Got any good tips/resources on what you're eating? Easily my biggest leak although I've made massive improvements. Thank god I always loved playing sports/being active because I'm pretty sure if I didn't I'd prob weigh a lot instead of just needing to lose 10-15 pounds.

In terms of the end of your post about the convo with your parents, do you have a vision for how you see the next few years going? Idk what tax situation in canada is or what your expenses look like. Do you think you can save up enough money after taxes/expenses before online poker gets any worse that you are at least decently on the road to being financially secure for life? Always important to have at least some idea of what your back up plan is imo.

Yeah i think that's a reasonable strategy. I think I just need to make more of an effort to actually get myself out there. It's tough when you're grinding such hours. Regardless of online or IRL I need to put in reps because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take I've been getting together with a few girls but my dating life isn't what I want it to be atm, or anywhere close.

Yeah! The diet I've adopted is from Tim Ferriss' book called "The 4 Hour Body". Without getting in too deep about it (you can google more for the science aspects and more info etc).

1. 1 day of the week you can eat whatever you want with 0 exceptions. Tim recommends going nuts because it ensures your metabolism/thyroid keeps working at an efficient rate (they slow down a lot if your caloric intake drops a bunch). It also increases adherence to the diet for a few reasons, which is the number 1 correlation of successful people on diets...that they can stick with whatever they do. For example Tim says keto is great if 100% followed but many people screw it up rather quickly and then it does more harm than good. This diet is easy to follow and reduces cravings by lowering blood sugar/insulin levels (other science BS you will have to google if interested).

2. Ingest 30g of protein within 30m of waking up. Reduces cravings throughout day and other science reasons for it.

3. No white carbohydrates. Apparently some are allowed 2 hours after a workout but for the sake of my prop bet and craving reduction reasons I eliminated them 6 days of the week.

4. Not allowed to drink calories. 1 glass of dry red wine and diet drinks are allowed in moderation.

5. No dairy. cottage cheese is accepted.

6. Must eat reasonable amount of legumes or else it will feel like you're starving all the time due to caloric drop off.

Like I said it's helped me reduce cravings a tonne and I've noticed really nice results even after only 5 weeks (with gym also). Just by osmosis I've been eating way better 6 days a week because this eliminates a bunch of junk by nature.

On a side note I've made sure my cupboards and fridge are stocked with lots of healthy food and snacks at all times and rid them of anything not diet conducive. I've found a lot of foods that satisfy cravings but don't have the unhealthy dent that eating trash does.

As far as resources Tim's book is quite interesting but a little bit dry. Can crush the audio book in a few hours. I'd highly recommend checking out the documentary "the magic pill" on netflix. A lot of those food documentaries are a bit hoaxy/falsified and extremely biased but this one taught me a lot+gave me some realisations. (Although yeah it was a bit biased etc too lol).

Would also recommend the Joe Rogan podcast episodes that feature doctor Rhonda Patrick among other episodes. She is an expert on intermittent fasting/nutrition/brain psychology i belive.


BTW disclaimer: I'm no expert and far from being a fitness guru with a 6 pack glgl


This is how I want to envision my future:
-Grind whatever means necessary to build a nest egg to retire from poker with and move into other stuff and more so retire from poker/drastically reduce my volume. Some possibilities are real estate or maybe start a business/company. Stlil working on that plan. I'll write up a more detailed plan one of these ninghts and explain the whole game plan.


Thanks !

Appreciate the info!

In terms of the life plan stuff, those seem like things that you could put time into now on the side of poker to give yourself an easier transition when the time comes.

im expecting some picz of binkz when i wake up

yeah exactly. I've been on and off looking into stuff and met with my mentor a few times to chat about them. for the first time in maybe 1-2 years I'm super motivated with poker so that's getting the lion's share atm.

haha, i binked lots of EV but no tourney. made a bunch of deeps and ran a 22$ ticket into 530 sat to the 5k on party but AA got skill gamed by A7ss Feeling good though.

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Just got off my 8th or 9th straight day of grinding yesterday night and I was exhausted. Really wanted to grind again today but had to listen to my body and mind that they needed a day off. Woke up feeling a bit miserable at like 11 AM and hit the snooze button until like 12:30 PM feeling like an absolute degenerate struggling to get out of bed when the rest of the world is half way through their day.

