It’s been a pretty mixed bag thus far. Some days are awesome and I fall asleep in like 15-20 minutes and sleep pretty well for the hour and half feeling refreshed. Others have been a trial in patience. I feel better by not taking as many sleeping pills as I wake right up and feel like I don’t have that haze around me for a few hours in the morning. That’s awesome. I’m going to try to push back the nap time to a bit later and see if that helps. I think if I am more tired, it might go better. The issue I am having is being tired. I will keep everyone updated on my progress with it, so ask me in like 3 weeks how it is going and maybe I will be able to give you a better answer.

It’s something she just got used to. We dated for 3 to 4 years before really spending any time together at night, so she was used to hearing about me not being able to sleep before she actually had to deal with it. There really isn’t much you can do about it, to be honest. You just kind of have to learn to accept it and that’s about it. I wish I had some kind of better answer, but it’s just you have to get used to it. Something I would suggest though is not saying much about it. The more you talk about it, normally the more pressure he will feel to try to sleep, which might sound odd, but is something to be cognizant of.

It’s update of the week time. Each Sunday I will give a full update on my health, goals and poker. Nothing else is all that important, so those are the three areas I will break things down into. Health consists of both physical and mental health, goals are where I want to be next week and poker is obviously the most important part of the entire journey. You will get exceptionally candid writing in these sections, and likely you will disagree with some of it, or think I have a bad thought process. Please let me know when you see that and I will be more than willing to talk about it and listen to you guys. I hope that if someone is going through something similar it will help them look in the mirror more, as I now that can be one of the hardest things to do. I know the mirror and I don’t get along great sometimes.

Health

This week went pretty well health wise. I worked out 5 days, ate a lot better than I had and kind of worked on my sleeping problems. I still have a long way to go on all three of those things as I want to get up to 7 days a week working out and I want to be eating better than I am right now. I ate way too much candy yesterday and that was not good for my stomach or anything like that. I also didn’t feel like eating a lot a few times this week and that caused me to eat smaller dinners than would have been optimal.

I did meditate this week and walk some. Both of those are things I want to do more for relaxation and keeping my head on straight. I need to get better at both as meditation was pretty hard for me. I have a really hard time focusing and keeping the thoughts at bay. I have read that it can take a long time, as I mentioned before, to really get there, but it’s still hard. The walking happened way less than it should have, but the one time I did go, it felt pretty good and I kept up a good pace. This week will be better for that.

Stress management is still something I need to work on. I get really down on myself sometimes and have really depressing thoughts. I am pretty sure that I am depressed or just coming out of it. I have all the telltale signs of it. That means I need to work harder on putting my mind in a good place and being thankful for the things I do have. The schedule I am trying to implement is good for that, because it puts me in a good place to start the day, but I need to learn to manage the rest of the day much, much better.

Depression, anxiety and negative thoughts are something I have constantly battled against and it hasn’t gotten a ton better with time. Life has this way of biting me a lot and it’s hard for me to get past that sometimes. I have a lot of unresolved issues in my life that I need to eventually come to terms with, but I also am afraid to really face them. I think that with improving my meditation and relaxation techniques I might be able to get somewhere with them though and maybe makes a really difference in my life. Time will tell though.

Goals

All right, last week was kind of a trial run with things. I did okay, but I still really failed to do things as well as I should have. I have a better idea of what things will take this week though and where I want things to be. I want to tighten the screws on a lot of areas of my life this week, and I think I can do that with proper adjustments and management. I have been holding back on a few things in my life, because it’s hard for me to fully by into things in life, but it’s time to really do that and embrace where I want things to go and how I want things to be. So with that, I think it’s time to make these next set of goals hard… but not impossible.

- 25,000 hands
- 14 hours of poker study
- 6 hours of writing
- 15 miles walked
- 6 days of normal workout
- 2 sessions of meditation a day (morning and night)
- Dial in daily schedule and sleep pattern
- 15 minutes of cleaning every day
- No playing on phone when alarm goes off instead of getting out of bed
- Curb random surfing of the internet. Use time to study poker, write or do work
- Do something fun with my wife during her spring break

Poker

Well, this was a pretty hard week poker wise. I felt I ran super terrible. I ran big hands into big hands and could never get anything going. I was actually breakeven if you look at all-in EV, but really that only tells part of the story anyway. I felt a learned a lot though and I am excited to get back on the grind, even though this week was so tough. I’m not really that worried about losing that many buy-ins, because it’s just a downswing and it will turn around. I am also only slightly down for the month, which is kind of funny to me, because if you look at that graph you would think everything would be terrible.

