You’re the best man

that was funny

Thanks man. I liked my post too, but I am even happier that you found it funny. German comedy isn't dead yet!

If EV is real, then focusing on EV makes the most sense.

If short term profit is real, then focusing on short term profit makes the most sense.

Now, I am not talking about a moment of focus right now. I am talking about a moment of focus while you play - relax - then another moment of focus - relax - and so on for minutes, a quarter hour, even hours during those sessions that are more important than usual: Focus on your EV more often. I like to think of it as something green.

I've learned something new about goals, too. An old pattern of mine is that I used to focus on one goal, but I secretly wanted to achieve it a certain way, too. Say you want to play 5 more hours of poker per week. I would have wanted that, but secretly I would have wanted more: To feel good about it afterwards and be proud of myself for getting it done, for example. That's asking quite a lot is what I think now. Also, it means that a certain type of pain was unacceptable. That has changed for the better, thank god. So now I can go after a goal more single-mindedly.

And that bodes well for the months to come.

So have a great weekend friends, you'll hear from me.

There's as little to say as I can possibly think of, because I've not spent any time thinking about anything. This is the grind, and I'll update you on my progress on friday.

Have a good week friends!

30+ hrs of poker this week, and very little else, which means that this has been the most volume I've put in for months. Some might wonder: How did you do it? So if you really don't know anybody much better suited for the task, a friend or a colleague who's got a great work ethic who you could ask personally, here's my method:

1) Formulate a goal: In this case: I want to play 30+ hrs of poker this week.
2) Strip that goal of all the secret stuff that used to sabotage you in the past: I don't need to feel good. I don't need to feel energized. I don't need to play my A-game. I don't need to focus all the time. I don't need to play a certain way. All I want is to play 30+ hrs a week.
3) Formulate a plan: Forget about anything else. This is how you can make it work.
4) Execute your plan.
5) Write a blog post about it.
6) Wish people a great weekend(!).

Still reading? Good. Point out that there needs to be balance in your life. Massive goals, like playing 30 hours every week for a year, require massive counter-weights in your life. Or to say it bluntly: Handle with care. Because this is going to work.

Have a great weeekend, friends!

Having very little to say can be a very good thing when saying a lot is a way of procrastinating, so when I write less, things are going well which makes me feel good right now.

I am still pursuing that goal of playing a lot quite single-mindedly (6 hrs today), which I can really feel at the end of the day, because it makes me feel exhausted.

So I'll update you on poker on Friday, and I'll grind til then.

Yea, the only playing when you feel you are at your best is a good way to get very little volume in. I've been the most consistent when I haven't paid too much attention to that. I think your results also do benefit from the additional work being put in, even if it's not the most efficient way to play.

I was listening to an interview by Dustin Poirier (UFC title contender) the other day. He was talking about not using a tracker to track his heart rate variability so that it would tell him when he should take time off of training to recover. He was saying that as a mindset it wasn't helpful, because you need to be in the mindset of doing the work.
I think I understand where he is coming from. I also think that with putting in the work also follows being in better shape to put in the work. If you know you are going to play 30 hours a week no matter what, you are going to focus a bit more on sleep on nutrition etc. naturally.

Well said Isaac (I wonder: Is that your real name? )))

Anyway, here's to me playing another week of 6+ hrs of poker per day no matter what. It's quite exhausting. I'll do another week of this next week.

Have a great weekend friends!

Doing a lot of playing right now I am reminded of the way Phil Galfond used to learn mixed games: By playing them.

Honestly, I am just writing something to keep up the streak. I don't think about anything, so I can't really write about anything. Thoughts come and go, but I postpone that part of it until I am in the lab again, at which point I'll do a LOT of thinking about things like "What does the perfect reviewing session look like for me?"

I'll update my progress on Friday.

Here's to me playing another week of 6+ hrs of poker per day for the third consecutive week. As I usually do one project per month I'll probably put in one more of these before I move on to doing something else.

For example today looked like this:
9-12: play a session
12-1: Take a long walk to get rid of some tilt
1-4:30: Play another session
4:30: Write this post
Then: Weekend. No work for 2 days, period.


And from a macro perspective, this is going on:

Interval 1: Play a lot - 4 weeks
Interval 2: Analyze a lot - 1-2 weeks
Interval 3: Relax a lot - 1 week

Right now we are in interval 1 for one more week.

Have a great weekend friends!

Nice, congrats on keeping up with the routine man!

