Wassup guys. I am 23 years old and from Costa Rica. I play as cant5t0p on Pokerstars. I am starting this PGC thread to both keep me accountable and to keep me motivated.

I've ****ed around a lot during my time in poker. Playing too many formats and being undisciplined. There really is a lot of gamble and risk tolerance in me, more than I believe to be healthy. Yolo. I'd like to change that though, and have been already. I've been working with Neuron Poker since February and have improved a ton, more than I thought possible. Things started to click sometime during May/June. Hopefully this lasts more than a couple of weeks. No real theme in mind.

You could say that my approach to poker is exploitative. I'm pretty in sync with my intuition, but still do a lot of solver work. I try to mix the two up as best as possible. However, I'm very far away from considering myself a good player. This year I moved up from NL25 to NL400 in a couple of months. I'm not sure how to feel about that because on one side you have something that a lot of people would like to achieve, but on the other side I don't feel like I have accomplished anything, it's just a stake. I've got a bunch of leaks and **** wrong with my game, but I try. Deep down I'm just a kid that wants to play poker every day. I still like to feel that adrenaline pump when pulling bluffs, and I still get excited when I learn new concepts. I think that sticking to enjoying the game and focusing on improving has been the best adjustment I've made recently. I was pretty emotionally wrecked about a month ago because I was both playing bad/going through a swing.

Anyhow let's get to it.

Goals for the rest of the year

[] Be happy
[] Reach 1k+ on stars
[] Move out, hopefully join a grind house.
[] Get jacked.
[] Understand most standard spots.


Goals for rest of July/August

[] Play at least 60k hands. (want to focus on volume over winrate to do a database analysis.)
[] Study at least 60 hours
[] Run/Workout at least 3 times per week
[] Meditate Daily
[] Journal Daily
[] Cold Shower Daily
[] No screens 1 hour before bed (I struggle hard with this one)
[] No weed( can make 2 exceptions)
[] Read 1 book (probably in search of lost time by Marcel Proust)

Here are my results for July, I decided to switch it up a bit and played Zoom this month. This graph is Zoom 100/200. Lacking volume, but played like 150 mtts at the start of the month.

https://gyazo.com/738f262735fc8404a33d10e5537ca2c1

Cheers guys, let's ****ing get it!

Hello finland

I'm pretty sure that's not him.

Sup guys!

Haven't updated as much as I would have liked but I am am keeping busy! I moved to Croatia like 2 weeks ago. I'm currently in a grind house with CRAIbaby and my friend Mike from Canada. Has been an interesting experience, right from the very beginning. To be honest I have learned a lot from them both, Mike is pretty stoic and I'm far from it. He has shown me the potential of what being stoic can do for you. I'm very committed to giving it my best attempt. He has shed light on many mental game issues that I'm currently working on. and then also being around CRAIbaby has taught me a lot about how to view the game. The main thing has been knowing why we are doing what we are doing, and not just because PIO suggests that we do or because someone told me to play this spot like this. I'm rereading applications of no limit holdem again to attempt to fully grasp the theoretical part of the game. I like the way things are going at the moment and I'm fully motivated to continue to work hard. I think I'll be in Croatia for another 6 weeks or something and I want to crush these weeks! lfg guys! Right not I can't be bother to post any pics but I'll do so later on.

Hey man , cool thread and nice rise up so far. Enjoy your travels in Europe. Do you see yourself sticking in the stars zoom streets?

Thank you man! I'm not sure to be honest. I'm split up between just playing soft games and selecting very well and also playing zoom. I think I will end up doing both because I really enjoy playing tough opponents. Probably won't be most of my volume though.

Interesting 3bet from OOP. maybe its not that interesting. Ill run it!

PokerStars Zoom, Hold'em No Limit - $2.50/$5.00 - 6 players
Replay this hand on Pokeit

DavyJones922 (UTG): $559.50 (112 bb)
cant5t0p (MP): $642.00 (128 bb)
niet2maar3 (CO): $743.70 (149 bb)
xeliqq (BU): $529.92 (106 bb)
Jarretman (SB): $719.80 (144 bb)
kiljusieppo (BB): $560.50 (112 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($7.50) Hero (cant5t0p) is MP with Q A
1 fold, cant5t0p (MP) raises to $10, 3 players fold, kiljusieppo (BB) 3-bets to $50, cant5t0p (MP) calls $40

Flop: ($102.50) 2 Q 5 (2 players)
kiljusieppo (BB) bets $32.84, cant5t0p (MP) raises to $74.14, kiljusieppo (BB) raises to $115.44, cant5t0p (MP) calls $41.30

Turn: ($333.38) 6 (2 players)
kiljusieppo (BB) bets $395.06 (all-in), cant5t0p (MP) calls $395.06

First River: ($1,123.50) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Second River: ($1,123.50) 9 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $1,123.50 (Rake: $3)

