Originally Posted by 6bet me
Fresh start after a short break
After voiding the 12 week challenge and taking almost 2 weeks off online poker, I am finally back and ready to go again! I feel refreshed, calmed and reinvigorated. That break was really necessary for me and I feel that it's going to be super +EV for me in the long-term.
I want to focus more on the present/future and less on the past, but nonetheless, I'll give you guys a quick update about what my past few days have been like:
Diablo 2 + Chess:
I had been playing Diablo 2 for a few days, but gradually started to get tired of it and began to play less and less. At one stage, it actually became more of a chore to play the game than anything else, and I had successfully got my sorceress up to level 89 and was trying to "push" myself to keep grinding and hit level 90, just for the aesthetics of it, but I didn't even feel like doing it. It just seemed like too much effort for so little reward. I never ended up dying, so I was successful in that sense, but I just abandoned the game and stopped playing.
For the last 2-3 days, I hardly played Diablo 2... instead, I preferred to just watch YouTube videos and play a bunch of chess on Lichess instead. I hit a new peak rating of 2026 blitz rating on lichess (top ~10% of players on the site), so I'm happy about that, especially given that I haven't done any serious chess study this whole year.
Speaking of chess: I think I found a trick to winning 3 minute blitz games: just focus on speed, speed, speed! Like pretend it's a bullet game. Don't waste time calculating anything, and don't try to be a perfectionist that holds on to every pawn and achieves an aesthetically good position. Speed is key. I've beaten so many players better than me, just by moving quickly and holding on long enough to win on time. It's quite counterintuitive, because when someone is attacking you relentlessly and it looks like you're about to get trapped in a mating net, it's tempting to spend all your time calculating the perfect defence, like a "do or die" situation. But if you just play the first move that comes to mind, and roll the dice on whether you get checkmated or not, you'll find that more often than not, you'll manage to hold on just long enough to win on time. It feels dirty winning that way, but a win is a win, and that's how I got my rating.
Food and Sleep:
I've been eating out a lot, ordering heaps of UberEats, and actually decided to visit Birthday Girl with my wife a few days ago at the super fancy Japanese restaurant where she works. In just 1.5 hours at the restaurant, I managed to rack up a bill of roughly $180 USD, but it was worth it for the experience imo. They give you a private chef who cooks the food right in front of you and cuts it up and puts it on your plate. It's pretty cool.
Regarding my sleeping pattern: I find that things need to get worse before they can get better. Rather than trying to wake up earlier and earlier each day, I figured that it's better to wake up later and later each day, until eventually, I have a super wholesome sleeping pattern. So in the past, I was going to sleep around 6am and waking up around 3pm. But yesterday, I forced myself to stay up late and went to sleep at 2pm. I ended up waking up at 1am this morning, which is actually pretty wholesome, because it means I've finally started waking up in the early hours of the morning, instead of the late afternoon/evening.
Gym Finally Reopened!
As of Monday, the gym just reopened! Unfortunately, there are severe restrictions in place: only 20 people are allowed inside the gym at any one time, and everyone needs to be spaced out (cannot go on the machine next to someone else). Also: the gym I go to now says that you need to "book" the session in advance, so I booked my first session this morning at 7am. I wanted to go earlier, but it was full. Slight inconvenience, but I can work with this.
I'm happy that I can finally start going back. I never thought I'd be this motivated for the gym lol. But I found that back when I went consistently, it gave me so much energy and life. Like I didn't feel like a walking zombie all the time, which was great. I don't really care so much about aesthetics: I mean, it would be nice to put on some muscle, but that's just a secondary thing. My main priority is getting into a solid routine and regaining my "energy", which should help me be productive in all other aspects of my life.
Closely related to the gym: I plan to look after my health a lot more now. I plan to eat good, solid meals, and have fewer snacks like chips and chocolate. I mean, I don't plan to be a health freak either. I'll still eat food that tastes good like KFC. But I'll make sure that I'm eating "real food" (like meat) instead of just Doritos and chocolate all the time. And I'll make sure I'm eating 3 meals per day too, since most days recently, I've just been eating 1 or 2 meals + a bunch of snacks, which isn't good for my health and energy levels, and certainly not good for putting on weight (I'm way too skinny).
Finances + Poker:
At some point, I need to come to terms with my current situation and let go of whatever's happened in the past, and I've successfully done that now: I've added up my current net worth (bankroll+liferoll, but not including student loan) and it is, when converted to USD, about $9600 USD. This sounds like a lot, but when you factor in the fact that I'm going to be constantly dipping in to this bankroll for food, groceries and life expenses, it's not actually that much, and I need to treat it conservatively.
So obviously, I'm going to have to put my dream of owning an apartment on hold for now. I'm not thinking about making any big purchases. I'm not thinking about buying a car, moving out of home or going on holiday. I'm going to knuckle down and play no higher than 100nl online. I want to be overrolled. I want to be calm and logical about all my decisions at the poker table. I want to keep variance low and avoid huge swings. And I don't want to gamble with friends, drink whilst gambling, or do anything that would increase my chances of punting.
I don't plan to play any live poker until the casino reopens, because I find that I'm very bad at responding to peer pressure and I'll just quadruple straddle and punt away buyins whenever someone asks me to. Like I could very conceivably bust my entire roll in 2 weeks if I continue playing how I was previously. And when I look at what my life would look like if I went busto: going back to driving Uber for less than minimum wage, or spending hours applying for minimum wage jobs and getting constantly rejected because no one is hiring during a pandemic... it looks pretty grim.
I am fortunate enough that, even despite punting off half my bankroll recently, I'm still in a good enough financial position to grind poker full-time without ever having to worry about going busto. If I just stick to 100nl online, I'm safe. Nothing will go wrong. I won't go on a downswing that's bad enough to break me, if the games stay this way and my strategy stays how it is. I'll be able to forever play on my own money, and I won't need to go on stake and give half my profits away, or take out a massive interest usury-style loan that causes a huge amount of stress, if I just stick to proper bankroll management.
So that's my plan. I won't set any fixed grinding times or fixed gym times/days. I'll just grind+gym whenever I feel like it. But on average, I will push myself to be productive each day, and I'll say that, as a loose guideline, I'm going to be aiming for somewhere in the vicinity of 4 gym sessions per week and 40 hours per week of online poker. If I don't achieve that goal exactly, then that's fine. It's just a guideline.
So yeah, it's currently 6am on a Tuesday, my gym session starts at 7am, and after that, I plan to go grocery shopping, eat some good quality yet reasonably priced food (maybe pasta or Subway?), do a little bit of cleaning/self-care, and maybe put in a quick poker session tonight. I'm excited for this!
