Thanks for the info. Wasn't even thinking about a second casino in Montreal but 14 tables, lots of players, and lowish rake sounds amazing. I really do need to get out there at some point, either when I have a decent amount of money saved up or when I'm finally crushing poker. Nothing can replace first-hand experience

Thanks for the compliment And appreciate the feedback on tips. I'll definitely keep doing it and I won't be skimpy, but it's something I definitely want to take into account moving forward. I think online cash is something I definitely want to try, can be a good battleground for myself to test my game and work on stuff


All of that being said... I AM DONE THE PROJECT!!! Finally

Cranked out the rest tonight. That's just been a cloud over my head the last few weeks and now that I'm done I can stop occupying my mind with all of that stuff. Now, the next step for me is to start crushing poker. And to start crushing poker, I need to start crushing my studies. I have access to a cash game course which I fully intend to rip into. Now that the project is out of my mind, I can be solely focused on getting in shape and improving my game. I am so glad

Someone mentioned several weeks ago that I should focus on volume and study goals rather than monetary goals and I think that's great advice. Going forward, I want to study a minimum of one hour a day for five days a week, or at least five hours a week. I'm a person that can blow off a couple of days and then spend four hours studying one night, so I'm okay with trying to go over that goal. Considering there is stuff I likely don't even know about cash, my priority has to be finishing this cash game course over playing the next few weeks. So maybe study 5+ hours a week (probs even 10+) until I finish this course. During that I can try and play 12 hours/week at the casino. It's not a lot, but if I go for Friday and Saturday sessions (which I fully intend to do), I can rack up those hours pretty quick. Hopefully I don't take too long. Bare down, get through the material, and start applying what I learn as much as I can.

The cash game course is for online so I don't know how that will translate to live. Obviously if you can crush online you can demolish live, so I feel like it will give me tons of great info. It probably won't cover all of the weird quirks like straddles that I really need to know about for live, but I'm sure I can find info about what I need somewhere out there lol. I would love to try plying my trade online as well, NL 10 sounds like it could be a safe place for me to start. I might start out bigger, might start out smaller, but finding a good mix between live and online cash will serve me well in my poker career going forward. If I live in Canada and can play online I definitely gotta take advantage lol

Excited to get this next stage started! I can start my course material tomorrow and maybe then I'll have a better idea of the time commitment needed to go through everything. I can have a better plan then. So my two main focuses now are health and studying. After that, my focuses can become health and playing. And once playing is a main priority, hopefully the money will follow soon after. We'll see

A few vids into the course right now. I'm so happy to have some fresh material and was so ****ing jacked to get some new hand ranges. Very hype times. I think that I should be able to finish preflop hopefully sometime this weekend or early next week. After that is post which could take a lot longer. I remember I got the course specifically for help with my MTT postflop play. Important stuff I guess

Going through it seems like the two main cash game study tools are Piosolver and Pokersnowie. I have some experience with Pio in that I watched my coach use it but have none with Snowie. It looks like an AI training app? It's considerably cheaper than Pio too. I would love to buy both but if I'm being realistic I can't comfortably invest in either one at the moment. Would love to get Snowie I think though. Anyone know if that is a must for cash game players?

As far as learning goes, it will be how the coaches told me to do it. Start with the basic stuff and progress your knowledge to the more advanced concepts as you master each one. So preflop will be my first priority, shouldn't take too long to grasp. Then I can deal with the postflop stuff. For this weekend I'm having supper with my friend tomorrow night. Will probably play tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. Sunday I'm not too sure what I'll do. I can study, study and play, or play MTTs again. I guess we'll see how I'm feeling

Decided to play a little 25NL on Party, just felt like getting my feet wet. I made an okay profit in a little over 200 hands. I might get roasted for this, but I just realized that my Party account is in CAD. Not too sure if that changes my bottom line at all. Anyone have an opinion on whether I should change it to USD if possible? I don't even know if it is. I've been recording off my USD stats on Party this entire time when it's been completely prone to currency swings. What a joke lol. I don't think it changes anything, so I guess I'll just keep it as is.