First Showdown: Board: 2 Q 5 6 5

kiljusieppo (BB) shows J K (a pair of Fives)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 39%, Flop: 46%, Turn: 27%, River: 0%)

cant5t0p (MP) shows Q A (two pair, Queens and Fives)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 61%, Flop: 54%, Turn: 73%, River: 100%)

cant5t0p (MP) wins $560.25

Second Showdown: Board: 2 Q 5 6 9

kiljusieppo (BB) shows J K (high card, King)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 39%, Flop: 46%, Turn: 27%, River: 0%)

cant5t0p (MP) shows Q A (a pair of Queens)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 61%, Flop: 54%, Turn: 73%, River: 100%)

cant5t0p (MP) wins $560.25

1st - In regards to the hand above, not standard at all by neither OOP or IP lol. gotta love button clickers <3

2nd - Feeling motivated to write now so will do a wrap up of the month now.

"Goals for rest of August

[ ] Play at least 60k hands. (want to focus on volume over winrate to do a database analysis.)
( didnt play nearly as much as I would have liked, the first week was pretty stressful, I tried flying from Costa Rica to Croatia and I wasn't allowed to at first. and then I was lol. got a bit out of line with my friends from home before finally flying out, and then flying over took some energy from me, and then the jetlag was annoying and yeah I have a million excuses lol.


[ x ] Study at least 60 hours
[ x ] Run/Workout at least 3 times per week
[ x ] Meditate Daily
[ x ] Journal Daily
[ ] Cold Shower Daily ( almost)
[ ] No screens 1 hour before bed (I struggle hard with this one)
[ x ] No weed( can make 2 exceptions)
[ ] Read 1 book (probably in search of lost time by Marcel Proust)"

Yeah not really what I wanted. Going to destroy September. Really focused on studying and playing a ton right now. Basically the grind house is over on the 9th, and then IÂ’ll be by myself in Split until the end of the month. Need to decide if I want to fly back home or stay somewhere in Europe. Will see how IÂ’m feeling towards the end of the month. But IÂ’m considering Montenegro and Serbia. To be honest right now all I want is a quiet place and good internet and no distractions. I really just wanna put in a sick amount of hours in September. We will see how it goes.

Anyhow there is something that has been bothering me. Even though I am confident that I can beat 200z, I donÂ’t feel that confident. So this is really motivating me to grind and study really hard, I feel like I have improved a ton in the past weeks. However, I still have **** to prove. Playing a bit of 500z let me see that IÂ’m just not great of a poker player lol, and that I still have a lot of work to do. I need to figure out some form of accountability. Will think about it a bit more.

Anyhow this month I played a bit on apps so tracking is all over the place unfortunately. Put in ok hours and maybe 30kish hands. Could be better imo. I’m not sure about what goals to have in September. I’m currently writing this in a café and Bingo night is about to start lol so will finish later.

tech fish here, so heres a link to da graph, some results missing.

https://gyazo.com/2d95b65ba007b5b3fd52fc3d20ab54c8

Today I had a session with my coach, and I think I got a lot out of it. Motivated as **** to play poker to the best of my ability. That includes paying attention to all of the details in hands, and thinking really deeply about the spots I'm in. Being in da ****ing zone ma man!! Main thing I want to work on this upcoming month is to think through spots and not be in a spot and try to emulate pio "this spot should be played this way blah blah". Thinking about the spot globally and coming up with a solution, and always trying to go with the highest EV line.

Anyhow, today speaking with my friend I said I was going to outwork all these mofos. So for this month I will track everything I do (hours played, study, exercise etc) pretty annoying but I think it will really help me with one of my biggest issues. I deal with confidence issues sometimes. I feel like I have high standards for what I need to be doing, and I am really aware of when I am not living up to my standards. So for example, a gto day for me would include gto food, exercise, journaling playing 5-6 hours, and studying 2-3 hours. and if i don't live up to this I end up feeling like a **** reg. and like everyone else is getting better and I'm not etc. So even if I am winning overall I feel undeserving and a bunch of other emotions. Pretty ******ed tbh. but yeah.

Goals for September
[] GTO sleep 7-8 hours. No screens 1 hour before bed
[] No phone use within the first hour of waking up
[] Highly reduce sugar/junk food
[] Exercise daily/Yoga
[] Meditate Daily
[] Play 4-5 hours of poker daily
[] Study 3 hours a day. (review all spots and more)
[] Finish 50% of applications of NLHE (use examples in book in PIO so we are not just reading and not learning.
[] Read 30% of Ray Dalio's book, Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises.

Shout out to Michael for sharing this video! Pretty gto watch!

youtube.com/watch?v=0m3hGZvD-0s

In for the ride.
Gl with your September goals.

tyty!
September is going a bit rough but all good to be honest. Kinda hitting that point where I'm just going to really focus hard on studying and improving at this game. I listened to the Garret Adelstein podcast with DGAF. There is something he said about faith, and about karma. I really liked both statements.