I assume those hours work well for you and that’s more important than the poker EV of course. However, how much EV do you think you’re giving up per hour on the tables by not playing weekends and nights?

For the macro perspective, do you mind sharing how you came to the conclusion of having three intervals and structuring them that way? Do you plan to restart the process once you’re done?

glgl

Thanks man.

I am giving up a lot of EV per hour. Maybe I make half of what I would make if I played weekends, maybe even less. When I am impatient, which I am often, then this sucks. In the long run, I am not sure that I am giving up much at all, but that's a different story altogether. Let me just point out that I read your question in a way that shows that you're at least partly (and maybe hugely) concerned with other factors, even other types of EV than good, old on-the-table-EV, and that's good. If medical students where very concerned with max EV right now, they'd all work at McDonalds rather than study for their exams.

And as far as the macro strategy goes, it's this:

I've found that for me, working on one thing at a time works best, so that's what I'll do as often as I need to, restarting it again and again until the accumulated progress really makes itself felt. From what I've seen and with how open-minded poker players tend to be, I'd recommend doing this to many of them and see where it takes you after two, three months (read: two intervals of doing it this way). I think that is going to generally give you that sense of being clearer about which strategies there are, and which ones may work for you. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that routine of working on your game and playing your game five days a work or even seven days a week, if you can handle that mentally.

So with all that said: Let's get back to the grind!

Count me in the camp of not grinding on the weekend's, except an hour or 2. And this is what it was all about when I initially set on my poker professionally journey : to accumulate enough monies that a decade down the road, I could not work on WE's and simply enjoy life That and playing part-time all together (under 22h weekly).

GL friend

I often meditate on Galfond saying that if you want to make it to the top, you have to be willing to put in 60 hour weeks consistently. Considering that he notoriously spent most of his time playing, that's a good motivator to put in some hands.

Thanks for that, that's good motivation. Like a sort of aha-moment: There are people out there who approach certain things the way I do, and (judging from the way you write on your website) they're the opposite of stupid and they've even made it work for them much better than other ways probably would have worked! So that's really good motivation to keep up the grind.

Thanks man, that's what I want to read right now. I am pumped!

Here's to another week of playing more than 30 hours of poker.


This is when I am moving towards the end of phase 1:

Interval 1: Play a lot - 4 weeks

With decent results this week. And then...

...into phase two, which I am excited about:

Interval 2: Analyze a lot - 1-2 weeks

...and finally, this one is going to be NUTS:

Interval 3: Relax a lot - 1 week

Have a great weekend friends!

Hello from the lab where I am researching ways to play better next time.

Right now I am focusing on two things:

1) The feedback that I get from looking at a spot. Let's call that intuition. If you verbalize this, you'd get a baseline for a spot. Often, I've found that this is to check or to fold.

2) The stuff that happens once I've got that intuition. Let's call this conscious thinking. This may completely overhaul my intuitive gut feeling and make me do something else or even the opposite, for example instead of check folding I may check raise, or instead of checking I may bet.

The content of these two sorts of packages is a different story, and an important one:

If you had a sort of mental PPU (Poker Processing Unit) then that Unit, like a CPU, would consist of several modules: Some sort of mental OddsOracle that generates output on range vs range equities and percentages of different hand types, and a sort of mental PIOSolver that generates a strategy from that. Then a hard drive with a database full of villain's hands and hero's hands and RAM, of course.

The conscious thought, on the other hand, happens based on certain Mental Models: One mental model is that of a polarized range, another one is that of Implied Odds. If you watch a Phil Galfond video (last time I checked), you'll find that he cycles through the same types of questions again and again. Those are the mental models, or tools, that he's using for the job of maximizing EV with his strategy.

And the goal of applying these concepts to hundreds of hands, which is what I am doing right now, is simply this:

To play better next time.

Chat soon, friends!

Here's to a week of working on my game. Tomorrow is good friday, so I'll take that day off. I'll probably move into interval 3 next week:

Interval 1: Play a lot - 4 weeks

Interval 2: Analyze a lot - 1-2 weeks
...to zone in on things that I'll do better next time. Which are:

- Four bet wider for value oop
- Make more pot sized flop raises
- Do more precise leading with sets on dynamic boards
- Use blockers more effectively
- Articulate the baseline first, then deviate if you can make it work
- be more precise preflop when it's multiway

Interval 3: Relax a lot / Rest my mind - 1 week

Have a great weekend friends!