I gotta say, cash was fun. I've only just learned a few basic preflop things so I'm still going largely off of my instincts/MTT knowledge, but it was nice to make a profit on the day. I didn't play great but it's awesome to play so many hands in such a quick time frame. I know I've been anxious about not having a huge amount of buy-ins available for me playing live. If I were to grind a bit online at smaller buy-ins that should eliminate that worry from my life. Maybe grind live on weekends and online during the week. Not the worst idea ever

I'm not too sure what games/sites/stakes I should play. Anyone have suggestions? I assume I should probably play some Zoom on Stars but are there any other sites I need to be playing? Or maybe I should just be shopping around on all of the sites for the best rooms out there. Just getting used to the idea of me needing to know all of the relevant rake/site info versus having my coaches tell me exactly what to do. Good change of responsibility tho

Hey mate, do you use Skype at all? In similar spot to yourself and would be useful to run hands back and forth etc if you like?

CAD is what you want. You want your account to be in the same currency as your bank, as when you make a deposit, you will not get charged the 2.5% currency exchange rate. Idem when you cash out.

I actually had my Party account for the longest time in USD and was paying the fees everytime I cashed out, which ultimately amounted to 4 digits in fees (you can only change your currency once and since I am assuming you have your bank account in CAD$, that would be your preferred currency choice as they do not charge to convert from CAD-USD when you join/leave the tables).

Dont play party, bot infested. Pokerstars,888, ignition are some good sites

If your computer is good enough no reason at all to choose snowie over pio imo, pio is a much more powerful software.

Thanks for the reply Dub. I knew there would be a currency exchange rate tacked on which was why I wasn’t too sure. Having it in USD just makes it seem more valuable cuz it’s a higher value compared to CAD I guess lol

Duly noted, will look into some of those sites. Need to do some depositing online I guess the next couple of days

I guess that Pio and Snowie serve the same purpose then? I thought it might be different cuz it looked like Snowie had some interactive hand training spots against AI, but good to have your opinion. I honestly don’t even know my computer’s capabilities regarding whether it can handle Pio. Something to figure out when I can make the investment


All of that being said, last thing I needed to talk about was the government job. I completed the test almost two weeks ago. It was almost all multiple choice so I thought the marking would be done fairly quick. I emailed the account for the job though and got a reply that I won’t hear back on an interview until first or second week of December (if I hear back at all). Pretty long turnover holy. In that case maybe they won’t even start the job until after the holidays, so beginning of 2019. So I guess it’s the mail life for me for a couple weeks for sure. I was really wanting to get out before we get hit by insane cold. Looking at the 2 week forecast and today is supposed to feel the coldest at around -20 C. Lucky it’s been mild so far. I was brought in to help my driver for the holidays so I know that leaving him a week or two before Christmas would really screw him over. I would honestly be okay with helping out until Christmas and then peacing it if I get the government job for start of Jan. I guess we’ll see how things unfold. Back on the live grind tonight, hopefully I can run up a good session

Was tough sledding at work today. Once again, my push cart had a flat tire when I started my day. After pushing about 200lbs around a mall on a flat tire, my driver hooked me up with my new ride



Yeah, I literally had to deliver using a sled today. I finally have a reference point for the saying "tough sledding." I gotta say though, it handled pretty good. Just floated over the snow, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Supper with my bud and then poker, hopefully it all goes well

Please dont play cash on Party, unless you want to be playing against bots on awful software

Your best choice is Stars really, I would start with 10nl zoom. Large soft pool and you can get in many hands. In terms of softness maybe look into Ignition. As much as a solver is probably a requirement to beating 200nl+ online you should probably start by exhausting all the valuable free content there is available and do a lot of playing and reviewing of your own hands at 10 or 25nl first before there is any use in looking into purchasing a solver for multiple buy ins imo.

Honestly you can get a ton of great free content on Youtube, a few channels to search for are:

- Nick Howards
- Charlie Carrels
- Skuzlad (2+2 poster) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCov...0vudK5ufOnKCeg
- A guy named "Aomishot22" has some decent cash game content
- and if you arent already, you should be watching all that Doug Polk has to put out on Youtube regarding cash game strat

Chinese food was a bad choice. In for $460, out for $84 in a short two hour session. I basically lost two big pots. The first one I got AK all-in pre vs two loose opponents ~$500 pot, flopped my ace, and lost to a turned 54s straight. Absolutely gross. That guy was huge action. He's a big reason why last Saturday went so well for me and why I jumped over to the main game today. He was in fine form, calling off 73s all-in pre for about $200 and getting there. I was happy to be at his table and happy to get in AK but he left shortly after that hand, taking his $800 with him. Damn.