Eventually gathered myself to go take a cold shower then wake up and get out for a walk. The weather has been quite trash here lately as it usually is in these months. You just kinda get used to seeing grey skies and snow etc but I stepped out today at like 2 PM and it was a beautiful sunny day. Got in a really good walk and meditation session by the river and felt like a million bucks afterwards.

Logged maybe an hour long grind on this asian cash site I've been grinding lately. I wish I could show you guys some of these HHs lmao. Gonna try to put in some more time there and study a bit and possibly move up stakes where hourly can be a lot higher. Basically just trying out different avenues to find where it's possible (if anywhere?) to make ~5-6k/month on average.

Anyways, a pretty abysmal day turned out to be rather pleasant. Getting dinner and then heading to my friend's place to watch the Leafs game tonight. You can expect to see this reg back in the mix tomorrow

GLGL

sup fam? Just about to head out to local home game so I thought I'd come in for a quick post to sort of 1) kill some time before I head there 2) talk about some random things to clear my head and get in the right head space before I play tonight.

I have to admit my mindset has been really good lately...yet struggling a lot at the same time (if that's possible). There's a lot of factors building up that are resulting in a large amount of stress. A lot of these factors sort of play off of each other and are causing things to spiral downwards. I'll quickly highlight a few of the things placing the most stress on me:

1. Liquid bankroll is dwindling. Definitely the biggest burden for me right now. The downswing I'm in has been absurd and even with selling big pieces and game selecting better it's been really difficult to get things back to where I feel comfortable. I have >6 figures in hard assets but I can't pull out any of that money unless I outright sell...which I might quit poker and get a job before it came to that.

2. Approximately 2k USD in bills come out of my account on the first of every month. It seems like every time I start to build my liquidity up again it gets kicked right down.

3. Pressures from family and society to go out and work a normal job or career. It sucks to say but my family is only supportive of poker when money is rolling in. When things are going bad they've always said "welp, go get a job".

4. Poker is a dying game and there is very little doubt about that. I question all the time why am I putting in so much of my resources (especially time) into an industry that's dying. Whether because of changes in the poker climate or it's inhabitants, the game gets tougher every day. Given my current financial state getting backed would make a lot of sense...but my heart isn't in poker in the long run (which really wouldn't be fair to a backer). To be quite honest I don't know if I have it in me anymore to grind in and out of makeup anymore.

5. Overall ambiguity about what to do with myself? Often I find myself just staring into this abyss only to find it staring right back.

6. Just running like actual aids for such a long period of time. It's very tough to stay strong when you get your ass handed to you every single session.

This whole post probably seems like a big ol' whine, right? Here's the action plan I've thought of for the above points

1. Sell bigger pieces of myself at least until I scratch together a more comfortable BR. Every time I get some $ saved up move it to other sites. Keep grinding these live underground games and eventually move into higher stakes ones. The EV is through the rough in these games.

2. Not much I can do about this it's just part of life. My solution from part 1 will definitely help this as well. I'm going to call my internet provider and ask them if they could reduce my bill a bit or at least find out why it's been so fkn expensive lately. I barely watch TV other than sports which I can just stream anyways so maybe cancel TV package.

3. Not much I can do about this either. I put myself through uni and a great deal of that was because of a sense of "obligation". A lot of the things I've done in life up to this point were strongly influenced by my parents and schooling. A great depression ensued while I was in University and things got pretty ****ing grim. I won't blame anyone for that except myself. I've taken on the mindset that I am the CEO of my own life...I dictate what I do and how I feel. Sometimes you just need to take the "leap of faith" in life and right now I'm doing what I want to be doing. If people don't want to support it that is their choice.

4. I won't ever get backed for tournaments again unless I got a pretty sweet deal with a few clauses that I pick. Poker is dying but I think I can have another year or two and reallllly set myself up well for the future. I'm going to do what I can control to make the most EV: game select better, other sites, live games, better IRL BRM.

5. Stop whining and grimacing and more doing/experimenting. Every time I have to post in here is time that could be spent at the gym, in the lab, on the grind, working on relationships. Every time I watch Netflix, play Xbox, sleep, watch sports, is time that could be spent working on myself.

6. Man up and deal with it. I need to get back into meditation and focus on the things I can control. No more whining to my investors or posting them bad beats. What's happened in this downswing is never going to change, but what happens tomorrow can.