Everything is kind of learning process though and I don’t mind learning the hard way. I had a lot of buy-ins for the level I was going to start at, and when you include rakeback and The Beast winnings, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. If I have another terrible week like this, then I guess I would need to consider moving down, but I would rather ride out the storm and go up from there. The goal is to breakeven next week, not win, and keep improving my game at every opportunity.

I think the largest things I need to improve in no particular order are: improving my play from the blinds, learning how to play OOP better and learning what flops I need to be attacking and which ones to be leaving alone a bit more. The reason I say those things is because if you look at my preflop stats, they look good, but I think they are kind of hollow and I am missing some major opportunities to not lose money. Like my fold to 3bet is good, but I think that I am not folding in the right spots when ranges are more narrow than average. So it’s a case of numbers looking good, but not actually translating to real world results.

I think that’s something players do a lot that is really wrong. We look for this special formula of what stats to play, and I am not saying that’s always wrong, but you have to temper those desire with what is most realistic. Sure, you can play GTO and hit those stats, but it takes a deep understanding of the game to do it correctly without losing too much value. Also, you are going to be missing a lot of value from players. So, what players need to do instead is know what they should be looking for and doing when having certain hands.

I could tell you to 3-bet 10%, but if you just did that with no impunity for who was doing the initial raising you might get yourself into trouble. If you played perfect GTO then that’s not a problem, because you are going to play postflop correctly that it will still be +EV, but if you don’t understand GTO and play it correctly then you are going to end up in some pretty nasty spots or just burning money. My goal overall is to learn good exploitive play and then transition to a more GTO type of approach. GTO to me is the future of the game and it has always appealed to me, but I think learning the game first is a good idea, and if I decide to transition to live in the future, which I might, then exploitive play is going to be way more useful to me.

This is all academic though and will change as I learn more and progress as a player. What is most important right now is improving and avoiding having bad weeks like I did this week. Tilt control for me is pretty good though, as the whole time my mantra was “let’s grind back to respectability.” I felt like I was making good decisions, so to me, it was just a matter of time before I got back to winning. That makes me happy and hopeful. All right, here is the graph. Have a good week at the tables. I will update the thread on Tuesday, Thursday and maybe Saturday.

Well done. Not your results per se (this week) but your overall approach. Seems quite - for lack of a better term - level headed.

Haven’t gotten a lot done playing wise the last couple of days. Wife came home from being gone for 5 days and so I decided to spend the day with her on Tuesday, had a lot of life errands to run on Wednesday and getting some work done today. I do plan on playing later tonight, but it will be more to try out some stuff I have been working on, as opposed to get as many hands as I can in. I spent a long time on Monday studying and just trying to learn more. I’m still newish to NL, so there is always something more I can look at/improve on/experiment with. It’s kind of the fun part of playing when you are learning a new game. You lose, but don’t feel like crap about it, because it’s all part of the process.

There was some pretty big changes to The Beast, which is a major rake race on Winning Poker Network, and that will change my plans a pretty significant amount. I could take one of two approaches to the problem (further than just complaining or not complaining) and they both have merits. I could decide to just limp into the top 110 (or so) and get $100 OR I could decide to try for the top 35ish and get $250. It’s kind of hard choice, because top 35 would mean making some changes to my plans just outside of poker, because I would need to grind likely 40-42 hours a week to get a place in it. With that being said, I think it’s the best choice, because with the 35ish hours of play I was planning on I could realistically get 45th-55th, which is still worth $100. I think the extra 5 hours for an extra $150 is likely worth it. (I don’t value my time at $30, or even $20 an hour.

The other thing that I am considering is actually playing on Twitch for a bit. It seems like a pretty fun thing to do, just because you get that sense of community and interaction. I like that, but I am not sure if I want to put in the work to do it. On a daily basis it doesn’t take much, because you are just streaming what you would normally be doing anyway, but you have to get everything set up and looking nice, which I would like to do, because I think making it look nice is important, at least to me. It’s something I will probably think about a bit more over the next week and make my decision.

Daily schedule has been super hit or miss so far, but that’s to be expected when you are trying to completely change how you have done things for the last… way to freaking long. I think my biggest success thus far is taking no more than 1 sleeping pill every night. That’s down 2 from my high of 3 just a month ago (well, ending about 2 weeks ago after lasting for way longer than I want to admit.) Got to look at the bright side of everything, because if you focus on the bad things, it will just bring you down too much.

All right, mega-update on Sunday!

