if OP hasn't purchased another can of crab meat during his hiatus Im gonna ****ing riot

Update please.

any pictures of the crab meat posted? I hope it was XXL size lumps of fresh white slightly oceany taste with firm, velvety texture.

Otherwise you may have overpaid.

Based on previous going dark periods, it doesn't mean that the OP has stopped playing. However, he is only playing when he feels like it and has the cash to do so. He considers sessions more entertainment, therefore not worthy of being tracked.

He most likely has bought the notebooks and pens, but has limited himself to watching some videos of lectures occasionally. The school year doesn't start until late February, so he has plenty of time before doing the research into getting accepted into a program. He is considering whether going to school is even worthwhile since so much material is free online, without the mess of homework and tests.

Good point venice. It will be interesting to see what happens next!

The process of applying to college shouldn't take all day. So I wonder what else he's doing with his time? I'm sure he will have an itch to play poker at some point as well.

Dang I see this bumped and hoped for an update with shenanigans and/or silly new life plans. Color me disappointed.

Nope. He's gone. Until he shows up again, has new chess/schooling/working/poker plans, effs them up and endlessly repeats the cycle

He probably took on that construction worker job and is too exhausted to update after working overtime and ****.

FYP.

I think we all know that he's in the same place as where he left off and is dithering about making any forward steps.

Alright, I didn't read through the entire thread but I give OP the benefit of the doubt on all questionable decisions he's made except one: purchasing Microsoft Word. Why would you do such a thing? There are so many free alternatives such as Google Docs and WPS Office that are just as good or better for the average user.

Far from the worst decision he's made ITT

Got any cliffs? I read through every page of the Paisting thread, can't really be bothered to do something like that again.

paisting knows he's a sick degen, which is why he plays nl2 and likes to troll people by hosting a thread

this is the polar opposite

I am trying to get it, is this trolling? I hope so I think...anyway, late to the game and on page 30 but I am going to the felt with this

OP, I hope you are succeeding

Cheers

Haven't been in here since OP's bet to grind for a bunch of weeks. Reading the posts were just getting too time consuming.

As for the age of OP's wife, I'm going to guess 35.

I wonder what he's been doing, given that college doesn't start till February.

update? <3

6bet we know you are watching.....speak.

Life Update

Hey everyone! It's been a while. Just over 3 months since my last post. So I thought I should give you guys a quick update how things are going. I'll split this up into a few categories as there's a lot to talk about:

Poker + Finances

Believe it or not, I've played practically no poker for the past 3 months. This is the longest break from poker I've ever had since I played my first hand of poker 6 years ago.

I guess I just lost the passion for the most part. Instead, I got addicted to online chess, and that took up all my time and energy instead. To me, this says more about me having an addiction to playing games in general than an addiction to specifically gambling.

I did recently just start playing poker again, but I've only played 2nl and 5nl so far. I'm trying to slowly ease back into things. I'm not sure if I plan to play for any serious amount of money in the near future, but earning a few dollars profit at the micro stakes seems more productive than earning $0 playing chess. It also gives me a chance to work on my game a bit, as the money is so small that I don't mind losing a few buyins just to experiment and learn.

As for my finances: unfortunately, things just get worse and worse. My wife and I have been massively overspending on UberEats. We couldn't even buy food at the Thai grocery store because of how strict the covid restrictions have been in my city, so haven't had any canned crab meat for a while lol. And delivery fees are always more expensive than going there in person.

My liferoll is down to just $6k AUD now (4.2k USD) and that's all from just spending money on food. No gambling since my last update. So I'm barely even rolled to play 100nl online even if I wanted to, but that's okay, because I don't really have the desire to play that game just yet anyway. I'm happy to start back at a small, stress-free level for now.

Covid restrictions

Can you imagine living in a country that's split up into 8 main areas (6 states + 2 territories), and 7 of those areas are perfectly fine and everyone is living life like normal, but 1 of those areas is full of virus and has literally some of the harshest restrictions in the entire world, and you just happen to live in that 1 area? That pretty much sums up my luck.

Like I cannot believe how bad I run. People look at Australia and they see fewer than 300 active cases in the entire country and they think "wow you guys are doing great, I bet you're living a pretty normal life by now?" Yeah, not in my city...

It was only today that they extended the 5km rule to become 25km. That means we're allowed to travel 25kms from our home now. For most of the past 3 months, the law said that we couldn't go further than 5kms from our home or else we'd face a $1652 fine. And the Thai grocery store just happens to be 10kms from my home. So that meant my wife had to order everything delivered to her.

We also had a curfew from 8pm to 5am, which sucked for me because I was living a pretty nocturnal lifestyle, going to bed at sunrise and waking up at sunset, which meant I would often miss the chance to leave the house and go for a walk. So being stuck at home all day and unable to even go for a walk kind of made me feel pretty depressed. Thankfully, the curfew ended a few weeks ago, so I haven't had that issue since.