I was tired all day to begin with even though it didn't affect my play so after I lost a $200 pot getting in Th9h on 862hh versus another dude's 82 I just called it a day. Can come back fresh tomorrow, watch a movie and sleep tonight.

Appreciate the feedback! I'm definitely going to exhaust the resources I have first. So much stuff to learn but hopefully I'll be crushing the online streets soon

Dropped a cool -$510 in a sub-three hour session today. Biggest losing day of my poker career so far, but you can keep your congratulations to yourself.

I lost several middling pots, basically card dead for the entire first two hours. In the last 45 minutes I saw KK twice and both QQ and JJ once. With KK I crippled the board once on the flop and got as much as I could. My other KK and JJ I took down the blinds and a few limps. QQ<KQ on the last one after we got it all in on JT8cc and he turned a King. Not great.

My last hand I bluffed off my entire stack. An OMC (I'm trying to learn poker slang lol) raised it to $12 in MP. Three of us called including me with 77 on BU.

Flop is Ac6c2. OMC cbets $25. I call my middle pair and the other two fold.

Turn is an offsuit 2 and OMC checks. Immediately I think that he has a middle pair as well, maybe TT or JJ. I've played quite a bit with him the last several sessions. He is a tight player and when he has the goods he plays it very aggressively, big bets. Seen him do it countless times with OPs and big aces. I bet $35 with intention to barrel off my roughly 2/3 pot stack on any river to get that middle pair to fold, cuz there's no way my 77 are good.

OMC calls and last card is an offsuit 3 (board = Ac6c223). He checks over to me. The flush draw missed and if he thinks I might barrel off missed clubs he might find a hero call. But the board is so dry, and I'm going for "full-value" with my ace, and I rip in the rest of my stack.

OMC calls and rolls over two red AA.

Get **** on, bud. Fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Still got some things to figure out I guess.

So I dropped a lot of money my last two sessions. I know that I wasn't tilting in either session. Even now I feel pretty level headed after my biggest loss. I tried to make the right plays and they've been the wrong ones and my cards haven't held up. It happens. It's only 6 or so buy-ins, but I'm not exactly loaded. This wouldn't be a problem if I was truly, properly rolled for $1/$2, but I'm not. Not sure what that means for me. I'm still okay money-wise but I'm not super comfortable with losing a couple more buy-ins. Agribition is in Regina so I might try again next Friday. If it goes poorly I can cool it for a bit. In the meantime I can study up and maybe work on my online skills. Not the worst idea.

I know I've mentioned it, but I'll say negative stuff a lot when I'm on my own. I think I'm just angry, or maybe I know how insane all of this truly is. This entire poker journey is honestly insane and I haven't been exactly crushing it. It doesn't mean I'm giving up, not even close. It just means I say ****ty stuff and it's just reactionary. And I know it's not true, and I know I don't believe what I say, but it still comes out of my mouth and floats in my head. How do you remedy that?

Food. Food is the medicine of choice for me. Got another bag of chips for this evening. Went to the gym today and even though the past seven days have been horrible diet-wise I've still lost weight. I guess my metabolism is going pretty good at the moment. Not proud of myself, but it is what it is. I could have more destructive coping mechanisms.

All of that being said, there is one positive thing to note. I know in September I got really worked up about when the last time I was/tried to get drunk. It was sometime then, and although I didn't make a conscious choice to be sober at that time, I eventually slipped into it and realized it as the positive it was. Well, a year ago today I saw my friend do improv at UBC. I saw it with another former classmate and afterwards we grabbed a burger and a beer at Mahony's. A glass of Stella Artois is the last alcohol I had, maybe the last I'll ever have. It tasted good too.

So today is one year of real, genuine sobriety. I don't want you to think I consider myself superior because of that. I just have other vices, other weaknesses. Finishing preflop tomorrow and hopefully I'll do some damage on the cash course the rest of the week. It's been good so far. Put in the work and the results will come

fold 77 on the flop or if youre going to peel no need to turn it into a bluff, has enough showdown, but i much prefer folding flop.

congrats on 1 year sober. alcohol brings out some demons with me and ive reduced my drinking to about once a month, but wish i could go completely dry. maybe 2019 i will commit.

