on this topic by any means, I've just read about how it helps improve focus and stamina and have found it to be true for me. (FWIW, I base my personal experience on a hike and then playing a session. I'm not one who likes to hit the weights, always been more inclined for some outdoor cardio.)

Great to hear of your excitement for the upcoming series. Best of luck and looking forward to the winning update when it's over!

Seems like everyone here pretty much agrees that exercise before a session is best. Thanks for the love, wishing you a happy and successful WSOP as well.

Growth

I just wrapped up a short impromptu session after getting the itch to play earlier today. My poker brain seems to be working better than ever, as I'm actively adjusting my open and three bet ranges based on various factors with relative ease. I can't tell if the other regs are actually getting worse or whether I'm just getting better, but I'm definitely noticing more mistakes that they're making than I used to.

Something I'm valuing more than just about anything with regards to poker right now is the willingness to have a growth mindset. I remember Phil Galfond writing about the importance of always being willing to go deeper no matter how good you think you are in his well a long time ago. It's taken me up to this point to actually implement that. Better late than never.

Having a growth oriented mindset is clearly worth a lot of money to a poker player, and the cost of not having one can be enormous. There have been two periods in my poker career where I thought I knew everything I needed to know. The first time came after I shipped my first live MTT for six figures. I was pretty much terrible at everything except stealing blinds and continuation betting, but that was enough to win lots of money back then. My friend was paying Vanessa Selbst $250/hr for coaching and I made fun of him for needing to pay for a coach. He ended up becoming way better than me within a few months and I ended up paying Vanessa $350/hr a year later to learn the same things. That year of being arrogant and not growing as a player didn't just cost me whatever amount I would have made; it cost me an opportunity to take shots at the bigger games sooner and chance at the exponentially bigger high stakes money that was flying around. By the time I was investing in big time coaches, the games were still good, but there were a lot more people competing to stack the fish in heads up games than there were a year earlier and climbing the ladder was much tougher. I made it to mid/high stakes and did well, but the opportunity for much bigger things had been there for the taking and I blew it.

Episode two began a few years ago when I moved cities and took up limit holdem. I had played a decent amount of live 30-60 to 100-200 LHE at Bellagio, Commerce, and home games so I knew enough to get started. In the beginning of this chapter I did go over some training videos but found that the hyper-aggressive online style I was learning didn't suit the midstakes live games I was playing, so I mostly learned by feel how to play certain spots. This worked pretty well and I ran amazing. I won about 1.5 big bets per hour for the first 18 months of playing and figured that I was the best and didn't bother to think about poker too much away from the table. In the last 15 months or so I've been making about half of that with way bigger downswings. Finally about six weeks ago I buckled down and started nailing down exactly what hands I wanted to play from every position, how I wanted to construct my three betting ranges, which hands and spots I wanted to bluff in, and who I wanted to target for thin value betting and/or bluffing. In short, I moved back into a growth mindset. My game is much stronger and more balanced now, and I consider myself much tougher to play against. I can't believe I didn't do any of this stuff two years ago, but running good for a long time can do that to a person.

The bad news for me is that poker is so much tougher than it was, and it's going to keep getting a little harder each year to win the same amount of money. The good news though is that there's always time to keep growing and improving as a player, and more big opportunities will come. When they do, I'll be more prepared than I've ever been to compete hard, execute, and have all the success I always knew I could.

Do you plan on revealing your identity in the future? I'm very curious as to who you might be?

Don't hold your breath

So long as I'm playing regularly for a living I have no desire to put myself at an information disadvantage where someone knows who I am and the way I think about poker while I know nothing about them. Having said that, you're not missing out on anything as I'm not anybody you would ever know.

Take it Easy

This week I finally took a little break from it all, barely even thinking about poker with no real studying or playing. On Sunday I got sick of a reg (who I really like as a person but who I think is a weak player who's been getting by on game selection and positive variance) beating me in every pot for the 3rd or 4th session in a row and booked out a few hours early. The next day I lasted only a couple hours before leaving to find a nice meal and watch Captain America in a dark movie theater by myself. After those two sessions it was clear I needed a break. It's easy to sit at my desk on January 1st and say that I want to play x number of hours every week in 2016, and a whole different thing to actually do it. Considering my history of poor volume in live poker I'm pleasantly surprised that I made it to the second week of May before taking 4-5 days off.

