Nice work! I like the direction you are heading!

Thanks Trevor! Keep it up with the vlog, looks like it's gonna be very entertaining.

August Summary

Realized I didn't sum up the month in the last post so wanted to do that now. Looks like I made about $2k, which includes that disastrous $1600 losing Sunday in the middle of the month. In the past a losing day like that wouldn't be that bad, but it was very stressful under the bankroll I had at that time. Luckily now I'm feeling better, more motivated to play, and have some more money due to good results. I think ACR went decently in August too but I don't track those results as vigilantly.

Volume

It appears I played 20 of the 31 days in August, meaning I missed 11, or over 1/3. However, 8 of these misses were in the first 12 days of the month when I was struggling hard with motivation, meaning I played 16 of the last 19 days which is quite good. HEM suggests I played 123 tourneys during the month but that also excludes both re-entries and WSOP tournaments. I actually just learned why my results are often off on HEM. The $215 Party tournament this past Sunday for example: The first bullet is tracked and shows all the hands I played on that, but I do not see the hands anywhere for bullet #2. I can find them in the normal session stats, but when I go to reports where the software shows how much money I'm up or down in each tournament, there's nowhere that lists the $600 I cashed for on bullet 2.

Anyway, in the small field NJ tourneys and the big field, small buy in ACR tourneys, I re-enter quite a bit, so that 123 tourney sample is probably much higher in reality. Regardless I plan on playing a lot more volume this month. I'm going to aim to play 6 days per week in hopes of playing at least 5 days per week. With 30 days in September that's a stretch goal of 26 days played with an actual goal of 22 days played. I've been happy with the volume I've been putting in lately and want to just keep doing that all month each session. I've been making a living these past 3 years playing low volume; I think I could really make some money if I actually start working hard and putting in good volume.

Running

I ran 73.2 miles in August in 9 hours 1 minute. Comes out to 7:23 per mile but pace isn't important for me right now. I'll set a hard goal of 100 miles in September and an easy goal of 75. I haven't ran in a week now with every day being in the 90s and it being hard for me to wake up early. Tomorrow's high is 93 again, but after that there are 4 straight days with a high in the 70s (high of 68 on Sunday!) and the next 4 days after that peak at 85 degrees, so weather won't be an excuse anymore. I've been doing well with poker without the running but I find myself getting bored during the day and almost having too much energy at night. I think I've been getting more worked up than I should be while playing and it might be in part due to not getting enough exercise. After a ton of deep runs and chip leads and great opportunities and flips for chip leads going the other way tonight I yet again took a bunch of 4ths and 5ths and 16ths it was enough to make me punch an old cheap chair hard enough to break it. Not good. More on that later though. Point of this paragraph is I need to get my mileage in this month!

Going Forward

I think what I'm going to do for the foreseeable future is to type daily updates whenever I feel like, save them in a word document, then post them here on Mondays so that there will be more of a schedule to when I update this thread. So in the future all of my thoughts will be fresh but compiled into one post at a later date.

I'm a little bit worried that my social life is going to struggle a bit with how I plan on conducting myself in the future but it's time to face facts. I need to take poker more seriously, treat it with as much attention and focus as most people treat their day jobs. I also love strategy and the more hands I play the more I start to notice patterns and develop my own strategies as to how to deal with things I see often that trip me up. In the heat of the moment when something's driving me crazy I throw a tantrum a lot of the time, but later that night or the next day I really think about why it was making me crazy. Then I try to develop a strategy to counter that way of playing.

A couple of NJ regs are dead set on playing for stacks whenever possible at 25/50 with a 10K starting stack in a soft field $100 tournament. I'd love to not play huge pots against the tougher opponents when there are weak players just absolutely giving it away, but that isn't an option when those regs are 3b'ing your opens to 5x with regularity. So you just have to develop a counter strat, go into your database and find the hands where they've done this, see if any have shown down. The other day I was looking at one guys hands by the biggest pots he's played in terms of big blinds and I find him opening 72o on the button in the top 10 biggest pots I've seen him showdown lol. So how do you counter a 100% button open range? I've been trying to really work with this sort of stuff lately and I'm going to just continue doing that until I find easy ways to counter all of the nonsense the NJ regs try to get away. I'm positive it isn't GTO so there's clearly a way to beat it, and I imagine there are ways of crushing some of the stuff I've been seeing.

I'm also noticing things about my mentality in the very big field ACR tournaments. In New Jersey there's sort of preset stages of each tournament that I've become very familiar with. Early stages, mid stages, leading up to the bubble, and then post bubble is often very close to the FT, so the space between the money bubble bursting and the FT bubble arriving has it's own feeling in my thoughts. However, when you're playing a 500+ player field and 100+ players cash, once you make the money there's an eternity until you get to the FT. I think my brain has just been conditioned with how to think after the money bubble bursts. "Alright, players really don't want to bust now so it's time to really go for it and try to take a chip lead into that FT." However, I make the money in these ACR tourneys, and I actually do often find myself near the chip lead, but as soon as things go backwards a little bit and I go from 4/100 to 26/82 and from 100BBs to 35BBs, I think a little bit of subconscious panic kicks in. "Wow I had 100K a minute ago at 1KBB and now I have 70K at 2KBB and there are a few players over 200K, how did I let this tournament slip away from me??"

Well of course this is a horrible way of thinking and it's very important to value this 35BB stack and to value the fact that you're still in a tournament, relatively deep in it, and this is the most important time to play well. I think I was 2/99 today when we hit the money in a $109 80K on ACR and then everything went south, but since I've seen myself in that position a few times now I did a better job of dealing with my 60K stack at 3KBB instead of focusing on how I used to have 150K at 1200BB. The spin up didn't happen, but I didn't feel as deflated about having a much smaller stack. It's important to be able to ride the ebbs and flows of tournaments and it's a skill I haven't developed since there isn't really much swinging to be done in NJ. You either maintain your big stack or you bust since the FT becomes short handed and it's clear you have to go for it right now. In bigger fields it's okay to lose a bunch of chips and then continue to chill and wait for the heat to come back.

I've gotten a little off track here but going forward I'll write down my thoughts each day or however often I'm feeling like it and then post them all together the following Monday. The trend of running really good early in tournaments and then running horribly at FTs has continued but that early run good has led to winning results, so I'm gonna choose to focus on that. I'm also going to focus on how easily 12 tabling has been coming to me and how (more or less) relaxed I've felt while doing it. I don't second guess my decisions while playing. I wait for the session to be over and then try to build strategies away from the table, implementing them later on. But while I'm playing I'm calling on the knowledge I already have, often in less than 2 or 3 seconds, and so far it's been working well.