Welcome, disciples. "Ah, ", you may think, "it's right after easter, so this guy must be..."

No. You're wrong, I am not that enlightened dude. Not jesus. But thanks for the thought, I appreciate it. Alas, I am a mere seeker on the path to greener pastures.

Greetings from the resting place of my mind. I feel joy deeply on imagining seeing your beaifutl faces reading these lines being lit by the weirdly radio-active light of your cheapo screens. Peace in peace of mind there is. There's also pee in it. Which is for the better, because who'd be interested in poops of mind? Nobody, really.

Has there ever been a better phrase to just let it be? It was just yesterday that this occured to me: Lucy in the sky with diamonds...

So as I am sitting here in my yellow subterranean meditation den, all I can feel is the gratitude of not being able to feel gratitude yet.

Or more bluntly: Thank you, no thank you, universe. Go f**k yourself. Right? Hence the picture. Have a good day.

Now I am finally done with interval 3:

Interval 1: Play a lot - 4 weeks

Interval 2: Analyze a lot - 1-2 weeks

Interval 3: Relax a lot / Rest my mind - 1 week

...which I used to balance out those pretty intense intervals of playing poker and working on my game. You could also go and take a holiday once every few months and rest your mind there. To each their own. But I believe that it's important to get that rest, and to make sure that you don't get sidetracked doing it.

All that means is that next week I am going back to playing in order to implement all those little changes and improvements, so expect some more poker related updates on Tuesday. For now...

...Have a great weekend friends!

I also find that giving your mind space can often lead to unforeseen revelations about problems you were working on. It's productive to create space after you have put in hours of deliberate practice or deep work (or however you want to think about it).

On a smaller scale, this is also why it is important to get plenty of rest (sleep) when performing mentally intensive tasks as it accelerates your learning/progress on said task. The background processing of our brains is quite substantial.

Thanks for that highlight of what I believe quite strongly is really important. I even put in short naps during the day when I feel that I've got a lot of things that I've learned to process. Excellent stuff.

I've started playing again and those new mental pathways come in really handy when I am in challenging spots now... there's definitely more space, if that make sense, once you've put in a week of learning and a week of resting (which, as you've pointed out better than me, is also learning).

Have a good week friends, and remember to rest occasionally. If anybody wants some techniques that I'd recommend, just say hi, ask how it's going, tell me what you what you think your problem is and I'll write something and post it here.

Good luck at the tables!

Back to playing! I played 21-22 hrs this week, which is solid. I love my progress. I also got a great chess lesson from a national master and was able to work on somebody's mental game for a lot of fun. I love that feeling when you can contribute to something good and have fun at the same time.

results-wise, I am reasonably satisfied. I sometimes think that poker goes like this:

1) You play poorly and you're break even or slightly losing. You make some big improvements. There are even a few aha-moments. You feel much better!

2) There's a small stretch during which you win a lot, then you move up or make some other change that you think gets you in the right direction.

3) You're break even or slightly losing. You make some big improvements. There are even a few aha-moments. You feel much better!

4) There's a small stretch during which you win a lot, then you move up or make some other change that you think gets you in the right direction.

(or)

4a) You're break even or slightly losing. Some of it is variance, of that you're sure.

(Can keep going for a looong time...)

But then, finally...

5) You're break even or slightly losing. You make some big improvements. There are even a few aha-moments. You feel much better!

6) There's a small stretch during which you win a lot, then you move up or make some other change that you think gets you in the right direction.

etc.

...Have a great weekend friends!

Hey friends!

For this week, I just want to re-iterate how good that one week of mental relaxation has been for me and that I'd recommend it to good friends (which I have done) when they need a sort of productive break. I am also listening to Boorstin's "The image" and it helps realize that taking a vacation is a weird thing indeed and it makes it even seem quite unattractive... so relaxing my mind instead, even though it felt like hard work, was much better is what I am thinking now. But as we all know, thoughts come and go, so I'll update you guys on my progress if I happen to change my mind in the future.

The grind is just the grind, but I've got my preparation as a good resource to help me trust intuition more and pull the trigger when it's useful more often. These things are not to be underestimated, which everyone knows who's ever made a plan and just tried to execute it during stressful moments, or simply over stretches of time that are longer than, say, two weeks. So I am well prepared, and I can already see it paying off nicely.

So is this a sort of marriage of mental game and technical game that I am talking about? No, not yet. They're just getting to know each other better. So the good news is: The honeymoon phase is still ahead of me. Man, that'll be a blast!