Hi everyone! I registered a long time ago and was in read only mode. I think it's time to break the silence.

I live in Russia and play microstakes for a living. I was playing nl25 on Chico network for some time, had moderate success. Then made a series of cashouts to finance my living and unexpected expenses. Moved down to nl10. Played fine for one month. And this month I'm just breakeven. Bad mental game and bad technical game.

I'm really not happy about the situation, because I really need some money by the end of the month.

So I'm starting this journal in the hope to make myself more accountable, tilt less, work on the game more.

This month results:



A lot of C game while browsing youtube, chatting in skype. Just clicking the buttons without much thoughts.

What I've done so far: blocked pron, will do nofap, blocked youtube and news sites.

Today I reviewed my preflop all ins and find out some spots where I could improve. For example I go all in to light against squeezes. AK is rarely good here.

Current goals also include: wake up at 7am (Yekaterinburg time) to play while the game is still going. After 13pm there much less tables. It will be difficult. It's 2:35am now and I have to set an alarm clock.

Ok, I'll continue tomorrow

Hey bro
Glad to see you start a PGC here.
Would follow obv.
Best of luck

For the last two days I played mostly like an idiot. But there were moments when I played really well and was really proud of my decisions. I think to play my best I have to be very focused. No phone, no skype, no browser and even no music. Just the tables and me.

Some time ago I read a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. It shows the value of deep focused states. How they produce the best results out of any endeavours. And the author stresses that this skill can be learned and honed with practice.

So the next goal is to implement deep work into my game and poker studies.

And as I'm writing about goals. Let me write about them.

I think that the biggest mistake I've made is that I'm still playing poker in 2017. I had to leave it five years ago and move to programming.

Before playing poker I had been making websites for Google Adsense and Yandex Direct (russian analog to Adsense) and was involved in a lot of related programming. I wrote a lot of different php scripts and some of them were really big and complicated.

And to this day I still like programming, like reading code and seeing how it works.

So I'm studying Python to move to the big city and get hired in a good company there.

I don't know how long it will take me to achieve this goal. But poker is only needed to sustain myself until this goal will be achieved.

Though I have recently had some interesting ideas on improving my game... So who knows, maybe I'll change my mind.

And just few hands to show my spews and mistakes. May be I won't do this anymore:

1) An unknown guy posted blind and made a 3bet against my raise. I decided to shove my tens.



2) Shoving nut flush draw with gutshot on the flop in 5 way pot. Trying to make the life easier.



3) I have 2.1k hand on this guy. He's 13/4 with and raises only 7% on the flop. I thought top pair was good against his raise. May be his smaller stack misleads me. I don't know. But the turn brought me the best possible card.

A month ago I switched to H2N, moved back to Pokerstars to play nl10 fullring. The results are good so far:


But the problem is that I can put two times more volume. I live alone, have no real job, no obligations. And the reason I don't play that much is because I spend too much time on youtube and other sites, and not focused enough.

So I decided to bring this thread back to life, to help me to put more volume.

Daily goal - 1600 hands.

Nice Results bro.
Wishing you the best of luck.
Post some 1week graphs regularly.. It would help you stick to the goal

Thank you! Actually I wanted to post yesterday an update.

Yesterday was a very productive day. I played 2k hands six-tabling full ring. I did a 10k evening run. Studied German for 45 minutes and studied Python for 2 hours. And even watched the first episode of Mr. Robot (probably a bad idea).

What has changed? I was thinking about how to do as much as possible, and I realised that I don't really have that much time every day. There are limitations. First, I'm not capable of playing 2-3 hour long sessions. I have to take 30-60 min breaks every 60-90 min of playing. Second, evenings are mostly not productive time. Sometimes I go out, sometimes I discuss hands on Skype, sometimes I'm already tired.

So I'll follow the following regimen from now on:

Monday - Saturday.

9:00 - wake up, eat breakfast, get ready for day.
10:00 - 16:00 - play 3 solid sessions with 30-60 min break in between.
16:00 - 18:00 - take a short break, review hands, watch vids.
18:00 - 20:00 - running, pull ups, push ups, dinner
20:00 - 23:00 - learn programming
23:00 - 1:00 - relax, read some book, watch some series and go to bed

Sunday - is a mandatory no poker day.

Subbed gl russian guy, can't imagine playing micro-stakes for a living tho would be fun i guess in some place like Valenzuela just the thrill of winning like $10/$25 would be a weird feeling to experience lol.

Interesting life situation and nice graphs.

I can relate because I'm studying computer technologies, and grinding micro-stakes poker too. I find the two to be complimentary. But, I'm not playing to use poker as leverage/finance for education and then quit. I will do both and go all-in on life.

I'm from Yekaterinburg too, btw.

GL and cheers in your journey.

Results for October:

Hours played: 92
Profit: +400

In the beginning of the month I enjoyed very good run.

In the middle of the month it was few days off. Family gatherings, few trips to the forest to hunt for honey mushrooms (found nothing), days when I visited dentist and played only 2-3 hours. At that time I was thinking too much about too many things and lost motivation to put hours into the game.