To counter a 100% Button 3B, what is his f3b and 4bet %?

In general wouldn't the consensus be to never fold your Big Blind and have a lot of large 3bets there(depending on 4b % and f3b%)

I think opening 100% of buttons in this day and age seems rather terrible

Yeah opening 100% buttons would not be good, however in the NJ player pool you can certainly get away with straying waaaaaay away from GTO and going crazy exploitative until someone stops you. In fairness to him he's not actually opening 100% of buttons but is clearly going quite wide if he's ever opening 72o in that spot.

And as far as to how we want to counter the theoretical 100% button open, I think that's gonna be the fun part for me going forward that's going to make me want to study and work hard! It's great to watch videos and review hands and those are both important parts of studying. But I think the best players in the world eventually graduate from that form of studying and start to figure things out on their own. Developing strategies is very complex and takes a lot of already learned knowledge. I think it's something I could be good at. And what's cool about it is I think there are multiple answers. Let's use the 100% button open counter for example.

If we're assuming small blind has folded then yes, we should fold a very small % of hands, though I'd imagine we'd still want to fold some non-zero percentage. Something I found very interesting while listening to a RIO video lately was the idea of straying from a completely 100% exploitative style in a given situation to help future EV. So in this example, we probably could defend 100% of hands in one way or another but this might lead villain to adjust in a way in the future that we don't want him to. So we fold some hands, allowing him to think this 100% button open is working to some degree, and we pick up more longterm equity from the hands we do VPIP.

Fold to 3b and 4b stats would certainly be important when figuring out this problem since he's going to need to defend ~43% of hands to stop us from 3b'ing any two profitably (assuming there's 1bb in antes, he opens to 2bb's, we 3b to 7bb's). This means he'd have to defend as wide as T8o, which probably isn't going to happen, so maybe we could start by literally 3b'ing any two cards. Or maybe there's a more profitable combination of 3b'ing, possibly by 3b'ing a ton of good hands and a ton of garbage and then flatting the middle 30% or so. I'm not sure what would be best. But my plans for the future include experimenting with different types of strategies and seeing what works best. That's going to take a lot of work away from the table and then a lot of volume to test what's best. I've been enjoying getting up to 12 tables going at a time lately though and my motivation is high right now so hopefully I'll be able to do all of this slowly but surely.

Weekly Review, 9/3 - 9/9

Wednesday

I just got done finishing my last post and it's helped to calm me down since the end of my session. I took an overwhelming chip lead to the final table of the WSOP $50 5K, I'm talking 400K of the 1M in play with 2nd having around 100K, and finished 4th, eventually losing AKs<TT for 500K of the 1M in play. The top heavy WSOP payouts are so wildly tilting when I continue to lose massive flips with 4 left in these tournaments. That being said, I'm getting into these flips since there aren't any real jumps and I don't regret my decisions. Getting AK in obviously is standard regardless of payout structure but in general I'm going to continue to go for it on WSOP.

I had an absurd amount of chips in the $109 80K on ACR heading into the money. I already had heaps when I got it in with 2 outs for a ton of chips on the turn and binked to get to 150BBs or something nearing the money. I always get subconsciously really down on myself when I get very lucky and then lose anyway. I'm starting to try to bring that up into my conscious mind so as to not let it eat at me. I lost AK to AJ for a bunch then lost a couple of flips; I don't think I played poorly, just ran bad down the stretch for cash for a few buy ins. I did play poorly in the 2 outter hand; I probably had no business getting it in there, so when I get handed an opportunity like that I always feel ****ty about losing. But again, if it's out of my control I shouldn't overthink it.

I bubbled the Stars nightly $100 8K again; that might make 3 nights in a row where I've bubbled a nightly, and I know I bubbled both Party and WSOP a couple nights ago, so might actually be 4 in 3 days. I jammed 20BBs from the SB vs a button opener who was opening 40% of buttons. Unfortunately AA makes up 6 of the 530 combos in that top 40% and this time he had one of those. I took 16th in an ACR $30 18K and 50th or something in a $16.50 15K to end up with one table left, the Party nightly $109 10K. I came to the FT with around average; most of the stacks were pretty close. Similarly to the WSOP FT, it felt like I was jammed on every time I opened light. Guys who were 3b'ing like 2.5% of hands were just snap jamming when I opened. Occasionally I'd find a hand and the open would get through. Quite frustrating.

I'm now looking at the last few hands on HEM. The guy on my right was a whale who legit has a 63% donk flop stat. 10 out of 16 opportunities he has led flop into the raiser. I open AJss utg, he peels bb, flop K87r he donks 2/3 I fold. Eventually I'm down to 67K at 5Kbb and jam A7s bvb. I get called by A2s and I flop a flush to double to 140K. Back to getting jammed on but I'm going to continue opening when I think it's profitable. The whale on my right limps off of 290K at 5K, I make it 16K with ATss and 125K in the next seat he calls. Flop 975sss and he donks 28.5K into 43K lol, I call. Turn 8x he bets 35K into 100K I call leaving myself 48K back. River 9x he jams my last 48K into 170K I call and beat KcJs. Oh my. This was the last hand before break and I now have 266K of the 1M in play with 6 left at a pretty soft FT and feel very good about my chances.

Four minutes after break I open JJ in CO at 5K and SB jams 95K, finally I have a hand to call off with! He has AQ and turns a Q and I'm back to 150K. Open A5s at 6Kbb and guy running 42/14/4.8 jams SB for 61K. Maybe I need to just flick it in only needing 37% but I really think he's jamming quite tight. I also maintain my 2nd place standing when I fold, when calling and losing drops me to 84K and 5/6. I fold and am down to 134K at 6K. Folds to my SB and I jam Q3o for BB's last 55K total, he calls with JTo and I hold lol, back to 185K and am 2/5. Open J2s on btn, fold to jam. Open T9s on btn, BB defends, flop KQ2r I c-bet and he snap x/jams for a lot, fold again. Down to 140K and 4 of us are virtually tied for 2nd with 1st being the whale at 460K.

