Hello and welcome to my latest and greatest PGC yet! I'm super excited to be back here in the PGC streets and looking forward to bringing you guys a fun sweat over the next 9 months. My aim as per usual is to hold myself accountable with this thread but also show you guys just how much money there is to be made in online poker today if you know where to look (*cough* China).

Background

I've been playing poker for 5 years now and doing so professionally for (I think) 1.5 years now. I played ~1mill hands on Stars at micros, never really made much money. Eventually I decided to grind 2/5 live full time and that was the best decision I ever made. I was able to make a very comfortable living grinding 40 hours a week in one of the nutworst poker casinos in the world. After about 8 months of doing that, I was introduced to Pokermaster, a Chinese poker app, and decided to make the switch to grinding this game full time. That was the second best decision I ever made, increasing my hourly 3-4x what it was in the casino. I've been playing on Pokermaster for the past 7 months or so.

Previous Results

I lost a previous database of ~100k hands when I reinstalled Windows and forgot to back up the db, so this is all I have currently. All Pokermaster. Terrible volume admittedly and I didn't work anywhere near enough this past 7 months with various personal things going on. Think I'm up about $50k this year so far.



That's all 8-max cash, 2/4/8 and 5/10/20 (roughly 160NL and 400NL AUD). The graph also doesn't take rake into consideration which is about another 2.5bb/100 off from that. Also the winrate is 2x what it should be because I've been playing straddle games. Been on pretty gross 25BI downswing lately, absolutely ridiculous stretch of variance.

Why Thailand?

Basically my lease in Australia expired and I decided I was paying way too much in rent living by myself in Brisbane. I really enjoyed living by myself though and have always dreamed of grinding in Thailand with a relatively low cost of living. So about 2 weeks ago I jumped on a plane and have settled in Naklua, Pattaya, Thailand.

View from my 1 bedroom condo, overlooking my private beach



The grind station



I might take some more photos of my apartment later when it's not so dirty.

Poker Goals

I have pretty high hopes for the forthcoming 9 months. Basically these goals stemmed from the idea that I want to take a AU$100k bankroll to Vegas in June and try bink a house in the WSOP. And here's how I'm intending on doing that...

[ ] - Play on average 43.75 hours of poker per week - This is basically 7 hours a day, 6 days a week, with approximately 1 session per week that is 8.75 hours in length (as a function of the way I've configured my schedule). This is going to be extremely difficult. When you're playing cash online full time, 40 hours per week is incredibly draining. It's not like live poker where sitting in a casino for 8 hours a day is a walk in the park. With the increased volume of decisions you're having to make, your brain is burning a lot of calories and it is mentally exhausting. But I intend on accomplishing this goal by practicing good lifestyle habits and implementing 'deep work' principles, which I'll talk more about later.
[ ] - Win AU$160,000 in the next 36 weeks (9 months) - I've selected this number because I'm currently playing on a full stake with 80/20 profit split, meaning if I win $160k, I'll only receive $128k. The $28k will go towards expenses and padding my liferoll/bankroll and the $100k will go towards a full WSOP schedule.
[ ] - Win at AU$105/hour - This is basically a function of the above two goals. For me to accomplish my profit goal, I need to play 43.75 hours a week with a $105 hourly.

How on earth are we going to do that?

I'll basically be multitabling midstakes cash on my PC. The plan is to play exclusively on Chinese sites. Initially I'm going to be experimenting with a number of alternative/less well known Chinese apps, like Oh Poker, Super Poker, Face Poker, Fish Poker, and some apps that I cannot translate from Chinese... I intend on finding the softest sites and grinding maybe 6 or so tables at a time, depending on what's comfortable and what's not. I can comfortably play 8 tables on Pokermaster and can see myself grinding 10 tables on PM if it came down to it. I've decided to give PM a break for a while to explore the potentially greener pastures of these alternative sites. But if I'm not happy with the action, I'll switch back to Pokermaster as my main site.

Chinese Poker Apps

Without saying too much, if anyone has any questions, queries, or wants to get their feet wet in the Chinese poker market, I want to make myself available to you to offer the information you need to do so. You can contact me via PM on here, via Skype (info@harveymeale.com) or simply email me at info@harveymeale.com and I'll be able to help you out. Due to my schedule not allowing any time for me to look at emails, PMs, Skype during the week, I'll only be responding to queries once a week on my day off. I do apologise in advance for this.

What to expect in terms of updates/this thread?

So I'm going to be updating this thread once every day after I finish playing and then I'll also do a weekly and monthly review probably on my day off. This will include results but also goals for the forthcoming week/month. Standard stuff. Each day I'll basically just record my volume played, results, any thoughts from the session, and then I'll see if I can get some sort of graph going so we can visualise progress. Each week I'll be spending 2 hours reviewing spots/running Pio sims and I'll post all the results here. Unfortunately I doubt I'll be sharing many hand histories here simply because there's no way to track hands on most of these apps. I'll try think of ways to keep updates interesting at least.