Everyone has a different learning curve and workload tolerance. For me, I think that taking a few days away when I want to is both necessary and profitable. I'm pretty sure I could make more money doing just about anything else with the same effort, but I value the flexibility of time and energy more than the difference in money I could make elsewhere. When poker starts to feel like a job that I need to be at all the time, that last benefit goes out the window and the game is extremely unenjoyable for me. When I don't enjoy myself at the tables, my winrate plummets and there's really no point in my being there until I clear my head. I've met many guys along the way would were able to grind through these kinds of periods and put in a lot more volume than me. My sporadic attempts to be more like them have failed for over a decade, so now I accept who I am and go about things in my own way.

With WSOP coming up finding some time off was even more important for me. I may not be playing a lot more hours over the summer but they will certainly be more intense. I'll be playing higher stakes cash games against unknown opponents while taking shots at large prize pool tournaments which require sustained focus over long periods of time. Sacrificing some hours and EV in the weeks leading up to the time where I'm going to require my absolute best every day seems like an easy decision. Everything comes down to giving myself what I need for long term success, and this week that means movies, cooking, dancing, and spending extra time with people I love. It's all part of the equation.

Back

After taking most of last week off I found myself lacking in motivation to get back to playing yesterday and today. I knew that somewhere deep down I did want to get back to the grind, but there's something very nice and relaxing about not thinking about poker very much for a week and part of me wanted to just stay in that place for a while longer. I ended up convincing myself to get in the car and play a couple of 5 hour sessions yesterday and today and I'm glad I did. Knocking off the rust after my week away didn't take as long as it has in the past. With all the work I've done on my preflop game there's fewer gray areas where I can justify spewy plays in the moment since I've already worked them out beforehand and usually know definitely what the best play is. From there the hard work is done and hands kind of play themselves for the most part.

I ended up booking a small win yesterday and a big win today. I'm officially out of my cash game downswing that started in early February. While I still have some work to do to erase the money lost in the handful of tournaments I've played this year, I'm also taking a moment to celebrate myself for digging in and becoming a much better player once adversity came. I didn't spend excessive amounts of energy thinking about the actual number of dollars I needed to win to end the downswing, instead I just kept working on my game, showing up each day, and playing as well as I could for weeks on end (with lots of moping in between sessions). The best way out really is to just not think too much about getting out and keep your focus on making your next decision the best that you can.

This week I plan to play a few more sessions and get back to studying both no limit and limit concepts as I was before my mini vacation. I'm happy I rested. There's only so much information that a person can take in before it stops actually getting absorbed, and I think I was at that point. Now that I've had a nice time integrating it all I'm ready to start putting in the hours on and off the felt again. Feels good to be back.

On to Vegas

It's been a slow month poker wise as I planned. I ended up playing about 80 hours and winning a smallish amount which is fine. Because I didn't play or study as much this month I found that when I did play I wasn't quite as sharp as I was in the previous months. I'm happy with the way this month went though because balance is important to me. I got to spend a lot of extra time with my girlfriend and do a bunch of cool things we otherwise wouldn't have done if I were playing my normal schedule. At the end of the day I play poker so I can live life the way I want, and this is what I wanted for myself in May.

Tomorrow I leave for Vegas and I am both excited and scared about the summer. Excited to test myself at higher stakes than usual, scared because short term variance likely will have a bigger say in the outcome than anything I personally do. I'll be playing as high as 100-200 limit cash games to start. If things go really well I'll consider playing higher and if they go really poorly I'll most likely drop down and grind the lower stakes or come home early to reboot. This will be my first WSOP where my focus is on the cash games more than the tournaments. Having not spent too many hours in the Vegas mid/high stakes limit scene I'm a little worried that everyone out there will be far better than me. At the same time, I know that games don't generally run without at least one or two good spots to play against, I've plugged a ton of leaks in my game, and my ability to play well in stretches where other top players would tilt and play less than their best is a big edge for me against just about anyone regardless of skill level.