I open AK utg, excited to have a hand when someone inevitably jams on me but it folds to the whale who defends. Hope I flop something because he's going to lead lol. J65hh, I have the Kh, he donks 20K into 30K. With 2 overs and backdoors I'm going to take one off, I kinda hate it against 2/3 sizing (1/2 or less and it'd feel totally fine) but I think it has to be done. Turn Ax and he continues 48K into 71K. I jam my 104K total (I could flat again and let him bluff rivers but with ICM I think I want to fold out gutshots and stuff that have any equity). He tanks forever and then calls with J7o. Pot is now 280K, the other 3 players have between 120K and 150K each, whale has 325K behind. I'm a crazy person so I've done the math on what this pot was worth. At this moment in time I have 89% to win this 280K pot, and 11% to bust 7th for $740. If I win this pot, my stack is worth $1790 from strictly ICM, but given I'm on the direct left of the other guy who has chips, he is a whale, and the other 3 players are all close enough that I *should* be able to abuse them, I think my stack is probably worth more than that, let's say 2K. 2000*.89+740*.11=1861, meaning on average at this moment in time I should expect to make about $1861, solidifying a good day despite a bunch of frustrating moments beforehand.

The river was the 11% jack of diamonds and it was just a bit too much for my still apparently weak minded brain to deal with. After screaming some curse words I stood up and punched a very cheap chair that was sitting next to me and breaking the back of it. I then punched my pedestal fan, knocking the cover off of it and the rest of it on the ground. What did this poor fan ever do to me other than keep me cool? I then walked into my bathroom and sat on the floor for about 5 minutes trying to calm down.

I'm not sure exactly what it is that sets me off like this sometimes. I think it has to do with having a ton of potential and then feeling like I've "wasted" it, as I alluded to in the last post. $1200 left on the table on WSOP, $2K left on Party, 15K or so on ACR, I should've won these tourneys if only I didn't suck! But of course when I take a step back and think about things rationally, there's just nothing you can do sometimes in poker. There's no need to feel as if running good early means you're a piece of **** if you don't win. You can't control most of this stuff. My irrational spur of the moment brain thinks I've done something wrong, while a different part of my brain knows there's nothing to be done, and those two forces clashing with each other lead to me short circuiting and breaking a helpless chair. I like that I'm showing passion for the game again, but I do need to tone it down just a bit before I break something valuable or mess up my hand or something.

Friday

Just absolutely did not have it today. Thought I was gonna feel good going into the session, got an hour into it and just did not feel right. I've been falling asleep after 5AM and waking up after 1AM a few days this week and that probably has something to do with it. I might also be paying for staying up all night 2 nights ago; I remember my coach in college always telling us that you didn't pay for getting no sleep the next day. You paid for it the day after that, and ever since then I've always thought about that and noticed it to be true whenever I don't sleep properly. I think trying to get into a "normal" sleep pattern is dumb given the nature of being an MTT player, but a goal of getting to sleep before 3 and waking up before noon is reasonable. Looks like I lost $600 in NJ and lost another $300 or so on ACR without any real runs. I am still 40/72 in the WSOP $30r so maybe tomorrow I can write about the day saving miracle that occurred but man I did not feel right during today's session. I'm not gonna let it bother me though, I'll try to get sleep tonight and get out on a run tomorrow.
*Two hours later*
Chipped up to top 5 then lost AK<KK to drop to 10bbs near the bubble, which lasted forever due to a guy with 4bbs folding like 2 full orbits til he blinded out in the BB. I was down to 4bbs at this point then jammed 55 getting 2 callers. 976 goes xx, 3 turn and guy bets and gets a fold, has A5, I hold and now have 15bbs. 13/20 now with $2300 up top one time?
*Two minutes later*
TT in vs QQ, T on flop. Also Q on flop. Out in 20th lol

Sunday

Had people over Saturday night, was on the fence about playing that night anyway and then a few friends I haven't seen in a while asked if they could come over so I took it as a sign. Woke up after noon for possibly the 7th day this week today. I really dislike doing that but I set the alarm for 11:30 and feel like I've gotten no sleep when I wake up. Fall back asleep and all of a sudden it's 2PM.

Got some food, watched the early games with my roommates then headed upstairs for session. I decided to play a bunch of satties but stay low on the MTT volume. The lens in my glasses popped out again as the screw holding the frames together broke. I ordered 1 day contacts that are set to get here on Wednesday so I don't want to go out and buy a new pair of glasses, but I also am getting headaches wearing these glasses again. In any case it was hurting my head while I played so I decided I'd only have a few games running at a time so I didn't start feeling really out of it.

I sattied into the WSOP $320 100K and the Stars $200 35K and decided to just take the T$ on Stars; WSOP was no choice but to play. At the same time I built up a stack in the $109 200K on ACR. With 100 left I got 65cc in vs KK on 742cc for the chip lead. Turn 8 got me to 650K from 10K starting at 7Kbb and things were looking good. Later I open KK on btn and BB defends then x/r's TT4r. Idk man it's such a dumb spot; there aren't any natural bluffs but I'm at the top of my range. I call down and lose to QT to effectively bust, eventually going out in 44th for $500 or something with 36K up top .

At the same time I was spinning up a stack in the $320 on WSOP, staying near the top 10 through the middle stages then coming back to the middle of the pack as we hit the money. Lots of ups and downs, won and lost quite a few flips, eventually jam 77 for 20bbs in CO, button calls off last 5bbs with Q5hh for whatever reason and flop is all hearts. Later jam KJ into AJ, board runs K2345 and that's that, out 15th for $1400. Nice pickup given I was only in for $150 or so but with 30K up top and a shot to get back to where I want my roll it stings a bit.

The weather has cooled off and I want to start running again but I'm worried with these glasses. I might pop the old contacts in tomorrow and run. I fear they'll start hurting midrun and I'll have to deal with either my eyes burning or being pretty blind while running; neither is a good situation. I really really really hope the 1 day contacts feel good in my eyes. It'll be a huge pain in the ass if they get here and don't work out. I just want to stop bothering with my eyesight. Winning either of those tourneys today honestly probably would have led to me getting Lasik . Have to find a way to run good deep in an important MTT. Obviously that's out of my control but it's pretty consistent runbad in the big ones. It doesn't bother me the way it used to but when I'm sitting here with tape all over one of my glasses lenses the difference between 1500 and 30K becomes a lot more apparent.