Health & Fitness

In addition to my poker goals, I have some pretty demanding goals in terms of lifting. I always make gym/diet central parts of my lifestyle because I feel they're super important in terms of life balance when grinding big time volume. My split is basically push/pull/legs/rest, rinse and repeat. I've given myself 100 minutes for gym each day, so I should be putting in some quality sessions. I'll also be eating 4 large meals a day and the goal is to stay in a caloric surplus. I'm currently about 89kg and want to lean bulk up to somewhere in the 100-105kg range (I'm 6'5"). I have no real goals for what time period I want to accomplish this. I'm not going to be counting calories/macros either. But I figure if I train really hard every day, eat a lot (but not too much), and get 9 hours sleep each night, I'll definitely make some lean muscle gains. Once I reach a size/muscle mass I'm happy with, I'll slowly start reducing calories and cut it up, but I imagine this thread will be finished before I start doing that.

What is Deep Work and how will I be modelling my life around it?

In a nutshell, high quality work produced = (time spent) x (intensity of focus). Deep work is synonymous with achieving 'flow-like states' where in which you're deeply wrapt up in what it is you're doing.

Shallow work, on the other hand, is where where we have a diminished 'intensity of focus' - basically this is time spent where we're distracted or doing unimportant work. Working in jobs where you're distracted by social media, emails, colleagues, etc, all foster a shallow work environment.

The reason I've come to Thailand alone is to enable me to focus maximally on the task at hand (see above goals). Below is a list of habits I'm going to implement so as to cultivate a deep work environment.

1. Remove notifications on my phone - I don't want to see notifications from Facebook, emails, text messages, etc. In fact, I don't want to spend a minute of my day looking at my phone. The only thing I'll use it for is as a clock. How many of you wake up in the morning and scroll through emails or Facebook on your phone? I know I'm guilty of doing it, and I probably currently spend 20 minutes each morning 'waking up' by staring at my phone.
2. Make sleep sacred, 9 hours every night - I have a horrible relationship with sleep and have had for my whole life. I usually get probably 1-4 hours a night max. The reason? Again, I'm on my phone on YouTube or texting or watching Netflix on my PC for absurd hours. Lately I've also been suffering from some degree of insomnia - I just can't turn my brain off at night. And so to cope I put a podcast on my phone and listen to this until my body eventually shuts off, which results in maybe only a couple hours of quality sleep when I'm completely exhausted. So effective from tomorrow night, my phone is banned from my bedroom. So is my laptop and my headphones. When it's time to go to bed, I will go to bed with the intention of sleeping, whether I actually fall asleep or not. My goal is to get to a point where I'm getting 9 hours of sleep each and every night. This is really important for the gym stuff - if I'm working out nearly 6 days a week, I need to give my body every opportunity to recover. A 2 hour gym session and high caloric intake is completely wasted if I'm only sleeping 3-4 hours a night. I think getting lots of sleep will also help reduce burnout on the poker front as well.
3. No social media - Similar to the first point, I'm not going to be using any social media any more. I will have certain periods on my day off each week that I can use to catch up on Facebook, emails, 2+2 PMs, etc. Again, the whole point is really to isolate myself from the outside world so that the only thing on my mind is getting my work done to the best of my ability.
4. Follow schedule religiously - Every minute of my day is planned out so that I know exactly where I need to be at all times. This is about spending time efficiently. Waking up and reading Facebook for 20 minutes each morning is a complete waste of 20 minutes. If I'm going to go to the gym for nearly 2 hours every day, play 7 hours of poker every day, and get 9 hours of sleep every night, I have to be efficient with my time. With such a schedule, I even have time to lie on my private beach for 40 minutes every day and soak up the sun!
5. When grinding, listening only to music - In the past I'd watch podcasts or YouTube videos on my second monitor, but this can be distracting and isn't a habit I want to repeat here in Thailand.
6. Grinding sessions according to timer duration - So the 7 hours of volume every day is broken into 2x3.5 hour periods and those sessions are broken into 2x105 minute sessions. I'll use a timer on my browser to sound when I've played the 105 minutes, this signals me to end the session and get up and stretch for 10 minutes. During this 10 minutes I'll stretch/foam roll my lower body to help negate the effects of sitting in a sedentary seated position all day. I'll then begin the second 105 minute session and once that's done, I have an extended break between the next two sessions to go out and get some food. One thing I will not be doing is having a clock visible to me during gameplay. I find I'm constantly checking the desktop clock to see how much longer I have in a session. With 10-15 minutes left, I'm just staring at the damn thing and intently wishing time to move quicker. This is counterproductive. I've turn the desktop clock off, removed the clock from the wall, and the only thing I'll have to help me tell time during sessions is the timer.