Goals

I failed all of the goals last week. I’m going to change things up a bit right now, because I realized that my weeks really run from Friday to Friday right now, so I should actually change my goals to reflect that. So since this will be a super short week I am not going to have any goals really, besides just trying to do better than what I was previously. I will post some real goals on Friday when I can have a full week to do them. I find it too hard to make goals appropriate for odd lengths of time, because I either aim to low or too high and don’t give myself enough wiggle room. So we will see how the week goes with no real firm plans.

Health

This was a wasted trash week. I have no other way to put it really. I only worked out two days and went on a very, very long walk on the other. That’s not nearly enough for me to be doing, especially if I want to make progress. I know what caused a lot of it, and that’s lack of motivation. I need to learn how to motivate myself to be better, strong and mentally tougher. Sometimes I just wake up in the morning can’t convince myself to get on the bike or to lift the weights. That’s terrible and I know that, but it’s what I do.

To attempt to build a bit more motivation I am going to create a “wall of motivation.” It might sound pretty childish to some, and admittedly, it might be, but I think it could also turn out really cool. On the wall I am going to have my schedule and then quotes, affirmations, goals and dreams. I want it to become a place that I look when I am not feeling it. I want it to be that little thing that gets me through the rough times when I don’t really feel like I am doing what I should be to make myself a better person.

I will post a picture of it when I get it done, and I hope to have it completed by Monday night. I rearranged my office so that I can have easy access to a wall and can easily see it without having to lean over my desk or anything like that. I’m not really sure what to expect from it, or what it will look like when it’s done, but perhaps it will provide me that little nudge that I need.

It has also been a pretty bad week when it comes to eating. I ate very few vegetables, ate a ton of candy and overall didn’t feel that great. I’m fairly addicted to sugar, kind of like people are addicted to smoking. I feel this need to intake some kind of sugar every couple of hours and it doesn’t make me feel great, but it tastes so good I can’t resist it. Many times this manifests itself in candy, which has become a great love of mine. I keep telling myself this will be my last bag of Skittles, box of Mike and Ikes or sleeve of Starburst, but low and behold I get to the gas station or store again and I need another.

This week has got t be better, but I am scared it won’t be. All I can do is just try my best and look at the results in the end and go from there. Time will tell, time will tell.

Poker

So poker was and wasn’t disappointing this week. I didn’t play near as many hands as I should have. I did study a lot though, like a ton. So that’s how it was disappointing, but not at the same time wasn’t. The studying really helped, and when I did play I felt pretty good about what I was going and what spots I was getting myself into. I noticed a few common spots that I still feel a bit uncomfortable withthough. I need to work on those more and figure out a plan that I can take against most opponents.

Did I mention that the results went well? That was a nice addition to the weekend, even if I don’t judge how I feel at the tables by how much money I make. I think that’s it’s a little normal for all of us to feel better or worse about our game though based on if we win or not. Also, winning at 25nl makes me feel pretty good and it is likely I will take another shot at 50nl sometime soon, probably around 30k hands for the month (about 7k away). Hopefully the shot will go better than the last one I took, I think it will, because I am a much better player, even if it was only 2 weeks ago.

I shouldn’t have started at 25nl, I really shouldn’t have. I haven’t even beat anything about 2nl playing 6-max, though I have beaten 10nl playing full ring. I am not counting tournaments or limit hold’em here as those have always went much better. I studied and took a huge chance. I ran well when I took my chance and I think that really has made all the difference. Poker is a lot about putting yourself in a good position to succeed and then running really well at exactly the right time. For instance, had I run well at 50nl during my first shot, then I am not taking about it right now as something I want to be doing, I would actually just being doing it. Considering that, I realize how fickle the beast can be.

Talking about the Beast, they changed that pretty drastically. The new system is set up in tiers and is going to make things a lot different. If I can only get to the $100 tier and can’t make it to the $250 tier than I will likely be putting in far less volume on WPN and will take my play to other sites. Taking my play to other sites isn’t all that bad of an idea anyway, because some of the games on those sites are pretty freaking soft. I can maximize my money on WPN and then also maximize it in other places by playing their soft games. Those other sites don’t have enough games to be my sole source, especially during the day, but at night, being able to throw up 2-3 tables across 3-4 sites would be pretty nice. I want to take my shot at 50nl first and clear as much as my active bonus as I can and then decide how exactly to proceed.

So that’s where poker is right now, gearing up for a big week and then hope for the best when I take my shot or whatever I decide to do. Perhaps the changing of the Beast system was actually a blessing in disguise, since I might end up playing softer games that I can win more money at. We will see.