Overall decent effort this week, 3rd consecutive winning Sunday, things are looking a lot better than they were a month ago. Gonna continue to work hard and grind. Goal for upcoming week is to try to fall asleep and wake up a little earlier each day and to get some runs in. I'm really counting on these 1 day contacts to help with my vision and make everything feel easier.

Weekly Review, 9/10 - 9/16

Monday

Pre-session: Woke up at 11:30 and fought the very strong urge to fall back asleep! It's the little things sometimes. 4PM now, gonna grab some dinner and relax til maybe 5:30 then do mediation. Will start session up around 6PM which I'm hoping to target as my new starting time. On Tuesdays and Thursdays this will allow me more time to satty into the $250-$500s that run those days in NJ, and all other days I'll be able to get into the 3:30 big guarantee ACR MTTs when blinds are still reasonable.
12:30 AM: Felt a bit tired mid-session and a little out of it, but it was a different feeling than those that I used to get in the past. This was "blah, I don't wanna 12 table, I'm still in a good state of mind to play though so I'm going to relax with 6 tables and take it easy." In the past I'd just want the session to be over.

I've noticed that nothing wakes me up like making some hands and winning some pots. It might sound obvious but I can be fading in a session then get AA twice in a few minutes and win a few pots and all of a sudden everything's clicking again. I feel more confident and positive and optimistic than I did a few minutes prior. It's not that I was getting down on myself or anything but the focus slips a little bit. I'm glad I'm consciously noticing it though as that'll make it easier to correct in the future.

The Party $109 10K today was one of the softest tourneys I've ever played. Here are two hands from the first 30 minutes (3 levels) of the tourney. 10K starting and these hands come at 30/60 and 40/80:



I got rid of names since last time I included names in here I got angry Twitter DMs.
I ended up like 10/14 with 12 paying and I had about 15bbs; unfortunately the shorties cling (as they should I suppose) and I hit the money with about 6bbs. Ran good, got a jam through then 44>33 and eventually AJ>AK and had a decent stack going to FT. One guy ran like god and played a ton of hands and knocked everyone out til we got 3 handed. He had 730K, I had 130K, shorty had 80K. Big stack then doubled up shorty and I was shortest at 5Kbb, stacks at 650K, 160K, and my 130K. Big stack folds button, I limp 77, BB just rips 26bbs lol. Against most I'd just snap it off but this guy was running 6/3 over 50 hands or something silly at FT so I took some time with it. Original plan was to limp/jam so him shoving threw me off for a second. After a little while though I realized it has to be a call, he'll have smaller pairs, might induce TT+ or whatever, and if I'm limp/folding 77 I obviously am way overfolding. He has K3, flop comes K high and I bust 3rd for $1350. Stars $100 didn't go off today and I played mostly ACR so only had $250ish of buy ins on NJ sites so it was a good day there.

Ended up mincashing a $66 12K and $30 15K. Currently am 1 tabling the $22 30K sitting 13/37 with 450K at 16Kbb (10K SS). If nothing else I love playing ACR to get used to playing actual multi table tournaments. I was thinking about it today; I don't play MTTs for a living. I play really good structured sngs. The fields are so tiny in NJ that the variance just isn't as high as I imagine most readers of this thread think it is. The comments about playing tournaments for a living not being possible in the USA are probably not incorrect. But I'm not really playing MTTs lol. Playing on ACR, even if I end up not making much money, does a great job of preparing me mentally for the live MTTs that have 1000+ people. I get no practice with that on the NJ sites. I'll wrap this up for today, hopefully can come back later and say I binked 5.6k off a $22 buy in!
Edit: AJ<A8 (J8 was also all in for 2bbs :/) then KJs<KQs bb vs btn, l8r me in 30th or something.

Tuesday

Up again at noon today, baby steps. Daily contacts are supposed to arrive tomorrow, not gonna lie I'm gonna be really bummed out if my eyes still burn when I use these. On the flip side, if they work I'll be really excited to not have to wear glasses for the first time in over a year. Running would be easier, I'd feel more comfortable, I think even poker would be less straining on my eyes.

Satties were frustrating to start the day, ran very bad in the $30s to get into the $250 on Stars. Tilts me a little harder since I used to rip that tourney pretty regularly but I just gotta stay humble and keep grinding. Went back to 12 tables today, no watching TV on the side, just music to relax and focus. Ended up making $17 on the NJ sites lol. Won some goofy "old school" $35 tourney on Party; no late reg but rebuys were available (no add on)...got like 17 people and only 2 paid, $450 and $300 and I ran good to win the $450. Field was soft but I needed to get there a few times to win. Mincashed WSOP 30r and took 9th in Stars $100.

Currently have 2 tables left, both ACR, er scratch that...mid writing this sentence dropped down to 4bbs in the $11 20K lol. Now 65/65 needing a miracle but do have the button. Other table I'm 2/16 in $30 18K with 316K at 6Kbb from 5K SS. Again, the ups and downs in these tourneys aren't able to be experience on the NJ sites. On NJ, you hit the money, then you gear up for the spring to the FT. ACR you hit the money then settle in for the long haul. It's sorta nice having different phases of the tournament. I've found myself calming down much more when things go wrong. I'm used to things going wrong post money bubble and now you have to try to grind out payjumps and whatnot. On ACR you get to just keep trying to build your stack back up without having to worry about any sort of ICM. MTTs just hit break, I'll have 2 very different experiences coming back, one table I'm dead last of 65, the other I'm only behind 1 with 16 left. Shade over 3K up top in each.

Friday

Kinda rough last 2 days. Poor results, very little desire to play, last night I even stopped regging and almost hoped to lose the few tourneys I had left. I actually did run really bad in them to bust and felt relieved lol. Today I woke up very late again but felt determined to stop feeling crappy so I went out on a run. 3 miles felt like a grind but I did get them done under 21:30 so that was good. I got started late today so at 6:55 I checked to make sure both nightlies that sometimes don't have the 5 required to start were going to start (they were) and then grabbed some food and did my meditation. It's 7:45 now and I'm about ready to start it up.

The good news from the last few days is that my contacts came in the mail on Wednesday and so far so good. I've had slight irritation in my eyes with these daily contacts but I'd say I'm a 9/10 on the comfort scale. As I've told my friends I'm cautiously optimistic about being able to use them long term. The run today was really nice not having clunky glasses on my face while I sweat and all that. It'll also be great if I can get back into basketball and not have to deal with the glasses falling off. A few times I took turn around jump shots the last couple times I played and by the time I released the ball the glasses had moved to the point that the rim was a blur . Anyway, contacts feel good, I'm gonna try to grind hard tonight and find the fire I've been missing the last couple days.