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Anyways, I wanted to come in here to cement this stuff into my head. Getting back to my peak is going to take a lot of grinding, lab work, and hard work. I've got the gym and nutrition stuff under control (for once in my life) and now I need to get poker back under control. When I build the liquid BR up again it will open some doors that I think I can branch out of poker from.

There's the game plan guys. As I said before I'm responsible for my mindset and my choices. Thanks for listening or any advice you could provide.

Mike

Saturday Night: I am responsible and avoid going out for drinks with friends. Continue my plan with high EV low variance grinding @ local home game. Lose 1.5 buy ins.

Sunday Morning, 9 AM: Alarm goes off and I briskly get myself to the gym for a workout. When I'm grinding through morning cardio and weights I tell myself "this Sunday will be better...at least I will try my best".

11 AM: Sit down and start registering with a nice 1$ coffee from McDonalds. Stacks and buy ins flaring everywhere, a typical Sunday during peak hours. Manage a final 3 table appearance in hot 33, no dice there.

5 PM: Broken and withered yet find myself final 20 of the double deuce. Can't hold in a few all ins and can't win flips in general. RIP dream. RIP session.

6:30 PM: I go for a drive to clear my head and pick up a diet approved burrito bowl. (By the way this is an amazing thing if you're trying to lose weight and has been a go-to substitute for me when having cravings or short on time/energy to make food...I basically don't get any sauces, rice, carbs and get vegetables, guacamole, lettuce base, extra beans, extra chicken, hot sauce.

7 PM: I grinded really hard today and in the last few weeks. Feeling good about my mindset today...why not fire up another session?

1 AM: Stacks flew everywhere and we managed to be 3/9 in the Sunday Wrap up. Aggro tard brazillian "sydens" opens UTG off approx. 40BB stack. I'm very happy to finally make a nice final table and feel like I've put in a heap of work to my mindset/game...here's a chance to ship 5k and take a dent out of my downswing. Anyways, back to the hand: I look down at 2 cowboys, "oh baby, how do I get the money in?" Should I trap? nahh, let's 3 bet him because we're in LP and will have a decent amount of bluffs here. We also have stations behind that will likely overcall a tonne and we don't want to go multi ways. I decide to go for the 3 bet. As anticipated, the villain time banks a little bit and 4 bets me...now I anticipate whether calling or jamming is best. My inkling was that this guy was light a high % of the time but trapping felt like I could miss value from AK/QQ and didn't want his bluffs to realize equity on FT...I jam.

We fade the snap call, woohoo guys we dodged aces! As he goes into the time bank I'm eagerly anticipating to see if he will call or not as at this point getting called by QQ or something is a dream... (even though the way things have went we'll prob lose anyways.)

His 30 second time bank is now down to about 20 seconds and "call" highlights the players name. "YES we got em!" I look over at his cards and see the ole' rockets, and then glance over to the flop to see third rocket in the window. Yup, just got slow rolled on final table by aces. It doesn't matter how bad you've been running or how you've never slow rolled somebody in a relevant pot, or any of the random **** you're going through in life...some people are just fkn ruthless.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not actually that upset about getting slow rolled I'm more sad about giving everything I have to this game and getting ****ed over and over. Running infinite BBs below EV for the whole year over a massive sample doesn't seem possible. Anyways sydens is a **** reg and hopefully this 5k helps him feel better about himself as does his slow roll. I got bigger fish to fry.

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Alright, I promised myself I'd stop coming in here for whines. I partially posted the above because it was funny and partially to reaffirm to myself that I've been putting in the work and improving/perfecting my process. Time to put in a post that isn't really about poker or the poker life for once. Hopefully y'all can enjoy!

Since I was a little kid until the point I was about 23 or 24 I had instances of crippling social anxiety. On almost every sports team I was on I was the quietest kid and would often go through great lengths to avoid any type of social pressures. In terms of school and high school I was a lot more outgoing as I was acclimated well with a really good core group of friends. In grade 7 or 8 I came out of my shell a lot and started gaining a lot of confidence. I was playing AAA hockey, starting to get jacked, and getting some attention from girls. High school life was really good to me and I have so many fond memories from that time period.

