pretty close to the single day triple crown. I'd be reg'ing $5 tourneys on party just to make sure you get the p5s trophy (assuming you don't already have one.) anyhow, congrats man. sick scores!

Hope this DOJ statement crap doesn't screw up nj sites. You hearing anything about what's gonna happen with any of that yet? I feel like bank's being conservative and refusing to process transactions is a real risk.

Heh I was joking with my buddies that I almost got the single day triple crown but unfortunately got zero legs. You have to win a tourney with 100 or more people and 10K or more prize pool. WSOP woulda made it if it was $100 buy in but $50 doesn't get it there, Stars misses by $86 (1 entry), and I didn't win on Party. It's alright though I'm okay just taking the money

I've been told by people who know more about it than me that this most recent news is pretty much a non-issue that's being a little blown out of proportion by media.

Post #2000 for me here on 2p2 and fortunately it comes after a good week with good results. Followed the +4k Tuesday with a +3k Sunday:



The way the short stacks ran in all ins from 11 down to 7 players was unlike anything I've ever seen. Ahead, behind, or flipping it just seemed like whoever had less chips was unbeatable. I'd estimate shorties went 16 for 20 in those all in situations so we ended up with the average stack being about 15bbs with 7 left. With the insane top heavy payouts there's a lot of wiggle room to go for the win and not worry as much about ICM on WSOP but you still want to be somewhat mindful of the jumps and the jumps from 3 to 2 and 2 to 1 are just massive (along with the jump from 8 to 7 being bigger than most the other jumps, which is standard for every MTT on the site, way to go WSOP).

I won 99>AK for a big one with 7 left then lost AK<AQ for a huge one to the same guy; there were 4M chips in play and pot was for 800K with me having 400K back at 40Kbb. Then got AT in against A5 and got the exciting QJ66T runout (chopping on turn, win on river). Eventually end up 3/3 and jockey back and forth for a while before being back to 800K with the other 2 around 1.6M. SB then just rips 30bbs with Q7o, bb calls 99 and the QJ7 flop gets me heads up. Couldn't make the comeback but I'll certainly take that 2nd place finish in such a volatile tournament where thousands of dollars in equity are changing hands with every preflop all in.

I keep saying this but it bears repeating: playing cash has really opened my eyes to just how extreme the variance is in these tournaments. There's some pressure when you're facing an all in on the river in cash. You start 100bbs deep and being wrong could mean you just blasted off a buy in. There's a lot of skill in dissecting his range and deciding if you're getting the correct price or not. But there's so much play and the worst case scenario normally is that you lose ONE buy in if you make a mistake. These MTT FTs mean if you jam a little bit too wide and get picked off you just cost yourself the equivalent of 20+ buy ins at the cash stake I'm used to and you just feel gutted.

Realizing how high that level of variance is makes me feel so much calmer while playing. I play hard and I realize the amount of luck at the end of these MTTs so I don't feel bad if I were to bust 7th in this tournament. You just don't have much control of what's going on. You don't "deserve" to win at the end of these tournaments more than anyone else does. However, when I do run good and have a finish like yesterday's, a new word has been coming to mind. I feel like I am "earning" these finishes. There's plenty of frustration throughout a session, a week, a month.

Yesterday I lost KK<AA with 16 left in the Stars $100, stone bubbled a satty to play a $500 I really wanted to play after being 3/5 with way more than the other 2 (they sun ran to stay alive), busted the $400 shot take I'd fired, along with a bunch of other stuff. But I'm working hard away from the tables and grinding hard at them, so when one given tournament does happen to work out, I am really starting to feel like I've earned that success. The key is to continue making what I've been doing a lifestyle rather than just something I do when I'm running low on cash.



Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

2 for 2

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

Went 5 for 5 on this, took Friday and Saturday off with a good amount of drinking for my roommate's birthday. Sunday rolled around and they wanted to brunch as usual; I told them I'd be the DD. It allowed me to go have fun with them while being forced to be responsible and not drink. I treated myself to a nice steak to make sure I got a good meal before the important Sunday session. The NFL games started at 3:00 so we watched the first half at the restaurant then headed out. I was on my computer by 4:30 and I'm very proud of that.

--Play 15,000 hands of cash in January (25,000 reach goal)

I've been slacking here and I'm finding it hard to find the time to put in long sessions when the MTT session goes late. I either need to get online around 5:00 and grind until 7:00 or stay up really late after the tourneys to get any cash volume in. I'm gonna try to make it to 15K this month but might adjust this goal for February. 9511 hands played so far.

--Make $10,000 every month

After being down $400 after the first two weeks but feeling like I was doing everything right I made $6600 the last 6 days. Definitely have a shot to hit this. Will be playing Tues-Thurs, Sat/Sun this week then going the full Mon-Thurs to end the month since my friends from England are coming Friday-Monday so I'll be taking the first 4 days of February off. Will grind hard both before and after this long weekend to make sure the motivation doesn't fade.

--Run 3 days per week, 10 miles per week

Came up short here again, 2 runs for 6 miles. It's gotten so cold and we had some snow and freezing rain mix, I'm just not gonna feel guilty about this at all. I will try to run whenever I can but it's very difficult to get motivated and run when it gets this cold and windy around here.



General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

I've been enjoying the grind so haven't had to worry about this one much, but I have been thinking about playing live cash or firing a couple of the Borgata series tournaments. For now I want to just stay focused on doing what I'm doing and improving as a player rather than taking shots down in AC.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

I've continued to just jot down spots where I wonder what's optimal in game then run it in the sim afterwards. The software definitely helps the way I think about the game but I do think there are a lot of people it wouldn't be great for as they'd misapply what they're looking at or just not really understand how it works to begin with.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

Definitely achieving this as evidenced by how I feel about missing the running goal above. I also find myself frustrated during sessions sometimes but instead of the old "you're a pro stop being such a *****" mentality, I allow myself to feel frustrated and then make sure I move on from it once I've acknowledged what I'm feeling.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

After the -$1400 Sunday 8 days ago I played the next 4 days, doing well with this.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

After the +4k Tuesday I played Wednesday and lost $262. I think old me in the past might have skipped Thursday. I've noticed I subconsciously always want to hang onto that feeling of winning which leads to me wanting to take off and enjoy the fact that I'm up a bunch after a big winning day. Again I think this comes back to confidence. "Maybe I just ran good one day and now this loss is me coming back to earth and running how I'm supposed to." When I feel confident that I am playing well and doing the right things every day it's so much easier to just grind the way you're supposed to. Lost $384 that Thursday, took scheduled days off Friday and Saturday, then had a successful Sunday.

I'm taking today off because I'd had my eye on this day time Brooklyn Nets game for a while (they're playing an exciting young Sacramento team) and my friend from Brooklyn said she was down to go with me. She works at a preschool so they have off for Martin Luther King Day. I'll take today off but be back for the grind tomorrow.

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

So far so good.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

Can probably still do better with this. Bought a reading light in hopes of helping myself fall asleep more easily at night. Eventually I'll buy some melatonin gummies as well. That's the one thing I really want to figure out and do better with. I've been staying up to absurd hours because I can't fall asleep. I hope that with the reading light I'll have all the overhead lights off and might just doze off while reading with this dim light. Overall though I'm being conscious of not just sitting on the computer wasting the day away.

Successful year so far but it's vital to keep this motivation high and to continue to strive to get better. I've made excuses in the past for why not to play the next day, from running good to running bad to being bored to wanting to do literally anything else. I find that when I focus very hard on the process, rather than the results or the grind, it's much easier for me to feel ready to play. Study hard and really work to be the best I can be, using cash as a baseline to study deep stack spots and feel more comfortable with every aspect of a tournament. I've had days/weeks/months like this before where I get highly motivated and make a bunch of money. Unfortunately they've always ended with me finding a reason to focus my time and energy on something else. This year that will not be happening. This year I will truly be a professional through thick and thin.

