I am a fulltime CG grinder on the third week of a 100nl shot and I'm still there*, so hopefully I can stay there and start to beat the pool consistently.

(*update: i.e. im not totally broke yet.)

I will try to post regularly / bi-weekly and will try to touch on:
• My experience of grinding the microstakes.
• How I attempt to stay focused and live in a way that is conducive to success in poker. Will try to cover mental game, volume, study, meditation, exercise and rest.
• Snippets of non-poker related musings on topics that interest me.

I had initially not wanted to focus on results, graphs and strategy but, having read other blogs, I want to talk about losing and winning and adjustments I am making on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month basis.

I'm currently undecided about revealing screenname and details of the pools I play in but I can imagine I will get there eventually once I figure out the blogging landscape and how it fits with everything else.

----------
About me:
• When I arrived in Tunisia in 2018 I decided to pursue a career as a professional poker player
• I had played €1/€2 and £1/£2 recreationally in casinos in Ireland and London while at university and in more recent years. I also messed around at microstakes online but, again, just recreationally.
• I was always that guy who could sit contented at a poker table in a casino for hours on end. I never dusted off all my money or got in any kind of debt. I just loved to sit there and nit it up... I just loved it as a pastime. I will share some degen live poker stories throughout the PCG.
• The thing I love most about poker and the reason ultimately I chose to try and make a living doing this (as opposed to something else) is the personal challenge that one must meet in order to have a chance of succeeding. The challenge to be consistent, focused, determined and resilient. These are traits I wanted to cultivate further in my life and poker seemed like a Big Hairy Audacious Goal through which I could.
• I grinded MS zoom on Stars for those eight months 2018-2019
○ Started at 2z September-December 2018
○ beat 5z ~January 2019
○ beat 10z ~February 2019
○ beat 16z ~February 2019
○ Began playing a lot of different formats March 2019-July 2019 (something I think was a mistake). Played a lot of online MTTs, live £1/£2 CGs in London, three live MTTS BI £75 and some zoom. As a result I was around B.E. and my game deteriorated.
○ I began a really disciplined grind in September 2019, back at 5z. I reached 25z in November 2019.
○ Started playing 25nl reg tables on GG poker January 2020.
○ Started playing live €1/€2 CGs and live MTTs in Ireland (ABI ~€70) mid-February 2020.
• Then lockdown hit and I got a new coach (will disclose who in the future I'm sure). He completely overhauled how I played and thought about the game and I invested in H2N and Pio.
• Started to play 16z to implement new strat.
• Played 25nl and 50nl on GG in June
• Started playing 100nl on GG in July.

Quick follow on to that first, mostly incomprehensible blogpost: I will be using this thread for lots of short and medium-term PGC for volume, study, meditation, lifestyle etc. Watch this space!

PGC for the next 7 days, until Tuesday 04 August 2020:
*Study 5 bluff-catch / over-bluffed spots in H2N range research
*Study 5 bluffing / over-fold spots in H2N range research
*Create doc listing useful bluff-catch and bluffing spots
*Solve 5 SBvBB SRP spots in Pio
*Second meditation session every day!

Tentative PGC for the month of August 2020
*Grind 88 hours
*Study 38 hours
(Study = 1 hour HR with group after each session, Pio + H2N work on study days)

---
I currently play 5 days per week, take one full day per week for study and take one day off per week)

Further August PGC
*Create doc summarising SBvBB SRP findings in Pio

in glgl

Will write and publish a new post today title: You Mad Bro? Why Poker Makes Us Bitter

100nl shot update

I will share graphs for May, June and July after the end of this month. I guess that's important for introducing myself to the community, framing my poker journey and vision and inviting people to relate.

Dropped out of 100nl for now and am back grinding 50. Will grind 20 Bis and go again. I was initially salty to move down but, as far as adversity in poker goes, it's the metaphorical equivalent of a squidg-ier than desired fart. So I'll be fine and will grind on.

