Almost done... Got Table Optimiser and Tilt Breaker all set up and hands are importing into HEM OK. Kinda pissed that I've lost all my notes and colours though that's a lot of EV down the drain. I'm gonna be playing readless vs opponents that'll have 1000's of hands on me. To add insult to inury, the only AppData folder I didn't back up was AppData (local) and of course this is where the Pokerstars' notes/colours are saved. I've been racking my brain for a way to lessen the blow a little bit but I'm drawing blanks for the most part. I have NoteCaddy so I suppose I could import some of my older backed up hands and set some colour definitions, however the only hands I have are close to 6 months old so not sure if this is the best route to take. What should I do? Do I just bite the bullet and start from scratch or is there some way to salvage the situation that I've missed? If anyone has any experience with this sort of thing I'd really appreciate your input.

Today was a productive day, all things considered. PC's all set up now and good to go. I re-started TGM today from the beginning and spent a good 5 or 6 hours creating all my own preflop ranges from scratch. I've always just used other people's so it was good for me to actually think about how different opponents and sizing actually affects how we construct our ranges. I was so engrossed in it I didn't have a smoke until gone 7pm so that's good.

Emailed PS and they were actually really helpful. They provided me with loads of info about recovering my notes but it looks like they're gone for good. They've also sent me my HH's from this year so at least I'll have the hands since starting the challenge. I guess I'll be going down the NoteCaddy route and putting in some colour definitions. It's probably best I revisit these anyway as I could probably do a better job of it this time around. Bit gutted about losing all my notes but going to see it as an opportunity implement a new and improved method of taking notes. Not sure what that is yet but I'll know once I've done a bit of research tomorrow

Gonna have 1 more pinhead, attempt to make it through a film and then get an early night so I'm fresh for tomorrow. Feeling excitement instead of the usual anxiety. Maybe it's the recent emphasis on studying and improving that's helping to ease some of the results oriented pressure I put myself under. Maybe it's just that I've had a couple of days away from the tables, or another mood swing, who knows!

Not a good day today, laptop's completely ****ed... It started off well. Worked my way through a good chunk of TMGOP and wrote it up into my own words. Spent a few hours making a new HUD from scratch with loads more useful stats and colour ranges. Got all my hands imported that stars sent me and ran NoteCaddy colour coding. Then, before I had a chance to back anything up, I got a "DCP watchdog violation" blue screen and it's just been restarting and looping ever since. Tried practically everything at this point - even did another full reset! Looking at pc's on ebay at this point ;( There's a couple ending tomorrow afternoon that I'll try my luck with but failing that I'll have to just buy one off of Amazon with next day delivery. Luckily all my training videos are stored on a hard drive and my phone has internet so I'm not completely in the dark but it's looking like no poker for a few days at least. And worse still is that'll I'll have to redo all my HUD, importing, settings etc again.

Hopefully I can win one of these bids so a nice shiny new computer can rescue the situation. Failing that it's a £300 ****ter off amazon until I can afford something better. No worries anyways - just a minor setback on my road to greatness!

Stayed up until 8 this morning and managed to get my laptop up and running again, albeit with the same wifi issues I had before it all started. So I've basically just wasted 3 days and stressed myself out for no reason, not mention losing all my hands, settings and notes. Still, I've managed to swerve buying a new PC for now so I'll take it...

Currently in the process of doing proper back ups of all my files and settings so I won't ever have this problem again. Got 6 hours left on the transfer and HEM import likely to be equally as long. After that I've just gotta redo my HUD, test everything's working and I should be good to go. Itching to hit the tables so I'm just gonna treat today as my day off and do the full 7 days next week.

On a side note, I've starting watching Westworld and it's proper sick. I highly recommend it!

All done at last!

Just put the finishing touches on my new HUD, tested her and everything's good to go so nothing to do but study/play tomorrow. Feels good, these last few days have been a proper grind. I've backed up anything of importance too, so God forbid if anything like this happens again it won't be nearly as much of a headache.

Here she is (not my stats btw ):


And my nice new tidy desktop:


Gonna watch an espisode of Westworld and then get an earlyish night so I can get a proper night's sleep. Glad it's all over and done with and looking forward to getting back into my routine. It's been a stressful few days to say the least!

A tip is to export hands/huds/filters and whetever else you can save into a cloud service. Dropbox is free for instance. It's great for peace of mind and also saves you a bunch of time whenever you have a crash or get a new computer or something

Thanks I will do from here on out, sod going through all that again I enjoy reading your thread, keep the posts coming!

Thanks for the eye cancer :S


Also if uploading hud/filters/hands is a hustle for you then you should work on your folder organization skills. Exporting hud and filters is a 5 minutes worth of work.