Today was an overwhelming success and I'm really so happy with how everything went. It's a type of success that I've rarely had in the past and I think it's been a huge breakthrough as far as really furthering my career goes. I called my parents before my session to let them know about it . It came without any poker being played.

Tuesday's session was probably the worst I've had so far this year. I was in Brooklyn for the Nets game and to hang out with my friend on Monday, stayed overnight and came back to NJ pretty early on Tuesday since she had to get up around 8AM for work. I decided not to nap or anything so sleep would be easier to come by later. Throughout my session, both cash games and MTTs, I just felt frustrated and negative. I felt old feelings creeping back into me about how annoying the game is and how bad I run and all that nonsense. I lost a flip to bust the $250 on Stars and my session was over, down a shade over 1K. Losing the money is annoying but what was worse was how I felt throughout; I was scared I was slipping back into the same old habits and that I might start making excuses not to play again.

I've started to write a ton in a WordPad document every day. Each time a thought comes to my mind I'll just start writing about it until I feel like I'm done. I wrote down all my feelings about the bad session while it was happening. This bit comes from the 10PM update after busting everything but the $250, which I still had 18bbs in: "I want to get up relatively early tomorrow, get a run in, go to the grocery store, then study for a while to get my confidence and motivation back to where it belongs."

So that's what I did today. I woke up and made a big list of things to do and told myself they all had to be done by 5:00. My first post in WordPad today:

"11:15AM, woke up today feeling pretty anxious about poker, shook it off pretty quickly but it brings up an important point. This week is going to be vital for my success going forward. I had a good first three weeks of the year and that seems to be my maximum amount of time for staying focused and motivated before I start sliding back into old tendencies. It's going to take a conscious and concentrated effort to keep the focus I've had. I took 3 out of 4 days off then lost 1K the next day, a sequence that would often lead to me slowly shying away in the past. I always seem to forget that the 1 out of 4 days I did play in that stretch I made 3K meaning I'm up 2K the last 5 days, but I focus on the bad losing day. I'd make excuses (I'm tired today so I'll take this day off and regroup for tomorrow) that would snowball into a bunch of days off in a row and a complete loss of rhythm and flow. It's very important I play today and tomorrow and at least Friday or Saturday if not both. I'll then need to play Sunday-Thursday so I guess I should take Friday or Saturday off to help control burnout. What I do before the session today to prepare will also be important so I'm going to make a list of things to get done before 5:00."

I listed going on a run, grocery shopping, washing dishes, doing NBA research for sports betting, running at least 2 PIO sims and watching at least 1 RIO video, folding laundry, and eating both lunch and dinner. One by one I crossed all of these off and while I was tired by the time I finished around 6:00 I felt so fulfilled. The sims had me realize a few things and the video helped me hear some insight into how to utilize those things. I felt excited and motivated to play again. I called my parents at 6:30 to let them know about all of this and how good I felt about it. I also told them about my experience from Monday and how it was a microcosm of the year so far. I bought the Nets tickets about 4 hours before the game started since I decided the 2nd place in the WSOP tourney Sunday was enough of a sign for me to splurge on the game. The seller had trouble sending me the tickets and I was forced to use my old phone to both talk to customer service and try to retrieve the tickets since I had to leave to make sure I was at the game on time.

By 3:20 (3:30 game) I decided I needed to get on the subway to go to Barclays which was a half hour away even though the issue had still not been resolved. I just decided to hope that the tickets would be emailed to me by the time I got there. While I was on the train I started getting mad at myself for making the decision to go. "I could have stayed home and relaxed, would've saved money, could've just relaxed and watched it on TV, it's 10 degrees outside and here I am on a dirty subway to watch a pretty meaningless regular season game that I probably overpaid for. Why did I think this was a good idea?"

About 10 seconds later I consciously chose to change how I perceived this event. "This WAS a good idea. You get to see your friend and see a team you're really passionate about that's having the most exciting season they've had in 15 years. Tickets were expensive but they're very good seats, they're playing the Kings who are a very exciting team with a lot of similarities to Brooklyn. This was a great decision! You just got a bad result. Don't be results oriented here; you should totally make this decision again if you had the choice." I checked my phone to see I did get some service when the subway stopped at stations. My email opened and there were the tickets; I opened them and screenshotted them before I lost connection again, met my friend at Barclays, and we were in our seats before the end of the 1st quarter. The game was a lot of fun and the Nets crushed the Kings.

It's a pretty great comparison to how the year has gone as a whole, and how keeping the positive mindset can lead to amazing results where they wouldn't have come otherwise. My first 2 weeks I lost money but was focused on the process and on becoming better so I didn't mind. Instead of giving up and lamenting my results I just kept going and kept finding ways to want to play. Then I had a $6500 week. Here I decided to stay positive about the experience and when things worked out I just felt good instead of feeling dumb or guilty about freaking out about things that were out of my control. It's so important I keep this mindset for the rest of my life.

I played 1300 hands of 100NL, was 1 minute away from quitting before losing a $250 pot with 55 vs AA on 8875A, so the +$60 session turned into a -$60 session. Oh well, money doesn't matter it's just about understanding the game more and getting better. I'd fired up a 9PM $100 MTT on WSOP and 10PM $50 turbo on Stars while I was playing the cash session. I finished the cash session at 10:55 so I could take my MTT break and then played out the tourneys. 4th on Stars and 3rd on WSOP to finish with a +$966 day, recouping all but $45 of Tuesday's losses. What a nice way to finish a day that would have been a success regardless of results. It's like the poker gods said "hey, forget about yesterday, everything's fine" by washing out the results. I'm excited for the future and plan on continuing to really focus on the process of everything, getting better, and staying motivated. The results will follow.

Good stuff. Mindset will always have ebbs and flows. Don't beat yourself up for having a bad mindset sometimes. Just keep doing what you did today and force through the negativity and let the positive momentum snowball.

January 21 - January 27



Monday-Wednesday: Nets game, falling down and getting back up again

Another really great week for me. After last Sunday's success I decided to go to the Brooklyn Nets' game with my friend on Monday and had a great time as the Nets blew out the Kings. Tuesday I came back and felt bad during the session despite feeling pretty good before it started. Lost just over $1000 on the session and felt very anxious about falling back into bad habits. Woke up on Wednesday and forced myself to get a lot done and by the time I needed to start my session I felt excited to play! In the past I would have 100% skipped playing Wednesday, I'm so glad I'm seeing these big attitude and work ethic shifts. I made just under $1000 and results for those two days were pretty much a wash but my mindset was amazing.



Thursday: Stars Success

Thursday I ran hotter in the $250 Thrill than probably anyone ever has. From a 25K starting stack in a tournament that got 26 runners, I had 193K and 6 bounties on the 2nd break at 400/800. People were very willing to gamble this day for whatever reason and we hit the money before late reg was supposed to end lol. I was 2/4 at 2400bb with 650K chips in play (162K average). Unfortunately I couldn't close it out but finished 3rd for $454 + $407 in bounties. Played the $250 6 max on WSOP and felt very comfortable the whole way, eventually busting when I opened KK off 23bbs and btn flats 98s. Flop comes 983r and I bust 25th with 20th paying the mincash of $600 and $8K up top. Took a very disappointing 10th in the Party 10K after losing back to back big pots to bust, but salvaged the day with a 2nd in the Stars $100 to end the day up over $1500.



Friday: Spin and Win

Friday was a planned off day, I woke up and fired a $25 spin for the hell of it, spun a $250 and won it. Flicked a couple other spins and WSOP blasts and made a total of $240 on my off day, always nice. Went to the city and had a great time with great friends.



