It's about time I make a PG&C and see it through.

Hi, I'm 19 years old and living in Vancouver. I'm in my second year of university, doing a commerce degree at UBC.

This year I'm taking 11 courses and need good grades, so life's pretty hectic and I often fall behind on one area of life or another. I'm gonna change that.

I haven't been able to play in the last 10 days or so due to technical reasons which has actually helped me a lot. I've been able to constantly meditate, catch up on school work, do pretty much everything I want to, and best of all download a calendar and plan everything out. Now, I can finally hold myself accountable and stop procrastinating/going out too much. Planning things out just helps so much. Life's been stress-free these last few days but it's time to get back to reality.



I'm staked atm. Been playing small/midstakes since august, lifetime results of 100 and above:




Goals:
For poker it's very simple, 20k hands a month of B+ or above quality volume and strive to play the best poker I possibly can.

subbed!

Gonna be putting in a lot of hours the next few days, so in accordance with my coach's suggestion I only played less than an hour today and spent the remaining time reviewing hands to get my mind back into it.

Eeergh,


When you build a pot vs fish and it backfires. Can hardly call it a cooler tho, he always a bunch of sets there.



Shove or call turn? I usually call, but I guess since he open limped, he's pretty fishy and won't be folding much, and I can get the money in before a Q/T comes that might kill my action.


- For all 3 of my sessions, my mind started wandering off after over an hour, so I needed to sit out and take a 5-10 minute break. Extremely annoying because having to break/restart tables. Kinda miss zoom rn. I used to be able to play much longer, I guess it's just a temporary thing because poker is so mentally taxing and I haven't played in awhile, hopefully I get used to it soon.

- I'm a bit more result-orientated than I used to be. Could be because I'm in MU and scared of losing more, or could be for some other reason. I don't let it affect my decisions at the table ever, though still not sure how big of an issue this is. (I used to not have this issue at all, partly because I never check my balance, but my stake requires me to update it daily)

- After a convo with my stablemates, I definitely need to tableselect more/better.

Ya I would definitely shove that turn, especially if he as only 35BB left!

Good luck, I'll be following! I'm in a similar situation, 20years old dealing with university, poker and friends/familly. I'm playing live 1/2 thought!

Eh, haven't been playing much. Lost a lot on Friday and coach said if my BR ever goes below that point, stop. Got the green light on Sunday night and then won some back.


-Been playing well, no problems with my mental game. Been meditating constantly, really happy about that.

-On Saturday I thought I wasn't allowed to play, so I was doing some review and going through my DB from biggest pots down, I realized, a lot of the big pots I won at 400 were vs spazzy players/stations. Before I moved down, I did table select a bit at 400, but I never do it at 200. Gonna start focusing on this more, 200 being soft enough isn't an excuse not to do it.

Yesterday:



Got pretty demotivated from the swing at the beginning, didn't want to play anymore (this part of my mental game has always been weak), but I'm on stake which means slacking off wasn't an option, plus it was on my calendar which I didn't want to break from. Glad I stuck it through.

- Played a few hands differently then I normally would have because I thought that's how my coach wanted me to play based on our last session. Cost me quite a bit of EV, and after talking to him about it we both agreed it was a bad play. Definitely cannot follow something blindly, I'm just going to play hands the way I think are optimal, and if it feels like it's contradictory to what my coach said, I'll ask him after the session.

- Everything else is good. Getting used to poker again, can play longer sessions.


Today:



10BI heater, so sunrunning quite a bit. Nothing too special, been table selecting a lot these last 2 days, more than I've ever done before, it's a really annoying process for me but definitely worth it.


Since start of stake:



Low volume is due to huge period where I didn't play. Anyway, glad I'm finally out of MU. Will start adding 400 tomorrow

Nice turnaround!

Results are nice, but the most important thing is to strive to put in high quality hours at the tables and play your best and maximize the situations in front of you regardless of whether variance is bringing you a winning or losing session.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks! You couldn't be more right. Consistently putting in high quality volume is the most important thing, next to constantly studying and improving off the table.

Today




Guess Bovada wanted its EV back from yesterday

First time playing 400 in awhile. Played really well for the first few sessions, not sure about that last session but probs played fine too and am just being result orientated. Gonna discuss some hands with my coach later to make sure.

What happened was I got into some high variance spots, and while ideally I should be exposing myself to tough competition, getting into these spots, and playing my best poker, I think it's better for me to just give up some marginally +EV spots for now and avoid the variance since I just started playing 400 again. Last thing I'd wanna do is to dive in too quickly and have to clear 400nl losses at 200nl. I sound like the biggest bumhunter right now (I'm not)

Just called it a day after those losses at the end, which is pretty lame. To be fair, I played enough today, and I'm just starting to feel a bit tired, so it wasn't the worst decision. Though could have probs pulled off another 1-2 hours of my B - B+ game.

Goal is to finish this week (half month mark) with 10k hands for the month. Sounds easy but I go out a lot on the weekend so I won't have time to slack around. Need to catch up since I promised backer 20k hands/month.



He had 66. Think it was a fine call.

Where the huge EV gap at ~600 hands came from



Yup, KT

In, gl man.

In for this one, should be interesting!

Pretty terrible day, only down a bit but have never been unhappier with myself and how I played. It's only 10pm, but I'll probably make a bunch more mistakes if I keep playing. Gonna clear my head and go outside in a bit.