As I've talked about before, I shipped myself out to butt fk nowhere in Quebec, far away from my friends and family. I got blackout drunk probably 95% of the nights in my first few weeks at school. I'll never know why but just the massive levels of change and stress took a toll on me. Drinking copious amounts of Sambuca, beer, Jager, and "Jesus Juice" helped me socialize better with people and to drown out the inner conscious telling me how much I hated it there.

After putting on probably 30-50 lbs. in my first semester I remember my dad picking me up to go home for winter break (barely recognized me). He was telling me "just stick with school it will be over before you know it" "university is the best time of people's lives why aren't you enjoying it?" Society and the part of me who always wanted to do the right thing, forced myself through school.

Second semester I requested my own dorm room because sharing with this drunken hooligan 4 class failing guy was clearly a bad influence. Not to mention having to share a jail cell (that doesn't have a private bathroom) with even my best friend for 6 months I'd begin to hate him. After moving all my **** into this new room I remember lying in my bed saying "finally, I can jerk off in peace". This is when things got anti-social af. I'd go to class, play poker, go to the dining hall, watch Netflix, kill time.

Embarassingly enough, I would go out of my way to avoid seeing certain people. I'd dodge eye contact, pretend to look at my phone, or even just take an obscure path home that I knew they wouldn't. It's crazy to think about it now how pent up I was in my own head. It's amazing the stupid stories our minds will tell us so that we avoid any type of possible pain. The only way to avoid rejection 100% of the time is to just avoid the chances of it happening...and that was my strategy. Walk around un-noticed.

There was times through school where my happiness went up a little bit and I did still have some friends there whom I lived with in 2nd/3rd year. A few times they'd have parties or whatever and I vividly remember just "fading" them as much as I could. I'd stay in my room for hours until they left. I don't like to admit this and it's embarassing af: one time I even pissed in a bottle because I didn't want to leave my room and have to talk to the people out there.

Poker became almost like an alternate reality for me. Something I could detach from all the BS and negative thoughts. Just crank up some music and load up 15 tables. No way my brain could think about anything other than poker with that type of stimuli. Poker was an escape mechanism of some sorts. The unhealthier my habits got, the better I became at poker. Vicious cycle ensues...

I'm not really sure how but at one point I was in a deep rut and I stumbled upon the "self-help" community which further led into the "dating-help" community. I buried myself in these videos for hours because I learned people deal with similar **** to me. My problems are not unique to me. I can't even count how many paradigm shifts I had and how much my mindset changed. I read this book called "The Solution to Social Anxiety"...and that changed everything.

When you pay attention to it you really notice that inner voice and the stupid things it's telling you. "you aren't good enough to talk to her" "people will laugh at you in the gym" "you can't do this calculus work"...your mind will tell you anything under the sun to keep you in your comfort zone. Nothing great was ever achieved from the comfort zone.

I'm actually too tired and oi to finish this post...part 2 will be at a later date. GN

Wow, I need to stop smoking weed judging by that last post haha. I spoke with a few friends and gathered their insights regarding what my plan of action should be going forward and here's what I've come up with, starting tomorrow:

1. Play wayyyyy less on PS. Tomorrow I'm going to try only playing Mini ST, 22 ST, 215 late ST.
2. Work on building rolls on other sites.
3. Sell responsible pieces of myself until I rebuild.
4. Once rebuilt to comfortable level grind more live games/hit live stops etc
5. Take one last honest shot at this game and if doesn't work out I'll have 0 regrets.

I'll try to post some non-poker related stuff in here in the near future but for right now poker has been consuming 90% of my thoughts.

Prop Bet Notes: I'm approximately 75% done this bet and have been getting lots of compliments about losing weight etc. I'm an idiot for not taking objective measurements at the start but for some reason I didn't want to look at a scale etc. because I knew I would get tilted at myself lol. I wish I could say yeah, I'm down x amount of lbs. but w/e. I compared myself now to some pics of myself @ the PCA in January and "before" pic I took at the start of the year and def have slimmed down from that.

I can't believe I stuck to my guidelines 100% and am actually 99% sure I'm going to ship the prop bet. That being said, I told myself at the start of the bet that if I won I was going to tell you guys to go take your losing 50 bucks and buy yourselves/someone you care about something nice for Christmas...if you don't want to do that ship it off to a charity. (Bet ain't over yet though and still a bit of time for error )

Upon the beginning of 2019 I'll have some sort of new regime that will be modified in a few ways for a longer term self-challenge.

