I am 29yo, and I love playing Poker and Basketball. Though, I didn't put a foot on the court since about 8 years now, but I will will start playing again on the upcoming Tuesday. I started doing cardio- and springiness-training at the gym a few weeks ago, where I spent nearly all my physical energy the last 10 years. It became mind-numbing the last few month to do this solo-routine, and I badly need a change.

I had a poker roll in the higher 4 figures at the end of the last year, and I busted most of it by playing highstakes omaha online. Though, poker will just be the second most important thing, since I will really focus on playing basketball.

Since 1st of January, I stopped smoking weed, and now managed 30 days off. This time was sick, since I lost most of my roll before NYE, and spent most of January being home alone, wondering what I am going to do. Hardly played any volume online with the remainder of my roll. I think I like to to call myself too smart to go fully broke in a time where my A-game is unlikely to be present.... This month was hell, since I first of all cut off contact to 2 of my 3 closest friends, who smoke weed every day. Other friend owes me a substantial amount of money and currently has a lot of trouble with personal stuff, and I didnt feel like calling him in my mood, same like him, I think, so I spend the whole month solely at home and in the gym, with one exception, where I visited my grandma.

On Tuesday, I will attend the first training of the second. Funny thing is, the first team's squad has my youth coach and my former captain of my youth-team in it, and my former captain met me once about a year ago, pleasing me to come back, telling me I'd just need about 2-3 month to get back on the level to play in the first team.
The current season ends in a month, so I am looking forward to work my arse off the months to get my place in the first team for the next season, hopefully.

I know that I'm a bit too old to make it big playing basketball, but my long-term-goal is to become a coach. I want to become what this quote has been written to explain:

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”
― David Foster Wallace

This will start with me being a basketball player, again being a student of the game, pushing myself and my team-mates as far as I can, but it won't end there. I surely have the sick disease that I am never fully satisfied, that I always want more. I am just competitive for life, always have been, am, and always will be, and I can't get rid of that urge. Why should I even want to?
I played for the local representative team from the age of 13-16, and the plain volume of training has caused me to be the way that I am now, I think. If I don't train or work-out, I become miserable within less than a week.

Though, this won't happen, since I am going to go at it again, and I won't stop before I drop dead.


“Talent is its own expectation: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.”
― David Foster Wallace

Good luck on accomplishing all your goals.

I'm intrigued, but have lots of questions:

- Where do you live?
- What type of basketball team is this? Professional? You mentioned 1st team, how does that work, is there a 1st and 2nd team? What's the difference?
- Are you getting paid to play on this team or do you play poker to make a living?

Regardless, good luck, and looking forward to more details

^^ ^^ Thanks to both of you.

I live in Germany, next to Hamburg, and will be playing for the Holstein Hoppers.
Here is a link to our team (No4 is my former youth-team-captain, and the No10 is my former coach): http://www.holstein-hoppers.de/herren/1-herren.html

Our team isn't professional atm. We dropped down a leaque last year, from 4th to 5th, and many players left the team. I suppose that they got paid to some extent, or got some other benefits, and now went somewhere else because of the lack of it.
In Germany, there is 1.st Bundesliga, ProA, ProB, 1st Regional- and the 2nd Regional-leaque, where we are currently at.

The difference from our first team to the second team is the leaque they play at, the amount of training-days per week, and the amount of beer being consumed after games, if it's still the same as 10 years ago . I strongly expect to only spend 2-3 month at the second team, and to be a part of the first team in September, when the new season starts. Everything else would be a huge disappointment for me, and I am not going to let that happen.

Poker is running okay. I managed to have a winning day, despite busting the horse and nlo8 tcoop today, because I did well in many satellites. Skipped the plo hu ko due to strong field, despite satelliting into it. I will try to get in the 8-game tcoop tomorrow with the tournament-$ that I made today, and then I will be back to basics, which means grinding limit-cash-games and the 33$ horse in the evening.

Going to go to the gym tomorrow, and do a bit of upper-body-work-out followed by stupid 30 min of jogging on the treadmill, since it's freezing outside, and I don't want to risk an injury at this point. Tuesday will be my first training-day with the second team, and I am really looking forward to it.