Also, it's a good opportunity to reflect on some of the things I must learn from this shot in order to increase my chances of success in the next one:

Try not to punt, either due to feeling out of one's depth or when running bad. Basic and fundamental, of course. And, to some degree (depending on definition of punt), impossible. But I would estimate that some number (higher than I am willing to accept) of stacks were torched during moments of weak mental game.

Maybe during next shot, if I punt in a hand for more than 25bbs, I give one subscriber some kind of reward...

I lowkey pride myself on a robust mental game so this is a sign that I need to brush up on things. Perhaps I get some recurring MG work back in my routine for a while. The blog, as a medium for organising thoughts, will certainly be MGEV+. But thinking about why my MG dropped below a level that I expect from myself, the next point is indicative.

Shot-take tactically.


I took my 100nl shot on Wednesday 01 July. Four days later I moved to another continent. I had been at home for a year and as soon as the lockdown was lifted, I got my flights, did all the admin and left. I'm now based in a Mediterranean country.

Moving to another country during a global pandemic, after living at my family home for one year, is, at best a lot of work to organise and, at worst, anxiety and stress-provoking. I don't regret taking my shot when I did. I was pumped after my best ever poker month in June, confident in my abilities and excited to dive into the 100nl pool. But I should not have done it, in hindsight. If I had that time back, I would try somehow to summon up the patience to wait until the Friday after I arrived and fired it up. The likelihood is that I would have grinded some more 50nl BIs for the roll that way too. But, more importantly, I would be in a more optimal shot-taking environment. Ultimately it was a mistake to shot the way I did. Learn and move on. Next time, I'll fire it up at the weekend.

Bringing the point full circle, the first week of the shot was an absolute **** show, I played horribly and lost a bunch. I felt intimidated by not knowing who the main regs were and weren't. The fish played differently. My ego was triggered by feeling like I was treading water strategically. (I won't say 'out of my depth' because I wasn't.) And I levelled myself and punted a bunch.

Funnily (some might say insanely), I wasn't checking results. I knew I was 'losing' but I didn't care. Turns out, I lost a pretty significant chunk of my BR during that first week. I grinded back to being up for the shot around 2-3 weeks in, but alas, last week was tough and I dropped back for now.

I now have something like 24k hands in the pool. I know the regs and how they play. I know how the fish play. And I will see them all soon again. Can't wait x

As for Why Poker Makes Us Bitter... Hmmm... Probably a few clues in this post but I will leave that for another day.

Today will post a PGC plan for August !

All hands played on GGPoker.

May 2020 (all 25nl):

June 2020 (11.5k 25nl , 18.4k 50nl):

July 2020 (23.6k 100nl, 4.4k 50nl):

Combined May-July 2020:

The problem with the graphs, of course, is that they don't include rake. All I know is that my balance on GG has increased since I loaded money on there at the start of May. I have received a lot of RB but I didn't beat the rake or the games this month. So the graphs are not accurate at all, really. The July graph should be way down. On that logic, I don't think I can call this a breakeven stretch? I really don't know to be honest. I'll keep grinding 50nl in August and see how it goes.

Here is what my August 2020 is going to look like. Will update the blog regularly.

• Dopamine fast
• Volume = 88 playing hours
• Study = 60 hours
• Meditation = 2 sessions per day
• Workouts = day-on-day-off with Sunday as rest day

Dopamine fast =
The software is a content blocker called Freedom. I now have nothing on my phone except Whatsapp, email... Waking Up (meditation) and Duolingo. No Discord, no Tinder, no Safari, no Messenger, no IG etc etc. I am 2.5 days into it and it feels amazing, although, of course when the brain doesn't get what it wants it throws a tantrum and it's great to notice that. Phone is essentially wiped of all time drags. 'Laptop time wasters' are -EV time drags. 'Laptop regulated' are things like Twitch, Youtube, IG etc which I have access to outside work and sleep hours.