Thanks for reading and GL!

When I read this thread,
me: I'd kill to be in your spot.
Reading second to last post tells me you could use a lengthy break.

prob going to ship during winter series

GL!

haha yeah I was actually talking about that with a friend today who is wayyy more successful than me in poker etc and he was telling me how he's had a really bad year and it gets depressing at times and then im thinking like "damnn this guy has been 10x as successful as me and still feels like the world is ending sometimes too during a downswing but hes better off than more than 99% of people his age. it's easy to forget sometimes how thankful we should be to play a game for a living/had the success we've had.

If I was like some type of performance coach I'd be suggesting to take a break to myself as well. However, my whole poker career I've always had my best results in the times of the most adversity. I will say a few weeks ago I was definitely in a reallllly bad place (in terms of poker mindset) and should not have been playing. I've been digging in the lab everyday and 100% found a few leaks in my game+came up with a few strategy adjustments that are going to be very good (I think). Really motivated right now and that' s helped my mindset 10 fold.

Hopefully take down the winter series main if i find a way in there ty for the post m8

Had some creative juices flowing so I'll come in here for a quick post as I devour this Big Mac for my cheat meal.

Instead of doing some meditation last night I hit the weed and laid down for an unguided thought session about poker. It might sound corny but I just laid in the dark on my bed and let various thoughts come to my mind about anything poker related.

1) You know that humans vs. AI poker challenge that Doug Polk and his gang competed in? Well, the first year the humans won handily. However, the second year they faced a much improved "bot" and I believe they struggled massively and ultimately lost. Not sure if they lost by enough margin/standard deviations that would consider with certainty that the bot had an edge.

So I was thinking about the stuff the bot must have been doing and I remembered reading something that it played pretty whack. It would use different open sizings on the button with different parts of it's range, it would open jam certain streets after not being the aggressor, it would like 10x pot jam random spots.

What can we infer from this? So many elite regs in the game have devised strategies that are so called "unexploitable" or "GTO"...Let me say that I'm not here for another GTO vs. exploitative debate...god forbid anybody has to read another one of those! Poker is a game of logic and deduction and making assumptions based on incomplete information. More often than not we're left making highly educated estimates and we know approximately how to respond with various parts of our range.

I'm not saying this is optimal, but throwing in some stuff into your game that is not pio-approved or unstandard could actually be very good. There's so many spots I encounter every session where my decisions are biased towards one option because I have just seen the population being heavily biased towards one option for so many years. For example spots where they check raise flop, over bet turn, over bet jam river on certain board textures they literally ALWAYS "have it". I don't care how good my bluff catcher is or how far up in my range I am...I just fold. Once in a blue moon I make a curiosity call and get shown the D every single time. I think many regs can agree they feel similarly in some spots.

My goal: Work to find some of these spots where regs deviate highly towards one option and start finding exploits for it.

Every reg c-bets ~33% on A22 flops, opens somewhere between 2-3x, plays a weak/passive strategy from the SB with an unbalanced limp/raising range etc. There's so many things everyone does the same of...it might not be theoretically sound but doing stuff different once in a while could possibly be optimal. There's so many levels of strategy and there is a "GTO" for every single level.

*IDK I might actually be completely wrong about all of the above but it was just a random "high" thought.

2) This is obvious but: A 567r board is much different than a 56hh7c board, is much different than a 267r board, or an A26 board, and these are all different UTG vs BB, UTG vs BTN, at 20bbs eff., @ 100bbs eff, @200bbs eff, BTN vs. BB etc.

For example a lot of the population seems to go HAM with check raises on 567 boards vs. UTG like 60+BBs deep, their range is a little bit more equity driven 30bbs deep, and they usually just jam 18bbs deep. This will seem really stupid but it's a really good thought exercise to think about different board textures vs. different positions vs. different stack sizes and vs. different sizings. How and why should our strategies differ in all of these spots? Seems stupid but a really good thought exercise imo.