Well the month has come to a close and I ended on kind of an odd note overall. I want to say it went well, but in reality, it was likely a bit of a breakeven month overall. I lost money, but did pretty well at 25nl while getting crushed at 50nl, so whatever. I played 6.5k hands today and feel like I can consistently do that, which means I can attempt to make this my main source of income, but I have my normal job, it’s just going to become my second source of income, hopefully. Next month my goal is to make $2,5k post-rb from playing only 25nl, which is going to challenging, but doable. I will post the full goals on Friday night for the month, but just wanted to get that one out there.

Everything else has been pretty unspectacular. I haven’t got on any kind of schedule and I have been doing the bare minimum to get by on pretty much everything (so basically only work and poker) which means that I haven’t been improving myself like I want to be. I feel like I am in this kind of haze that I can’t really break myself from. I’m not sure how to fix it, but I guess just keep trying to get better and eventually I will break through. It’s frustrating though.

I have three more days to really get going though before the month begins in earnest. I would like to have Friday be my first full day doing exactly what my schedule says, but I am not sure if I am going to be able to swing that, if nothing else, I have to have everything down by Saturday and really push through the month. I am happy with my poker and work output though, so at least I have some things down and it’s all the side stuff that has been suffering the most.

I will post some hands tomorrow, but I will leave you with a graph of my month at 25nl and the preview for Fast and Furious 7, which I am going to go see on Friday with my wife (yes, I am dragging her to it!) (Actually no preview, can't get the youtube thing to work)

Glad to see you're doing well.

I hope this is the video you wanted.

It is, thanks. i for whatever reasons can never get 2+2 to do what I want it to, lol.

Discovered this a moment ago and just wanted to wish you the best of luck. I've only had time to read the OP so far, but I enjoyed it; looking forward to catching up.

Thank you for the kind words. I greatly enjoy your PGC thread and it is actually one of the reasons I decided to start mine.

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Things haven going okay. I played a few days and had some success and some… not so successes. I am getting my butt kicked during the afternoon session I play, which is something I need to change really quick as about half of my play is going to be during those sessions. I’m not totally sure why I am losing so much then, because my nightly sessions are going fantastic, and it’s not like there is a huge difference in the player pool. (Slightly more regs during the day, but in reality, the games are so reg-infested you barely notice it.) At this point it’s like just a mental block I need to get past and once I do I will being doing just fine. Still annoying.

Everything else has been really hit or miss. I get work done, which is good, but I jack around for 2 hours afterwards on different websites. I completely screw up my sleeping schedule, but I play 6-7k hands in a day. I can’t seem to find that happy medium where I am checking all the boxes. I’m up later than I wanted to be today, but still in the realm of acceptable so long as by Monday I have the correct sleep and wake up times under control. We will see though, because I am not nearly as sure of myself at this point.

Went and saw Furious 7 and I have to say… it was interesting. When it was first over my thought was “I think that was a bit too far…” It kind of reminded me way to much of Crank, which is something I have a love hate relationship with. (Crank 2 was just legit awful.) After having a bit of time to think about it more, I think that it actually was okay and not nearly as bad as I initially gave it credit (blame?) for. The action sequences were pretty awesome (the tower stunt alone gained it at least a half of a grade in my book,) and while a lot of the stuff forces you to completely forget reality, I think I can do that, to a degree. You really do need to abandon all sense of reality when watching it, even more than the previous ones… probably combined. Something I never thought I would say about the series is that they handled Paul Walker’s death exceptionally classy. If I had to give them a grade it would be a 6.5/10 for a normal movie and an 8.5/10 for an action, turn off your brain, I need popcorn flick. (Can we just never hire Tyrese Gibson for anything ever again?)

With all that being said, it’s time for a few goals for the month. I’m not going to make weekly goals, because I just want to see how things go and then I will use that as a baseline next Friday for my weekly goals. Here are my exceptionally modest, but still challenging monthly goals:

- $2.5k in profits post-rb
- 115,000 hands played
- Poker study 10 hours a week
- Workout 7 times a week
- Clean house 15 minutes a day
- Write 6 days a week for 1 hour
- Morning routine 7 days a week
- Read 15 minutes a day
- Make 1 new dish for dinner
- 1 serving of vegetable every days

Some music for the road

Thought I'd check in Giraffe looks healthy. Nice to see after ' like a ton' of study! Motivation wall sounds interesting too. Oh, did you give any more thought to the twitch tv idea?

Edit: Whops, just saw post regarding 50NL crushing. Congratulations on some solid results at 25NL!

It’s been a long last few days. I’m getting destroyed at the tables, and I was really beginning to wonder why. I’m down nearly 20 buy-ins this week. Some of it is I am running bad, and that’s fine, but other things have been bothering me way more, most notably I am spewing in really big pots. So I decided to seek out why I am doing so badly, because I just can’t sit on my laurels and let it keep happening.