Friday, tail-end of session: My roommate asked me around 6PM if I wanted to head out to NYC with him tonight. He threw some very tempting details into the mix but I buckled in and said I needed to work. It's probably more me feeling anxiety about heading into the city lol but I was still glad I was able to stay focused on the session despite the bad feelings I'd had the past few days. I got rewarded with a win in the Party 10K for $2850. The final hand I had 500K to 300K at 6Kbb, I min K4o in the SB he calls, flop KQ3ss he jams for 12x pot I call and hold vs 73o. Yikes.

Up over 2K in the last 2 days in NJ (forgot to record BR after yesterday, think I lost about $300) and am currently 10/15 in the $55 12.5K on ACR (on the 1AM break now). Unfortunately just lost AK to AQ/88 for inf (beating AQ woulda given me a good size side pot too)...a scoop woulda given me CL but I've still got 18bbs to work with. Hoping to spin this up for another $2700+ score on the night.

Sunday

Started around 5:00, watched some football beforehand, did a good job to not get sucked into staying downstairs too long. Won 2 satties to Stars $200, 1 satty to $320 on WSOP, got scummed really hard for a seat to the $400 satty to WPT main, oh well. Made runs in quite a few tourneys. Cashed every nightly, mincash on WSOP 30r, 5th in Stars $100 8K, currently 2/3 in Party $109 10K. Just busted ACR $55 30K 6 max in really brutal fashion, KK<QQ for chip lead with 6 left, Q on turn after T52r flop. I really just don't win MTTs on ACR, pretty sure I have literally never came 1st in one. I've ran quite well on ACR tbh, but when it comes to FTs I do not run very good. What can ya do but keep grinding. 6th for $1100 with $5800 up top. Pretty brutal.

Appears I am up $400 on NJ sites today plus whatever I cash for on Party. Plus an additional little chunk on ACR. 3 left in Party, stacks are rec--553K, me--470K, reg--226K, playing 5K/10K. $1625 locked up, $3481 up top. Would be very nice to close this one out. Regardless of result I have my 4th 4 figure winning Sunday in a row. +8K the last 3 Sundays plus today being at least +2K means I'm up 5 figures the past month's worth of Sundays that I wouldn't have been had I gotten lazy and ran from the stress of playing on the biggest day.

I'm proud of myself for grinding through the tough times. The more I play the more confidence I feel. I'm happy with the humility I've shown, not playing anything over $100 buy ins without attempting to satty in. Going in to today I was something like +$6800 on the month on NJ sites. I sometimes think back to my first month as a full time pro, living on my own and paying bills and all that. That was my biggest NJ online month ever, +19K. It feels like ages ago and like I was a different person or something. Eclipsing that mark would feel like a huge accomplishment, so I'm going to grind hard with that in mind the rest of the month. For now, it's time to try to finish off this Party MTT.

Edit: Took it down 23 minutes later

Thread In General

Wanted to get some feedback from anyone reading this. Do you think this format of writing posts in a separate place and then posting everything from each week at once is good? Or should I just post each update on its respective day? Is it better to see each post day by day as time goes or is the bigger update once per week a better way to read it all? Let me know your opinion! I'm always looking for feedback on what would make this more entertaining. It still basically serves as a therapeutic way for me to reflect on how everything is going but if I could make it more entertaining that would obviously be better. It's tough to be entertaining when I'm not doing much other than online but when I get back to live I'll make sure to take a bunch of pictures and whatnot.

Midway Check on Monthly Goals

Poker-wise we are in good shape. After not playing on the 1st, I've technically played every day, but I'm only gonna give myself credit for 14 of the 15 since one I played 1 MTT on ACR that started midday just for fun so that I could take that night off . That was Saturday the 8th, so that's 8 consecutive days now. Wednesday and Thursday were low volume since I was getting very frustrated and didn't want to keep playing those days, but I did sit down and at least give it some effort. Ten of these days I've played at least 10 MTTs, and remember that's with re-entries and WSOP tourneys not included. I've played 152 MTTs in total, already eclipsing last month's number.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have done almost zero running. I did my random 3 miler at 7AM after I couldn't fall asleep a while back and on Friday I ran 3. Running without glasses felt amazing but I could tell my cardio was quite bad. I did put in 21:30 for 3 miles which was cool but I was laboring. So I'm at 6 miles with a soft goal of 75 miles, probably not gonna happen lol. But I would at least like to try to run 5 days per week to end the month, so 10 days out of the last 14 would be an acceptable finish for me.

Tomorrow I'll hit up my buddy Max and chat about him possibly coming back over the pond to visit and maybe review some hands. He's at the tail end of WCOOP which must be a pretty wild grind. NJCOOP is starting up at some point at the end of the month and some WSOP online circuit series starts on Tuesday. I'm still not rolled to be playing $200s but I'm significantly closer than I was just 2 weeks ago. I'm thinking about my bankroll the same way I was the first year of playing and it's helping to keep me motivated by making me feel like I have less money than I actually do. I'll probably take a few shots during that series since it should be soft while continuing the standard daily grind. I have a number in my head that I want to get my roll to by the end of the money in order to make that NJCOOP feel more stress-free as far as money goes.

But to sum up, let me know if there's anything you think could be better with this thread to make it more interesting or entertaining, and thanks for reading!

What's your comfort level playing on ACR? I know a lot of their volume went down after the "Bot" situation and DDOS Attacks.

Hey Dan haven’t checked in in awhile. Just went back and read all your Vegas posts up to the present and caught up... good stuff, I’m glad you got to play the main. I was out there for about six weeks myself this summer and the games were so good I wanted to make a point of posting in here that you should definitely be in vegas during the series. With the craziness of vegas I just never got around to it. It sucks too because we there at the same time and could’ve got a beer or something. Anyway glad to see you made it out there and played well... Maybe I’ll tell you more about my trip another time, it went pretty well actually (on the table at least (Bink)), but I gotta crash.

In reference to your question, having just read thru eveything before and after the format switch, I like the old format better... it allows for people to contribute on a more real time basis which creates a more conversational atmosphere. But I realize its probably more work that way and I think both formats are viable. Vegas inspired me to get back on the grind and start taking my game more seriously again, I’ll be in here more often. Keep grinding and working hard, talk later.