Study =

• At least one pio sim --> findings into strategy doc
• HR
• At least one H2N line --> findings into strategy doc

---

Average grind day will look like this (with the 'critical' markers that I will focus most on hitting in bold font):
Wake up: 0800
Meditate: 0810
Duolingo: 0830
Shower: 0845
Coffee and breakfast: 0900
Warmup: 0930
Grind hour 1: 1000
GH2: 1110
Lunch: 1210
GH3: 1240
GH4: 1345
Post-grind journal: 1445
Meditate: 1450
Study two hours: 1530
Gym (on gym days): 1730

Evenings on non gym days: blog, read, journal, relax, chat, chill, swim in the sea.

---
Then we have Monday as a day off. And Tuesday as a pure study day (5 hours) where I take the lead from my coach on how best to approach my study but essentially do the same as the grind day study slot x2.5.

I have my first session with a new coach next week and I am hoping to take a good deal of confidence from that and excited to plug some of the most glaring leaks in my game. And get on with beating 50nl and back into 100.

---
The carrot: Organise a trip and take 2-3 days off in early September as a reward for a huge August.

gl us. Let's crush this month.

I won't update the blog every day (that would be a bit tedious...) but gotta report back on day 1, right.

Dopamine fast
Volume = 88 playing hours
Study = 60 hours
Meditation = 2 sessions per day
Workouts = day-on-day-off with Sunday as rest day

Let's start off as we mean to continue. Hitting the 3 critical time marks I highlighted in the daily schedule was smooth and flowed well from task-to-task.

The dopamine fast, although tough, is a god send. Trying to find some balance with this stuff. Hard these days to be sociable, not isolate oneself, meet new people without being a slave to the internet and social media. But we're doing it.

Second meditation session immediately after playing felt great.

I played 4 hours and studied at least 2.5. The quality of the grind wasn't great. Not really enjoying my poker at the moment. But I'm totally fine with that. There are going to be lots of points along the road where it just feels like a grind. The job I suppose is to not let standards slip during this 'grind' phase to a point that is hurting performance and is not acceptable. Will keep this in mind.

The study time stretched from 330pm to 730pm. But I'm not counting 4 hours because some of this time was spent talking to friends. Got lots of good analysis done though and used pio, H2N and flopzilla. The objective will be for this to be high quality time so that it doesn't take up 4 hours but is condensed into 3... and then maybe I can move away from poker for the evening... another challenge... to create that kind of max effectiveness in one's work along with a couple hours down time... but... is that ever realistic in what we're trying to do here? I don't know. I have good friends of mine who have started businesses in competitive environments and something like that... like this... is not so easy to put down every evening.

But let's see. Firstly, I'll need to close the laptop for a few hours and allow my brain to cool down. Good night.

Oh and my gym is closed today and tomorrow. Good! I do not have a problem motivating myself to work out. I have a problem not pushing myself to burnout. So 3 days off from the gym is good for my body right now.

I have this habit of writing things on the internet (FB, IG etc... even though I don't post there anymore) and speaking to my friends as if life is great. But life is ****ing hard. And I want to be honest when stuff is tough as well as when I feel pumped.

IDK exactly but I lost around 50% of my br in less than 2 weeks. (BR peaked on Thurs 23 July and hit a low today.)



These ****ing GG graphs. I'm not-so-low key paranoid that if I bad mouth GG they will put a hit out on me. Or ban me. I rolled 10% rb in the fish buffet yesterday and sort of thought for a second that I had offended them somehow. Kind of ****ed up. Jk GG I love you please don't ban me and never change xoxo

But yeah lol @ doing any study today FML. Will go and get drunk now and not think about poker again until Tuesday and then a coaching session to fix my **** and then play 25nl next week until the process of peeling my battered confidence off the floor is complete

Back on the grind today and I have made some tweaks to August PGC.

First, update on original August PGC

Dopamine fast
Volume = 88 playing hours (12.25 hours)
Study = 60 hours (4.5)
Meditation = 2 sessions per day (3/5)
Workouts = day-on-day-off with Sunday as rest day

Haven't worked out since starting the challenge. Feeliing throat-y today. Let's hope it's not the big C.