Here is something that I can only describe as "activated, hesitated, motivated..."
Time to refer to Basketball again when watching this, not just poker

I puss'ed out like a blatant candy-ass on Tuesday, and played the pokerz instead of attending the first basketball-training, as intended. My Sunday-losses on the last day of tcoop (lots) and the superbowl (100$ on the Broncos), caused me to delay basketball for 3 more days. Though, I managed to hit 4 winning days in a row now to recoup nearly all my losses when I finished today's session.

I went jogging outside before breakfast on Monday and yesterday, and now really feel prepared to join the first training tomorrow, on Friday.

On Monday, I have an appointment at the Bundeswehr (german army), since I am sick of having to do stupid jobs like HR-managment or call-center-stuff, where I basically just profit on other peoples back. Both of these jobs are ethically way worse than playing poker, imo, and if I can join the army, I will definintely get a good job in administration, as my contact-person already told me on the phone. I am industrial-clerk, and administration is the only business-operating-area that is really up for grabs at the Bundeswehr atm.
There are some leaks in my CV, but I am very fit, bright, and have managed the basic education at the frech foreign legion successfully in 2007. It was way less interesting than it sounds; nearly a normal military nowadays. I might get into some details about that later on ITT, but as I said, there was no huge drama or so, and I was able to leave after 6 month, as it was said in the contract. I expected to get 1300€ pension per month, after 15 years service, but in fact it would just have been 700€ (heard that not before being 2 month in...), so I decided to leave at first chance, instead of doing five years for kinda average wage.

I'll likely write another post tomorrow evening, when I'm back home from training.

Managed to go all the way (1:45h) without puking or bailing out at any point. Was breathing like an air-pump most of the time, but it went quite well, considering I didn't play for +10 years.

My shooting and defense was surprisingly good. When we were shooting free-throws, I scored 4/10, 6/10 and 5/10, and 3-pointers went 2/10, 3/10 and 3/10, while I was already quite exhausted from the first 45 minutes of lay-ups with two passes, and shooting with two passes, both with a lay-out-pass, which means rebounder passes to side-line-guy, who then gives it to to middle-line again.

Game at the end was really hard for me, but my defense was okay, I just didn't cut in the zone enough after setting some blocks when playing offense, which caused two balls to get lost, since they expected me to go where I should have gone... Need to make sure to man up and go where it hurts the next time, getting more rebounds and lay-ups.

All of them, including the coach, were really cool and welcoming to me. I would have prefered to not have them talk about me being in the represantitive team in my youth, before becoming a pot-head (acutally did both for 2 years together...), but I expected that to happen, and so what, anyway.
Only seconds after we finished, a perfectly cooled crate of beer appeared, which was nice, and seems to be the standard on the Friday training.

Oddly, I feel a bit down and very melancholic atm, but it's likely mostly fatique (and the fact that I kind of wasted my life so far...)
Am going to kill a bottle of red wine, as soon as I digested my meal (mackerel, lots of rice and broccoli), and am sure to feel better by then.

I think I will create a new schedule for the gym, with more focus on gaining core strength, lose a tiny bit of weight, but not strength, and enhance my springiness. Pretty sure I will post that when I had some wine in a few hours.

I have to add that I meant that I take money from people who know that they can lose it, when playing poker, in a fair battle, and they don't have to play, in the first place, while temporary worker (HR-managment cutomers) and old, senile people (most of the call-center victims) basically have no chance to avoid the hustle, for different reasons.

Not going to post a lame gym-schedule here.
Will post again on Tuesday, I think.

I'm enjoying your blog! (It would be great to be 29 again...) I'm going use you as an inspiration to choose some sport to get back into again, but I 'm not sure what it will be. Good luck going forward.