I've been there with computer problems. Eventually i took it to a computer guy who fixed my problems quite cheaply. Considering the time i saved the money was well spent.

I just use a bog standard memory stick for saving all my stuff.

I'd recommend saving your notes on players from Pokerstars as well

I'm not giving up my empty lines between stats just yet! And na the hustle was having to redo everything from scratch cos it wasn't backed up lol. Now everything's backed up on a seperate drive so if it ever happens again it'll only take 10 minutes to restore everything.

I've learnt my lesson the hard way! (twice)

Ye I proper learnt my lesson the hard way, won't be making those same mistakes again :P I've stolen your lil' half hour timer idea btw and I'm loving it so far so thanks for that!

Was a good day today, got through the full 4 hours of studying and playing. Nothing special in terms of results but we're not focusing on those anymore! Gonna start tryna focus entirely on the things I actually have some control over and ignore the short term as much as I can. Will still be updating with results on a Sunday of course, I just mean more on a personal level (checking balance during sessions etc). Carried on working through TMGOP for my mental game hour and spent most of it filling out the attached "client questionnaire" and am now just moving into the strategy section (the good bit!). It's funny how even just reading about something that applies to you can immediately have an impact on your game.

I skived off a bit with the technical side of things and instead of working through TGM I started watching one of Carroter's DC series' again - Teaching Tom. It gave me a little boost of confidence because I remember when I watched it last year, I had loads of the same stats and leaks as his student in the videos. Now they're (for the most part) where he's telling his student they should be at, and the few times I'd have played a hand differently Carroters jumped in and backed me up The videos are conveniently around an hour each and relatively slow paced so I'm able to take notes and think about spots without pausing for the most part. I'll be moving onto TGM when I've finished TMGOP but until then it'll be mostly videos for my technical game studying. One of the side effects of being born into the "now generation" is that my attention span is appauling and so I think 3 hours of focused book study is a little unrealistic.

As mentioned in my previous post, I've nicked an idea from a fellow 2+2er and I've set some timers to go off during my session sessions every half hour. The plan is to immediately sit out next hand when it pops up and just take 30 second - minute to sit back, do some controlled breathing and evaluate how I'm feeling/playing. So basically I can never play over 2 hours in a single session and every half hour I take a minute break, more if I feel like I need it. Just another little change to help keep me on the straight and narrow.

On the weed front, I honestly feel like I was so much more in the zone in my 2nd session after I'd had a joint but obviously lol sample size so could have just ran better. I'm gonna keep the plan as is for now and just keep a close eye on things.

Looking forward to watching some more Westworld. I enjoy my rest 10x more when I've earnt it, there's no guilt. I can actually kick back and relax knowing
I've done everything I needed to.

As promised, here's the hands where I lost close to/more than 100bb . The goal is to cut spew from my game so I'll include any relevant stats and thoughts and appreciate any input.

Not sure about this one, feels a little spewy. Vs weak 24/16 reg (180 hands). 1 AF and generally pretty tight post over the small sample. I didn't think he would be raising sets on this board vs an UTG range. At the time I put him on TT-QQ or overs with BD's and maybe some 78/89s but not sure about this.




Vs Unknown. Again, not too happy with this one. Should be sizing smaller OTF IP and at these stakes a min raise on the turn is never a good sign. I kind of knew I was beat but put the rest of it in anyway. It's one of those hands where bet folding turn would probably have tilted me more than just getting it in lol. Thoughts? Is it just a snap fold OTT vs the min raise or is it closer than I'm making out?


vs 23/15/3 over 52 hands. 100% flop and turn cbet but only a few opportunities for each. Another one I don't feel great about. Don't expect him to triple any draws, overpairs or Tx on this runout so think we can safely just fold river. I also didn't think he'd bet turn and river for this size with Jx though, which is why I went for it, but I guess AJ makes sense.

Couple of bonus hands I enjoyed playing:

Some rope, sir? Got more notes on this guy than anyone else I reckon. Mostly of the "bet 3 streets air/called F & T air, shoved river when Ch to" nature. Needless to say I added another following this hand.

im on my fourth database without saving a single hand
hopefully i learn my lesson one day

ive been looking at wall stickers when i find one im willing to buy al let you know mate


gl gl

The hands I'm not too worried about, can get the recent ones from stars and I purge em every few hundred k anyways. It was more the having to do the settings and HUD and everything from scratch that was a pain. Then my PC ****ing up directly after I finally got everything how I wanted and having to do it all again *sigh*.

Nice, mine certainly helped me get through the last few days .

Nice thread man, GL at the tables!

