Morning! how are you? how's your grind going? you still in Thailand?

Very fair question. All my staked action is on bros at the moment so I'm playing there exclusively. Also I withdrew my balances from stars and GG so have no balance to play there. But you make a very valid point. If the frequency of the bros maintenance gets out of hand then I'll need to reload another site and play there whenever bros is down.

There is also a point here about how many playing hours per week one wants to play. There doesn't seem to be any GTO consensus at all in the community on this: some crushers play 24, some play 48. Maybe win rate and rate of improvement (measure in change in win rate and ability to climb stakes) are good measurements for an individual to find that sweet spot.

All is well my friend. Yes I remember WSOP I had balances on GG and Bros, and there were even times when both sites were down for maintenance at the same time, causing me to mostly go out and get drunk in response.

I guess it also just depends how strict you want to be re volume. If you're forcing yourself to hit x hours of volume per week, IMO you MUST have access to more than 1 site for when maintenance happens, GG was down for like 6 hours yesterday. Additionally, if your target is say 40 hours a week (whatever the number may be), plan your schedule so that you're actually getting 42 or 43 hours by default. What I've found is that if you say you want to hit 40 hours by playing 8 hours 5 days a week, it becomes extremely difficult to play for longer than 8 hours. At that point you just shut up shop for the day because you've hit your volume target.

But it's incredibly easy to lose hours and almost impossible to add hours back to your week once you lose them. Site maintenance, internet/power outages, having to run unexpected errands, getting a fine from the cops because your greenbook is out by over 8 months, then driving an hour to the transportation office, only to realise your license expires tomorrow as well. Sickness, hospital trips, immigration offices, etc. All of this will cause you to undershoot your weekly volume goals which is why I now plan in extra hours to my week, once I'm at a surpluss of 10-15 hours I can go out and party and be hungover and still know on average I'm hitting my volume.

Very nice idea actually--I should incorporate this.

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#4 / 47




Daily Reflections
Really high quality day in the system. Fully four hours of play. And a 1.75 hour coaching session with a gym session in-between. That's my perfect grind for now. Everything either side of that, I want to design for daily happiness. Tough spot.

BTW coaching sessions where my coach sweats me playing doesn't count towards the volume cap free-roll ! I have no idea whether the community will think "duh" or will be like "scum!"... it's a straight flip. But like, the 4-hour daily volume cap free-roll is a restriction so I don't play higher volume because I want to put quality over quantity and take rest and recovery seriously, so I can achieve elite levels of consistency. Hence I have capped both my daily volume and my total volume until 31 October. When I play my 4 hours and have a coaching session scheduled in the evening and my coach wants to sweat my play... that's a coaching session, right?

I have some random and complicated and non-poker thoughts and ideas that I want to write about but I'll keep those for their own posts later.

In the meantime...

I think as another tactic for bringing more pleasure back into my daily life I will go to the guy in the newsagents and ask him can he get me the FT (if not I'll take another English language paper he sells) and bring my waking up time forward by 30 minutes, get my paper and get a coffee at one of the really nice cafes nearby. There's one near the beach that has a large balcony I haven't checked out yet.

Seems like a happy way to start my day

Also man that’s a sh*t ton to write up all the time (which is just fine if you like it)

You mentioned before you go all in on things then give up, part of it could be you’re asking either too much or too little of yourself.

Find what is manageable for you, it doesn’t have to be tons, but THEN STICK TO IT. This forum is completely filled with people who have big dreams but can’t stick to sh*t. You gotta focus on being disciplined when you work for yourself because no one will do it for you.

Keep up the good and hard work and you will succeed

Good job

How's it going how are you.

#5 / 47

play: 4 hours
study: 0.75 hours




Daily Reflections
Immediately after my day's play today I was feeling flat for having broken even. Experiencing some mindset stumbles in-game when I get frustrated playing against very splashy, fishy opponents. Action was wild in some spots today and felt the adrenaline of that.

I'm reflecting on these things and taking practical steps to mitigate against overwhelm in those moments when the action really starts flying. My plan is to stay the course, continue to improve, and make those practical changes and then our day in the sun is only a matter of time.

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A mistake from today that perhaps some of you may find interesting: acting way too fast. Deciding on your action before even your opponent acts. This feels different from autopilot in a way and more like a kind of stubbornness or tilt.

The action and board is not terribly relevant but what happened was, I was HU and I bluffed OTF, xx OTT and hit top pair Kx OTR and new that I was so often good. Being in the stabbiest of pools, I decided I was calling before villain acted OTR. I snap-called a 1.5x pot lead; a clear fold at this table versus this villain. I snap called without thinking. I would call most sizes up to large sizes but i never thought he would 1.5x it. There were plenty of hands he could have that were better than my hand and i just closed my mind and refused to think about it. He rivered a straight. I wrote a note of it and resolved to learn from it and move on.

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Hey thanks for engaging again, nice to hear from you. So these updates don't currently feel like a lot. As you can tell, I enjoy writing and I enjoy checklists. I'm also enjoying the accountability this offers. Of course, there is wisdom in what you are saying and it's a useful reminder.

Hello

#6 /47

Volume: 3.9 hours
Study: 0 hours




Very ready for a day of no poker tomorrow Will be back playing on Tuesday. gl today all

Will maybe do some longer writing tomorrow. But for sure I hope to write some longer, more substantive and lucid updates than just these daily grind sheets.

No poker today guys. In real life stuff changed for me yesterday, resulting in me booking a flight home to Ireland for the start of October. Will update soon when I'm back on the grind. gl all.

Hope all is well mate. <3