I'm hoping that the combination of the above few points will help foster a work environment in which I'm able to execute deep work. We'll see how it goes and no doubt tweak a few things over the course of the coming few weeks.

================================================

Anyhow, I think that's more than enough rambling for now. I'm going to run some errands tomorrow but as of Monday (24/09) I'll be starting up the full time grind. Tomorrow I'll post some weekly goals so I can start this thing off strong.

Also cheers in advance for those of you who sub and join in on the ride.

GLGL!!! 80% of your future roll towards tourney punts is one of the most psycho things I've heard in a while

GL and hope everything works out for you. Great to see people willing to take risks and mix their life up to achieve their goals, no doubt you’ll continue to crush .

GLGL

For me with sleep has helped to set alarm every morning to 6am if I slept not well I might nap till 8am or something but whole sleeping pattern always remains the same and it makes everything easier. Interesting thoughts about deep work I think it's definitely way to go,
however looking for flow and enjoyment with grind has worked for me better than pushing myself with work time or money goals but what works for one doesn't work for all.

Gl and hope to catch up in Thai sometime

Why not!

Cheers mate, appreciate it.

<3

Yeah dude I set my alarm for 12pm today, ended up getting out of bed at 3:30pm -______- I think once I start working out again and just forcing myself to sleep it'll become easier.

Cheers for the sub man <3

Awesome stuff. Whats cost of living like in Thailand?

Also, why do Chinese players play on Pokermaster if I still see Chinese players on Stars?

Subbed gl mate.

Setup looks good, dope view from your window, go crush!

wb meale, sweet setup, will be following

Cheap! My expenses are AU$430/week which is definitely on the high end and involves eating 3 meals out per day. I could also be paying 50% less in rent if I wanted to, etc.

Are you sure about that? AFAIK poker is banned in China and has been for a while. IDK Maybe I have it wrong. IK they just "banned" these apps in China but can't imagine they'd do that and allow people to play on Stars still.

Cheers bruv, good to have ya on board.

Thanks boss.

in, gl!

glglgl

You are the man with the plan.

It's great to see this level commitment and discipline.

I will be following.

GL Harvey.

Interesting. In.

Bruh that condo setup is sick.

GL overall OP.

sweeet gl

glgl

fellas <3

Appreciate it m8,

Wouldn't have it any other way. :')

Yeah she's pretty decent aye! <3

<3

Thanks lad.

================================================

So having a few dramas at the moment with my bank back in AUS... They gave me a "traveller card" which currently has about 60k baht on it. Issue is whenever I try withdraw from an ATM or make a payment on eftpos, it says my pin is invalid. Obviously it's not invalid. Read online a bunch of terrible reviews about this card and other guys having issues too.

So right now I have about 600baht to my name that I can actually use (cash in wallet). Pretty tilting because now I have to go to AIS tomorrow to put call $ on my sim card so I can call my bank and have them resolve this BS. I haven't allotted time for this BS so it's going to snap make me fall behind volume.

But I don't want that to happen so I think I'll probably have a shorter gym session tomorrow and instead of lying on the beach (weather's going to be ****e anyway), try sort this **** out.

Going to plug a small session now and then later this evening do up a full plan for the forthcoming week.

I was completely on board until the put the entire year into a WSOP schedule part But you do you and glgl!

See my reasoning is that it doesn't really make much difference to me whether I have 40k to my name or 140k to my name. Either way my expenses are the same (low), I can't reaally buy a house (anything decent in AUS anyway) because no proof of income etc. So why not just rip it all into the WSOP and hopefully increase net to something more useful? I get it though, it's kind of stupid but I don't haaate my logic.

totally in

Stay out of SOI 6
cover up
check adams apple every time.

GL with grind.

PS

On a serious note respect your environment, not a place to fallout with the locals.

def need some more pics of the apartment m8, that's a sick view

do u plan on playing on stars at all now that u can? obviously not as +ev as the apps but it's a good place to practice

Hahah have already run a muck in soi 6, LK Metro, Walking St, etc. :') Got it out me system already though so it's time to knuckle down. Always good to have you on board bud.

Will defo upload some more pics later tonight hopefully. It's a very sick location imo.

Don't reaaaaally have any plans to get back on Stars... I do miss the software a lot though so maybe will flick it in occasionally but doubtful. I wouldn't mind playing SCOOPs/WCOOPs on there or MM or AM Anniversaries just for fun. But we'll see.

Don't mind the overall sentiment, it just seems a little bit on the aggro side, for me anyway but I'm a life nit

Thoughts on what buying a house will provide towards your life at this stage?

And +1 on baaniii's suggestion. I'm playing some softer games mainly currently and when you get caught in a rut and lose sight of how soft it is it's really nice to just play a couple of zoom sessions to reset your frame of reference.

Good luck fellow Aussie, will be following