About Faith

1) I've never really been a man of faith. but it's because I've always associated it with a religion and a god etc. But I had never though about it the way Garret described himself as being a man of faith or something along those lines. He said he has to have faith in the process, or in whatever it is that he is doing, faith to believe that all the hard work that is being put in will eventually produce an outcome, whether or not that outcome occurs should be irrelevant. I loved that because I thought about all the hours I put in to studying the game, and it's truly based on faith. I have faith that all the hours on pio and thinking about the game will eventually produce something. I guess it's working, and that helps to continue. I had fun yesterday thinking about the days when I couldn't beat NL10, and I thought about how I never gave up. So I'm thinking about my current situation, and that If I went from not beating NL10 to winning at midstakes, then If I really don't give up now, then highstakes doesn't seem as far as it seems to be. Faith.

About Karma
2) This is something I had a discussion with a friend about, and basically I admitted to believing in Karma. I'm aware of how illogical that may seem, but **** it. If it makes me happy and it makes me a better person then why the **** shouldn't I believe in it? It was nice to see someone else agree with me on this. I think the world is too obsessed with breaking everything down, I think that we are losing the human element and being somewhat robotic at times.

Also just finished watching "the social dilemma" and I think I will probably stay away from social media as much as possible. I think it will be good so that I can stay more on track with the things I need to get down.

Wat a bunch of crap .
If standalone faith has any effect try doing fulltime faith without work then
show results. Then try fulltime work w/o faith and compare results.

..."all the hard work that is being put in will eventually produce an outcome, whether or not that outcome occurs should be irrelevant." - this bit seems logically flawed.
To talk about a "produced" outcome of any kind isnt it necessarry for that outcome to have occured in first place?
As for the first part - expecting results from hard work is called common sense. Nothing more or less.
Faith may work for you as a way to motivate yourself, just like someone else
might enjoy 'squeezing a goats testicles for good luck"

But ok, im no authority of any kind on these subjects so whatever works for u id say give it a go.

Subbed and GL

Sup! I don't think I ever mentioned anything about standalone faith, just said hard work + faith in the process is what I think is good, but yeah we're all entitled to our opinions, and not everything works for everyone.

This past month has been good and bad. My grind house mates left on the ~13th. So I was in Croatia by myself for like a week and a half, and then my friend Tim came over. But yeah, tough start to the month. I got a lot of alone time and time to reflect, on the other side I did have a couple of moments where I'd think "what the **** am I doing over here so far from home lol". But also met two girls at a cafe and hung out with them a bit before they left for Montenegro. Smoked some weed during this time, and that kinda messed with my productivity. I also stayed up super late to watch the NBA finals.

Struggled to get in volume the whole month( mainly because i reduced tables, and tried to be more aware in spots) , but studied a lot more than I should have haha. Can say that I have had a lot of poker realizations this month, and I like where my poker game is going.

Kinda weird tinder story: I matched with this account that said "birthday party". None of my mates wanted to go, so I ended up going alone. The party wasn't even in Split lol. but like 10 mins out in Podstrana. Anyhow I get there at 11PM, and text the girl that I'm there, and she's like "noooo we dont start until 12AM" lol wtf?? So I'm outside of the house trying to solve this spot, and I decided that **** it, I guess I'm pot committed here and will have to get there an hour earlier lol. I walk up the steps, and they (group of like 10 ppl) are eating dinner lol. "Hi im the guy from tinder" LOL Pretty cool though because they were all from Chile and Argentina, so it was nice that I spoke Spanish lol. They offered me some food and then asked a bunch of questions, very weird dynamic, I'm basically the center of attention for like 30 minutes, lmfao. Not my idea of fun, but it worked out. A French group showed up to the party and I ended up smoking some hash with them lol. "if you dont smoke a lot, then just take 1 or 2 hits" had a fun time, and ended up crashing there next to two of the girls. hahah not as introverted huh.

Goals for September
[x] GTO sleep 7-8 hours. No screens 1 hour before bed
[] No phone use within the first hour of waking up ( get rekt)
[x] Highly reduce sugar/junk food
[x] Exercise daily/Yoga
[x] Meditate Daily
[] Play 4-5 hours of poker daily ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[x] Study 3 hours a day. (review all spots and more)
[] Finish 50% of applications of NLHE (use examples in book in PIO so we are not just reading and not learning. (not quite at 50%, more like 40%, but because I went deep into the examples, and ran sims for a lot of the examples)

[] Read 30% of Ray Dalio's book, Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. (lol no where near finishing this, or near 30% lol, but did read stillness is the key by ryan holiday) Maybe Ryan Holidays biggest fan now. Really enjoying his books. thinking about writing an extensive review of his books after I finish Obstacle is the way, and his new book, lives of the stoics. I've really been thinking a lot about the ego, and how it shows up in poker, I think it shows up pretty damn often.




