I want nutrition!

Sup guys. Let myself down at the end of last week and the start of this week. It's sad because I'm just repeating the same cycles of inconsistency that saw me eventually break down and fail the last time I played poker for a living. It's really really sad. So close yet so far sort of thing.


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Monday 5th June to Sunday 11th June - Review


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Higher Stakes Graph




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I suppose there's a few small potential positives that have come from this most recent lapse in productivity.



Firstly, I've been having a good think about my approach to poker and it's blindingly obvious that I'm allowing my OCD with regards to notetaking and plugging spots to negatively harm my overall productivity, and most importantly my bottom line.

Whilst I think it's really good to have systems in place for studying/analysing there has to be balance. Right now I'm creating so much external work for myself from grinding that I'm basically not giving myself much opportunity to relax in a working day. I think it might be contributing heavily to the regularity of these periods where I just stop being productive altogether.



Moving forwards I'm going to stop being so ******edly obsessive with notetaking. I'd say at least 80% of the notes I make are unnecessary. That's a lot of time that could be put towards grinding, or even put towards chilling out and watching netflix or w/e. For the guys where I have a mountain of notes, I'll set time aside to do an analysis and just make some general, easy-to-read headnotes.



WRT studying, it's super important and I think it's kind of vital to put a study session in before I start grinding, sort of like warming up before sport, but at the same time I'm being a bit too obsessive, saving so many spots that by the time it comes to studying I've forgotten the range I thought I was up against and end up just plugging a million different ranges.

I think moving forwards, instead of saving every single spot imaginable I'll maybe start focusing on one specific type of spot that I'm not great at (such as overcalls; rejamming from sb; 3BJ from sb etc etc) rather than saving a million different type of spots each day. Maybe this will be a more efficient way of improving my weaknesses? It's something that needs to be tampered with at the very least.



And finally, I've spent a lot of time watching Netflix documentaries on food over the last few days and, alongside some external research that I've done, I'm starting to feel like the high-fat/low-carb diet I've been trying might not be the best option.

I won't go into a huge amount of detail but for a combination of financial/ethical/health reasons I've basically decided to ditch LCHF in favour of a diet that re-introduces decent amounts of fruits and grains and legumes, almost totally eliminates dairy and eliminates a lot of meat.

It's basically a vegan diet except I'll still be eating mackerel at least once a week, I'll look to occasionally introduce shellfish, I'll look to occasionally introduce organ meat, I'll occasionally eat eggs and I won't be fussy if I'm invited to a BBQ or w/e.



I'll be getting in touch wrt the two freerolls I owe for, and I'll be setting some new goals over the next few hours with some freerolls.


Shelly.

Simple goal for the next three days including today.

[ ] 500 games at higher stakes

$3 freeroll on that to the next three respondents.


Vamos.

I am in. Vamoooooo!

Vamonos!

Hey Shelly,

Regarding the thoughts above, have a look at this graphic below:



You can replace task and 'shaving off time' with situation and '+EV'. Not only do I often think that no note taking is better than extensive note taking, I think time is better spent on situations/hands that are more frequent and where with less effort than notorious note taking you can get higher +EV results.

I hope I make sense?

in for the freeroll

update ?

Updates bro? Hows the squash?
Hope the spins have been going well

Sup guys.

Basically I left that stake about a month ago and am currently out of action. I'm also close to running out of money IRL so have been on the job hunt for a while now.

It's sad that it didn't work out but I just found those games to be a real grind. I was also suffering from many old patterns of OCD that were completely consuming me and making it difficult to put in consistent hours as I was suffering from burnout at alarming periods of regularity.

Another aspect I disliked was that, at the stakes I managed to reach, the games on that site were only good in the evenings/at night, but still massively reg-infested. As I mentioned before, they were much swingier than on stars due to a shorter structure and quality of opposition, and I ran quite absurdly bad in my (admittedly small) sample at the higher stakes. It was always my intention to have it so that I was treating poker as almost a normal job where you do your work in the day/early evening and then get to chill at night but it just wasn't possible.

Also, it goes without saying the software was pretty poor compared to stars. I'm looking forward to going back to stars and not having import issues with my HUD and being able to use extensive colour-coding systems and whatnot.

More than anything though I'm not a rb grinder. Whilst it probably makes poor business sense, when it comes to rb grinding I'm very much a square peg trying to brute force my way into a round hole. I'm much more suited to being a player focused on CEV and maximising winrate.