Folding flop was probably the play. Once a month is a pretty good starting point I’d say. If you do commit I wish you the best of luck


I’ve continued my very poor eating habits since my last post and haven’t been to the gym since Saturday. I am still getting some exercise at the job of course, but I really do need to supplement it with the weights if I want to see results like I was having the last month. Tonight is hopefully the last night before I recommit to the fit life. Obviously I’ve told myself that a few times already the past week and a bit, but I’m ready to get back on the saddle. I can’t believe I just shoveled garbage into my mouth non-stop for like two and a half years. A truly disgusting habit. One to stay on top of

Goes without saying I’ve been pretty depressed the last few days. The food obviously doesn’t help, but my brain is still stuck in the past. It’s almost been a year since my rock bottom I guess. It’s a date on the calendar, but it’s a 20-page entry in my journal too, one I’ve both read and listened to recently. Crazy to think how bad I let everything get. Crazy to think how far I’ve come. A couple days ago I messaged my Vancouver friend about talking sometime once her classes are finished, when things are calmer for her. Obviously I want to just have a good chat, but I want to ask her about that night too, what her perspective was like. So thankful to have had her as a support all this time

I haven’t been studying poker at all. The last four days have been food and movies and books. As always, although the entertainment is not improving my poker game, I still think of it as useful for myself and important. Won’t be playing poker this weekend. My parents were out of town the last three weeks or so and just got back. Gonna head to Swift for the first time in a month and a half. Will probably see some friends Friday night and then do nothing at the lake after lol. I feel bad for talking about the toxicity of home and my friend group there, even if it is honest. I’m still upset with my one friend in particular. I don’t know if I’ll talk to him about some of my issues or not. We haven’t been tight for years now so I don’t even know if I have the right to be upset with him. Maybe I just let it go. Hard to say, but we’ll see I guess. Gym and some poker vids tomorrow. Baby steps

Keep looking and moving forward my man, try to make progress towards your goals everyday man.

Also once I cleaned out almost all the garbage in my diet, started lifting hard and eating lots of clean protein everyday I rarely ever get negative mental state drops anymore. This is coming from someone who used to be on antidepressants and in a dark hole for a long time. Also, look into supplementing your diet with vitamin D and fish oil. Its a lot of work to eat clean but man Im telling ya, totally worth it.

Nice post iluvcats

OP, where are you at in your weight challenge? I can relate, as I have struggled somewhat with my form over the past decade... Am 41 though, so it is a bit more natural to gain some kilos over the years, yet I do not want to end up a diabetic, so I do put in some exercise, keep myself at under 200lbs, eat well, meditate etc. It does not get easier, I tell you

High intensity interval training is also a good workout if you are overweight. If you do it on your resting days from lifting and don´t overdo it (2 days/week is probably the nuts, overtraining is reaaaaally bad, believe me), you´ll probably see satisfactory results soon.

You will feel like you´re dying immediately after, but at least for me, it gave me a nice boost to work/enjoy myself during the rest of the day.

Thanks for the advice iluvcats! It’s definitely hard cleaning out the garbage but I’m doing my best. I was really crushing it there for a month but it’s only been the last week and a bit I’ve faltered. Might look into the supplements as well, thankful I’m working outside all day. Good thing about Sask winters is that you can still usually see the sun even if it’s cold as **** haha

Haha yeah I’m starting to realize this is gonna be one of those things to stay on top of for me. Haven’t weighed myself in a little over a week, I think I was around 228 lbs. Wouldn’t be surprised if I put on a pound or two. Apparently work is light today so my driver gave me the day off. That means I won’t get my weekly bonus for working all 5 days but I can go to the gym and get home early today. I’ll take it

Definitely something I will look into. Right now I’m basically getting my cardio at work, probably burning around 1000 calories-ish a day just pushing a cart around the city haha. Honestly probably helps out some muscle groups too. For weights I’ve only done a beginner body building thing with like 10 exercises and only one set of each exercise. Pretty basic but I’m moreso looking to be lean than to get ripped. Will definitely look into interval training tho


As mentioned I got the day off of work so I’ll finally go to the gym. Sounds like tonight will be supper and possibly Mario Party 8 with the boys. Sounds like a good time to me. Two nights ago I ended up calling my Vancouver friend because I wasn’t feeling very well, imagination running a little wild on me. I guess the anniversary of that November night coming up has just made it omnipresent in my mind. Even tho she had to get up at like 6:30 to babysit some kids, she still talked to me for an hour at like 1 AM (3 my time). Biggest difference between this last year and the ones that came before is that I actually have a support system. It helps that I’m aware of what’s going on with me and I’m actively trying to get better, but I’m glad I have a few people I can talk to when things aren’t going so well. I did ask if she was surprised to know I was as depressed as I was last November. She said it was a total shock but it makes sense thinking back too. Funny but true. Felt like everyone in our program was complaining about how depressed they were and having breakdowns. I had some of the darkest/most depressing writing, but I smiled and didn’t complain at all which let me blend in I guess. Easy to not see that way haha. Feeling better today tho, gonna have a good breakfast and hit the gym. Have a good weekend everyone!