I went and looked at the stats for the biggest winners in the 25nl game that I am playing. I have played about 50,000 hands in the past month, so I am getting an okay sample on some regs that I think are the best. I wanted to see what there game is doing that mine simply isn’t. One striking thing I found was there fold to 3-bet percentage. I knew this was an area of my game that I was struggling with most, but looking at their games, I don’t think I realized how big of an issue it was. I also took a look at the biggest losers in the game and noticed something, they all had about 28%-31% fold to 3-bet after raising. It’s pretty hard to deny there is a coincidence there.

The second thing I noticed was their ranges. While they are playing what most people would consider pretty nitty, it might be something they are doing on purpose, because with people folding too little to 3-bets, CCPF so much and just other overall –EV things, they have decided to counteract that with playing tighter. At higher stakes, players get looser, because ranges expand and people have less holes in their game. Aggression goes up, so you need to change your ranges to mirror that, but at these games, the opposite might be true.

I decided to break out Hold’em Viewer and start constructing some ranges that actually did well against their continuing range. The results kind of surprised me, because I was taking a lot of under 50% bets that were just stupid. I shouldn’t have been doing it, but I was, because that’s what I do. SO to say I have overhauled my 3-bet ranges is a bit of an understatement. Sometimes you just have those moments where things seem to click in your mind about you should be playing, and it’s safe to say that I finally had one of those moments.

This will also help me with another major issue I was having is the spewing in big pots. I was 3-betting way too much, way, way too much. This would cause me to get into awkward positions post in bloated pots. I was finding myself paying off way to many big bets, because I just couldn’t think of anything better to be doing with myself. It was not good, not at all. Now, knowing that the opponents are not folding a lot and are being exceptionally sticky preflop allows me to comfortably fold hands that I shouldn’t have been raising in the first place. This will allow for pots to remain in control until I want to bloat the crap out of them.

I still have a lot of other leaks though I need to work on postflop, that’s for sure, but I think that I can start to work on those a bit more seriously once I get my preflop mistakes under control. I have a lot of bankroll to go until I need to even consider moving down, so that’s not an issue, so I am excited to start making some of these changes right away and see how they perform when I put them to the test. It’s going to take a while to break out of the issues and bad habits I have created for myself, but I think that I am going to be capable of doing it.

As for everything else, it’s been a pretty unspectacular week, to be honest. I am doing terrible on most of my goals, I am not focused on pretty much anything except for poker right now. I’m hoping that these small moments of clarity will really start to pay off with poker, but also allow me to obsess over it a bit more. I was also pretty sick the last 3 days, so actually being able to eat again it think is going to do wonders for me, at least that’s my hope. I need to get a TON of work done over the next day and a half, so here is to hoping I can do that. I will update with a more well-rounded one Friday night.

I keep going back and forth on the twitch idea. I need to really think more about it and I think if it is something that i would really enjoy doing. I think that it may be, but just not sure of how to best implement it. I have seen a lot of people try it, and I think the quality of most streams is pretty awful. i want to avoid that.

All right, it is update time. I know it has been horrendously overdue. I guess, time had gotten away from me a lot lately, and that just makes it hard to update. Also, in reality I have been pretty embarrassed with how I have been playing, running and such. I just haven’t been playing well and I haven’t been getting the results that I know I am capable of, but it is also partly that I simply am not nearly as good as a lot of the grinders on Winning Poker Network. It’s a sad reality. It’s something you need to be deathly honest with yourself though, because you can keep trying to bang your head into the wall and hope things will change. I think it’s something a lot of people end up doing, or you can make a change.

For me I decided that change was going to come in the form of moving to Bovada, again. I have put in some decent volume there in the past and just think that it is going to end up being a better place for me, long term, because I am going to add in some tournaments to my normal grind. I have always done well in tournaments and while I don’t want to play them full time (well, maybe if I could play everything on Bovada) I enjoy them and they are quite profitable for me. (I have my roll right now, because of my tournament success).

While I am going to be giving up a fair amount in rewards, I also am going to gain a ton in winrate. Just sitting at the tables the last few days over at Bovada has been fantastic, because the quality of players is bad, like nothing you would see at WPN. WPN is beatable, if you are good, but for someone like myself who isn’t up to those standards yet, it’s easier to target games with weaker regs and bad players all around. I think there is a chance I will go back to Winning Poker Network in the future, because only being able to play 4 tables is a bit of a drag, but there is also a chance that I won’t. I think I want to see what life will bring.