3) GTO has had way too much influence on my play. My intuition and instincts won me a lot of $ in my career. If I thought someone was 3 bet bluffing me I would 4 bet bluff them whether I had 53 suited or JTo. I didn't care about having blockers or being balanced. There was a spot where I opened 67ss from co deep in a tourney and was like 90% sure they guy 3 betting me on the button was wayyyyyy over doing it. I wanted to 4 bet but told myself nahh this is a bad hand to 4 bet @ this stack depth. I ended up calling and lost a big pot vs. J9o. I think studying lots of strategy helped my game theoretically but it also turned me into a massive nit in a sense and deteriorated some of that "organic feeling". Going forward I want to focus much more on exploitation and not being concerned whether how good or bad things are theoretically. Again, I might be crazy.

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Had a bunch of deep runs this week and going to be grinding big volume again this weekend. Feeling a million times better on the tables right now and those "raw poker feelings" are coming back to me. I've made some adjustments with my schedule and how big of a piece I sell. This has lowered stress 10 fold and in turn helped my mindset.

In the mean time, it's time to hit "send" on this post and start cleaning my place. One of my best friends got kinda like a "free weekend" from his GF and he's coming to visit. Women flock to this guy like bees on honey so he's a lot of fun to go out drinking with. Should be fun tonight followed by a big grind tomorrow...

Thanks for reading y'all. Vibes were getting pretty negative in here which I didn't like. Poker's been going poorly but other things have went very well. There's more to life than poker and it's tough for my happiness to not be overly influenced by poker. Hope this post brings some positive vibes...LFG

Sup fam? Hope you guys are well.

Things on my end have been going a LOT better last ~week or two. I've strung together a bunch of winning sessions (albeit small), made a bunch of nice FTs, and just building a lot more stacks. The last few months in poker I was in a dark, dark place. I haven't been in that bad of a place in probably my whole career. In as non-morbid of a way as possible, everyday felt like I was a cow trapped in a slaughterhouse just waiting for that random Ace from space on the river, or whatever else kind of RNG misfortune you could imagine. Everything felt pretty hopeless and I was in an extremely pessimistic state of mind.

Diamonds are made from pressure though right? (If that's even the saying?) I'm happy to say I had some BIG realizations about poker theory, overall strategy, exploits, and most importantly, mindset. I broke down my whole schedule and game to pieces and restructured them both. Really feels like I'm in a good spot gearing up to make 2019 my best year ever. I haven't been this obsessive about poker in a long time.

If you read this thread regularly you probably think I'm some bi-polar wreck who changes his mind about poker at the drop of every all in. Probably is short-term variance and just running a little bit better but running deep everywhere and building heaping stacks last few sessions with the new adjustments is feeling really good...hopefully that's a sign of improvement and not just running better.

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So as I've mentioned I've been getting back into the dating streets. Went on a few dates recently and scheduled one for last night with a girl that I already bailed on once. I really wasn't feeling the date and then like 30 minutes beforehand had a text typed out basically saying I was sorry about having to bail again...followed by some random excuse.

Anyways, I gave my head a shake before sending it and told myself "get the fk out and meet that girl idiot, you need to improve that area of your life too." I really wasn't looking forward to the date but more or less forced myself to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. To my surprise, the date actually went really well and her pictures were actually worse than her IRL appearance (big rarity). I'd love to give every little detail like meale's thread, but I'm not anonymous On the down side, let's just say my testosterone levels still haven't bounced back and I need to go see a doctor tomorrow if possible. After 2 almost 2 months of fixing my diet and exercise regime I thought things would be coming back to normal by now. Doctor told me it was because I was out of shape before and excess fat turning testosterone into estrogen and it would take 2-3 months or so to start improving my levels. Slightly worried about it but w/e it's time I get this **** fixed, I'm like 99% sure they will come back eventually if I continue this pace.

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Anything else random to talk about? Ermm

Nahh, that's enough. Best of luck fellas!

How's the diet coming along?

Way better than I ever anticipated it going. Down almost 30 lbs. since starting the bet and definitely put on some muscle so likely burned more than that in fat. During the first few days I was thinking "no way in hell I'll be able to do this". After about 2 weeks all of the cravings went away and my body/mind started to adjust.

Have approx. 1 week left in the bet and then might take til Jan 1st off, and resume things then, possibly with some slight modifications.

Not sure if you read before but I said if I hold up and finish perfect I won't accept any $ for the people who bet against me. The motivation/support from people has been really helpful and the changes happening are something money can't buy. If I end up holding everyone who bet against me please make a donation to a charity/buy someone something nice for xmas, or buy yourselves something nice for xmas

Sup fam? Hope Christmas treated you guys well. (No I am not poking at your religious beliefs if you do not celebrate Christmas).