Saturday: Finding and maintaining discipline

Saturday I once again didn't let myself stay in the city long enough to lose motivation to play. I'd taken off Monday and Friday so Saturday was a must play. As I played Saturday I realized I still felt groggy from the night before. Playing Sundays after drinking Saturday is not a good idea but Sundays must be played. I think I'm going to try to not drink/stay out late Saturday nights in the future unless it's pretty unavoidable. If a friend I haven't seen in a while is having a party Saturday night I might need to just suck it up and go, but maybe I will try to moderate drinking, go home that same night if possible, etc to make sure I am as sharp as I can be Sunday.

Made a run Saturday in a 50r on WSOP where I had heaps early but stalled out and got 16th, 8K up top again. I list what was up top because it just goes to point out tournament variance that much more; running good in just ONE of those tourneys gets me 80% of that MONTHLY profit goal I set, the one that I said was unrealistic . From 12:00-1:15AM I played the bubble of a satty to the WSOP 525 the next day, eventually stone bubbling and I was sad. Lost like $450 on the day but did win a $400 ticket to a satty to the live $3500 WPT that would run the next day.



Sunday: Satellite success and firing a 1K

Sunday was an interesting day. Tons of potential in big tournaments but I made $1100 on the day after finally breaking through in the satellites that have been frustrating me all month. I won a seat to the month $1000 6 max on WSOP, then I got 2nd in one for $900, then I won another seat which got me $1000 cash. The 1K started with 10K chips and was a 6 max. Once again I cannot explain how important playing cash has been to my development this month. Instead of just guessing at strat, now I have 10K at 40/80 and it's pretty much a spot that I've played 10K+ hands of this month at now. I've defined some opening ranges, know how to respond to 3b's, understand preflop sizings this deep with no antes, have run a bunch of sims, have watched a bunch of RIO videos. I'm certainly far from being all that great at it but I'm not clueless and I've been playing poker long enough to at least have a shot when I'm playing against tough competition. Fortunately there were still 2 or more fish seemingly at every table I played at in this thing and it just kinda felt like a standard 100NL table lol.

A funny dynamic developed when my friend Stephen sat 2 to my left. I used to talk to him and the rest of the "young wizards" pretty much every day in a facebook chat. Since I sort of fell off the map last year I fell out of touch with those who don't grind the NJ MTTs. So now Stephen is on my left and still certainly perceives me as an incapable nit so he's 3 betting a large % of my opens. Certainly possible he just had a bunch of good hands to do it with but I think it's more likely that he was just pushing a perceived edge with very speculative hands. But since I imagine he thinks I'm incapable, I realize my bluffs should work at a higher than normal % (as long as they make some sense and I have some value hands in my range).

So I open QTss on btn to 240 at 40/80 with 8K to start, he makes it 960 from the bb covering me I call, flop K54ddd goes xx. He checks the turn 2x and I just decide I'm gonna go for it. Honestly this probably wasn't the spot to do it but again I think my image is gonna make it work way more often than it should. When he checks twice his range is pretty weak and while I won't have a ton of flushes I think I do check some Kx on flop and start betting turn with those. Looking back if I wanna go for it this hand I probably should start betting flop but with 2K in the middle and 7K back I'm not really gonna be able to triple comfortably unless I want river jam to be like 40% pot. Idk I'm kinda torn about this one the more I think about it lol but at the end of the day I just decided Stephen would give me more credit here than he would a good reg so I went 1150 into 1960 on the 2x turn and he called, river Jx (K54ddd2xJx), he checks and since I don't think I can really rep flushes I don't wanna go polar sizing so I bet 2250 into 4260. Stephen tank folded and looking back I wouldn't be surprised if was considering hero calling something pretty light. I don't rep much but again, perceived nit.

I think I played pretty tough the rest of the way and didn't play "scared" at all. Got some 3b bluffs through, made big folds not because I was afraid of losing but because I thought it was the right play, heroed when I thought it was correct, etc. MTT ended very standardly when I jammed A8o for 10.5K at 700bb on btn and SB woke up with KK. That happened at 12:02, and at 12:03 I 3b/called off 33bbs with AK with 5 left in the Stars $100. Villain had 66 and made me feel a bit sick that I didn't just 3b jam myself to avoid an ICM disaster like this one. Board ran out KJJ86 and I busted 5th and was shellshocked for about 10 seconds before just shrugging and feeling okay about it all. +$1100 on the day, 2K more up top in that Stars $100 but what can ya do?? If I fade that river 6 there's a good chance I win the MTT and get to 5 figures in profit on the month. Instead we're at +$8500 and are gonna need a good last 4 days to get there. As stated before though I don't actually care much about that goal, the rest are way more important.



Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

3 for 3

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

5 for 5 this week, don't think I've missed this once yet this year.

--Play 15,000 hands of cash in January (25,000 reach goal)

Currently around 11.5K 100nl hands. It is very important that I keep playing cash in the future. As I've said in this and previous posts it keeps my head on so straight and forces me to think deeply through spots which spills over to my MTT game. However I don't think playing 15K hands while I'm focusing on MTTs is really necessary and it's going to be difficult to get that in this month despite the fact that I played a bunch early in the month. I think 10K is going to be the goal for February but like the 10K profit goal it's not going to be that important to me. If I do ever feel like I'm getting lazy in MTTs and not thinking through spots then it'll be important I put some cash volume in and do some studying about any spots that come up.

--Make $10,000 every month

+$8500 this month and have had some chances to get there. Again this goal doesn't matter and it was kind of a reach/joke goal at the beginning of the year so the fact that I'm close is pretty fun. I will not be differing my normal volume levels or taking shots to hit this so hopefully it just happens naturally.

--Run 3 days per week, 10 miles per week

Only one run again this week, 3.5 miles this time though at 7:30 pace. Again the weather is just SO cold outside and running is not enjoyable for me in that. What I have been doing however is doing a walk around my neighborhood, about .65 miles, each day I don't run. When I'm inside all day I feel lethargic or something and getting out and getting that fresh air is huge. I was feeling a bit anxious before Sunday's session and knew I had to start in a half hour so I just took that walk and came back in and felt great.



General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

I've been enjoying the game each day so this hasn't really been necessary. I tried to satty into the WPT main and decided if I won that satty it'd be enough of a sign to make me not feel too bad about getting away from the online grind for a little while but it didn't happen. I'm looking at the Parx 8 handed $1200 in late February right now that I might go rip if I'm getting bored of the online grind.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

Still running sims, still finding new stuff and really thinking in depth about spots away from the table that I didn't have time to think about mid hand. Also watching a lot of Run It Once content to get a better feel of how to best utilize this software.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

This has been huge for my success so far. When I get mad or don't feel like playing, I don't beat myself up over it, I just fix the problem.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

Wednesday was MASSIVE after the bad day Tuesday. 100% achieved this goal this week.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

Won on Wednesday, fired Thursday. Won on Thursday, took scheduled off day Friday and fired Saturday. Won Sunday, ready to go tonight, doing great with this as well.

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

Def grinding hard so far.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

Could probably do better with this but I haven't done poorly with it either. When I catch myself doing nothing I try to snap out of it and do something that's either productive or go get actual rest. When I'm doing nothing on the computer it's almost worse than sleeping since I'm not getting actual rest. So now I'll get up and play PS4 or try to take a nap if I really don't feel like I can do anything productive at that time, but for the most part I go make food or run sim or watch RIO video. Very happy with my progress so far this month/year and look forward to carrying it into February. I'm a little worried about this 4 day weekend I'm about to take. It will be the biggest test I've faced so far this year but it's going to be critical that no matter what happens I'm back on the grind on Tuesday. No matter how "guilty" I'm made to feel when time is up on Monday I HAVE to be playing again on Tuesday or all the bad habits could come back and I could lose a lot of this positive momentum I've built up all month.