After my session on Sunday, I went to a beach bar and got drunk with landlord, his brother and their friends. Was just what the doctor ordered. I did SFA on Monday and ate KFC and ice cream. Again, going for a full system reboot after getting my ass handed to me on the tables in July.

Tuesday is designated study day and I had a coaching session where we identified some leaks which helped the old confidence. And back to the tables today. Played 25nl and it was fine.

-----
I'm going to increase my daily playing volume from 4 hours where it currently is to 5 and then possibly 6. Today I played 5 hours for the first time in months, having played 4 hours on grind days since around April.

I am schedule, planning and routine oriented but I think if one zooms in too much, routines can become stifling and can actually damage quality of play. For example, taking a break strictly on the hour mark even if you feel locked in and are playing well. Or grinding to the hour even if you are not feeling it, are tired and are playing poorly after 45 minutes. I will try and let this flow a bit more naturally and aim to get to 5-6 hours of play per grind day. And may even extend my grinding days to 6 days per week, from 5, where it is currently.

I think I won't take Tuesday as a full study day but instead play and study consistently 6 days per week. And then maybe once every 3-4 weeks take an extra day off altogether if I need it.

So instead of this, as originally posted:
Wake up: 0800
Meditate: 0810
Duolingo: 0830
Shower: 0845
Coffee and breakfast: 0900
Warmup: 0930
Grind hour 1: 1000
GH2: 1110
Lunch: 1210
GH3: 1240
GH4: 1345
Post-grind journal: 1445
Meditate: 1450
Study two hours: 1530
Gym (on gym days): 1730

My grind will look like this:
Wake up: 0800
Meditate: 0810
Duolingo: 0830
Shower: 0845
Coffee and breakfast: 0900
Warmup: 0930
Grind: 0930/1000-1700/1730
Journal and meditate: 1700/1730
Gym (on gym days): 1730/1800
Study 1-2 hours: 1930

That's going to be a pretty sick grind and if I can hit it 4-5 days per week then I'll be happy. Otherwise if I'm there or thereabouts 5-6 days per week then I'll be laughing.

I really want to smash August and after a tough July so I can plan appropriately for October-December. Because I do not know for sure where I will be for the last 3 months of the year and a lot of that depends on where I'm at with poker.

----
Some thoughts on my grind today that people might find helpful. I play regular tables.

I played 6 tables during the first part of my day and at around the 2.5-3.5 hour mark, there was a slide downwards in my graph from hand 1100-1400. This was after my lunch break and began playing while eating. Then I dipped, felt tired and unfocused. The quality of my play dipped and I continued to 6-table.
Takeaways from this:
1. feel free to eat away from the table if it's not going to be too long.
2. Start out the day grinding the 6 tables but grind 4 tables from after lunch onwards when you are less fresh
3. checking the graph from time-to-time is important and +EV in this spot! if you don't have tilt issues then you see when you are sliding and you go for a walk and take a break. (I have been a militant avoider of checking results or graph since March and although I think that is wise in some spots, when I am grinding and shotting small shifts in my BR, I will check. It cost me big time in July not checking and not having a clear plan for the shot while I was shotting 100nl.)
4. I went for a walk to the beach at hand 1400 after I had been fading and playing poorly and it was obviously helpful. I came back and grinded 1.5 hours 4-tabling and it was calm and my graph ticked upwards.
5. There was a slide again at hand 1600-1800 and is definitely related to chatting and writing on Discord while I grind. I will have to think about using the content blocker for this. This is the stage of the grind where energy begins to fade and it is so easy to become ill-disciplined. I will need to keep this in mind.

All-in-all good day and happy to be back at it with confidence and very good hours. Want to get going grinding earlier tomorrow morning

Dopamine fast
Volume = 88 playing hours (17.91 hours)
Study = 60 hours (5.75)
Meditation = 2 sessions per day (4/6)
Workouts = day-on-day-off with Sunday as rest day

I'm going to be pausing indefinitely the dopamine fast and the workouts PGC.