I feel pretty comfortable about it but I don't keep a lot of money on there and I don't consider the money on there to be mine, if that makes any sense. In other words, if the site snatched up all my money in a Black Friday-esque situation, I don't think I'd feel anything. It's just sorta free money in my mind and when I have a bunch on there and people want me to sell them some, then it turns into real dollars. But there haven't been many DDOS attacks lately and I've never encountered anyone playing in a way that felt robotic. I imagine a lot of Americans get frustrated since there are some Euros on there who undoubtedly play better than what most Americans are used to but I definitely enjoy that challenge.

Damn yeah woulda been great to grab a beer and meet up! Definitely let me know next time. Congrats on the bink, happy to hear about your success!

You're probably right about simply posting each day whenever I feel like it. It really isn't any more work; I've actually been writing the posts on 2p2 then copy/pasting them to a word document. I didn't want to clutter the thread but I suppose cluttering my own thread is sorta the point of it after all!

Monday

Poor day results-wise, mincashed a $88 60K on ACR and didn't cash anything else. Had CL for a while early on in Party 10K, thought it was gonna be 3 wins in 4 days but wasn't meant to be . I'm back to the point of having a roll where I don't feel desperate but I want to keep pressing on so that the roll never gets as low as it did a few months ago again.

All that being said, I do feel tired and a little burned out. Yesterday I just felt tired while playing. It wasn't even negative feelings, just exhaustion. The WSOP online circuit series starts today and I want to at least play that event. Maybe I'll one table it and watch the Red Sox clinch the division vs the Yankees with my Yankee loving roommate. He likes to talk about how Judgment day is coming and he really never stops with it, so I never stop spamming him with this picture:



Red Sox magic number is 2, meaning a win tonight would clinch the division. I just gave my roommate 100:1 that Boston would win the division, I imagine true odds are probably like 1M:1 lol.

Tournament (and baseball game) starts at 7:00, $200 12.5K knockout. Appears it's $100 per bounty, just a straight up KO, no progressives or anything. It could be nice to kick back and relax while still feeling like I haven't missed an event I shouldn't. It does suck missing Tuesday, a big day to try to satty into a bunch of different events in NJ, but with how tired I've been the last few days I think it's time to just chill and maybe try to get some good sleep tonight.

I just got done a 3 mile run as well which felt good. I took it very relaxed, 3 miles in 7:46/7:37/7:25 for a total of 3.01 in 22:52 (7:36/mile). Has to be good for me to go easy and try to get back into a loose schedule of running each day again. It helps my mindset so much and it's so easy to get out of the habit when poker is going well. When I'm having success in one form I tend to neglect other things that help me. In order not to get frustrated with future run bad it'll be important to continue doing the things I know help. Time to grab a shower and some dinner and then watch Boston clinch this thang.

Wednesday

Not a great day yesterday. Sleeping trouble continue, doesn't seem to matter when I lay down, I'm not falling asleep before 4AM (and usually later). This leads to me waking up after 1 and now I don't have that long before I want to start up again at 6. Easy way to burn out when you feel like there's not much of a break in between playing.

I did mange to run for the second day in a row. Got out there at 3PM, ran splits of 7:39/7:18/6:41, getting a little carried away on that third mile when I caught a guy who was running a decent pace and felt awkward about it so I picked it up lol. I got some food after that, tried to relax at home, ate some more food and started my session around 7 after doing a quick meditation.

I fired one bullet of the $215 WSOPc online event and busted very quickly which was frustrating. The rest of the session was going alright until around 9:30 when something just snapped inside of me. I did the usual punch my desk and quick yell and then started feeling a bit of panic. I'd registered a few $100 buy ins I don't usually play and everything hit me at once. I was exhausted from running, my bad diet was catching up to me, and the realization that I was 12 tabling with a decent amount of money out there had me start feeling really panicked. For the first time in a long time I started feeling like I just wanted to punt off every tournament and quit so I wouldn't feel like this anymore.

Fortunately, after punting a $100 buy in very hard, I managed to get myself back together and calm down a bit. I was left with 4 tables, a $109 25K on ACR, WSOP $30r 7K, and Stars $20 1.6K and $100 8K. Jammed TT for 19bbs UTG with 8 left in the $20 and UTG1 called with AJo, RIP me. Then AK<AA pretty deep in ACR for a mincash. Final tabled both the Stars and WSOP nightlies before busting 5th and 7th respectively. Added up my results on the day and it ended up actually being a small win on the NJ sites. Definitely a relief given how horrible I felt mid session.

So I took a few things away from yesterday. I'm going to be tired any time I try to get back to running after a break from it. This is going to lead to me possibly being a little more easily shaken up so I need to be smart when I'm tired. I won't be skipping sessions but I need to play them appropriately. I also need to focus on buy ins vs volume. If I'm going to rip a bunch of $100s+ then I don't think I want to be 12 tabling. If I'm 12 tabling I should be playing a bunch of tables where losing won't hurt at all. But I still feel the financial sting of busting $100s more than I'd like to, so having 12 of those running is not going to lead to good things for me when the negative variance hits.

I also want to improve my eating habits but I feel clueless in that department. Luckily English Max is gonna come over for a week or so in Early October and has let me know he can help me with this. Not worrying about whether or not I'm eating well would definitely be a nice weight off my shoulders.

So it's about 1PM now, I'm going to drive to the same park as yesterday and run again and then head to a grocery store after and pick up a lot of stuff. It's not the healthiest but it's certainly better than eating fast food each day. I'll try to eat something before 3 so that I can eat again before my session, which I'll probably start quite early today in order to play satties to the bigger stuff the sites run on Thursdays.

Last thing I forgot, I eclipsed 900K in online earnings the other day. I have 59 cashes in September so far according to P5s. It's been fun grinding hard and trying to put up some stats in the process.

I had a similar problem a while back ago. I used melatonin to start and after getting advice from a few friends did affirmations before I went to bed and visualized that I would get up at 9:30AM everyday, I set my alarm in the room over from my bed with a cold glass of water.

It sucked first week or two but eventually became pretty easy after awhile, think adding those extra hours as a poker player is vital.

Also would recommend trying running/working out in the morning, as I find having a lot more energy by night instead of working out right before my session.

GL on the road to a milly cashes

Need an update Dan.