In the end of the month I realized (again) that discipline trumps motivation and start playing more.

Goals for November:

The most important:

140 hours at the tables.
Cold shower and 15 minute meditation every day.
4-5 runs a week.
Study programming 2 hours every day.

I'll change my playing time to evening/night. The game is much better. During the day even at 10 nl there are mostly rake parties

So the day will look like:

Get up at 12-13, study programming, German, English, review hands, watch videos, train and start playing after 20-21 until 4-5, go to bed.

You have a lot of leaks in your game for someone who's been playing for years.

Huge gap between your VPIP/VPIP
You cbet way too often and you double barrel 85%, then your Afq drops to 6% on river
You chase all gutter balls, 10:1 draw, but you don't seem to give a **** about equity or overextimate implied odds.
You're a calling station
you overplay Tt JJ
You chase J hi flush draws vs a nit who's betting into you
you think you are the best player at NL10
your WTSD is 42%
you are very robotic
you call an all in with a gutter ball vs a nit player
you play way too much -EV poker



you will NEVER be a winning player

also, your F3B is just 7%, you're a huge whale

you cry call Qq into my KK and get lucky again
you're a joke, your luck will end, all in gutter ball vs two pair you get lucky
A8 vs my AJ you river an 8

looks like you are using GTO bot software

I will bumhunt you every time you play

wow 3b 14% lol

you sure do cry call a lot

Called 2Bet from blinds range {88,QTs+,Q6s,T9s,A6o,QTo,JTo,T9o} (9)

3Bet+ Blind vs Blind range {44,22,65s,A8o

KK,55,KJo,K9o,J8o

A5 beats my JJ

A5o OOP vs UTG, you call

you sure don't adjust to your opponents well

https://snag.gy/nxzGqo.jpg
look at those stats

5 buy-ins above EV so far kid, get it good huh hahahahah

=))))
Seems somebody is tilting =))))
15 posts =)))
How old are you dude!?
chill a bit =)))

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.

Day 1

5 hours played, 1 hour studied.
To work a lot is as easy as to procrastinate a lot.
I just need to set the goal and keep on doing it.

On studying.

I study right before the session. It primes the mind for the session. But the biggest advantage - it's much harder to skip studying. I used to study after the session, but it didn't work very well. Too often the mind was too tired of poker after playing long hours. Or there was some other task to do.

Day 2

2.5 hours played, 1 hour studied.

On the second day I slipped off. During the breakfast I decided to check one Youtube channel, it sucked me in. And as a result I spent whopping 7 hours online today. That's why I played so little.

Tomorrow I'm going digital sabbatical, at least for a week. I probably need to set clear rules what is allowed. OK, it will be email, vocabularies, online documentation for programming, this topic - that's all is allowed. No videos, no music, no other blogs or forums. Shutdown them completely.

I also want to modify my starting goal. I'll play no more than 4 hours a day, instead of 5. I think my mind can handle only the first 3:40-3:50 of play in a day, when I split this into 3 sessions. After that my mind becomes tired, loses focus and money

Extra hour will be spent on programming or German reading.

I also took 2 hour walk today to the grocery store. During it I listened to this book https://www.amazon.com/Rest-More-Don.../dp/0465074871

The author shows that throughout the history those who do intensive creative work, do it no more than 4-5 hours a day. It's rather a rule, than exception, given a number of people who did this. The reason is simple. Hard mental work exhaust mind very quickly and anything produced after 4-5 hours in a day will be of very low quality.

An interesting quote from the book:

Day 3

1 hour studied, 4 hours played.

I also did a 30 minutes meditation, first time in a couple of weeks. Such a relief! I think it's very profitable to start a working day with meditation. It improves concentration and productivity a lot.

Almost eliminated surfing today. There was no youtube, no news like websites, but my cravings steer me to vk.com. I'm not an active user, just use it as a messenger to be in contact with a couple of friends. But today, I caught myself scrolling through several profiles, for the same fun, which I usually sought in websurfing.

I also decided as I reduced daily hours of playing, I won't introduce intentional rests day. The goal is to play 7 days a week, to be consistent. 1.5 year ago there was a time when I played 5 hours every day, and the rest day was essential to stay in good mental health. But I remember, that almost all of those rest days were just wasted on movies, youtube, games. And while I was refreshed after them, I wasn't happy about how I spend those days.

Day 4

Play: 3 hours 40 minutes, study: 1 hour reviewed hands myself + 1 hour discussion in a skype group.

Cravings are smaller today. Feels better.

Day 5 - rest and party time

Play: 2 sessions, 2:40 minutes, study: 0.

Played 2 sessions, then went to the friends for the pizza party, then went with another friends to the sauna. Good recovery day!

Day 6

Played 3 hour 44 minutes
Studied 1.5 hour
Browser 4 hours, skype 1 hour.

Today I got up early after not very good sleep. While being not really awake, removed blocks and spent a few hours watching Youtube and websites. But still somehow managed to meet all the goals. Played and studied poker, studied English and German, did some coding, even went out for 4 hours. How I achived everything is a mystery to me.