^^Hi there... nice to see you chime in :/

I feel really bad due to telling a lie about my motive at the second team. At my first training, I told the coach that I don't know yet, and that I'll have to see etc...
That was a straight out lie. On Friday, I will tell them that I want to play in the first team next season, and that I simply didn't think it would have been right to directly go there for my first training, after not playing at all for about 12 years, which makes sense.
I also feel bad for drinking too much the last days, and losing a bit at the pokerz.
On top of that, I applied at the Bundeswehr (german army) on Monday, where I very likely have zero chance to join, due to a youth-criminal-offence I did, which I would like ot use as an excuse for being week-minded and drinking the last days.
Going to go to the local police station today, to make sure if my effort is worth it, or not (catchword=inspection of files, not just certificate of conduct...).
It ain't easy atm, but nothing that is worth having it comes easily.
On top of that top, I likely only post when I had at least 2 drinks, since I think attention-whoring online is stupid for many valid reasons...

Going to update on Saturday or Sunday, after having had 2 beers, I think.

It's going further

I landed a nice staking-deal for my cash-game, which allows me to grind stress-free (just 2k hands minimum per week) and keep 2/3 of my winnings plus all frequent-player-points, which I will translate to tournament-$ to play the SCOOP and WCOOP events of Stud8, HORSE and 8-Game, combined with the small rest of my own roll, which will mainly be used for the FTOPS and life-purposes, from now on.

I also decided to un-reg at the gym to fully focus on Basketball.

And I have several applications out, one for the Bundeswehr (german army), where I have the chance to get a really sweet job in admininstration, or even as a instructor, with the chance to yell at my inferiors, hehe.
I also have application out to sell furniture, and an other one to become a game-tester for good-games (browser-game-stuff), where I might also get a glance at software-programming, which should suits my talents (logic and speech) very well. All of them have already relpied and look promising, so far.

Stopping to smoke weed already seems to become profitable

Going to do the next update on Tuesday, I think.

**** Basketball, I'm too old to be good, and too young to dabbel around.
I wnt to 3 training-days, but felt uncomfortable, despite them being really nice etc. Just all the reminders that I wasted my talent for weed and party... and all the regs left are those who I didn't really associate with back then... Time to move on for now, and maybe come back for coaching in a few years, hähä


I still grind poker, more than ever, now have a backing deal, and play all PLO Hi, Limit, and Mixed MTT's that are offered on PS and FT.
The reason why I update this thread is that I want to up my volume drastically, and not drink any alcohol until March (friend's birthday barbeque). I don't have a serious drinking problem, never drank daily or more than 2 beer and a bottle of wine when at home, but I lately realised that whenever I had more than 1 drink the night before, I tend to tilt in chat on Pokerstars over nothing, feel slightly uncomfortable when going to stock up on groceries, to the gym, or visit someone, and would just prefer to play micros and chat-rage at innocents, slightly excessively said...


I will update this with news about not drinking, going to the gym, grinding a lot,... likely every day, beacuse not drinking will get me bored...
And that will pretty much be it. Visit frinds every now and then, but skip parties until March.
Not that long of a time, and if I do well, I get a shot at living my dream, so for this one time, I will not puss out like a blatant candy-ass, and simply do what I have to do, no matter how it turns out to be.


Funny thing is, I usually only ever posted in my h&f thread and blog when I had a few drinks, so I will really need to change my habits. I'm drunk now, btw.

I stopped posting PG&C and H&F threads (**** abbreviations), and will only post in this thread now.

Never felt worse after drinking than this morning when I woke up, which is pretty much perfect timing, I guess, haha. Have zero headache, but my stomach was ****ed, and half a liter of left over cold sprite light nearly made me puke. Still haven't done some accoutancy I need to do, and just woke up from a nap.

Day one without alcohol was/is ofc very easy, considering my hang-over.
Will go to the gym tomorrow and on Thursday and only play very few tournaments, then get back to the real grind on Friday.

I only have the strong urge to drink alcohol when I had a big score in a tournament, which always leaves me with such a and-now-what-feeling.
Friday is also the start of the TCOOP, and after much bad luck the last two years, I ofc hope and intend to put myself to the hardest possible test very soon, by shipping one of them.

Just finished +2 hours work of accoutancy, transfers and PM's for my old and new Weekly-, as well as the TCOOP-package. Feels good to have sorted it as far as possible atm.