Today I'm relaxing with my girlfriend and taking care of some last minute things before leaving tomorrow. I know that I've done the work that was needed since last year's WSOP came to a close and can look at myself in the mirror and say without a doubt that I'm the best player I've ever been and that I'm substantially better than I was when I started this thread. Now it's time to play and see what happens. Best of luck to everyone heading into the desert.

Sounds promising man. The Game and life GOT, that is All the best in Vegas and looking forward to the updtes

Good luck in Vegas buddy! Will be following along from Dublin, Ireland and look forward to your updates. Run good and enjoy

Go to the Bellagio

I've been in Vegas for ten days now, and have played some form of poker on nine of them. The trip started out awful, with me losing a bunch and eventually questioning whether I should even play poker for a living on the day I played the Colossus and busted in three hours. Since that day I've been playing all cash games and am up a bit for the trip now.

On the day I arrived, I sat down to do my evening meditation. Towards the end of my 20 minute meditation I heard the phrase "Go to the Bellagio" run through my mind. I figured I might as well follow my intuition and headed down there. I put my name down for 40-80 and 80-160 LHE and 100-200 mixed, waited for about half an hour, then started feeling antsy and went to the Rio. At the Rio I played 20-40 mix for a few hours, was bored by the stakes and played pretty poorly, lost a bit, and went home to sleep. The next two days I returned to the Rio and sat in the 75-150 O8 game and ran pretty poorly (though to be fair, not playing my A game). After busting the Colossus last Saturday I was pretty down about things, and then on either Saturday night or Sunday morning during my meditation I again heard that phrase, "Go to the Bellagio" run through my mind. Since then I've played all my sessions at the Bellagio, had a nice time enjoying their fancy decor and well prepared drinks, and am feeling confident in my abilities once again.

The games have been pretty good for the most part, with the mixed games having usually 1-2 pretty good spots at a seven handed table every time. I've played pretty well, learned a ton, and am excited to continue grinding until I go home on Wednesday. Seeing the bigger games running has been very motivating and inspiring for me. I'd love to keep working hard and eventually get up to being able to play and beat 200-400 and beyond someday, hopefully maybe even by next WSOP. I'm happy I finally listened to the voice in my head and even happier that I'm enjoying the grind so much out here. I'll be sticking to cash games for the rest of this trip and probably only play the monster stack and main event if any events at all when I come back. Gotta do what I enjoy while I enjoy it.

Leaving Las Vegas

I had planned to stay until Wednesday but today I noticed I was tired and kind of hitting the wall. Vegas wears everyone down eventually, even the guy who eats healthy, meditates twice a day, and doesn't have a single drink while he's there to grind. Things have been going really well for the past week. I'm happy that I was able to log a good amount of hours in the 100-200 mixed games and now know that I can definitely hold my own against the best while winning my share from the weaker players.

My last two sessions of mixed games featured a complete lunatic who must have suffered some serious emotional trauma in his life. I'm choosing not to go too much into detail but I felt very sad, scared, and ticked off witnessing some of his shenanigans. The poker table is the only place in my life where I ever end up spending time with people who I don't enjoy being around. I know it's always my choice whether I want to stay, and for many hours over the past few days I kept choosing to stay because I love playing in that game and this guy was losing tons of money. Eventually though that choice has to be paid for, and I'm now feeling a little burned out and wary of the dark side of poker and life.

As I was driving home tonight I had the thought to change my ticket for one day earlier and I felt happy and at peace with that. The idea of playing exactly one more session feels good whereas two more days felt like something I wouldn't be able to do. Knowing that tomorrow will be my last session in this game for over a week, I feel motivated to play solid, focused poker for as long as I can. That's a great mindset to bring into a session and I like that. The other day I wrote that it's important for me to do what I enjoy while I'm enjoying it, and the other side to that is that it's also important for me to stop doing something for a while once I notice I'm not enjoying it so much. I have exactly enough fuel for one more session of giving it my all, then I'll be so happy to go home, rest with my woman, and enjoy life in the comfort of my home for a bit.