Maybe setting smaller, but certainly achievable goals is the right way of handling tasks. I'm not afraid of amount of work, start doing it earlier and finish earlier. In the end I achieve much more.

But I want to make an adjustment. For the last few days studying was a big burden. It creates a lot of friction. I review one or two hands, then go to another room to do something. Then review a couple of hands more, and switch to a different window. This process could last 2-3 hours. All this time I don't play, as I start playing only after I review every hand. This wastes a few hours of time and shifts playing time to the time when most of the weak players went to bed, and only european regs left playing with each other.

It's better to get up, eat quick breakfast, review hands for 30 minutes and then start playing.

I'll focus on improving this process. And additionally I will not start Skype until I'm finished with the morning session.

Day 7

Played 4 hours
Studied 1.5 hour
Browser 5 hours, skype 1 hour.

I didn't write yesterday report in the evening. There was a lot of thoughts I wanted to write down. But after a good night sleep they're all gone

Anyway, the working routine has been established. I play and study every day consistently and this is really great.

Today I'm doing some important non poker task, that I neglected for a few days, therefore will play less, or skip playing day altogether.

Day 8

Played 0, studied 0, browser 6 hours. I watched a lot of youtube videos, read a lot of websites. Again.

But why?

Today I wanted to put aside poker, add some improvements to my current programming project write an email to a potential employer. Easy tasks? Not really...

For me the biggest trigger for procrastination is the task that is defined not clearly enough. Make some improvements and write a letter - these are vague tasks. Write down the list of neccessary improvements and work 3 80 minutes sessions are much better tasks.

I hope I'll finish tomorrow morning with these tasks and will play usual amount tomorrow.

Days 9, 10, 11, 12

I didn't play. I really hoped to get the job and to end with poker. But it looks like that to get a good job, I have to build a larger portfolio first, to show that I'm capable of doing a variety of projects, not to talk that I'm capable.

So I'm staying with poker for a few months. In the morning I'll play poker, in the afternoon I'll code and study programming.

On studying poker / warming up:

I invented some tricky process for studying / warming up before a session. I think it's very effective, but at the same time it's really not fun. On the scale from 0 (meh) to 10 (a lot of fun) it's around -7. Because of this too often I delayed studying and playing for hours and wasn't happy about my progress for a day.

I'm changing my approach. I will review 7-10 hands for 30-40 minutes without any tricks before a session. That's all, nothing more. On the same scale, it's around 5 (pretty tolerable) with a possibility to move up to 7 or even 8.

Ok, tomorrow is a fresh start.

Day 13

I failed the fresh start again. Got up at 11:30, opened Youtube, opened several promising videos in the background and finished at 16-17. Then read for 90 minutes a German book, did several non poker tasks, went for a walk, did some calisthenics, more reading and the day is over.

Problems and solutions:

1) I read about politics and it turns my mood from ok to really ****ty every day. The state is corrupt to the core. Financially and mentally corrupt. A small group of people are trying to oppose this without any chances to success and regularly punished. The majority is in brainwashed / learned helplessness / ignorant state. It seems that the problems will only amplify itself without any real possibility of resolving.

Solution: I knew all this years ago. It's better to not poison my soul everyday and to go my own way. To be stoic, to be like buddhist and to be resilient. Meditate every day, read great books and listen to interesting philosophical talks. To go into complete inner emigration.

2) I've been playing poker for a long time. Over the years it turned from the promising and interesting opportunity into series of failed attempts and eventually into a great burden. But I can't leave now. Alternatives are even less inspiring. It mostly includes a lot of manual labour in poor weather conditions.

Solution: just do this now and build expertise in other fields.

ok, enough whining for today

Day 14

Played 3 hours, studied 30 minutes.
Slowly gaining momentum.

Day 15

Played 1/2 hours, studied 10 minutes.
Lost momentum.

Today I got up at 12:40. Spent several hours on Youtube. Then went to visit my family. Come home at 23:00 and put half an hour of play.

Tomorrow I'm getting up at 6:00. To move working hours into earlier time.
Also, I'm stopping using Youtube and watching websites for a few days. Cravings for them should be high. But being prepared and ready for these cravings usually is enough to overcome them.

Day 16

Played 3.5 hours, not studied.

Today despite being away for 7 hours, I still managed to play a decent volume with a decent quality.

It's because I was determined to be focused. When a thought about checking news and youtube arose in my mind, I instantly caught it and focused on the work. It's very nice feeling actually.

I finished a very nice book yesterday, it's Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. The best I've read on work/life balance so far. Among the other interesting things, there're several interesting hypotheses. For example, he argues that getting up at 5:00, even for not a natural early riser, increases creativity, because the mind stays slightly sleepy. It removes some mental barriers and allows creativity to flow more easily.

And I noticed a long time ago that being slightly sleepy, not dead tired, I play better poker, my concentration is slightly better, I can play longer sessions.

I want to try this more methodically. To sleep for 6 hours, then get up, play poker. And if I will very tired in the afternoon, nap for 1 hour to catch up on missed sleep. Then study for some time after the nap, and continue with other tasks for a day.