I have a nice playground close to my home, where I just discovered that I can do chin-ups and incline push-ups. That playground will be very handy during the time from 23rd to 1st of February, since I'll have to grind every day (TCOOP), and won't make it to the gym during that extended week.

Now I'm going to stock up on groceries, and then go the gym to squat until I drop
With the 10 days gym-break starting on Friday, I can really go all out today.
Likely doing some shorter/lighter upper-body workout tomorrow, and then definintely fully focus on poker till February starts.

Got in a good work-out yesterday, and met a friend whom I hadn't seen for a while.
Heading to the gym with him again in an hour, and afterwards am going to visit him to watch "The Gambler" on his sicko-surround-sytem. Perfect preamble for the 10 days of TCOOP, and he also doesn't drink during the week, which ofc suits me very well.

No poker today, and also played very few the last two days to feel fully motivated to likely grind 10 days of TCOOP and many regular events in a row now. (But arranged it in a way that I have two short session on some days, to avoid having to grind +10 hours in a row)

The movie "The Gambler" was good, but not great. They did not show what the dealer had in a few Blackjack hands were standing pat or taking one seemed to be a real decision, but so be it. Really liked the scene were he first talked to his basketball playing student, who he asked to stay in class after he sent the others home.
I somehow felt the same when I was 16/17, like being forced to keep playing basketball because I'm good at it, while I don't enjoy it much anymore.
Thankfully, this is not what I think about poker at this time. I just managed to get to the highest level of my niche-variant MTT's. Admittedly, on a backing deal and with selling seperate shares, but I got over a few plateus in my game already, and am far far away from being tired of poker in all it's variants, or thinking I know it all.

Somehow, I'm not yet tired, but will have a choclate-soy-milk now (normal was empty), and lay myself down soon.

TCOOP is already annoying me. Damn crapshot-structures. Also pretty pissed by running bad in other tournaments, and also some non-poker stuff on top of that. Only good thing today is that I didn't drink.
Tomorrow is another day

Busted about a dozen MTT's today. Will be going to the gym on Tuesday, since there is only the 27$ Stud Hi TCOOP on that day, and I'm already raging enough to set personal records by now...
I will simply cut tomorrow's session a bit shorter, focusing on five big MTT's, and only play the 530$ PLO on Monday, so that I have two easily playable sessions until Tuesday. No drama so far, just about 500$ in make-up, but am stuck nearly 3x that much since about a week ago.

Am going to do a new log in the health&fitness forum, since I am bored out of my mind atm

****ing TILT!
These imbecile mouthbreathers with the IQ of a salad spinner who are running FullTilt have decided to silently add big antes to the 109$ PLO Big Game, effectively turning the game into ****ing pre-flop BINGO, ffs!
Just self-excluded on that travesty of a site for 1 months, and will do 18 months at the end of February, if these ****ing idiots can't grasp the dynamics of MTT-poker.

Thank you, niss. Much appreciated


TCOOP always irritates me, mildly said. I sold lots of shares this time (without mark-up), but even with just 65%/30% for my deal, I still don't really enjoy to gamble with such fast blinds and huge fields. I know I just have to focus on doing the right decisions, and my shortstack play is ofc solid in all variants, but there is just so much luck needed in those huge turbo fields...

After the TCOOP, I will start playing 5 short session per week, just regging games within 3 hours during peak-time, and grind one long session on each Saturday.
Hope that I will get lucky and bink something to at least get out of make-up by then, and with the HORSE, 8-Game and PLO HU still coming, I have the best shots yet to come.

Still don't smoke any less cigarettes per day without drinking, which I somehow expected. Though, I have no intention to stop that at this point, since it would definintely mess with my poker. Maybe switch to an E-cig at some point

Mincashed the 530$ PLO to at least have a slight winning day after a terrible weekend.

Tomorrow, I will start with my new gym-schedule. Going for heavy work-outs with frontsquats, chin-ups and presses on Tuesday and Thursday, and some minor exercises for arms, abs, rotator-cuff etc on Sunday, to make sure that I won't get too tired to grind afterwards.