Re dopamine: it's just not a thing. The grind is intense at the moment. (Re-cap: July was a shitshow and I am grinding it back.) I blocked Discord (content blocker) during the grind today and didn't browse phone during grind. It was more browsing social when I couldn't sleep and on my breaks and after the grind. Which I'm absolutely going to give myself right now. Trying to be too ascetic / brutal on myself with routine and discipline is a chronic life punt of mine and I am trying to learn to be more reasonable and fair to myself. Gotta negotiate with the brain to get **** done, right.

Re workouts: lol how I'm coming across like a lazy POS when it comes to working out on this blog. I have been grinding the gym like a MF for the past year and have been loving it. Grinded great gym volume in July and looked and felt great. I'm not prioritising it this week. Which isn't GTO but I need to think about what I want to do with it.

Firstly, the gym I joined in July is honestly the dingiest, grimiest... it's not great. I'm 6'7'' tall and I can't fit inside it. It's in a basement and has no AC. Plus some other boring complaints. And TBPH I'm low-key salty about having to re-join for this month. It's the only option as it's in walking distance from my place. ... I'll probably end up re-joining When I do I'll try send some evidence for how it may be world's worst gym.

I'm also enjoying putting everything around poker just right now NGL. And that means putting less pressure on myself to lift and keep fit. Again possibly not GTO... but if needs must...

Study today was reviewing some H2N spots with my group. And just generally talking hands. Nothing too structured... which... yeah

----
This 'goal' will take a strong effort. So as Elliot Roe prescribes, I am embracing the grind.

Gl man. Very interesting thread. Where about you from and where you based at the moment? Seems like your putting a lot into it. I’m sure the results will follow . Can be hard when you need to succeed . Mentally more than anything. Maybe if you had some temp work or whatever to help the life roll it might take a bit of pressure off. Either way man GL with it all and hopefully you get some needed run good.

Hey! Thanks so much for reply and glad you find it interesting.

At the risk of rolling out clichés, poker has literally been my life now for two years. My personality is such that I, for better or worse, create very vivid simulations in my mind of how I want the future to be and then I take on a project that I estimate will get me there and I become obsessed with the project and making it work.

The obsessiveness is mostly a weakness; at least to the degree that I take it. As in, if you're obsessed with a work project and you really apply yourself well then you will often succeed. But my obsessiveness is mixed I think with a really insidious self-judgment where when I make all of the inevitable mistakes along the way, the 'inner critic' condemns me as not [X] enough to succeed. (I believe I am by no means unique in this unfortunate trait and that we all, more-or-less, have these doubts along the way.)

I predict that the obsessiveness comes, in part, from a difficult family life as a child (it's also just part of who I am) and a resultant belief that I must--I really must--do something if I say I'm going to do it, finish what I start etc. So it is genuinely quite scary for me to think that poker might not work out. In fact, it's not even a remote possibility in my mind.

For reasons that are perhaps obvious, an obsession with this type of 'integrity' and such a binary nature makes adult life, at times, very difficult. Because, of course, humans are flawed and one must be reasonably flexible in order to find any peace. Trying to hold other people to these standards does not end well.

Anyway, yes, my two years of poker so far have taken me right into the furnace of these traits but I have surrounded myself with good people along the way (something very helpful that I am quite good at, thankfully) and I am learning to judge the optimal moments to increase the intensity of the grind and when and how often to rest.

Very valid point you make about needing to succeed and how the pressure of that can cause stress (which undermines us). The realisation of potentially needing temp work was something I needed to confront and was actually a big relief when I did realise that, around sometime last week. It was a relief because, there's always a way forward, we're never helpless, no matter how frustrated we sometimes feel.

At the moment I have increased the intensity of my grind and I will give it everything for the next 1-2 months and then make a call. gl us.

Volume = 88 playing hours (30.48 hours)
Study = 60 hours (9.25)
Meditation = 2 sessions per day (4/11)

Summary of month so far (after the hard drop out of 100NL)...