You can say it’s running away and me just not being good enough, because that’s kind of what it is. I wasn’t good enough to hack it at Winning Poker Network. In reality though? Big deal. I don’t play poker for the ego, because god knows it would be destroyed at this point. I play to win money and whatever I need to do to set myself up to do that, that’s what I need to do.

I don’t have my roll on there yet, because I am waiting for the funds to get transferred to BTC so I can then put them on my CC to move them over. That whole fun song and dance. Luckily, it had been so long since I last played on Bovada that they decided to give me $30 for free to make me want to come back. I decided to play around with it and see what I could make happen. I played some cash and ended up winning about $30 playing 5nl and then entered a tournament late last night, because I was bored.

I won that tournament for just under $320, because the play at the final table was horrendous. I went into 3-handed play trailing 50k to 300k to 250k in chips, but only had to win 2 all-ins to win the entire tournament, because I got so many walks and stole so many pots. I got amazingly lucky, but that has to happen sometimes.

I decided to play some tournaments today (blanked them all) and not sitting and playing some cash at my normal stakes, even though I am underrolled on the site. I am going to put more money on when I get the chance, so I have no real fear about busting the money, because I will just replenish the roll when I need to. Also, if I just sun run it up, then I cannot put as much on and don’t really need to worry about anything. We will just kind of see how things go.

Life update will come sometime tomorrow. Got to get a bit of work done before the night is out.

All right, I promised an update on life, but first a little more on poker, and then on to life.

Bovada plays so much different than WPN, it’s really pretty hard to get used to. I have stacked off in a few posts that were actually pretty bad, and I have made some bets in situations that I shouldn’t have. It’s all a learning process though and I feel pretty good, despite getting hit with some of the most insane coolers I have had in some time. I’m down slightly at 25nl and up at 5nl and 10nl, so that’s good. 25nl has been a struggle, because of that cold deck I mentioned. The tables are super soft, but you can only win so much when you run set into set, bottom 2 into flush and set into something else. Just gotta keep grinding though.

Talking about struggles, o man, has my personal life been kind of a mess lately. Sleeping is going pretty much awful, working out hasn’t happened at all and my wife and I have had more tension than I would like. So the sleeping thing I think is mostly caused by eating badly and not working out enough. I have been doing a bad job at keeping a good schedule and that’s not good for what I need to get done. It’s a bit disappointing, because the first two weeks of this exercise were awesome and I did what I was supposed to, but I got lazy one morning and it all went to crap. Today I took the first step towards getting it back under control, but it has a long way to go.

The tension between the wife and I centers a lot on school for her. She is doing very well (95+% in all of her classes, etc.) but some large changes were just announced about her program that has everyone else pretty upset. She is fine with them, because they don’t really affect her, nor are they unreasonable, but the issues comes from her thinking she made a mistake going to this school in the first place. It’s pretty easy for her to do well in her classes, her classmates complain constantly about how hard it is and how unfair it is and just overall things like that. When we made the decision, the school looked really good, but things have changed that would likely have changed what we did now.

The reason this causes tension for us, is because it causes her a lot of stress and just puts more on her mind and thus more between us. It’s something we are constantly working on, but life isn’t as easy as waving a wand and hoping it gets better. It’s not like we are going to get divorced or anything like that, but having a more stable and easier time on that front would be nice, because I know we could work on making our marriage strong and not kind of stagnating until we get through this latest episode. Things happen though and you just fight through it and come out on the other side stronger.

I have a feeling this is going to be a good week. I don’t know what is causing me to think that, but I just feel more positive about things right now, and I think that I can get back on track. Mentally, I know I am pretty far from optimal, but I really hope that I can get back on track with that soon enough.

It’s always a little nerve-wracking when your boss says that he needs to discuss something with you. There is just this part of your mind that thinks, “Well, I had a good run.” I think a lot of that is an indication of what kind of mental issues I suffer from. I am always thinking that the next bad thing is just around the corner. I’m not sure what he wants to discuss, but considering he wants me to keep doing my work as normal and feels it’s not serious, I think likely I am in the good, but I will always fear things will turn out bad at any moment, that’s just the kind of person that I am.

Anyway, I think that’s a pretty good life update. Hope all is going well, and it’s awesome to see a lot of the threads that I follow have been producing really impressive results lately (blakkman08, urban surfer and sifiasco.)