But still, I see pictures of people in America going to the gym, going to the casino, travelling about freely, having a drink at the pub, shopping at Kmart... and it makes me so jealous. I mean, I'm happy that we've come pretty close to eliminating the virus here, but still, the extremely harsh rules required to reach this point are pretty frustrating to deal with.

Online chess + games

So since I've been stuck at home all day and felt pretty depressed, I basically just ended up playing online chess all day. I did briefly go through a phase where I started playing World of Warcraft, but I got tired of that game pretty quickly and went back to chess.

The good news is: I started showing significant improvement. I spent some money paying for group coaching and online chess memberships, put in a huge amount of volume, and got my rating up to the highest it's ever been.

Just recently, I managed to hit the magic number which I'd been striving for for literally years: 2000 elo rating on Chess.com! I achieved this in all 3 time controls: bullet, blitz and rapid. You can see proof of this on my Chess.com profile here: https://www.chess.com/member/deranged

I also found out that my local chess club has been running online tournaments for a while, and I've played a bunch of those tournaments and did reasonably well at them, but the thing is: there's always at least a few players that are practically unbeatable. Like there's a few "master" level players in my area (FM's and IM's) which I'll just lose to every single time. They're constantly winning the tournaments and taking home the prize money, week after week, with no variance.

Since I achieved the main goal that I'd been striving for in chess, I kind of lost the motivation to keep going. I just hit a massive milestone and it's like, the next big milestone is so far away that I could spend literally years working for it and still not make it. So I figure this is a good time to be happy with my achievements and quit playing seriously. It's analogous to getting a black belt in karate: after you've hit that point, there's a lot of temptation to quit, because you've hit a milestone so huge and so significant, and the next big milestone is so far away, that it's just a good time to be content with your achievements and call it a day. So that's what I did.

Applying to university

So I've applied for exactly 1 course next year so far. I guess I'd been putting it off for a while because I had to write a statement explaining why I failed my last degree and what steps I'm taking to ensure that this doesn't happen again, and I found that whole process pretty daunting and didn't really know what to say. I did finally do it though and applied for one course, and I intend to copy and paste that response into other applications.

The course I applied for is a BSci in Applied Maths + Stats. I plan to apply for a bunch of other degrees over the next few weeks, including anything related to maths, stats, finance or economics. The good news is that the cutoff date for applying generally isn't any earlier than December, so I haven't missed it yet, and I don't plan to.

My plan is still to become a full-time uni student next year and perhaps play poker on the side for some additional income. I do acknowledge that people have been suggesting this to me in this thread since day 1, and I thank them for that advice. At the time, my passion/addiction for poker was so strong that I couldn't fathom the idea of finding a balance between those two things, but since my passion for poker is much lower now, I think that I'll find it easier to manage this in the future. Poker no longer consumes me, like it used to, which is a great thing imo.

The future of this thread

I can't guarantee that I'll post regularly in thread from now on, since I don't really have any specific and passionate poker goals right now. My goal at the moment is to basically just work on my game, in particular preflop, and I'm playing a bunch of 5nl rush games with opening charts in the background to help solidify this knowledge into my brain.

My original intention was to keep the money I have saved for live poker, since it's 20 buyins at $1/$3 which seems like an ambitious but decent bankroll to work with. However, since I don't expect the casino in my city to open up anytime soon, nor do I expect interstate travel to be allowed anytime soon, I'm ignoring this dream for now.

I guess my plan is to continue applying for uni courses, do a bit of preparation for next year, and just focus on grinding the micros at the moment, not for the money, but for the sake of improvement.

If my passion and confidence for poker both reignite, which may happen in a few weeks, then I'll go back to playing a decent game like 50nl or 100nl. But I want to ease back into things for now and take it slowly, before sh*t hits the fan again. I didn't cope well with my last $10k downswing, so I'm trying to avoid having that happen again.

As far as my living arrangement goes: yeah I'm still living with my mum, wife and brother, and I don't expect this to change anytime soon. I plan to continue living here until after I graduate with a degree. It just makes life easier for me when I don't have to stress about rent money. The last thing I want is to have an assignment due in 2 days time, but my rent due in 3 days, and I am so focused on the money that I neglect the assignment. So that's why I plan to move out after I complete my studies, and not before.

So yeah, I think this pretty much sums up everything. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thanks for reading!

Welcome back.

Great read, that all sounds good. I think you should start by posting some hands you play at 2nl and 5nl. I can sense your passion for poker is reigniting. This is a good sign.

Awesome, nice update!

Stay on the chess grind, it seems to be therapeutic for you.

glgl bro

Hi 6b, thanks for the update.
Good luck getting back into school.
Stay far away from poker unless it's for recreation (as it is now).

GL OP, happy to have you back.

Sounds like you've got a healthy relationship with Poker now which is great, and congrats on 2K ELO, that's a big achievement. Hope you continue to update with both hands and life updates, I'm sure both will be interesting!