I hear ya man... that is where live and online come to balance out for me. Good on you for changing your flight!!! Loving the updates, take care!

Thanks man, been enjoying your threads for years now. Good luck to you this summer.

Poker definitely has a dark side. I'm assuming your talking about taking money from someone who is on life tilt and not feeling good about it. I once busted someone at a 2/5 table for about a 2200$ pot who then looked at me and said, thanks, now I don't know how I'm going to buy food or diapers for my son. I could tell he was serious.

Poker has a very real dark side. I always tell myself if it wasn't me taking there money it would just be someone else, but it never makes me feel better in the long run. If it weren't for degens there would be no poker pros, its really sick to think about in detail.

I may be way off base here and this is not what you were referring to at all.

On a side note I always enjoy taking money from rich cockey dick heads.

Really enjoy your post, keep it up.

Definitely was not the case with this guy, just a mean spirited person who probably should be getting checked out for some type of mental illness. He had plenty of money to burn and played every hand to prove it, but eventually I just decided the money wasn't worth spending all the extra time with him and wanted to rest and regroup.

Back to War

I'm now back in Vegas after spending a week about a week at home resting. I did play one short session back home and won a little bit but most of my time was spent sleeping, eating, and hanging out with my woman. While I was officially off duty, my mind was never too far from the action.

Now that I'm back in Vegas I feel good about my plan of attack. Starting tomorrow I plan to be at the Bellagio by 11am each day I'm playing so that I can get on the lists early and not get locked out of the lower stakes mixed game. I don't feel like I'm quite ready for 200-400 yet and there's only ever one table of the 80-160/100-200 mixed games. Arriving around 3pm like I had been is risky, and a few times I never made it into the game before leaving the casino. I normally go to bed around 2 or 3 in the morning and I've never been good at waking up early so this won't be easy at first. However, if the difference between me getting to play 8 hours of the game I want and having to play lower stakes at games I don't really want to play is solely a matter of waking up earlier, that's an edge I'm willing to create for myself while other regs wake up later and get locked out of the game.

A bunch of people I know will be around Vegas for the next few weeks so there will be plenty of opportunities to hang out and enjoy good food with them, but my priorities are clear. I want to play a lot of high quality hours throughout the rest of the summer in the mixed cash games and see what develops. While tournaments are a possibility as well, I'm starting to see them in a more negative light as time goes on. They're amazing when I win them, but almost always end with me being disappointed and having invested a large chunk of time at a lower hourly rate than I would have had in cash games, and they also require time for me to rest and recover after I bust. This results in less volume at a lower winrate with ridiculously higher levels of variance and stress. As someone who loves variety in all aspects of life I know I'll come back to them eventually, but right now the idea of grinding my way into the high stakes cash games seems more fun and reasonable, so that's my plan for now.

I wrote this back in the midst of my downswing, and in looking at my spreadsheets saw that it took right around 180 hours of play to end the downswing/breakeven stretch. I didn't spend a ton of time and energy fixating on when the downswing would end, just kind of noticed it was over one day during my last stay here in Vegas. Just goes to show the power of putting your head down and showing up to do your best each day while the benefits add up slowly over time.

Giving Action

Today went well. I didn't play anywhere near my best but the cards were in my favor so I ended up booking a medium sized win. I was able to follow through with my plan of waking up on the early side and being there before the game I wanted to play got filled and am happy about that. There was definitely some rust from not having played much in the past ten days. I opened too light in a few spots, chased some draws I should have folded, and steamed a little at one point after taking a couple big hits in consecutive Stud 8 hands. Each time I play I learn and remember lots of things though, so tomorrow I plan to be much better than I was today.