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - $0.25 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 107.8 BB (VPIP: 18.20, PFR: 12.72, 3Bet Preflop: 4.32, Hands: 4,138)
CO: 104 BB (VPIP: 37.88, PFR: 22.73, 3Bet Preflop: 8.00, Hands: 66)
BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 26.18, PFR: 16.33, 3Bet Preflop: 6.71, Hands: 1,476)
SB: 91.84 BB (VPIP: 29.56, PFR: 14.15, 3Bet Preflop: 5.93, Hands: 329)
Hero (BB): 200.2 BB
UTG: 45.6 BB (VPIP: 30.29, PFR: 28.69, 3Bet Preflop: 10.64, Hands: 389)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A K

fold, fold, CO raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 7 BB, CO calls 5 BB

Flop: (14.4 BB, 2 players) A J 4
Hero bets 9.12 BB, CO raises to 18.24 BB, Hero calls 9.12 BB

Turn: (50.88 BB, 2 players) K
Hero checks, CO bets 25.6 BB, Hero raises to 174.96 BB and is all-in, CO calls 53.16 BB and is all-in

River: (208.4 BB, 2 players) T

CO shows Q J (Straight, Ace High)
(Pre 33%, Flop 17%, Turn 14%)
Hero shows A K (Two Pair, Aces and Kings)
(Pre 67%, Flop 83%, Turn 86%)
CO wins 198 BB

0.96 BB was deducted from the pot for the jackpot.

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - $0.25 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 247.16 BB (VPIP: 27.97, PFR: 20.34, 3Bet Preflop: 10.26, Hands: 124)
CO: 40 BB (VPIP: 13.55, PFR: 11.40, 3Bet Preflop: 4.53, Hands: 1,087)
BTN: 205.72 BB (VPIP: 31.86, PFR: 30.97, 3Bet Preflop: 20.93, Hands: 114)
Hero (SB): 100 BB
BB: 100 BB (VPIP: 19.27, PFR: 15.60, 3Bet Preflop: 2.56, Hands: 114)
UTG: 77.72 BB (VPIP: 36.17, PFR: 17.02, 3Bet Preflop: 11.76, Hands: 47)

Hero posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A A

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 11 BB, fold, BTN raises to 21.6 BB, Hero raises to 32.2 BB, BTN raises to 205.72 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 67.8 BB and is all-in

Flop: (201 BB, 2 players) 6 8 K

Turn: (201 BB, 2 players) 6

River: (201 BB, 2 players) J

BTN shows K K (Full House, Kings full of Sixes)
(Pre 18%, Flop 88%, Turn 95%)
Hero shows A A (Two Pair, Aces and Sixes)
(Pre 82%, Flop 12%, Turn 5%)
BTN wins 190.96 BB

0.96 BB was deducted from the pot for the jackpot.

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - $0.25 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 133.4 BB
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 20.77, PFR: 16.16, 3Bet Preflop: 5.08, Hands: 479)
BB: 146.08 BB (VPIP: 21.85, PFR: 17.86, 3Bet Preflop: 6.31, Hands: 1,701)
UTG: 100 BB
CO: 84.6 BB (VPIP: 52.94, PFR: 17.65, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 17)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB, UTG posts penalty blind 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.4 BB) Hero has 5 4

UTG checks, fold, Hero calls 1 BB, SB calls 0.6 BB, BB checks

Flop: (4 BB, 4 players) 3 T 2
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets 1.88 BB, fold, BB raises to 11.28 BB, fold, Hero calls 9.4 BB

Turn: (26.56 BB, 2 players) A
BB bets 24 BB, Hero raises to 121.12 BB and is all-in, BB calls 97.12 BB

River: (268.8 BB, 2 players) 6

Hero shows 5 4 (Straight, Six High)
(Pre 50%, Flop 28%, Turn 77%)
BB shows 3 3 (Three of a Kind, Threes)
(Pre 50%, Flop 72%, Turn 23%)
Hero wins 260.8 BB

0.96 BB was deducted from the pot for the jackpot.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 116.6 BB (VPIP: 43.92, PFR: 7.61, 3Bet Preflop: 6.28, Hands: 13,315)
UTG: 44 BB (VPIP: 33.11, PFR: 17.22, 3Bet Preflop: 2.56, Hands: 12,797)
MP: 125.4 BB (VPIP: 32.68, PFR: 16.35, 3Bet Preflop: 5.35, Hands: 11,737)
CO: 45.2 BB (VPIP: 32.82, PFR: 15.96, 3Bet Preflop: 5.89, Hands: 9,165)
Hero (BTN): 101.4 BB
SB: 54.4 BB (VPIP: 44.21, PFR: 11.96, 3Bet Preflop: 6.69, Hands: 12,843)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has T 7

UTG calls 1 BB, fold, CO calls 1 BB, Hero calls 1 BB, SB calls 0.6 BB, BB raises to 5 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 4 BB, SB calls 4 BB