• Making some fundamental changes to my routine: will grind more hours, more days and evenings now instead of mornings. More on this, below.
• Grinded 25NL last week to collect myself and, although I notice plenty of salt in my attitude about that, it went 'well' and was important to get the hands in, keep the consistency up.
• Grinded higher hours Weds-Fri, totally fine
• Hours down on Saturday as I was back in the gym and this created inefficiencies, naturally
• Said **** it and jumped into 50NL on Sunday night, went well. Back grinding 50NL now.
• Hit a big energy wall on Sunday, went for dinner and drinks and just crashed hard Monday evening, yesterday was a write-off as a result
• Plunge in energy also due to railing the sick (can I get a hell yeah) HS action on GG for hours (as we speak Limitless has just hit $1m stack, I believe. What a guy) and spending too much time in Kakitee's Twitch chat. He'll agree all my contributions have been top class though

Volume

Last week's grind:


PT4 now applies rake to GG hhs! So we get a more accurate interpretation of where we're at in the graph. Last week was a hard and somewhat boring grind--in the context of everything that's going on--so I take a lot of heart from this graph. I got right back to it with a gritty mindset after a tough month.

I decided last week to make some fundamental changes to the routine I've been keeping for a number of months now. The routine has been solid and beneficial but was calibrated for balance. I want a more poker-intensive routine for the next two months, so I have decided to play in the evenings instead of the mornings, increase my daily playing volume from 4 hours to up to 6 hours and to try and play Tuesdays, making it 6 days per week of grinding.

The rationale is simply the spot I currently find myself in (to re-cap: I just moved away from home and have all life expenses paid up to early-October. At that point I either need to draw down some BR to live off or get a job). So I'm optimising for BR growth for the next two months. And, honestly, I'm enjoying it. I'm out here, got my own little place on the beach, go on a date, for dinner, drinks maybe once-a-week and otherwise: poker, poker, poker. That's a good life for me, for now.

Switching around the routine in this way has presented challenges. Tardiness has crept back in with starting grinding too late. Motivation to start studying early enough in the morning has been low. Motivation to work out in the middle of the day before the grind has been low. Temptation to drink coffee later in the day has been high.

This is all fine. Just flowing with the process of change.

The inevitable dip in energy has led to watching more streams, reading more 2+2 (#freeduddi) and railing the living **** out of HSP on GG. So productivity dipped for a few days and played fewer hours than I would have liked at the weekend.

I'm also pretty good at taking corrective action after having spent a day lying on my ass, scratching myself, telling Kakitee who my all-time NBA starting 5 is. So have given my study group a free-roll where I have to be in the café by my house every morning by 10am for the next 4 days. We're one from one and it honestly felt great to be out and about walking the streets, going somewhere in the morning. Odd feeling for a poker player.

Study
Our study group is absolutely lit at the moment, with a few new additions on there every day and everyone posting and responding and calls every day too. I'm active on there every day. But I have a propensity to be a bit of a meme lord and a joker and neglect the HR channels when I get in a lazy mood. So want to be grinding that because it is of course essential to staying sharp.

More structured study is a real struggle... I want to be grinding H2N but I need to think about how to approach that. It relates closely to the messiness of change associated with the new routine. Once my mornings are cleaner and crisper then I want my study hours to be productive and of course to be grinding H2N as part of my HR with my group.

Meditation
I'm determined to salvage the 2nd meditation each day! I'm still meditating every morning of course. But during this dip I certainly haven't been enjoying them and, as you see, the second session has disappeared. I'm not going to give up on that and will have to face posting sad faces for the rest of the month if needs be.

Mindset / Mental Game
Briefly on this topic, I'm a bit concerned with the attitude I have at the moment towards losing pots.

It must be related to how the shot went in July. But it's also making me really start to believe that so many factors in your life determine your ability to have an A-game mindset. How secure are you in your life roll? The temperature. How are the relationships in your life? Are you lonely? Have you fallen out with a good friend? Is your landlord bothering you? Has your boiler broken? How is your diet? How is your mind?

This may seem like that clichéd, obvious reference to these 'external' factors. But I'm experiencing this acutely at the moment. Going from humming along like a well-oiled machine with a solid routine during the previous months to July being tough. (Re-cap: I had a lot of upheaval in July so this is absolutely to be expected.) And I can feel how all of these things are affecting my mindset.

