Hi, dear topic and reader. It's been a long time since the last update.
In the last 3 months I moved from full ring to 6-max, and from nl10 to nl5. I didn't lose at nl10, I can beat it, but hourly at nl5 is higher, and variance is lower, so moving down is the right tactical decision.
An obligatory graph for nl5:
In the beginning poker gods sent so much extra buy ins my way, that it even makes me a little uncomfortable. But I'm confident, that my game has been evolved and my current winrate is higher.
Why bother resurrecting this topic?
Short answer: to foster discipline.
Long answer:
Internet addiction is still the big problem for me. Today, for example, I spent at least 7 hours online. It could be higher, I was away for 3 hours. And I cannot see a way to achieve anything significant, when I spend countless hours online everyday.
Running online journal at various resources has been the best way to take control of this behaviour. And as poker is still the biggest part of my every day life, resurrecting this journal is the obvious decision.
How I'm going to handle this?
Complete elimination doesn't work for me. It's difficult to establish in the beginning, and eventual slipping induces voracious binging and wipes out all progress.
Harm minimisation approach works much better. It's easier to start and get back on track when something goes wrong.
Rules:
1) At all cost maintain stable daily routine. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time. It's absolutely necessary to establish solid habits. When you go to bed 1-2 hour later every day, when your waking time shifts all the time, developing any habits is impossible as they almost always anchored to a specific time of day first.
Habits are important. When you play 4 days straight from 9:00 in poker, it's much much easier to repeat it on the 5th day.
I even eliminated tea and coffee to sleep better. One of the best decision so far
2) No internet before 18:00 and no more than 1 hour online. Starting a day with hour of youtube, reading news, blogs, etc. conditions the brain for addiction. Starting a day with studying and work conditions the brain for work.
3) Play 5 hours, study 1 hour, 6 days a week. 1 day is a mandatory full rest from poker.
4) Write progress daily here. Muse sometimes on different topics.