A couple of spots popped up regarding giving action that I wanted to write about. My first game was an 80-160 mixed game consisting of five triple draw games and Omaha 8. The player to my left was a high stakes PLO player who only had experience with 2-7 and was completely new to all the other draw games. He was putting in massive amounts of action while drawing dead quite often and obviously was very good for the game. After a few hours he was starting to lose interest as the game was fairly nitty besides him and he started eyeing a big PLO game nearby. One of the players offered to add PLO to the mix to make things a little better for the inexperienced player, but a nitty reg instantly said no to that. I was completely baffled that this guy wouldn't even consider this, given that the bad player was the only bad player at the table, and he was losing a ton.

The bad player left and the mixed game broke pretty quickly soon after. I played a guy heads up for about half an hour but nobody came so we converted the game to 80-160 LHE, then I got called for 100-200 OE so I took a seat there. I ran awful for the first couple hours, then caught a big heater when the game was four handed. At this point the fourth player racked up and it was just me and two very good pros who were clearly more experienced and better than me, especially shorthanded. Since I was up a bunch and they were both stuck I told them that I would play to the end of the down, about twenty more minutes. With a couple minutes left in the down I asked the dealer to high card until an A, 2, or 3 came out to see how many more hands I would play rather than simply play my button and leave. I ended up losing a couple thousand to the two other guys in three handed play before leaving at the designated time.

In live poker I think it's important to treat people the way I want to be treated. Even though I'm pretty bad at PLO and have zero clue about PLO8 I was willing to play them in the mix to make the bad player feel more comfortable while giving him a reason to keep playing with us. I was willing to give some action to the two guys left in the OE game because I was up a bunch and thought it would be fair to give them a shot at winning some back (while also practicing some short handed play). While the second scenario could be argued to be a little too generous on my part, I think the first is cut and dried. Pros need to remember that the bad players are the only reason why they're earning money and be willing to take slightly uncomfortable risks in order to maximize earnings in the long run. Action players want to feel like you're giving them a fair gamble. Of course we are all in this for ourselves, but the difference lies in how the action players are perceiving the atmosphere we are creating for them. Once it becomes apparent to them that you're only in it for yourself they'll often leave, just like today.

That ends the rant for today. I'm feeling tired and content right now. The rest of the night involves me taking care of myself by meditating, working out, cooking food for tomorrow, catching up with my girlfriend, then hopefully reading for a bit before having a nice deep rest. Another session awaits.

End of June

Today I played my last session of the month, and after booking a medium sized win, wrapped up what was my most profitable month so far this year. I played around 110 hours in cash games, with around 75% of it at 80-160 and 100-200 mixed games. I think I played well for the most part, and I know I ran very well, which is a great formula for financial success. One month of running hot in higher stakes games was enough to make up for nightmare that was February/March and my hourly for 2016 is now right around where I hoped it would be when this year started.

Going into the WSOP my plan was to mix in a few tournaments while mostly playing cash. After the Colossus, each time an event I had planned to play came up I realized I would rather just play cash. I skipped the Millionaire Maker, skipped the Monster Stack, and everything else as well. I chose volume and steadiness over unlikely dreams and it worked out better than I could have hoped. Someday I'll get the itch to start playing tournaments again but this month was all about the grind.

Despite having my biggest month of the year (and one of my best months ever), I don't think I'll be playing the main event. I'm pretty tired of Vegas at this point and can see how the energy of the city and being at the tables so much is starting to affect me. While I understand that the main event is special and only comes once a year, something I've learned over time is that there's nothing worse for me than playing in a poker tournament unless that's the thing I most want to be doing in that moment. In a few days I'll go home and feel pretty good about how this summer went. I've got plenty of gas in the tank to go back to my usual stakes and games, and I think I'm a better player than I was before. I've given myself many hours in bigger games, handled the swings well, and made the adjustments I've needed to make when I noticed things were a little off. All in all a good summer for me and I look forward to what's next.

Congrats on the good summer. I enjoy the writing.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.

Seems like it's hard to do Vegas well. Nice to hear that you have the discipline and self-awareness to know your limits and what kind of grind you'll most enjoy. Congrats on a great month!