Heyo. The weekend home was good. Ended up seeing my friends Friday night, got sushi, and then played Mario Party. Me and my friend were on a team and were crushing it as Yoshi for the first half of the game before getting wrecked by RNG. That game is ridiculous. Hung with the parents too which was mostly them having Christmas Hallmark movies on the TV as background noise, surfing their phones and computers mindlessly while I read my book. Pretty much how I expected it. I'm not missing a ton being away from Swift. Awesome to see the guys and have a good night, but I know those are few and far between. Probably won't be back in Swift area until around Christmas time. We'll see

Since I've been back I've gotten back on the health train. I've gone to the gym twice and am eating better/less, so the weightloss will continue. I'll probably snag an end of November weight my next time at the gym. 220 by 2019 is a must. 210 is a stretch, but you never know

As far as poker goes, studying has been slow going as I've been focused on other things, mostly reading, reflecting, and watching some movies/TV. At some point in Grade 12 I know I made a conscious choice to absorb as much story as I possibly could. This has resulted in me feeling like I've seen almost everything I've wanted to see on Netflix. Now it's all lower-reviewed movies and stuff that doesn't interest me. Nothing wrong with that, just means I'll have more time for more productive ventures. I have gotten back on the study grind here but am still a ways away from finishing my course. I will probably stay off the felt, both virtual and real, for at least the next week. Just gotta get back in the study grind and do some damage.

I've been thinking a lot about tomorrow and how it will be a year since breakdown #2. It's been forefront on my mind for the last week, but persistent in my head for much longer. It's a weird thing to commemorate and I wasn't sure how to do it. And then I remembered one line in my journal entry where I tried ordering pizza online but got shut down because I put in the order too late. At the time it was meant to be a celebratory pizza for not killing myself. Seems like the celebratory pizza will still apply, especially tomorrow. Pizza and Maniac sounds like a good way to spend the night

I know that my work ethic isn't what it has been or should be. To be a truly successful poker player I need to do more than what I'm doing. That being said, I feel like my priorities are where they need to be. Getting in shape is still absorbing much of my energy, but work and these other pursuits have still been good for me. I know poker will need to be a bigger priority, but I'm happy with how things are going. A little inspiration from the local semi-truck...

I have FINALLY heard back on the government job. Made it to the in-person interview phase. I was originally scheduled for an interview early next week but it conflicts with my mail job, so hopefully we'll reschedule. Spent the last couple hours filling out all of the paperwork I need. I've had 12 different addresses in the last five years. 5 of those were in the last year. No time to get comfortable lol

How this job goes will determine my immediate future. If I don't get the job, I'll aim to leave Regina by end of January to make the bigger move I arguably could have already made. If I do get the job, it'll be term employment and I'll leave Regina at the end of March once the term is up. Depending on how much money I have saved up, I might take another run at being a full-time poker player and possibly look into a staking deal. If I think I still need more money, I might get a job and have poker on the side until I have enough of a nest egg. Basically, I think I need to take one more solid, fully committed run at poker. A year or a year and a half where I bust my ass or maybe just crush it. If that doesn't work out, I'll know it's time to move on. I don't intend on eking out a living as a poker pro if I think I can thrive elsewhere.