January 28 - February 3

Will be doing a January recap but wanted to quickly sum up the week first. It was a very disappointing week as far as results go, but I was highly encouraged by my mindset and the way I stuck with it throughout. I played 5 out of the 6 days from Tuesday through Sunday the week before and the plan was to play Monday the 28th through Thursday the 31st as well, making that a stretch of 9 out of 10 days played. I knew I might feel burnt out by the end but since I was planning on taking Friday the 1st through Monday the 4th off I felt I had to push through it.

On Monday the 28th the session was quite frustrating and after I busted all my MTTs I decided to just quit and not worry about cash. I checked the RIO page to see that Francesco Lacriola had posted a new video called "Reaching the Flow State" and I decided to watch that. It really rubbed off on me and I vowed to focus on always trying my best to reach that state while playing, which means really blocking out distractions. The flow state is that zone you get into where you almost forget about the concept of time. You also sort of forget that anything else in the world is going on; at that moment you are totally focused on what you are doing. I'd heard about this concept in an AP Psychology class my senior year of high school but I never thought about the fact that I'd gotten into that type of state before while playing poker. I certainly never thought about consciously trying to enter that zone.

So Tuesday I went into the session focusing on entering the flow state and I think I did quite well to do that. I busted a bullet very early in the $250 Super Tuesday and decided to fire again. By the first break I was the only person eliminated but I also had the chip lead lol. I was battling and not shying away from playing big pots against the spazzes who are down to fire 8 bullets into that thing if it means having 2-3 starting stacks by end of late reg. 9 players got paid and when we reached the final 9 I had 600K of the 1.7M in play with 5K up top. I would reach the 10K profit goal on the month with a top 3 finish. Instead I finished 5th after starting my bust hand 2/5. It was pretty devastating and I'm not gonna lie, I literally laid on my floor for 5 minutes after the hand . Nothing too noteworthy, I opened btn off 45bbs with AQs, SB chip leader 3b's and I have to decide what to do. I thought he'd been playing more aggressively since gaining the chip lead (he 4x'ed the only time I limped bvb, he r/f'ed utg vs MP's 8.5bb jam lol, stuff like that) so I went all in. I can certainly understand arguments for flatting. He had one of the 3 combos that has me completely dead and I was crushed, especially since I felt like it was my fault in that moment for not peeling against someone who I'd perceived as a nit in the past.

I think I took some solace in the fact that 1) I lost A4<JT for 10bbs to bust a guy and get us down to 4 handed a few hands earlier. If I win that pot this one doesn't happen so there was some element of bad luck that led to this bustout. Also the fact that the guy somehow has AA in a spot where he should have a ton of hands. 2) The case ace hit the flop so I lose a lot of chips in that pot no matter what. And 3) I played that tournament very well. Sure I ran like god to get that 600K stack but I was putting a ton of pressure on the guys who didn't seem to realize they should stop opening into my bb on the bubble when I have inf. I got a lot of light 3b's through and even got to confirm that one guy was opening way too wide and then folding hands too strong to be folded because he was streaming his session on twitch. It's a nice feeling to 3b squeeze K4s out of the bb and see that the SB flatter off 25bbs is just throwing KQ in the muck.

Anyway this post has gone on way longer than I wanted it to. Wednesday I lost about 1K and Thursday, down to my last MTT on the last day of the month, I realized a 2nd place finish would lead to a +$10,006 month. I got crippled down to 4bbs AK<87s bvb for like 16bbs each with 12 left, spun that back up to 20bbs which put me 5/11, then jammed A7 bvb and got snapped by A8o, a hand that probably needs to consider folding there given ICM implications (he barely covered me) but I think the guy just knew I was a reg and didn't want to get pushed around or something. Whatever, -$700 last 4 days of the month but I think I played really well.

Friday through Sunday (and yesterday's Monday) I took off as planned to hang out with Max and his friends. Saturday we went to the Meadowlands Beer Expo, Sunday we had a bunch of people over for the Super Bowl, and Monday we went to the Nets Bucks game. If you're ever thinking about going to a Nets game at Barclay's Center, pay the extra $50-$60 to get in the 100s sections as opposed to the 200s. We were far up enough that it legitimately made the experience a lot worse. That being said it was still cool to see Giannis in person, it's insane that a human being like that exists. I stayed over my friend's that night, came home today, just got back from a run and now need to plan the rest of this day to make sure I'm ready to put in a good session.



Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

I know it's Tuesday but since Monday was a planned off day and I was running around trying to get some stuff done before taking the train into the city to make the game on time, I'm gonna give myself a pass on this one and count it. 4 for 4 on the year.

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

Every day I've played this year I've accomplished this goal. It makes a big different to start these MTTs on time.

--Play 15,000 hands of cash in January (25,000 reach goal)

I'll do a roundup of this in the monthly recap.

--Make $10,000 every month

Monthly recap

--Run 3 days per week, 10 miles per week

Nope, zero runs last week, did just go on a run in today's beautiful 65 degree weather though.



General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

The Flow State video was great and got me more motivated to keep playing as well as I could.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

Definitely wanna start running more sims and also want to start talking more with friends who use the software.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

On the train home today I started feeling guilty about not updating this thread on Monday. That led to my natural reaction of thinking about just playing video games today and running from it all. I must work as hard as I can to stomp that feeling out whenever it arises. I acknowledged that I missed the Monday update but I refused to let myself feel bad about it. I also told myself that I'd do the update when I got home, and here I am.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

I really am proud of myself for playing Wednesday and Thursday after how distraught I was Tuesday. These were also days 8 and 9 of playing in that 10 day span so they were tough but I got in there and battled.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

Next upswing coming this week!

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

So far so good. Tonight will be quite important in proving to myself that I can take 4 days off without it meaning I fall back into the bad habits of the past.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

Still working on this and might need to start attaching quantifiable goals to this one.


I'll be back tomorrow with the monthly recap and goals for the future.

January Recap

January was a massive success for me. I missed my 10K profit goal but when I told people about that I always followed it with "I think this month was huge for me even if I had made zero so any profit should just be considered a bonus." I did a great job of establishing some good habits and just working harder than I have before. I had a great talk with my friend Sean a few days ago where we reflected on a bunch of those ideas that help to keep motivation high and the drive to get better alive. We talked about how the pure passion of just loving every aspect of the game fades after you've been in it long enough. But we also discussed the concept of manufacturing that passion and that love of the game by consciously working on it. Using PIO and watching videos and challenging myself every day made me realize that I really do still love this game. I just needed to put myself out there and take that leap to start working hard again.



Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

Gonna give myself a 10/10 on this one, guess I could say 9/10 since this week I posted on Tuesday instead of Monday but with the planned 4 day weekend and the update coming the next day I'm gonna go ahead and count it.

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

10/10, don't think I missed once.

--Play 15,000 hands of cash in January (25,000 reach goal)

Gonna give myself a 13714/15000 on this one (9.14/10?). I'm quite happy with the volume and the actual point of playing the hands was to simply get better at poker. I think I achieved this and then some. I profited $608.70 which comes out to 4.44 bb/100. I lost over $300 in a 98 hand stretch on WSOP on the 30th so for most of the month that bb/100 was considerably higher, but there's no real reason for me to focus on results. The point of playing cash is to keep my mind sharp and to find spots that I can run through PIO. I think playing cash made me so much better early in MTTs and I found myself building very big stacks early in these tourneys by being confident in my reads and catching punts from the guys who have no clue. I won the Stars $100 on Tuesday and from a 10K starting stack I played a 50K pot at 60/120. In this pot I x/c'ed an 18K jam into a 14K pot with AKo on 975ddc4c. You better believe I wouldn't have had it in me to click call in that spot in 2018.