Flop: (17 BB, 3 players) 7 7 J
SB checks, BB bets 13 BB, Hero calls 13 BB, SB raises to 49.4 BB and is all-in, BB raises to 85.8 BB, Hero raises to 96.4 BB and is all-in, BB calls 10.6 BB

Turn: (259.2 BB, 3 players) 4

River: (259.2 BB, 3 players) 4

BB shows A J (Two Pair, Jacks and Sevens)

Main Pot [165.2 BB]: (Pre 46%, Flop 3%, Turn 1%)
Side Pot#1 [94 BB]: (Pre 63%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)

Hero shows T 7 (Full House, Sevens full of Fours)

Main Pot [165.2 BB]: (Pre 31%, Flop 95%, Turn 98%)
Side Pot#1 [94 BB]: (Pre 37%, Flop 91%, Turn 95%)

SB shows J Q (Two Pair, Jacks and Sevens)

Main Pot [165.2 BB]: (Pre 23%, Flop 3%, Turn 1%)

Hero wins 246.4 BB

I haven’t completely forgotten about this thread, I just haven’t wanted to write in it much. Some of that is losing, some of that is just not feeling it and some of it I can’t really put my finger on. I suppose going through cycles and ups and downs is pretty exacted and I think my overall lack of structure has contributed to my waning interest in typing out stuff in this thread. Reality is though, I should keep typing in it. So here are a few updates on how things are going, while I watch the Spurs v. Clippers.

Health

Up and down, up and down. Basically that is going to be the theme for everything in this review. Sleeping has been good and bad, but overall I have wasted much less time doing things I shouldn’t be doing and making the most of my waking hours. I have been sleeping less hours but been feeling very awake. That’s a really good feeling, so at least in that respect I have been doing well, but the consistency, or lack thereof has been a bit annoying. I find myself having things come up far too often that get me off my schedule. That shouldn’t happen though. I need to schedule better.

Diet wise, I have been doing pretty well. With the exception of last night, I have had almost no candy. This is huge for me. I have also been pretty good about eating better for breakfast. Lots of oatmeal and protein bars. They give me energy in the morning, so while they may not be the absolutely most healthy thing, it’s better than not eating (which I did a lot) or eating some refined sugar cereal (which I also did a decent amount.) As for the rest of meals, I have been fitting a decent amount of veggies in my diet, which is a HUGE change for me. I won’t say it’s every day I get 2-3 serving, but 5 or 6 days a week I am. It needs to still improve some, but you have to start somewhere and this is a big step.

Working out has been going okay. I’m doing it much less than I should, but when I do, it feels good. The not doing it as much as I should has a lot to do with the not sleeping a consistent and good schedule. I just get up in the morning and want nothing more than to just not workout, so that’s what I do. So obviously I still have a long way to go with the motivation thing. I think this area is easiest to improve when I get on a normal sleep schedule.

Something I have been at least a little happier with is my focus. I’m still wasting a bit too much time, but it’s been better the last week. I still spend too much time surfing the internet, refreshing pages I don’t need to, getting into internet fight and the like, but I am doing better than I was about a month ago. This better focus I think has also resulted in better quality output with my job, even if it’s a bit lower than what I would like to be seeing right now.

Poker

I have been playing some, but not a lot. I moved down for a bit to regain some confidence and such, and that has been doing well enough. I have mixed back in some tables from my normal stake, because a lot of what I was experiencing was negative variance and not bad play. It’s just a learning process of doing well, getting happy, doing badly, getting sad. Rinse and repeat. I still have a ton of holes in my game that I eventually hope to plug, but it’s going to take some time until that actually happens.

I have also been playing a bit more full-ring lately. I’m not really sure why, but I find the game kind of easy in a lot of ways and just randomly played them one night. When the tables get a bit shorter also people play much worse, so that’s kind of nice. Something I have also noticed is that people are really bad and there is more of them. At a 6-max table you have maybe 2 bad players, but at full-ring you have 5 to 6 bad players. So the percentage of bad players to good ones is much lower and you can stay out of the way of the good players more. Now, the major issue that presents itself is that for American players you only have so many options for full-ring and eventually you just run out of games if you reach a certain stake. That is a decent ways out in the distance for me though, so it’s not something I am really getting scared of right now.

I got Ed Miller’s new book the other day and have started to work through that. It seems interesting thus far. I am likely going to get a lot of read this next week when I go back to my hometown for a while. My brother and sister from DC are going to be in and my other sister is having her first baby. OS going back to my hometown for a while seems like a good and smart thing to do. I don’t think I will get that much poker played, but I plan on reading and studying a decent amount, as there is sure to be times where I am just not doing anything productive.

That’s it for now. Next update won’t take as long as this one did, promise.