So, that's the basic plan for the immediate future. Tonight, imma order my pizza and get my Netflix on. For the foreseeable future, I want to watch 3+ cash vids per weekday and 6+ every weekend day until I finish. That should get me to wrap up all of that sometime in the next week or two. I've been a little ancy regarding my finances but if I get this government job I can grind more live knowing that I will have that extra income coming in no matter what. Big difference from knowing I'm just treading water at the mail job. Not a bad way to celebrate a year since breakdown #2. Things are looking up

Six hour day at work today, we had a ****load of packages. Walked 15km at work, felt like just calling it a day and watching Netflix. Instead, I watched two vids, went to the gym, hit the 20km and 30k step marks (new one-day PB!!!), and will watch the last two preflop vids once I'm done this post. As for my weight, the scale dialed me in at 224.6 lbs. So, since the beginning of the ************ journey, and honestly probably since I got to Regina in October, I've lost 24 lbs. Halfway from the start to 200, a third of the way to my rough end-goal. 220 by January should be a slam dunk, but if I stay disciplined I really believe 210 is within reach. I won't kill myself trying to get there, but I'm gonna try my best. This is also with two weeks of absolute **** eating with multiple pizzas and bags of chips. So we can say I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

I also have to say, the goal of 3+/6+ videos per day is what inspired me not to do Netflix. As far as goals go, it is a much more tangible thing than "study 10 hours a week." I'll know at the end of the day if I did or didn't do it, and I won't have any excuses. I really haven't been playing very much poker since August, but once I finish this course hopefully I can get a consistent volume going once again. I guess I kind of feel like an impostor for not playing as much as I know I should be, but it will all come in due time.

All of this being said, I found myself intrigued by the idea of incremental gains. So many times in the past year I've felt in danger of falling backwards, of feeling like I had made no progress. Yet if you analyze my journey on the macro level, I've accomplished so much. I went from a breakeven microstakes scrub to a genuinely profitable player. The mental health gains I have made are nothing short of amazing, and in the last few months the work I've put into my physical health have been equally awesome. I'm teaching myself some personal finance, how to cook, maintaining important relationships. Even though on a day-to-day basis it often feels like I'm going nowhere, these incremental gains have added up to some awesome results. And that's all it is - incremental. Nothing happened over night. It was all about persistence, chipping away, never stopping moving forward, even if I stalled or only inched along at times. To be a successful poker player, I have to make more of these incremental gains in my study habits. The importance of consistent improvement is so obvious. Before the new year, I want to be done learning new stuff and actually be duking it out at the tables again. But hopefully after that, I can focus on consistent studying. Even though it feels like I'm far down the totem pole, if I keep chipping away I'll get where I want to be. Something to be aware of when I want to blow off studying for Netflix. Every day, every minute matters.

MOTIVATED AS **** HOLY ****, goodnight guys

Heyo. So I did not stick to my 6+ vids on the weekend rule, but they did get longer and more complex and I still fit in 3 per day. I’m still wasting time doing other things, but I still studied for several hours both of the last two days. Filling up my notebook pretty fast with new stuff. I don’t think I am super far away from being a successful low stakes cash player. Most of the stuff seems pretty intuitive, but there are some new concepts and a lot of refinement I will need to do. Hopefully I can be done all of the material in the next 7-10 days. I guess we’ll see. My coach gave me this to help with my MTT postflop skills, so I think practicing and learning this on my own will help with my MTT skills when Ido go back to that. Learning this stuff will just make me a better all around player for the rest of my poker career

I’ve been thinking about that a lot and I know I need to give MTTs another shot in the future. The most important thing for me is that I have some money saved up to pursue it whole-heartedly. I believe I can and would do well, and if I am highly motivated I think I will be able to climb up the stakes in the MTT world at an okay clip when I get back. Government interview is on the 11th. Hopefully I get that job, and then I can save up a decent amount of money while playing cash on the side for the first few months of the new year. After that i can leave Regina and go somewhere else. I’m still very intrigued by the idea of grinding in MTL. I feel like I would be highly motivated poker-wise if I was on my own in a francophone land haha. Would be less distractions for me, and I believe my lifestyle wouldn’t change much from what it currently is at the moment. I’m seeing other friends and family pretty infrequently while being able to have my long distance support still going. I guess we’ll see what happens. Maybe I can do Montreal once I’m on more stable poker-footing lol. Guess we’ll see! Back on the mail grind tomorrow, the poker grind hopefully isn’t too far away. Goodnight

Heyo. Haven’t been updating last little bit just because I haven’t been making any significant poker progress. Seeing as how this is ultimately supposed to be a poker thread, I decided to lay low on the updates for the time being. I still have a ways to go on the poker course, I really do want to be playing again by the start of the new year which shouldn’t be a problem. I had my interview for the government job. I thought it went as well as it could have, but I won’t hear back from them for SIX WEEKS. This sounds like much more of a long-term job than I anticipated which wasn’t as advertised. Given the opportunity, I think I would still take it, would be a great opportunity to save up some money and get something good on my resume as opposed to minimum wage grunt work. I’m not above minimum wage in the slightest. It’s just that it doesn’t sound great at an interview when all of my work experience anecdotes involve giving people fruit or freezing my ass off in the snow. I believe it went well, but I could easily not get the job just because of my limited/irrelevant work experience. Would be great to not wait six weeks to find out, thereby costing me at least an extra month in Regina if it doesn’t pan out. So is life though