--Make $10,000 every month

+$7855 on the month and had a very real shot at it the last 4 days but things didn't pan out. Tuesday the 29th was extremely painful after bubbling both $100 dailies (AJ<AT 2 off the money on Party, A3<KQ 1 off the money on Stars) but not feeling too bad given I had a huge chip lead in the $250 Super Tuesday where a top 3 finish would see me eclipse 10K on the month. Had 600K of the 1.75M in play starting the FT, finished 5th. Last MTT of the month I was 5/11 and a top 2 finish would get me the profit goal but I busted 11th. Such is life. As I've said before this profit goal was meant to keep me hungry at the end of a good month where I might slack off. I'd say it worked for January. In the future though I'm going to focus less on hitting it because I did find myself getting more frustrated than usual when I busted a tourney. I think that also might be in part because I knew I was about to take a 4 day break so it shouldn't be too big a deal. And just as a disclaimer this profit total is strictly how much I made in poker on NJ sites. It doesn't include how much I spent on PIO, RIO, health insurance, rent, student loans, internet, the taxes that come out, etc.

--Run 3 days per week, 10 miles per week

I did not do well with this goal. I did sort of amend it as I went and think I will continue to do so. I'm going to run when I feel like running and when I don't feel like running I just have to get outside and go on a walk around the long block. It's about 2/3 of a mile and it's amazing how much better I feel to just get some fresh air and stretch my legs. I think it helps a lot with having me think straight during a session. I love running but I feel so tired when I come back and I think it does have me feeling a bit complacent at the end of my sessions. That being said, I ran Tuesday and felt tired at the end of my session but then won the Stars $100. So I'm not just gonna give up on running but will focus less on this goal in the future.



General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

My passion for the game was pretty high throughout the month. I watched RIO videos and ran sims and that helped. I watched the occasional entertainment value poker video which was nice, and I did try to satty into the Borgata WPT Main. I decided if I didn't win a satty I'd take it as a sign to keep grinding online and that's what happened. It's a lot of time and spending money to play live and might have gotten me out of rhythm so I want to be sure my head's in the right place before I go do that. I do have my eye on the Parx $1200 at the end of February. It's 8 handed and I like Parx but I will only play if I reach a goal by then. I still have to figure out what that goal is.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

I've done well to run some sims but I do want to start to get a fuller understanding of it. Tomorrow I'll be on a call with my buddy who definitely understands it better than me so that should help a ton.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

This was huge throughout the month and will continue to be vital to my success. I'm going to mess up, hopefully not often, but in the past I've ran from my problems after I screw up. The key is to never do that again. Falling down is fine, staying on the ground is not. Feeling guilty about tripping in the first place has been the force that's prevented me from even trying to stand up. I want to continue forgetting about the trip and fall and thinking only about the best way to proceed with getting up and moving forward.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

I did well not to run from the frustrations of losing money and only focused on what I could to do be better, similar to the above goal. Will continue this through February and beyond.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

The 10K goal was good for this, I'm also thinking more about P5s rankings and trying to establish myself on there again. I was 3rd in NJ at one point, now I'm not even sure if I'm top 30. Moving up the ranks there will require me to play tourneys above $250 whenever they're running, which will require my bankroll to be way bigger than it is now. I'm confident I'm winning in those fields, I now just need the money to be comfortable going on a downswings at those stakes. Seems like some good motivation right there.

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

Good start, 4 more solid months of grinding ahead.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

While improvement can be made in this area I definitely did a better job than I have in the past. There were times where I'd catch myself doing nothing and just throw up a RIO video or go clean my room or just do anything productive. I want to keep working towards minimizing the amount of time I'm doing nothing.



I may come up with more February goals and might amend some of the goals above. In general though I just want to keep plugging along the way I did in January.

Congrats on the great month! Keep at it, day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, you got this.

Nice month! Seems like almost every pgc has killed it in January which is nice to see people doing well. In terms of your 10k/month goal, I know it's not a "real" goal persay and just a number put there to help push you. But do you think you'd benefit from taking some time and looking at your daily buyins/expected ROI's and trying to get a better idea of what your yearly EV looks like as a nj tourney player? I feel like it'd be very good info for you to have as a professional to help you map out your goals and analyze how your results are looking over months/years. glgl feb

Thanks man, it's a simple sentiment but so important for me to focus on when I get overwhelmed. Sometimes the idea of grinding a lifetime is so crazy so I can just shrink it down to just this month, which can still be a lot. Even just thinking about playing the 1st of 5 days in a row can be a lot and I can stop and just focus on doing what's right today. And sometimes that daily grind gets boring and then I can look at my goals for the week, the month, the year, the career. I sort of get to yo-yo back and forth between it all.

Yeah great job to you too! In theory that's a great suggestion but I'm not sure if I love it for myself in practice. I used to track buy ins and cashes each day and it'd stress me out a lot; maybe that I'm older and a bit more mature it wouldn't be as bad now. I also don't want to stress about grinding volume as I think I might play worse and hurt my ROI if I try to play more tables than I'm comfortable with just because I'm trying to hit a volume goal. Maybe I'll try it out again though.

February 4 - February 10

First really tough week of the year is in the books. I cashed 2 tournaments in 5 days of pretty reasonable volume. Fortunately one was a win and the other was a 5th but I still took a big loss and found myself getting frustrated. However, from Tuesday through Friday I think I did a great job of staying level headed. Tuesday was easy since I won the Stars $100. I was running really bad in everything, dropped to 14K at 2Kbb with 13 left and then had 300K entering the FT after I coolered the dude who wants every pot to be massive. Not a ton of note happened at the FT and I was down something like 800K to 400K to start heads up. We played 120 hands and eventually I won after going back and forth for nearly an hour.

The most important hand came when I hero'ed down with J6dd on 6c2s2dAdQc vs a raise pre and triple. I tanked probably 60 seconds on river trying to decide on exactly what his value range and bluff ranges looked like and eventually decided he was going to throw some random airball bluffs in there that others might not based on how he'd been playing throughout. I thought he'd overbluff this "scary" high card runout in an effort to make me fold a 6. He had T9o and I felt quite good about that one.

Wednesday through Friday I didn't cash any tournaments. Variance-wise it's probably the worst 3 day stretch I've had in my career in terms of how I ran when all in. What was very encouraging about it all was how I reacted to it. I genuinely think I played great throughout and was still battling in my last tournament in Friday, regardless of how frustrated I felt.

(The following paragraphs contain lots of details on how bad I ran this week. I've included them because they help me vent and feel better. I also want the casual poker player to realize that poker can be very difficult and frustrating for long stretches at a time and this is when being a professional is very difficult. You can continue making money from your job and take a "poker break" to clear your head. I cannot as I do not have that secondary way of making money. So through all this variance I must keep playing. Anyway, skip over this if you'd rather not read about the struggles I had this week.)



So anyway my bad beat whine update is complete. It feels pretty good to vent about it here because I don't want to whine to my friends and if this sort of thing isn't interesting for you to read you can just skip it! I think it's nice to also show the other side of being a pro. Some people might look at my P5s profile or whatever and be like "woah nice he won the Stars 100 on Tuesday for $2400 good stuff" when in reality I lost 2K on the week. And this is not losing 2K because a fire a bunch of big buy ins. I played 2 bullets of the Stars 250 on Tuesday, 1 250 bullet on Thursday, 2 200s and a 320 on Sunday (I think I put like 500 into a 4 max 50r on WSOP as well, AJ<AA, in a 4 max, to bust that one lol). Everything else was 100s and under and outside of the 100 win I was down 4400. Tournament variance is very real. I think my head is on straight again after that real let down on Sunday and I am ready to roll.



Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

5 for 5 on the year

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

Missed on Sunday on this one so 4 for 5. Once again my habits on Saturday and how I handle myself that day will be vital in making sure Sundays go the way they are supposed to.

--Play 7500 hands of cash in February (10,000 reach goal)

1300 hands played so far. I've changed the volume on this because I think it's important for me to focus on tournaments where I really make my money. That being said it's still vital I get some cash volume in. It really helps my mindset and makes me deeply think about poker in a way I didn't used to when I'd get deep in MTTs and stacks would be shallow. Now not only do I feel way more comfortable in the early stages of tournaments when stacks are deep but I also find myself always looking hard for creative lines when stacks are shallow and ICM pressure can be applied and some people are afraid of the bubble, etc.

--Make $10,000 every month

Well this one's going to be quite tough this month so I'll just be focusing on controlling what I can.

--Run once a week, do the 2/3 mile walk around the block on days I don't run

Updating this as well since I never hit the 3 day running goal last month. I love running but two things are working against me with it right now. First of all it's winter and freezing and it makes running way less enjoyable. Secondly and more importantly I feel so tired after I run and I think it might hurt my poker bottom line to overdo it. I don't want to give it up entirely though so I want to get out and run once a week. However, there still needs to be some sort of exercise and I've been walking around the block before sessions and I truly think it's helping a ton. I just deeply breathe in the fresh air and sometimes realize I've been inside all day and I really needed the air. Also something about getting my legs moving and oxygen flowing and I feel like I'm able to think better. On Tuesday I ran 3 miles since it was an amazing 65 degrees outside and I did walk a few of the other days. I'll be more conscious of this goal this week and try to hit as many as I can, but if there's a day where I get outside but don't have time to do the walk I'm not gonna be too concerned about it.



General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

Not much to say on this one, I think just keeping to my schedule is going to make this work. It's also vital that when I have a bad day that I do productive things the next day to make sure I don't fall into a slump.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

Have not ran many sims on my own but had a really nice 2 hourish chat with bbissick where he helped me with some of the details of PIO and gave me some cash advice. It's so cool to see how far he's come and that he's making it work as a pro. Check out his PG&C thread if you haven't, the ups and downs he goes through remind me a bunch of myself. He's also playing in what I think is the more entertaining higher stakes cash games and deals with much bigger swings than I do.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

This goal is still probably the most important one for me and I'm still doing great with it. Yesterday I sucked. Forget the $1500 I lost, my mentality was horrible and it was all my fault. I didn't plan Saturday out well and felt ****ty when I started the Sunday session and let my emotions control me way too much. BUT, unlike 2018 and before Dan, I woke up today, admitted I sucked, and forgave myself for sucking. I moved on and figured out what the next step was. I didn't stay in bed all day and watch Netflix and play video games. I got good sleep then went out and got food and made sure I had dinner prepped. I did some laundry and cleaned my room up a bit. They're small simple things but together they all get me back on track to play my best and feel better.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

After a tough Wednesday I played Thursday. After a tough Thursday I played Friday. After a tough Friday I took my scheduled day off, and despite not feeling good when I got home I played Sunday. I did well with this last week. I'll need to continue to find that motivation now with the bankroll shrinking. Running from the problem like I have in the past will only serve to make it worse.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

Hopefully I can deal with this this week!

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

I did a great job to get back on track and play after the 4 day weekend. The results were not what I wanted but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be proud of the effort.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

I think I'm doing better with this every day and will continue making a conscious effort to not waste time.

Great to see you back man. Always love reading your threads.

Thanks man, appreciate that!

Variance

I'm currently in the middle of what feels like my worst downswing ever. I imagine I've had worse. I've definitely had worse as far as pure dollars lost, and my mindset has been way worse in past downswings. But as far as the amount of money compared to how much money I have now and how badly I want to further my career by building a bankroll and moving up stakes, this feels like it's probably the toughest I've ever dealt with. Full disclosure, as much as possible anyway, has always been my aim for this thread. I am -$5764 in my last 7 sessions, which have come over the last 9 days. My best result of those 9 sessions came today when I finished 9th in the Party 109 for $250, making my loss on the day only $556. I lost more money each of the previous 6 sessions.

It might seem like I've lost my mind and started taking big shots or something, but I've played 3 bullets of the $250 Super Tuesday (2 last week 1 this week), 2 bullets of the $250 Thursday Thrill (1 each week), 1 $320 bullet with the 125K guarantee on WSOP Sunday, and 2 additional $200 bullets on Sunday in the other 2 majors. There was also a $50r I put quite a few bullets into. Other than that, all my volume has come from $100s and below. So about 2K from the "big" tourneys and $3700 from 100s and below. On ROW Stars or something that might not seem too out of the ordinary, but in the small, soft fields in NJ it is pretty absurd.

My mindset has been very good throughout this stretch. I can tell the will to continue optimally preparing is getting beaten out of me the longer the stretch goes. I think subconsciously it feels like "well going on a run/walk, eating well, meditating, none of those things have been working, so what's the point in making sure I keep doing them?" Obviously a rational mind realizes this doesn't make sense since they give me the best CHANCE at success, but it's easy to get a little bit lazy in a stretch like this.

The early levels of tournaments are still fun for me. It takes some very weird things to happen for me to get stacked and for the most part I'm able to just pick off the people who want to spaz early. Unfortunately even a lot of those spots are not going my way right now:



Sometimes after I win an all in I start trying to get myself amped up, "today's the day we're busting out of this thing keep your head up don't shy away from spots keep plugging":



But then literally 56 seconds and the next hand later that gets snuffed out very quickly:



So it's been very difficult. I have literally cashed 3 poker tournaments in those 7 sessions. I think a monkey who knew how to click a mouse has a chance to outperform how I've done during that stretch if he played the same schedule. But that depressed hopeless feeling that I'm sure every professional poker player has felt at least once in his career doesn't last for me anymore. I feel it as I see each session crumbling while I'm trying to stay optimistic about another bitterly disappointing day. But when the session's over and I've had some time to cool off I just sit back and realize I'm still playing really well. I'm putting myself in positions time and time again to succeed.

And I'm not acting like a younger version of me used to act. I'm not getting 88 in vs AK at a final table and getting pissed off about how bad I run, while simultaneously never finding good spots to chip up before I got down to 10bbs. Current version of me is always battling in those early levels. I'm never starting sessions late, always regged on time. I'm building stacks in the early levels and one by one by one having them cut down by strange events occurring. Today's 109 I had 300K (50K SS) at 6K/12K with 15 left and 12 paying.

This is a critical part of a tournament for me these days, where in the past I would've been playing very conservatively to lock up a mincash. Now 25bbs is that really important time where this level is going to decide how much control I have over my tournament. I'm either going to find a few spots to chip up and then have a chance of really opening it up with 30+bbs, or I'm going to chip down and get under 20bbs without much control of how the rest of the MTT goes at all. Sure I'll be able to pick my 3b jam spots better than most players, sure I'll defend bb's properly and I'll find the occassional steal off that stack, but typically you're quite handcuffed once you dip below that 20bb mark.

So with that in mind, this hand becomes quite frustrating:



I get just about the worst flop in the world where I'm going to have a very difficult time winning the pot and choose to just give up with this combo. However, the turn gives me top pair and him a strong draw, forcing me to commit another 3.5bbs, which would be fine if I could fade the river. Pretty fortunate not to have to face a river bet tbh, but I'm now down to 19bbs and have to play the waiting game with the short stacks around me on the bubble. It's pots like these that can sneakily define a downswing. If the rivers a brick I have 380K at 12Kbb with the only guy I expect who would want to put too much pressure on me on my direct right. I can start opening liberally and taking some control of this situation. But instead I am forced to sit and wait and just take my dose of variance yet again.