To tell you the truth of about my Christmas it was relatively poor. I mean, everyone is ok and it was great to spend the usual time with family+eat good food. I'm going to talk about one of the issues more in the year-end post which I have been working on for a few days now. Unfortunately, two of the dampers are not at my disposal to talk about. One of these issues put me on monkey tilt and for now I've been asked not to talk about it.

One thing I can briefly talk about now is that I bought my mom a gift-card for Amazon for Christmas. I checked her e-mail on her computer because I wanted to make sure that the gift-card movie was delivered properly. My eyes quickly glancing through snagged one e-mail headed: "re:Son's Gambling Addiction". So I couldn't help but open the e-mail and read about two sentences before I closed it down. One read: "Your son needs to hit rock bottom first." This isn't something that is new to me. My family has questioned poker since day one. At the start of the year my family was extremely proud of me because I was in the spotlight at PCA and winning all the money. 11 months later at the end of the year and that spotlight has now been shattered and only the remnants of my hope in this game and myself remain.

I confronted my mom about this e-mail and tried to explain that these people are likely dealing with actual gambling addicts of roulette etc. They have legitimate gambling problems and in the long run will lose all of their money. I gamble but not often on -EV investments. Poker has paid for my car, education, condo, all my living for the last 5 years, travel, and every dollar I've purchased anything with has came from poker related revenue. I tried to explain that I'm a net-winner in the long run and I have a really great opportunity to leverage future/past poker winnings into a future life that I dream of living. She explained that she has been really worried about me and she was trying to find cases of parents dealing with similar spots. It's a little bit sad that probably 99.9% of cases with Gamblers Anon. type calls are probably to be cases of gambling addiction and people knowingly doing harm to themselves. Anyways, we all know how this story goes and in poker most of us deal with all the same BS. I'm not mad because I know my family cares about me a lot and that is why there is concern. Things ended on reasonable terms and there wasn't too much drama about it so it's all good.

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Anyways, Christmas is done with and now just New Year's in the way before I can get back to life as it was. The difference between December 31st and January 1st carries massive symbolic value. The time the calendar flips over to a new year, the time people decide their lives will take a 180 degree turn (but usually turn like 3 degrees lol), and the time when people look for a new beginning. Ironically, in the actual time frame not much changes, the sun still sets the next morning, and life continues as normal. I think it's kind of dumb to wait for a specific day of the year to change, or to try to make a massive turn-around over night. For the past 5 or 6 years every December 31st I'd be pumping myself up for the big turn-around and think of where I'll be one year from now. Every single January 1st I woke up hung over and no different than I was the previous year. So glad I started in October this year and have actually kept with it. Now is as good of time as any to start changing for the better.

Anyways, too high for this haha, have a good night guys.

Closing Up 2018 and Looking Onward

What sums up 2018 for me? I really can't put the words to it.

The year had just turned over to 2018 and I was gearing up for a year that I was very excited for. The year began with me playing my first 10k buy-in live tournament and ticking off the box of one of my poker bucket list items: play in the PCA Main.

The last 2 years or so I've been relatively strapped with liquid cash flow due to investment in my property+other assets, so this was a good spot to sort of "freeroll" a 10k tourney and sell a few pieces. After getting off the plane my friend and I hustled down to the convention hall to late register a 500$ side event. After approx. 36 sleepless hours I got like a ~5th place in that event or something. This segway'd into the sleep of the century followed by day 1B of the PCA Main.

Long story short I ran pretty good and played an exhausting 5 or 6 days of poker. For a guy who doesn't play a whole lot of live poker (especially at these stakes) I found the whole experience quite exhausting. After some hot run, hero folds, a Q high hero call, a horrible QQ hand, sucking out Jake Cody, drunkenly chirping Jack Eichel, drunken blackjack with Mikhail Sergachev, drunken advice from Noah Scwartz, my first feature table, and losing a soul crushing flip on FT bubble...I got 10th place. Honestly, I'm really proud of myself for giving my best effort and doing my best to make a dream become a reality. There's a lot of guys out there who take this type of experience for granted and I don't want to be one of them.