Will give the full update tomorrow

In.

In what ways were you playing poorly? How did the spew manifest itself?

What do you think were the triggers to put you in a poor grinding state? What do you think are the underlying reasons why these triggers impacted you?

That story was Thursday

I wasn't feeling the greatest already. I woke up late, decided to skip my pregame session and jump right into it. During my sessions I let myself get distracted by social media more than I should have, kept closing and then reopening facebook awhile after.

Usually when that happens, I just leave and take a 20 minute break, gather my composure, and then come back with my A game. But I was finally getting some good tables and didn't want to leave, but I knew that my state of mind was no good so I just tried my best to inject logic. It didn't work as well as I had hoped, I didn't open social media again and instead put on some music, but my mind was more focused on the music than it should have been. My decisions at the table were far from optimal, and there were a lot of hands where I made snap decisions. While a lot were still the correct play, it's just a terrible habit to get into. I never ever make snap decisions in big pots (unless it's that top 1% like you have the nuts or something). Convinced myself I had to stay because of the good tables, but honestly should just have left.

Also, swings



Friday

So I've noticed a trend, I'll play very well for awhile, and then slowly decide that I can unconsciously do it and then start doing stuff like skip pregame. After that I'll play very badly on a day, have a wakeup call, and it starts all over. Hopefully it never happens again.

Because of how badly I played the day before, I made sure to bring my ultimate A game to the tables on Fri. Morning cardio, fruits and water ready, cold shower before playing, and a pretty intense pregame session. Was pretty much ultra-sharp at the tables, didn't even feel the slightest urge to open music (usually i have the urge to open social media, which is wayyy worse). Sadly, session got cut short because had to do some school stuff. Anyway, wayyy later during the day I played another small session without warm up (only had an hour). Think I made a bad call and got stacked at 400 (not in the graph for some reason.), but realistically I was playing my B game at that time, wasn't horrible like friday or anything.




Saturday: Losing, but playing well so I'm happy. Not sure if will still play, update to come tomorrow.

Wanted to add that I'm feeling really good, I think every time I make these mistakes, I'm able to learn from them and become a better player. I'm feeling more and more confident in my game and ability to make money.

Awesome, that's the right attitude. Mistakes will occur forever in your poker career. Your job is to learn from them and make it so these same mistakes happen less and less often.

Today:

Could only play for over an hour, so only spent 3-5 minutes on pregame and jumped right into it. B or B+ game probably, but what can you do



Week:


Will be the last graph that includes EV. I'm blocking out the things that don't matter. Usually I don't look at results too but my stake requires me to update the balance daily.

Anyway, really happy with results. Obviously running good, but I was at 3k ish MU around a week ago when I made this thread, now I'm around 2k in profit. Can't complain there. Also as mentioned in my previous post, learned a lot, feeling great. Definitely an awesome week.

Goal was to hit 10k hands for the month, I'm at 9.4k. Had some school stuff on friday, friend's birthday on Saturday, and was pretty hungover Sunday morning. Put in way too little volume that weekend, though I don't feel guilty at all. Those were legit excuses, and when I did have time to play I did and didn't slack off.


GL GL

interesting thread

are you able to say who you're being coached/staked by? and how many hands have you played at microstakes?

nice results, keep up the good work

Imawhale is my backer, the person who posted above me is my coach.

I've played roughly 300k hands at microstakes lifetime (50nl and below)

TY

some big pots of the week



KQo, ty sir



AA



Meh, he had 55. bad play by me. Call is not as bad as it seems, but honestly shouldn't be making this call vs most players, including this guy.



Bink, he had 45hh.

So pretty much exact same thing as yesterday.

Only had over an hour to play, so spent just 3 minutes on pregame for a B game session.






He had KJ.

Pretty terrible play, have so much better to bluff catch. That's what happens when you have Skype open while playing.

Damn, from vancouver aswell. Subbed & GL! Thinking about making a PGC aswell

Some helpful advice... take 30 minutes out of your day and think long and hard about why you feel the need to be staked, and if you can do anything to avoid it as soon as possible. Long run it's really not worth it at all if you're a winning player. You're probably thinking you don't have the roll and its a safety net/expenses bla bla..honestly just built your roll on your own (and on your own terms). Way down the road you'll thank me later

(and yes by all means get coaching on the side if that's your wish!)

Good luck at the tables

Thanks for the advice, I actually feel the same way. (No offense to anyone)


I started my stake in October and it's 2 months minimum before I can leave, my plan was always to leave the stake right after. However, I did tell my backer that I would play roughly 20k hands a month, and I've put in way less volume. So I'll leave after 2 months worth of volume, which should be mid/late December, leaving before seems morally wrong. I also would not leave before at least 10k profits, want to pay for the coaching and other costs rather than waste their time and leave them empty handed.

Don't get me wrong, I genuinely think Imawhale is a great stable, extremely good coaches/players who are very helpful/easy to work with, they definitely exceeded my expectations to say the least. You have my word. But like I said above, I've planned on not staying long before I even joined. It's because for someone like me it makes totally no sense to be backed. After this I'll properly look for some private backers that can give me what I want (so probs none of the 2p2 stables), or just play on my own dime which is totally fine with me.