This might be the last time I post monthly results, because its somewhat irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, dunno yet tho
https://gyazo.com/43fffc2a88fefb4ed340411b363db09e

Really need to work on putting in more volume. That may just be my biggest struggle at the moment.

Sexy redline mang.

ty

October has been a mother****er. The grind has been really unpleasant. Really not trying to give it too much energy but it for sure is ****ing with me in game. Doubting myself in a lot of spots. I am trying really hard to continue to play my game, but honestly losing every day for the past 2 weeks does make me change some plays. It's a very weird dynamic because I am reviewing every session, and spot marked, and going deep into it. and at the end most of the spots are just fine, but even knowing this I still question myself? I guess going through so many swings lately has broken something in me, I am getting to the point where I just don't give a **** about losing lol. Like what can I do about it? (besides the things that I can control, nutrition,sleep study etc)

Anyhow I am proud of my work ethic, still going to continue to go hard at it.

Sorry to hear but it will happen often it poker. Only problem is that your confidence in your game is still related to you winning/losing $$$ instead of playing to make the best decisions possible.

What I've found to help this is meditation and of course stop checking your results all the time as when you do you are creating a bigger space and more connections in your brain(there is some science term for this but forgot) that works like this: I won money = I should be happy and confident / I lost money = I should be sad and unsure.

Solid advice. Yeah I really should not be so connected to the results. I've never felt stronger as a player, yet I'm losing haha. I've been meditating daily, but only for 20 minutes, will probably try to do like 2-3 20 minute sessions. Cheers dude!

Yo wassup guys.

Been busy grinding and studying! <3

Going to continue to update on instagram. Feel free to follow @cant5top.

Bless you guys!

So the whole instagram thing isn't gunna work, just not that into it. So I guess I will continue with the pgc. Need the accountability. I have been dealing with a downswing, that at this point I don't even know if its a downswing or I'm just a losing player. I feel like Sisyphus. Instead of a boulder I have a cold deck, and sometimes It ****s with me and lets me win, only to have my boulder come rolling down. I know this is depressing, but **** it, let’s not sugar coat things, I think it’s important to showcase all the realities that we as poker players have to deal with, and that playing cards isn’t a walk in the park. The same way I’d be running around in here showing a 10bb/100 graph, I think it’s important to write about the negatives.

As I write this I just finished a losing session. Besides feeling my body in flames, I felt amazement. “I can’t ****ing believe it” you see this is my issue, I can't ****ing fathom just how cruel card distribution can be, I know it goes both ways, but lately it’s only been going one way. I look at the card distribution now and laugh. It's almost like this **** was written by a genius writer, however, from a parallel universe, where everyone is a poker god, and for tv they watch humans play cards, and there is a bad beat channel, and I'm on that channel all the ****ing time. I probably have a fan club by now, they probably made tshirts in my honor, you could say I'm like a celebrity. I don’t know, I don’t know what to feel at this point. The emotions I have felt in the last months have been all over the place, however, I have mainly felt anger. I’m trying to figure it out. I’m tired of feeling these emotions, I’m pretty sure they will kill me some day haha.
Anyways, today I have decided that this can’t continue this way. For the moment being I will continue to update this daily. It’s not all that bad, I don’t have to deal with tilt, I guess the main issues are the emotions that flow through me daily.

For the rest of the month I am mainly going to focus on putting in a lot of volume. Yeah that’s it. And will also be checking spots that I found troubling in game. Will go from there. Will post a daily results graph as well.


https://gyazo.com/cceeec588e3aa755c355c950c8ef9f27

https://gyazo.com/997891d01874e576bd2d91ff05e54752

Today didn't go any better, but **** it, **** feeling sad. Had a call with my coach and we spoke about some things I have to work on. Going to focus a lot on bluff catching. I also need to have a better idea of my overall gameplan. Will also be more ocd with my routines. Not going to slack with yoga, meditation and journaling. Will also take my walks lol. Ready to put in some work.

https://gyazo.com/001f0be2683239fb47536f8e27e9a6a0

Testing day today. For sure at some point in the day I just got up from my pc and threw myself on the couch to see if this was still real life. It was. Had another coaching session, and we spotted a couple of leaks, which I think can be patched up easily, however it's not really a lack of skill I'm dealing with, it's just internal **** that causes me to make bad decisions, dealing with it. Becoming more aware every day.

https://gyazo.com/6cbf33cf36ac7cf1034864aaaa63edcd

Que hiciste para subir de NL25 a NL400 en dos meses!!??

about your on going downswing,I think you are right, about it being more of a mental state instead of by lacking technical aspects of the game. (oh well what do I know,but that's my impression!)

GLGL!