So there I was...flying out of the Bahamas all happy and proud...but...with a little nuisance that has followed me around for many years now. This little monkey sitting on my shoulder that constantly tells me the things at my deepest importance. It's like this constant hum of a refrigerator that's been progressively getting louder the more I've tried to silence it. I've tried to shut this monkey up by: drinking, gambling, playing poker, smoking weed, going hiking, vacations, fishing, Netflix, Netflix and chilling, meditation, and basically any other activity under the sun.

Many days in 2018 I'd wake up and just do things that would make that stupid ****er shut up. I'd do anything that helped distract me from the things at my deepest importance. Anyways, it's taken me 6 or 7 years now and I've finally started to face those demons. It hasn't been easy but I feel a million times better because of it. 2018 didn't solve all my problems but it's the first year that I've taken action and started getting in tune with the agenda of my deepest importance. Sadly, I didn't start taking solid action until about 3/4 of the way through 2018, or else I'd be much further along. Facing the demons meant sweating in the gym, getting comfortable with being in the gym, having a panic attack at doctor's office, curbing some food addiction habits, disassociation with a few people I've been very close with, admitting some things to myself, taking a leap of faith, and some other stuff I'll talk about some other time.

What else do I have to say for 2018? Well, this was the worst year in online poker for me ever. I lost my stride basically all year until just this past month. I was stuck in this rut where studying so much theory brainwashed me into play a style that just is not very practical in today's games. I stopped thinking intuitively/exploitatively and was just clicking buttons and going through the motions. Yeah, I ran like dog **** all year but I knew something was seriously wrong with my game. Some massive realisations were had in December and I barely had a losing session this month (compared to losing almost every day in 2018 it felt). Trends continued in 2018 and the online climate got progressively worse. However, for the first time in a long time...I'm optimistic about online poker in 2019.

Live poker? Yeah it was awesome this year. Shipped a local bowl for ~5k, 2nd in RIO Deepstack for ~23k, 10th PCA 75k, and then some final 30 finishes in massive field 1k events. 2019 will likely be geared a lot more towards traveling to live stops and I'm really excited for it.

Health? I've talked about this enough in here you can read above posts if really curious. Down approx. 30 lbs. in the last 3 months and starting to feel really good. Have a HEAP of work set out for me in 2019...and I can't wait for it.
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To stray from the above topics I want to talk about the age of 26, the age I was for most of 2018:

26 is an age that brings a strange feeling with it. You still feel young yet external stimuli constantly reminds you that you're a grown ass man. You've graduated from the "schooling" era of your life and likely moved onto a stage of your life that has a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty. There isn't anybody telling you what to do anymore. How will I make my living? Is my living sustainable? Who are my best friends? Should I settle with a girl? Should I date multiple girls? Do I want kids? Do I want marriage? Do I like where I live? Should I retire from poker? Am I happy?

Everywhere you look around there's a friend getting a nice job promotion or having career success (or lack thereof), friends starting to get married, friends buying homes and having kids etc. Every time I think I'm young all I need to do is check social media to be reminded of this elephant in the room "what are you going to do with your life, Mike?" Opening the mailbox and getting bombarded with bills is also an alternative option. Damn, being a kid was so easy.
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What else do I have to say about this year? Well, not much, really. I guess what I have learned is that there is always beauty in the struggle...and there will always be struggle. Struggle and hardship are part of life just like success and happiness are. There's uncertainty everywhere you look in the world and that is just part of life. Sometimes you just need to trust the process and have faith in yourself when other people don't. I was supposed to be quitting poker today, but that's going to have to wait a little bit longer.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody who followed along in the blog during 2018. Whether you gave constructive criticism/advice, trolled, or even just lurked, I appreciate it. There was a lot of times this year I felt really down or stressed and just splurging thoughts out here really was quite therapeutic. I hope you guys got something out of it or at the very least found some entertainment somehow

I shall sleep in tomorrow before hitting the gym for the last day of sanity there (incoming new years resolutioners on Jan. 1st), and then hit the drink to close out this year and welcome in the new year. When you really think about it it's just another day, but YOLO. I guess mods can close this thread whenever and I might start up a new one for 2019.

Thanks for all the love everyone and I wish you a happy and healthy 2019...life beckons!

Mike

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post54643051

2019 blog for whomever wants to continue reading. Thanks for 2018 everyone!