I get a few jams through, we make the money and the FT, and early in that FT I click call in a standard spot and cap off yet another tough day with this hand:



The KQ<T8 tilts me, don't get me wrong, but it's nowhere near as tilting as knowing I had a shot at having some control over my destiny with a 30+bb stack where I can 3b the big stack on my right light once in a while or I can open a ton of hands feeling confident I'll know how to respond to aggression. But once that king hits the river I'm now forced to accept whatever happens to me. And for the 7th day in a row it was very disappointing.

I know I will hop out of this and don't have any of those negative "man maybe I suck at poker" thoughts I used to have when I was younger. I understand variance so much more now and my head is on a little tighter than it used to be. But there's an added level of stress when money starts feeling tight. Ripping 200s on Sunday feels irresponsible despite the fact that they are so profitable, because what if I just keep losing? That being said, I don't see myself ever giving up on this game, so if the bankroll I have in mind completely dried up, I think I'd just be going into savings to continue playing. I REALLY hope that never becomes an actual decision and I HIGHLY doubt it ever will. But those thoughts crop up while I'm waiting for this downer to end and it certainly is very stressful. It for sure doesn't affect my play though since I feel I'm playing optimally. If I were to choke up it'd hurt my winrate and therefore my chances of getting out of the hole.

I've stuck with playing 5 days per week and I think I scheduled my off days this week very well. I was really frustrated after Tuesday and decided to do absolutely zero poker related activities Wednesday. No talking hands, no watching streams, and of course no playing poker. It felt good and I did feel refreshed today. I thought maybe if I was feeling good after today I'd play Friday, but I think I'll take another day off tomorrow and then be ready to grind the weekend. The good news is I literally cannot run worse. I'm averaging like 0.4 cashes per session so cashing 0 MTTs really isn't far from what I've gotten used to over the last 10 days. One of these sessions I'm just gonna win every all in I play and bust right out of this slump. I'm just hoping that session is coming soon!!

Brutal run man. I’m still mirroring you and experiencing the same death run of cards. Def one of the more stressful things that we have to deal with as poker pros. Seems like you’re handling it well though and hopefully it’ll turn soon. If you want to sell a small chunk of certain tourneys for bankroll reasons feel free to hmu, would be happy to buy. Either way hope you bink a big one soon. Glgl

I think you said it on your previous post, every time there will be a designated winner, so he will win most flip, a monkey can win couple tournaments with his luck, so that’s that.
I had a hot streak which I blink 3 109s in a row in three days, what’s the odd? The last one I took 2rd which I plunk on some spot myself, but I was holding the chiplead HU. And then I will had a streak really winning nothing, no matter how hard I tried.

If you review your own thread, you will find these patterns, every time you had little heater, good month what ever, and then you will have downswing, it’s not like you play any difference or the player pool change, i know these thing it’s out of your control, so people will used downswing as excuse for these patterns, but if the pattern keep repeating itself, something is wrong, I hope u can see it

Sad thing is even you notice these thing or know about it, nothing you can do, you just had to keep playing and hope it wash out your bad card run and hope they give you the hot streak again

Good thing is your ego will be gone, you will be keep questioning yourself and will be looking for way to improve, it helps your game in the long run, so good luck,

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Some of those hands are brutal, def a bit of a test for you going forward. You’ve gotten in a really good habit of working and putting the volume in and I know from experience how tough it is to play when you just keep getting your teeth kicked in.

Tournament variance is crazy, have you thought of maybe putting some volum in the Blast SNG’s when your table count drops? I imagine you would have a big edge in those.

I could be wrong but I don't think Blasts are beatable. How long is the timer before everyone is all-in?

Not sure how profitable the NJ player pool is, you sit down with 7 reg plus 1 or 2 random guy, may be you thinking oh, I am beating these bad reg, probably they think the same
So you battling the same 60 players every day, pretty sure they has the same experience and background as you, or else they will no longer able to stay in the game, may be not a big winner but at less marginal winner.
Some of the reg max late reg every tournament, only show up lvl 12 or after and play flip or fold poker and try to spin it up, there’s no way to avoid gambling at some point in a game environment like these, plus the site need to balance the game and have to let the fish win some time or else they won’t deposit, then what ever hand you lost above its prone to happen very frequently.
Poker player some time don’t think about the big picture, they just blindly keep grinding and pushing and “hope” some day they can beat everything, sad thing is when so many people try to beat online cash, hope one day they can playing the nosebleed stack, but the fact is the high stack online game quickly died, there’s no more fish and the reg refuse play each other. I think there will be the same for online MTT, when all the small buy reg start talking solver and GTO, the game will be dead and there will be no money can be made like the online cash game

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Bolded part on cash games is not true.

GL OP in grinding out of current downer.

Thanks man appreciate that. I've had quite a few offers of people wanting to buy action and if nothing else that boosts my confidence a ton. If it ever gets that bad I'll certainly be willing to sell but I think the most likely outcome would be me getting a backer as opposed to just selling for an online tourney here and there. I'll certainly sell whenever I start playing live again though.

Thanks for the compliment Jerrad. As far as blasts go I do play them from time to time, could be a good way to fill my screen when I'm only down to a few tables. I do sort of like having less tables as the session gets later though. I think this is a leak of a lot of MTT players. They get deep in MTTs and are so focused on hitting some volume quota that they keep firing everything. All of the money comes from how you do at FTs so once I'm down to 1-3 of those I feel like all my attention should be focused on those tables. I should be focusing on the hands I'm not in as well and taking notes. So I probably won't add more games at those times but I will admit Blasts are pretty fun lol.

I was kinda going back and forth on whether to respond to this or just ignore it but I'll bite. I've been a winning poker player for 10 years and a professional for 3.5 of those. I've gone through downswings before. I take great offense to your posts in my thread essentially telling me I can't beat the games anymore. Please stop posting in my thread with nonsense like this.

Completely agree, if I can hop in the games and feel like I'm a winner in them (while also winning in them, admittedly with low volume thusfar), there's hope for still becoming a crusher. I think hard work alone will no longer get you to the top level whereas in the past that might have been true. You now have to have a bit of a natural talent for it as well but it's clearly still possible to become great. I probably know this better than most in the poker world given I became friendly with a few of the younger American poker players as they were beginning their rise. Ali Imsirovic was already crushing when I met him but was a relative unknown in the live arena; now he seems to be on PokerGo streams every other day. A few of my 21 year old buddies are consistent winners on the NJ sites and were winning on ACR before that. When I met Ricky Guan he was excited about going deep in a live tourney. With a hard work ethic and a business background he's become a part of team Run It Up in a very short period of time and is turning into a very successful streamer. I still haven't even mentioned Stephen Song who's been crushing live or Adam Hendrix who just live FTed a live streamed Poker Go PLO bird. All of these guys are younger than me and are proof that the poker dream is alive and well.

I hope plocp's negativity in this thread is due to a language barrier or something more than just straight ignorance because he's flat out wrong on the idea that the games aren't beatable anymore. And if his point is that I personally cannot beat the games anymore then I guess he's just gonna have to wait and see

February 11 - February 17

Back to back weeks of torture, sometimes that is what being a professional is about. I'm not totally in tune with how big the swings are in MTTs as far as big blinds goes but I decided to check my graph on all MTTs since February 6:



I assume running 500bbs below EV over 5000 hands is extremely unlikely but maybe it's more common than I realize. These hands do not include WSOP, where I'm down $4500 since the 6th, which actually accounts for 70% of the losses. I have to imagine I'm running even worse there but since HUDs are not allowed/HHs cannot be saved, there's no way for me to track this. The fields are bigger there given the combined player pool with Nevada and the series they have running right now. It's frustrating running bad but with variance being higher in bigger field MTTs, this downswing is more likely. That being said, there's way more money up top than usual and getting out of it is also more likely to happen in the blink of an eye with just one good tourney run.