It's ****ing unreal. And further highlights to me just the scale of the challenge in becoming and remaining a winning player. Big s/o to all the good regs I discovered or met this year who have been playing this game for a living for years. Much respect.

Noticing this is, of course, a good thing. And I want to acknowledge that and commend myself for it. It is an accrued benefit of having a meditation practice, noticing these things and not allowing them to spiral or swamp you. But that doesn't mean that the annoyances go away. They will always be there: these 'problems' to be 'solved'. It's part of the beauty of life. They just don't need to be quite so annoying.

I've now spent way too long writing this and will get in gear to go grind! Gl all.

The most motivated and hard working guy Ive ever met, youll climb the stakes in no time. Just keep doing what youre doing and stay positive. Gl my man!

Thanks man--that's sweet of you. Really important point you make about positivity. That's the real battle, right. Will keep that in mind.

You seem to be doing a lot right which is great. If you keep up this level of investment in poker I’m sure you’ll succeed bro. It’s a tough road. . I think mental game and being adequately rolled are very important when your doing it for a living just so your not constantly worried about how you’ll survive day to day so the part time work will def ease that burden. On some of MMA’s streams lately I’ve seen him say often it’s important not to constrain yourself to catergories such as 50nl player instead look at it as that’s your main game but it can be flexible when games are good or bad etc. How come Tunisia ? Sounds great to be fair . Would love some beach action right now . Stuck in london. If your open to new member in your study group I’d be down. Playing around same stakes just as a hobby at the minute but quite seriously and very keen to improve too.

Good luck OP. Gg cash is a tough gig and requires a lot of discipline preflop to beat the rake. Will be following along and will developing some content for you in the next few months I feel will greatly help with your progress!

Gl!

Yeah it's a tough road. It's a weird vocation where things happen more-or-less every day that feel in the moment like a big deal, like they might derail the whole enterprise... but, of course, they're not that consequential. Losing a number of buy-ins is the classic one.

Since I moved out here to live by myself, the mental game aspect has become fascinating for very different reasons than it was before. Previously, when living in very comfortable conditions with no perceived financial pressure, mental game felt like something to be mastered and I felt I was mastering it. But in these conditions it feels a bit like: how could I ever be stoic and equanimous and disciplined. After a bad session you just want to eat ice cream and binge on Twitch streams. And then I think: wait, wasn't I just recently the guy who had great warm-up, cool-down, de-tilt, schedule and all those other practises.

This morning I was reminded of a very powerful philosophy that I picked up from Buddhist meditation: begin again. Simply, begin again.

Let's PM about study group etc and gl in the meantime

Thanks meale. The PF point on GG is interesting. I definitely have leaks there. Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Volume = 88 playing hours (36.03 hours)
Study = 60 hours (12.07)
2nd meditation sit in the afternoon/evening = (6/13)

Marsh reminded me of something that I started doing a few months ago that has been quite a cool little addition to the grind.

Three public personalities who have had a big impact on me this year are Sam Harris, James Clear and Elliot Roe.

On a good day, Harris is my only source of information for global / US-centric current affairs. He is extremely intelligent and articulates difficult ideas better than anyone I have heard before. His podcast Making Sense is a must-listen for any devotees to lifelong learning. www.samharris.org. He is also the best meditation instructor that I have ever heard and I have sat with a lot, either through apps, other audio or in person. He just gets it. That's all I'll say. www.wakingup.com. (A little secret... although both his podcast and meditations are available on paid subscription... he gives them away for free if you cannot afford a sub (useful for a broke poker player)... which tells you all you need to know about the man.)

James Clear's book Atomic Habits is the only self-help book you will ever need to read. And his weekly email newsletter--that medium that often makes you want to slap your computer monitor--is perfect. www.jamesclear.com

Elliot Roe, you will all know.