Want an update, Daniel.

bumped for a concerned fan of the blog

+1, hope all is well

Alright I guess a month is long enough between updates! Not a ton to update other than the standard "I got motivated, did well, then abruptly lost all motivation to play and haven't played at all lately." I took maybe a week off just doing other stuff, then Max came from England and we hung out for a week. At the tail end of his trip I started feeling really sick and felt like **** for a few days before slowly getting over it. We then realized our heat wasn't turning on so our house was very cold (55 degrees I think) for like 4 days and I still didn't feel great so I was just under the covers for a while. Yesterday we got that sorted out and I hung out with my roommates. Tonight is my friend's housewarming party that I'll be going to and then I suppose tomorrow I should get back into the Sunday grind.

I have a feeling I won't grind properly but hopefully can at least get a small session going to build some momentum to settle down and grind out the work week. All of the stuff above are just standard excuses and not good reasons to not to my job but that's all I got. I've realized that I love games and strategy but I feel like I have almost a long-term sort of ADD. I simply have not ever been able to pick one thing and stick with it. I like trying to solve a game to some degree and then I get bored with it and move on. With poker I was enthralled with it for a long time but over the last few years I've been pretty bored with it. I don't share that same enthusiasm I see a lot of my younger friends having with it.

That being said, I do have streaks where I truly love it again. I start thinking about different strategies and get excited like it's a new game again. That's what happened for 3 weeks in September and the results and motivation were both very good. The key going forward, as it always has been, will be to keep that motivation high as often as possible and to minimize the time I find myself with no motivation. Or even to just grind through and play when I really don't want to. I'm going to look for new ways to keep the game fresh and enjoyable going forward so that these lapses become less and less common. I did a good job in early September and I'm not going to write that off as nothing simply because I've had a letdown over the past month, but clearly I do need to get back into it.

Some non-poker stuff that has been pretty sweet lately though. The obvious, the Boston Red Sox. I have literally never had a more tense sports-related moment than watching game 4 of the ALDS vs the Yankees. With Boston leading 2 games to 1 in a best of 5 series my roommate (and best friend) had been very tense with each other, him being a diehard Yankees fan. I am horrible at handling **** talking and I take it personally for some reason lol so when he started going in on me during game 2 I was just not about it at all. That being said, I did no **** talking during games 1 or 3 because I don't wanna dish it out when I can't take it. So during game 4 with Max visiting, Tee Dubs and I sat in our living room not saying much to each other watching this pivotal game; either we go to a winner take all game 5 in Boston, or Boston knocks out NY by winning 2 games on their home turf.

Boston more or less dominated the game, loading the bases with 2 outs in the 1st before Ian Kinsler launched one to left field that just missed getting out. CC Sabathia barely survives the 1st unscathed. Both pitchers pretty comfortably get through the 2nd before Boston scores 3 in the 3rd and gets Sabathia out early. They go to the 9th with Boston leading 4-1. Tee Dubs has been very amicable all game and I've appreciated that so still no **** talking. The bottom of the 9th comes and we bring in a struggling Craig Kimbrel to try to get the job done. He's been bad since July despite normally being a top notch closer. None of the announcers have seemed aware of this during the playoffs, always talking about how great he is without mentioning his struggles in the 2nd half of the year. He lets 2 runners on before getting a strikeout on Giancarlo Stanton. He then walks Luke Voit on 4 pitches, hits Neil Walker with the bases loaded, and the game is now 4-2 with 1 out and the bases still loaded. Gary Sanchez gets up and comes *this* close to ending the game, hitting the ball to the warning track and allowing the runner on 3rd to tag. Game is now 4-3 with 2 outs and runners on 1st and 2nd for Gleyber Torres.

I've been sitting there silently losing my mind while all of this goes on. Tee Dubs is screaming and jumping around the room. People were coming over that night and they'd begun to arrive and don't care about baseball so they're now talking about how stupid the game is while Dubs and I are on the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum with it all. Max realizes how tense it is and is cheering for Boston with me but doing a good job not to poke either of us the wrong way. Torres hits a soft ground to 3rd where Eduardo Nunez has not looked too sharp. He charges, launches the ball on a bounce to first, Steve Pearce digs it out (if it gets away from Pearce NY at least ties it and probably wins), beating the running by a fraction of a step. It's close enough that the play was challenged but upheld and Boston wins.

I walk out of the house pretty quietly without saying anything, Max also comes outside to smoke. I high five him and then sprint down the street, barefoot, around 11PM, just screaming lol. The Boston NY rivalry is like no other. Boston then went on to lose game 1 to Houston in the ALCS before winning 4 straight, including 3 in the defending champion's own ballpark, to move onto the World Series.

So yeah, I've been a bit distracted with all of that. NFL has been fun as well, I have a dominant fantasy team and am a pretty big favorite to win the league right now. NBA is back and the Nets beat the Knicks last night which was cool. Fanduel and Draftkings both have some absurd promos to get their sportsbooks going so I've been betting a bunch on those. Up a little chunk on there which has been nice. But yeah more or less no poker. Got 4th in a $50 freezeout on WSOP for like $350 or something a couple nights ago while watching the game. The plan is to have fun tonight, play a small session tomorrow so as to not overwhelm myself with a big loss upon my return, and hopefully get back into rhythm on Monday. Thanks to everyone who's reached out to me asking how I'm doing, I've just not really had anything to update on the poker front, hence the silence. Gonna get back into poker and running and everything else that's good and be more active on here again soon!

did the red sox win the world series?

**** yeah they did

Bit of a tailspin the poker career's been in lately if it wasn't obvious. The desire and motivation to play is mostly gone and I've been waiting for it to come back and it hasn't really been. What has come up is a desire to be productive, which I genuinely never thought would arise in me ever. When you work a 9 to 5, or go to school full time, or live any sort of normal human being lifestyle, there's always that jealously of someone doing what I've been doing the last 6 weeks or so. "I wish I could just sleep in and lay around doing nothing all day." I totally get that feeling; I used to have it a lot before I was a poker player. But once you do that long enough you start to get bored and anxious about just how much of a bum you are and you start looking for purpose.

For whatever reason I think I personally can go much longer than the average person being a bum and doing absolutely nothing. I'd rather be lethargic than anxious. I often only stop being lethargic once the money situation gets to the point that it makes me anxious, at which point I stop being lethargic so I can relieve that anxiety and I start playing poker again. With no real money problems and the amount of fun I've been having going to the city or staying home with friends I haven't felt the need to play poker. But fortunately a few things have happened lately that have made me want to have more money in order to be able to do new and more enjoyable activities and it's led me to have the ever so slightest desire to start playing poker again. Last week I played twice, both small sessions, found a 2nd in the Stars $100 (the guarantee seems to be going down weekly at this point) for $1300 or so.