I'll be off this thread for a while but I won't close it because I fully intend to get my finances sorted IRL and then move back onto Stars. I know there's basically no rb on there now but I've had a few dabbles in the past month and the games seem pretty good at all times. I cba playing 3s as I was playing 15s equivalent on the other site. They were much more reg-infested than the games on stars so I have no doubt 15s is a level I should be beating pre-rb with my current skillset, but I'll deposit when I have a tidy roll for 7s to put down, at least 200 BI IMO and ideally closer to 300.

I also won't be getting another staking deal, not least because I left the stake on fairly bad terms (lots of coaching didn't translate into much returns for them) so I'd basically be getting blacklisted if I did so. That's more than fair enough, though there might've been hints that they'd be annoyed if I played for myself. I possibly misread what they were saying, but if I did end up playing for myself and they took issue then I'd view that as pretty unreasonable on their part. I did make a small amount for them + they approached me, I never approached them. It's obviously gutting that I became a bad investment for them but there was no malice on my part. It just wasn't for me.

So the plan is to rebuild my finances IRL, and then play spins part-time. I'm guessing I'll be back towards the end of the year.


Squash is going fine Colin, however my progress has kind of stalled. I'm competing with and beating players I couldn't even compete with a year ago, but at the same time I'm recognising a lot of weaknesses so will be implementing a full training schedule that involves lifting weights, jogging, nutrition and lots and lots of solo court sessions to improve technique and court-fitness. There's a bunch of videos on youtube so I'll use those to coach myself and then implement during training.


Ty to everyone who has supported me in this thread. I will be back in the future, also I'm not sure if I still owe any freerolls but if you think I do send me a PM as I'll still be on 2p2 from time to time and then I'll check to see if it's the case and send you the money.


Cheers, Shelly.

Entering a stake, then quitting shortly after to play the same format on your own money is a big no-no. Basically scammer, stealing future equity.

Edit: It obviously depends on what you have agreed with the backer.

Other than the occasional small deposit dabble I won't be back grinding for a good while and even then I won't return to full time grinding as that isn't for me. I'll be playing as a hobby/pocket money with small chance of a life-changing bink, and that's if I even end up playing semi-seriously again in the future at all.

The structure of the games is noticeably different so although the format is similar, on the site I was on at the higher stakes it's basically impossible to win pre-rb without the biggest multis. They're basically just a variance-fest compared to the games on stars, which is saying a lot because spins are a variance fest in their own right. It's definitely not the case that you can't make good money pre-rb without the highest multis on stars at equivalent stakes, in which case I think there's an argument you could make as to whether the format is even the same.

I left for a variety of reasons that meant I wasn't able to put in the hours needed to earn a living and to satisfy the backers. I didn't leave to grind own dime. Also, of the studying I did during the stake I'd guess maybe 10-15% was coaching and the rest was me plugging spots in mizer alone.

Whilst I accept it's not black and white, should I hypothetically grind p/t in the future I'm really doubtful it could be construed as scamming. Maybe I'm wrong though?

Yeah, some of these sound reasonable, this should be between you and your backer.

However regarding the format - you should have researched it before you enter stake - I would never ever sign to play at a site I haven't played at least for a few weeks before that. Complaining after that - the format, the regs, the variance, the software - absolutely all of that is on you, how can you sign to play that without having a clue about any of these?

I have no idea how different the 2 formats are and I have no idea how much you intend to play. If the 2 are comparable and you intend to play any sort of reasonable volume, it's scamming, yes.

Honestly, maybe I'm using that stuff as secondary excuses but primarily I genuinely believed many of the issues I suffered from in the past were things I'd be over by now but the last x months of trying to be a grinder again has confirmed that either 1. these issues are still present or 2. that poker brings out the worst in me.

So in answer to your question, I signed because I didn't know myself well enough to know the problems I would face, or through some false belief that I'd grown to a point whereby I wouldn't face the same problems again. Sadly it was a painfully rude awakening which is why I've been semi considering not even coming back to this thread as it's kind of embarrassing. If people who have supported me hadn't bumped looking for updates I probably wouldn't have re-opened the thread until I was back playing spins p/t, so possibly never.

If I ever grind seriously again it would be p/t at most. I know without doubt that I can't ever play poker f/t again. For whatever reasons it isn't for me.

Sure no one should be forced to play, no doubt about that. People quit poker, nothing embarrassing in that. Good luck!