Bought a grapfruit-juice today, to finish the last ~8cl of vodca that I still have in my fridge. I made more drama about the not-drinking than needed, and will stay sober until at least next Monday again, when I had these 2 drinks. Cheers!


I put a link to this thread in my health&fitness thread I just started, and will not post in that one anymore. Means, I will now post my workouts in here, and likely a lot of thoughts and plans, and then change, modifiy and condemn them frequently.



Work-out for Tuesday (weights are kg):

15° DB press - (2x) 6x30, 6x30, 6x30
Frontsquats - (3x) 5x75, 5x75, 5x75
Chin-ups - (2x) 5x+8, 5x+8, 5x+8
30° bench BB Pendlay rows - (2x) 5x90, 5x90, 5x90


I expect to be able to get in all reps, since I start with weights that really should allow that. Thursday will roughly be the same, just DB shoulderpress instead of chest, and straight-leg deadlifts instead of pendlay rows, plus a set of dips at the end.

My intention is to keep that programm for 8 weeks, gain some strength, and then go back to some other split with more than 5 reps per set.
However, if my knees won't allow me to twice squat heavy within 48 hours, I will have to change something.

Making new gym- and poker-MTT-schedules is actually one of my favourite activities when being alone at home, which is somehow odd, since I am otherwise the distinct opposite of anally rententive / OCD'ish. Though, doing them is much more fun for me than sticking to them for more than 2-3 weeks

gl, kid

mmmm, thank you

Got up way too late today, then decided to visit a friend, instead of going to the gym. He is a DJ, and I got enough fresh music to for the next few weeks now, including a very nice set he just finished. He made several outdoor parties during summer over the last years, and it seems like he is now slowly catching up with the club-scene in our area. If things work out, he'll likely soon run the Tuesday evenings in a local club. It's mainly progressive, what he's playing.

I got back home in time to play the Stud Hi TCOOP, and mincashed it. That tournament had a huge overlay today, same as last year, when I already pointed out that Stud Hi got a too big guarantee, as well as Stud8 having a too small one, in the PS-MTT thread.

Tomorrow, I will a have a pretty long day. Starting with an appointment at noon, then going to the gym right after. Hopefully, I will be able to catch 1-2 hours break before playing the first of two PLO TCOOP's that run tomorrow.

Got everthing done yesterday. Went to the gym after my appointment, and did this:

15° DB press - (2x) 6x30, 6x30, 5x30
Frontsquats - (3x) 5x75, 5x75, 5x75
Chin-ups - (2x) 5x+8, 5x+8, 5x+8
30° bench DB rows - (2x) 6x35, 6x35, 5x35

Then I played the 11$+R 3x TCOOP and went from 1.1bb on the bubble to 28bb within 4 hands, where I got dealt KKxx and won each of them...
~$29K for first place and ~70 left when I get dealt KK9x again, openraise, get 3-bet and move all-in vs KQ96, just to see him making a 2pair with his Q and 6... out for ~3x my total buyin...

Lots of TCOOP Events this evening. Playing a 82$ to the NLHE sat to the main-event at 18:00, the 82$ Razz at 20:00, and the 82$ PLO 4max at 00:00.

Again so close to a big score... 7th in the 33$ Omania
Busted a lot of other games, so not a particularly good day

Have another appointment tomorrow, quite early, and afterwards go to the gym for a very short workout, since I play the big 8-Game in the evening.

Going to do this there:

Seated DB shoulderpress - (2x) x25, x25
Frontsquats - (3x) 5x75, 5x75
Chin-ups - (2x) 5x+8, 5x+8
DB-DL hookgrip (2x) x30, x30
Dips (1) x+8, x+8


I decided to do the above (+ 3-4 more sets), and the last workout I posted on every Thursday and Tuesday for the next 8 weeks, and use the Sunday for a lighter workout with higher reps, including arms and minor stuff like abs, rotator-cuff etc.
If I stick with this for a 8 weeks, I will definintely make some progress again, after plateu'ing and being semi-lazy for months.