Cheers mate! Hopefully I'll be able to back it up with some nice results too before long

Lost a lot of BI's today. Cashier's blocked for now but I think it puts me back at 10nl temporarily. I'm gonna take a few days off from updating the thread. Every time I start to have a bad day at the tables I feel loads of pressure and it becomes nigh on impossible to get back to my A game. It's always at the back of my mind that I'm gonna have to update the thread at the end of it and my play just gets progressively worse until it becomes blindingly obvious that it's time to quit. I'll be back on Sunday with my poker update and then will most likely continue with the daily updates after that. For now, I just wanna get back on my feet and regain some confidence, it's not been a great week.

Why does knowing you have to update the thread have an affect on your play? Seems like that might be an ego problem to me, without knowing too much about your situation. Is it something that happens regardless of whether you've had a smoke before your session or not? The readers aren't expecting you to win every time you play, we know that's unsustainable even for the best players in the world, and no-one thinks any worse of you as a player, even if you have an extended losing period, it happens. There isn't supposed to be pressure about posting results from posting a thread like this. It's supposed to be a tool for accountability and networking, but seems like it might be having the opposite effect? Seems like a mental game leak to me.

Good luck anyway man, hope all goes well for the remainder of the month. I'll hit you up on Skype this evening or tomorrow if you're about.

Ye you're completely right, it's almost certainly an ego/insecurity thing. And ye it happens regardless of whether I've smoked or not. I guess I care too much what people think and it's not just in poker. I'm the sort of person that will have a conversation with a complete stranger, and then go through that conversation in my head for the next 2 weeks beating myself up about why I said "x", or what they must think about me saying "y". It's honestly hell at times.

Thanks for the advice and reassurances, I'll be doing a proper update shortly with my plan moving forward. And ye I'll be about mate, hit me up any time.

I like what flawz says about accountability. In the brief time I've been doing my own thread, I've gained so much from re-reading old posts.

GL to you, I'm following the journey.

I've been slowly slipping back into my old ways since starting this thread. I got off to a strong start but the inevitable regression's been gaining momentum these past couple of weeks. It wasn't going to be smooth sailing from the off so I kinda knew that I'd hit this point eventually. After all, I'm trying to undo 25 years of conditioning and 10 years worth of bad habits all at once. The important thing is that I pick myself back up and carry on moving forward.

It seems like most of my mental game issues stem from fear, specifically fear of failure. This is mostly just me being insecure of my own incompetencies. I suppose in my mind that not trying is superior to trying and failing. Essentially it's just my ego holding me back. The other day I read something along the lines of "fear disconnects you from your passion" and it's so true. I need to accept that I'm only human and stop putting myself under so much pressure to do well. I WILL make mistakes and a lot of the time I WILL lose. These are facts that I need to embrace if I'm to have any chance of succeeding.

I'm giving up smoking. For real this time, I've never meant it more. I had about an 8th left yesterday so I smoked as much as I could and then gave the rest away, along with all my paraphernalia. I deleted all the numbers from my phone and gave my cards (access to money) to my ol' dear for safekeeping. I spent the day researching withdrawal symptoms and how to reduce them. Insomnia, irritability, loss of focus, anxiety, headaches, cravings, sweats/chills, depression, digestive issues and the list goes on. Reading all of this, I decided it was best I didn't play any poker to begin with, at least until the worst of it's over. I've printed all these off along with the how long after quitting I should expect to see 'em, so when they do inevitably pop up they shouldn't come as any surprise.

The plan is to begin playing again in 2 weeks but I may bring that forward or move it back depending on how I'm feeling nearer the time. I'm gonna use this time to get my head straight and do loads of planning/studying. The next time you hear from me I'll be completely sober and on a ****ing mission! See ya soon guys, I'll be sure to return with a bang.

Here's where we're leaving the BR at:

Wish you all the best man, I hear quite a bit if myself in your last few posts. I too default to being overly hard on myself. It has some benefits, but not being able to switch it off is not ideal.

Gl with the not smoking, stay strong!

Thanks mate, it's 100% in the bag this time!

-------------------------------------------

Day 1 outta the way, let the insomnia and terrifying nightmares begin!

Probably gonna be watching a lot of series' while I toss and turn these next couple of weeks so if anyone has any suggestions that'd be great. I really enjoyed Westworld so if you know of anything similar then let me know.

Checked the cashier today and noticed I need 10k VPP's by the end of this month for Supernova! WTF?! I thought it reset at the start of the year, clearly not. I didn't really wanna play any serious volume until the withdrawals faded but it seems like a massive waste to not make SN when I'm this close. So, it looks like I'm gonna have to play 4 tables around 8 hours a day to make it in time. Not ideal, I'm barely sleeping and feeling irritable so it's gonna be a somewhat ****ty standard of poker being played but needs must. Probably not gonna be great for my bankroll but **** it I'd pay the $500 for the increased RB for a year if I had the option anyways. Gl me, exciting stuff!

2 days clean. Now's where the **** really starts to hit the fan