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From these three influences, others and some of my own ideas, I developed this simple idea of writing important helpful reminders, taking a screenshot of them and adding them to a documents folder. Then setting my desktop background to a slideshow of the images in that folder. And it's been really cool!

Here's my slideshow: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c8T...ew?usp=sharing

Feel free to download and use and I hope it helps!

Subbed & GL

Volume = 88 playing hours (68.33 hours)
Study = 60 hours (23.17)
2nd meditation sit in the afternoon/evening = (12/22)

Summary since last post

• Withdrew balance from GG Poker
• Joined a CFP deal and now playing 100NL staked
• Made a thorough 4-month poker plan covering some hopes for BR and hourly and the schedule and process to get us there
• Booked a propbet to plug leaks in quality of focus while playing and general productivity
• Next step is a health & wellness challenge / propbet without compromising on intensity of the grind

Wanted to make sure not to leave it longer than one week without penning an update. Grind is intense at the moment and I'm trying to make the most of that.

Withdrawing from GG Poker
Funds haven't actually hit my account yet so let's not celebrate too early.



I've been following and contributing to the conversation about GG confiscating 180k from Tobias Duthweiler. If the facts as set out by Duthweiler are accurate then GG's practices here are unethical in the extreme. There are at least three separate conversations to be had here: Duthweiler's actions; GG's actions; and bum-hunting generally. I've seen quite a few exhausting and depressing posts along the general lines of: the bum-hunting pro lied and got what he deserved.

No.

If he tried to deceive GG Poker he should have been stopped at the door. GG profited from letting him back in and then shafted him exactly when he was no longer profitable to them. And bum-hunting is both a complex issue and, depending on the definition you employ, an intrinsic part of the game. And, as we've seen recently, GG now has egg on its proverbial face, when these spectacular nosebleed games sit and break depending on whether any of four or five 'VIP' players have chosen to turn up. So, which is it? A poker utopia where greedy, evil regs have been banished, leaving recreationals in peace for the good of mankind... Or a poker site?

To be clear, I did not withdraw my money from GG for moral reasons. It suited me to stop playing there and withdraw my money. Of course, with recent developments, I was no longer comfortable there. But if I was crushing the games and printing money, maybe it would have been a different story, I don't know.

CFP
I applied for CFP for all of the usual reasons. Wanting and needing coaching. Bankroll relief. To play higher. Etc etc. I am one week in and I am immensely excited and relieved and I think I have found a uniquely kind, talented and interesting coach. I have already had three calls with him and am fired up to grind on.

Schedule based on 4-month goals and plan



Going to aim for this six days per-week. It is quite ambitious and there will need to be quite a lot of good quality rest built in around it.

The rest being good quality is an important point; because it just hasn't been. Sleep hygiene has deteriorated completely with phone use before sleeping and after waking. And it's just such a drag on everything. I will need to devise another propbet for this. Propbets are a method that I find extremely effective in the initial stage of breaking or forming challenging habits; which so easily kick back in an undesired direction in such subtle ways.

You think you're doing great and then... bam!... you wake up at 4pm covered in KFC grease with sore eyes from staring at Kakitee for seven hours.

Productivity propbet (bet itself running for the remainder of August only)



More-or-less exactly what it says on the tin. But feel free to ask if anything doesn't make sense. The 'café at 10am' thing is about getting my ass up and out of bed and on the grind!

Health & wellness
I have set a demanding schedule and the grind is intense so I want and need sleep, diet and exercise habits that support rather than undermine. For example, waking up with a sore stomach because of eating too late at night and/or eating too much glutenous pasta and bread the day before is -EV. Never working out is -EV. Listening to Chael Sonnen at 1am talk about who might be the next UFC women's bantamweight title contender is... -EV.

• Sleep hygiene - No phone or laptop after 10pm - No surfing or messages before morning meditation is complete
• No coffee after 3pm
• Light workout most days
• Eat eggs and veggies for breakfast
• Replace bread and pasta with rice

Is this sustainable... is it possible to embrace this as a lifestyle... and just live it... all of the time? I'm going to say yes. Yes, it is. I will report back.