I thought in this update I might post some spots that I've run into over the last few days. I'll post the results of these hands on Friday but in the meantime I'd love to hear feedback on them.

Hand 1:

$535 6 max on Party, I sattied in for $109. I can probably go bigger pre but I don't think this is too far off. Villain is a reg at these stakes and I assume he still views me as a nit who is going to be scared money playing at this buy in level. I ran this spot through Pio, it likes me checking flop at a decent clip but went for the 1/3 sizing with KK (I also gave it 50% and 75% options). He responds by calling with most hands, I'm checking close to 100% on turn, and he's never supposed to have this all in sizing, with the solver leaning towards betting 1/3 with almost 60% of range. So it's most likely an exploit (which I assumed in game), but what exactly does that mean? What's his range here and are you calling off?



Hand 2:

Party $109, 14 left and we are ITM. Opener has been seen r/f'ing off this stack before. Button has flatted so now a jam would be for 32bbs effective. I don't think 3 betting to a non-all in size can really be good in this spot (but let me know if you disagree). So should we flat here and avoid the disaster of jamming into a premium? Should we rip and just take the variance? It seems very very unlikely the flatter will have a better hand than us so often the worst result here is losing the 280K of the opener and we'd still have a fighting chance with 240K back.



Hand 3:

Stars 100, 25 left with 15 paying and I'm top 5 in the tourney. I open JJ from HJ, button 3b's, we're 46bbs effective. Villain has a 14.5% 3b (8 out of 55 tries) and he's 3 for 8 (37.5%) 3b'ing from button. Clearly we must continue with this hand but the options appear to be 3b jam, 3b some other size, or flat. Jamming 46bbs seems like a lot. However, what size can we 4b to? And if we 4b another size are we committed to calling off? Flatting feels way too passive but maybe this is correct? What do you guys think?



Hand 4:

20 left in Stars $250, 12 paid. I coolered someone QQ>99 to get a stack, then lost JJ<Q7s to drop back to this stack. Pretty simple spot, check or go for value?



Hand 5:

15 left in Stars $250, 12 paid. I got very short then got 93cc in vs AK on K74cc and got there! Then got K6s in for 12bbs on btn and beat AQ! I was feeling very ready to win this thing and say bye bye to the downer. Villian is a rec who I've seen open A4o utg and call off vs a 12bb jam (beat AQ) then limp KTs utg and call off vs 12bb jam utg1 (beat AJ). Flop decision is actually kinda interesting and speaks more to my overall strategy which I'm not sure I want to stick with. I find myself checking very often on flop OOP in multiway pots. What I've done to try to balance this is make sure I check hands like AA in this spot. However, the other way to balance is to simply find more bluffs to bet and then bet AA here. I'm not sure how I want to go about it in the future but it's something I've been thinking about. Anyway I check here especially since I expect this particular guy to stab often in CO, but he does not. Now I bet turn and get x/r'ed. Can I get away from this spot against a weaker opponent?



Kidding obviously the money's going in here, he had A5 and I bubbled another big tourney . I actually called turn almost hoping for a spade to hit so he'd check (yep the recs check those spots lol) so I could save my last 33K but it was an 8c and it was see ya later.

Anyway let me know what you guys think about those first 4 hands I think they are interesting spots. They actually all occurred yesterday so the downswing was at it's greatest and I think I did a very good job thinking through every spot and making what I thought was the best play. I've done a great job of that throughout this downswing but the downswing has only fought back harder! I was considering skipping MTTs altogether today to try to get back on track with cash game hands. I've been ignoring my goals putting all of my efforts into trying to get back on track with MTT results. But I think getting that confidence and relaxation back that comes with playing 100NL is important and I do want to still try to hit the 7500 hand goal for the month.

The goals portion of this post is probably going to be a little sad but I will try to get back on track this week. The one thing I know for sure is that if the ice ever breaks and I have a huge winning day I'm going to have a much easier time getting motivated to sticking with my goals and getting them done. It's just hard to do the routine the right way and lose at poker that night repeatedly. Your brain starts to associate doing the routine with losing. Of course you need to override this, assuming your routine is good (which I think mine is). But when you're winning it's so much easier to just do what you've been doing because you expect it to lead to success. Right now it just feels like it leads to failure, but when I consciously think about it I of course know better.

Quantifiable Goals



--Update thread once a week (hopefully more often)

I'm updating on Wednesday and usually update on Monday but am going to count it and say I'm 6 for 6 here. My friend had off from work this week and came over Monday and we spent the whole day together. Yesterday she left around 3 and I wanted to get some stuff done before my session and ran out of time to update. It was more a genuine lack of time than me being lazy about it. I also did an unscheduled post on Friday so count it!

--Sit down at my computer before 7:00 every weekday I play and before 5:00 every Sunday

Still killing it with this, don't think I've been late for a scheduled day yet this year.

--Play 7500 hands of cash in February (10,000 reach goal)

1529 hands so far, gonna have to actually focus on this the rest of the month to ensure I get there. With 9 planned sessions left though that's still <700 per day so today I'll try to play a bunch from 5:00-7:00 and then start my MTTs.

--Make $10,000 every month

No point in talking about this one.

--Run once a week, do the 2/3 mile walk around the block on days I don't run

I've been doing pretty good with this one but was a little lazy last week. It's quite important I do get some physical exercise each day. I went on a hike with my friend Monday which felt great and then did some walking around the mall yesterday. Today I was outside in the snow doing my around the block walk and was really thinking through last night's session to the point that I almost didn't want to stop after the 2/3 mile. I almost forgot it was snowing I was so deep in thought lol.

General Goals



--Find new ways to like poker and want to play poker

I really want to play live to try to get out of this funk but the logistics of selling action and getting cash and driving to the casino has just really turned me off to the idea. I wanted to play the Parx $1200 this weekend but I don't think that will be happening.

--Develop a deep understanding of PIO and how to best use and utilize it

I've really gone away from running sims and ran one before starting this post today. I need to get back to studying harder and focusing on the process of making my game better. I feel like I'm in crisis mode financially so all I want to do is win a tournament and feel better. Unfortunately the poker gods are telling me to really go suck a dick on that front so I need to make sure I focus on the process again until they're ready to let me have what I want.

--Hold myself accountable without feeling guilt.

Think I've done an exceptional job at calling myself out without making myself feel bad about it. It's been very important over the course of the last two weeks.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after a downswing

I find myself still wanting to play sessions despite getting the shaft over and over. I can't overstate how much different my mindset is now compared to even just 3 months ago in that department.

--Find ways to enjoy the game and find the motivation to play during/after an upswing

N/A

--Consistently grind without lapse in motivation for first 5 months so that Las Vegas and the WSOP can be the reward in June

Getting my 5 days per week in every week so far. If I can do it when everything's going to **** I can do it any time.

--Shrink the amount of time I sit around browsing the internet, watching Netflix, doing nothing in general

Think I lapsed a bit on this last week. When things are going so poorly it's easy to look for excuses to do anything else. I played a ton of Rocket League and while I really enjoy that, I think I probably overdid it a bit. Some of that time should have been spent studying and working on my craft.

I know u beating the game but by not much, u had almost 1M online earning and 200k live earning, and u still panic with 5k downswing, that means one thing, your ROI is super low, I know with your ego you won’t admit your are just one of those bad reg that being around for years and never able to break through, I guess most your poker mates are moving up stack, sometime be honest with yourselves would be a good way to improve, don’t worry I won’t post or checking your post no more, I don’t see you going no where and lost interested to follow


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