Two nights ago I played 3 tourneys and stone bubbled the Party 10K. Last night I played another 3 tourneys. Despite really not wanting to I just sat down at the computer, threw on the ol youtube tv on the 2nd monitor, and just relaxed while playing. I won the Party 10K for $2850 and some more monetary breathing room. I'd certainly be pumped to play tonight but I've already made plans that I'm pretty excited about to be honest so I don't feel too bad not playing.



I often get new perspectives on poker when I've been away from the game for a while and I had a few thoughts when I woke up this morning that I wanted to share here. I thought about the good feeling you get when you win a tournament and the natural inclination to credit yourself for deserving the win. I also thought about why human nature leads people to say things like "man I was just playing amazing today and I really felt I was gonna close." Or whatever it is they say in the winner's interview after winning some live bird.

The funny thing about poker tournaments is that someone wins every single time. There is always a winner. It is a 100% certainty that someone will come away with 1st place. It is also human nature to assume you have more to do with your successes than you do in reality. It's similar to someone winning the lottery. The odds of it being you are microscopic but SOMEONE has to win, and that person will often be a redneck talking about how they knew those lucky numbers would pay off someday. But when you think about it from a big scale level, there are millions of people playing, the random dart hit that one guy, and now he feels like he was chosen at some cosmic level.

What I'm trying to get at here is the winner of a poker tournament got lucky and at some level was almost the "chosen one" for that given tournament. Sometimes someone with no skill wins and he was super chosen that day. Sometimes the best player wins and he might have made several very good plays to get the W, but he also ran about as well as possible given he was the winner. Usually it's somewhere in between. But when I woke up this morning I thought about that good feeling you get when you win and the desire to play again because you realize it's still possible. I then tried to break down what I did to deserve the win and what good happened that I had no control over. So I'm going to share the biggest pots I played just to give some insight into the luck vs skill aspect there is in one given poker tournament.



I think a lot of people in my shoes might say "well look at the biggest pot, both by BBs and chips, I heroed down correctly with 2nd pair and deserved this win." Yes, there is always a little bit of skill in tournaments, but dude bet like 90% pot on turn after I 3b pre and x'ed back flop and I thought it was pretty obvious he was trying to fold out the TT-KK stuff, especially given this was the first time in the HU match he'd used any size bigger than 70%.

Let's look at the hands where I was just the chosen one. AQo I open limp SB, Katie Stone (her and her husband are on fire live! way to go guys!) 4x's BB, I jam 38bbs she calls JJ and I win flip. Pot was massive to give me the chip lead at the time; if I lose that I'm out and have $2850 less than I do right now. A7ss, I open EP get 2 callers, flop checks to the button who bets full pot I call, turn goes xx and I jam for pot on river. The dude had TT! What a gin river! Some want to say "well I checked flop and allowed him to put a lot of money in bad" but come on, that's a 1 outter on river for a ton of chips in my eyes.

KTdd was against a fish who plays a ton and decided that when we were in 1st and 2nd he needed to play every pot with me. Already very lucky; fish who can basically help me win the tournament by playing as many hands as he can with me decides he wants to play as many hands as he can with me! The fact that his 3b pre was small and then he checked flop when he usually auto c-bets actually led to me not snap calling river lol but in the end I did and his Q9o was no good. Shrug. People punting to you is a big part of positive variance that people forget about.

AJo, a much more obvious run good hand, I open CO and tight button jams 19bbs. I took a while with this one. I'm opening a ton so I'm very high up in my range but exploitatively he's quite tight and this hand probably doesn't do very well against his range. I call, he has AK, I river the 3 outter to have a lot of chips going to the FT.

A4hh, I open EP, 2 calls, 652hh BB jams over 2x pot lol. I'm not folding the nut flush draw gutter draw A high combo and I get there vs Q5. More variance, I live in a state where these lines are standard and I get to just print money whenever I decide not to be lazy and sit down at my computer.

77 vs AQhh flip, guy flops top pair and royal draw, I river the 2 outter 7 at the FT. T9dd I open EP get 3 calls, flop T93hhh I cbet and guy who's 3/6 at the time on the button minraises. Oh boy, he's known to be a bit spazzy at times though so I think this just needs to go in even though I expect to just run into a flush a bunch. I have no idea wtf min raise means here and I think my hand's too strong to read too much into it. He folds and just hands me 270K chips on the flop for no reason. 54hh, last hand of the match and similar to the A4hh hand, I limp SB 17bbs deep he 3x's I call, 762hh he just rips over 2x pot with KQo and I turn him dead.

In conclusion, you need to run good to win a poker tournament. I did yesterday so I won. But if you're better than the field then you obviously have a better chance than most. I guess I'm not really saying anything new here but I was watching Planet Earth this morning and these eagles in the Himalayas found a pack of cranes that were trying to migrate over the mountains so they worked together to drag a young crane away and hunt it. There were hundreds of cranes but that one was the chosen one that day. It got me thinking and this jumbled up blog post was the result

I found out the same as well, I won the same tournament on 24th, so spot just clearly they give it to you, without those spot I wouldn’t have enough chip or able to survive and end up winning, I think it’s the system of the algorithm controls these thing and make sure some fish also have a chance as well


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Milestones

Well obviously things have been quite stagnant in my poker life for a while now, but in a few minutes I'll get up, go to the bank, and deposit rent money for the 36th straight month. Three years I've been surviving on my own exclusively through playing poker. Regardless of everything else I'm proud of that fact. A lot of people try and fail at this profession and no matter what else goes on I can at the least say I've succeeded at doing this for three years which has allowed me to live an incredibly free life.

That being said, I'm still very optimistic about making this continue to work for myself. I played Monday-Thursday last week and played last night (and an abbreviated Monday session). Plan is to play tonight and Thursday, maybe Friday, Santacon Saturday, question mark Sunday. Slow but steady steps to get back into enjoying it again, as I've done seemingly countless times before this most recent lapse. It's not great that I do this so often but it's one of the only jobs I can get away with it. All I can do is keep searching for what makes me tick and what gives me that real motivation to play poker.

Woot update, glad you are doing alright