So, the mail life will continue until at least the end of January. If I get an affirmative on the job, I’ll take it, put my head down, and save up some money. If I don’t, I’ll try and leave Regina for end of February. That means I have a month and a half to work my ass off at getting onto the felt and making some money. When the ladies conducting the interview asked if I was gonna do some Christmas shopping after, I couldn’t say yes because I am scraping by here. I’m not struggling, but, very simply, I am not thriving. I don’t really enjoy being at the mercy of other people. Would love to be my own, independent person. If I want to do that, I’ll need to study study study.

Tournament staking will have to wait indefinitely. If I get the job it will be longer than the three month term-employment. If I don’t, I won’t have the liferoll behind to play poker full-time. Crappy situation altogether. Probs should have just moved to Calgary to begin with

Someone mentioned Charles Bukowski in the thread a couple weeks ago and I’ve taken out Post Office from the library as a result. Guess we’ll see how closely my life parallels this book

A thought I’ve had. I don’t really like the feeling of being a nuisance. To say that I am one is probably inaccurate. For the most part I keep to myself, and the people that do put up with me probably don’t mind me. That being said, reaching out to people that don’t reach out to me feels like I’m just being needy, a feeling I’ve battled for a long time. Landlord’s girlfriend is kind of an angry nutcase, so I try avoiding the kitchen/being upstairs when people are around. That’s translated to me getting more bad food, garbage piling up in my bedroom. For the gym, I told the membership guy that I would prefer having a treadmill and weights in a basement as opposed to a gym membership. I don’t like people watching me and that was always how I did my weight loss journeys before. So now I either go mid-afternoon when no one’s there or later at night when no one’s there. Forget about peak hours which means - surprise surprise - I haven’t been there in several days. Don’t forget about my relative silence around strangers. I rarely add to conversations because I don’t think people want to hear what I have to say. Not the best attribute for a live poker player. These are all bad habits based around me not wanting to bother people, live conflict-free perhaps. Not really sure there’s a great point to be made from all of this, but it’s been something on my mind. I’ve definitely come out of my shell more in recent years, but these are all things I still need to work on. Treadmill and dumbbells in the basement would be nice tho

Despite not pulling my weight poker-wise, I’m probably going to make a trip to the casino this weekend just to get my feet wet again. With Christmas weekend coming up, this’ll probably be the last time I’ll go in December. I went home last weekend too by the way. The group chat with the crew back home got hyped about playing Smash and then going out for drinks last Friday. I caved and went and just enjoyed my time there. Not sure how much longer I’ll be around these parts, so I’ll take it while I can. Hopefully I can make a few bucks this weekend! Btw, the book is pretty dope. See ya

Tonight, I resigned myself to another night of being a fat, lazy pos. Crushed a pizza, bag of chips, and got amped up on a litre of Diet Pepsi as I finished my binge viewing of The Seven Deadly Sins (sick anime, I’m in love with Diane) and Love, Simon (well-written gay teen romance). Bloated af, I decided to go for a walk. So I’m cruising around the neighbourhood late at night, all the stores are closed, I’m just listening to the music and the beat and just getting in a mellow, saddish mood. And then I realize I probably shouldn’t be a total pos and just go play some poker.

In for $160, out for $676. A boring, straightforward, last-minute session that helped regain some confidence. That’s the first time I’ve played since starting the course and since my absolute thrashing nearly a month ago (yikes). I know I’ve been lazy and preoccupied and prioritizing different things, but I don’t see why I can’t grind Fridays/Saturdays, even if I am studying. Even if I’m not what I should be, I can more than hold my own at the local $1/$2 tables. This week, I really want to do my best to finish the course. I’ll be going home the Christmas weekend and hopefully won’t need to come back to work Christmas Eve Monday. I’d like to be done watching all of the course vids by Boxing Day, when I’m back in Regina. I should be able to do it, but I obviously need to be more disciplined than I have been. I’ll do my best and try going back-to-back winning sessions tomorrow