I don't know what's worse as a fail-stamp so I'm not going to try and visualize how my week went.
After the first day while working I didn't get the hands in, which made me look at the numbers. Last week I played 4 hours a day on average and still didn't make my goal.which means I have to play more than 4 hours a day.
Given that working takes away, say 9 hours, that includes the whole waking up routine and lunch, sleeping takes away 8 hours, which means I have 7 hours left to do everything else. Which includes making dinner, eating, dishes, washing, shopping, etc. plus 4+ hours of poker.
Which is not impossible, but hard to manage. That left me kinda down, and led me to just stop trying to get the vpp's in.
One obstacle I really felt is my tiredness. I thought it would go over when I didn't eat a lot of (red) meat in a while, but when I go back to my standard eating patterns it just gets bad again. Right now I'm emptying out my freezer and when that's done I'm going week-day vegetarian for a month. I love eating meat, but if I feel significantly more energetic and fit after this month I'm just going to stay with it (but include chicken/turkey and fish). The week-day part is just so I don't have to be an ass when my friends want to grab a kebab, although I will take one with chicken. The key to eating and drinking healthy is just not to buy unhealthy stuff.
I'm likely going for some meat-like products that aren't meat, because since I don't like to eat, what I call 'rabbit-food', it's hard to not eat pasta all the time. There's been a lot of improvements in that department though. There's actually some stuff that tastes great, and I've just tried a couple of things while there's a lot more stuff available. There's this cheeseburger they have at colruyt which tastes better then any meat-burger if cooked right (I think I over baked it a couple of times whereafter it doesn't taste nearly as good).
You have to stay positive and make positive changes. Lately I feel a bit stuck, things don't move forward it seems. Maybe I'm just getting older, maybe I just feel the urge to get a girlfriend and start a family, although I'm still not a big fan of kids. If I compare myself with a year ago, I'm basically the same person, I have the same problems, mentally and physically. It's not yet a year since I moved on my own, I lived with my parents before that, however I feel like it didn't change me one bit. Maybe that's one of the things about being an introverted person, you spend a lot of time on your own anyway, something other people might be forced into when they go and live on their own.
Last time I challenged myself for something I hung up a piece of paper against my door saying "How badly do you want to succeed?" which did help. In risk of overdoing stuff I'll be hanging some stuff against my wall this evening. One of it is a "to done-list" as recommended by Hannah Hart (from My Drunk Kitchen), it's basically a to-do list, but with things you've already done that day. For one, it's more positive compared to a to-do list, because you can't fail it and you feel good about doing stuff you'd otherwise don't care about. For two, you kinda force yourself to do positive things, because you'd want to write some stuff down so you don't have an empty paper at the end of the day. Well, that's the theory. "How badly do you want to succeed" will make his comeback, because I still have to grind a bit this month. When my freezer is out of meat something along the lines of "Be awesome, eat healthy" will be there too. If somebody has a good idea of a one-liner to hang on my door, put it in the comments.
It's just too bad a paper with "forget about her" has to opposite effect.
As for my grinding plans, I'm "just" going to play towards 75k vpp's yearly this month, which is still 10k to go, but it'll bring me back on schedule for SN this year.
[IMG]http://www.xstaticdevelopment.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fail_stamp.jpg[/IMG]
Right now I have 7166 VPP's this month, which means I shouldn't be posting this according to my rules. Speaking of which, I have sinned in that department too. I've seen some youtube videos :(
Since I had the week off I kinda thought I'd be on schedule or a bit ahead, but alas. Which means I have a pretty shitty time ahead.
12k hands I have at the moment, which I think is the most I've played in a month this year. 5k hands however are from 2/4 which doesn't give that much vpp's. There is something very convenient about 2/4. You can always join a good table pretty quickly. 2/4 is mindblowingly easy, so I might play those games by default after I get supernova. I'll have to do some calculation, but given that I can play a bit more tables on 2/4 it's likely the best thing to do moneywise.
Although I'm not on schedule now, I definitely played more and longer. While also shortening my other internet activities, which is a good thing since that was eating up way too much of my time.
Most of my time I've spend this week is with friends and family, so if that's what took me off my schedule, I'm fine with that.
Although I do get a bit in the grinding spirit, I'm not going to say I look forward to this week. However, I'd like to surf around and youtube a bit without feeling guilty so I have to get back on schedule asap.
Still down a whopping 140$ this month, 355 if you count the LHE WCOOP. Why do I keep playing tourneys, I don't get it. 5h+ of play to bust out of the money against some idiot who 3bet K2s and backdoored into a flush. I must be addicted or something, because everytime I play I end up regretting it, yet I don't seem to learn.
So,
in order to get myself grinding I made a rule for myself.
No internet stuff unless I'm on a 1000 VPP/day schedule for the month. Which means I should have 3000 vpp's by the end of today (since it's the third of september... that day I'll always remember... Yes I will) and a whopping 30k vpp's by the end of this month. That'll be a personal record I think.
I've got this week off at work, with only 2 days with some scheduled stuff going on, so that makes it a bit more doable.
I've played a small bit of 10/20 this morning, and it felt even higher as usual. Which likely has something to do with adding 2/4 to my play.
It's pretty weird too. If you compare that to NL stakes it's playing 500NL while also playing 100NL.
Must say the difference between 2/4 and 3/6 and up is huge. Depends on what time of the day it is, but there are some extremely soft tables on there. Which needs some adjustments too, I'm not used to playing big multiway pots anymore, I'm likely c-betting a bit too often and overvaluing my hands a bit.
Since that's about all I can say about that, I'll add a small anecdote to lengthen the blog :p
So a couple of weeks ago I broke the screen of my new phone. It's a €550 phone so that kinda sucked. With a bit of research online I found out you can replace the top touchscreen. So I ordered one, trying to repair it at my friends house since I didn't have a heat gun. Anyway, I broke the LCD while trying to get the touch part off which, I found out later, was actually impossible for this specific phone.
Following simplified conversation took place: Well, I guess you'll just have to buy a new phone. No, I can buy the lcd-screen too and replace the whole thing. Well, what if that doesn't work either? THEN I'll buy a new phone. After that he gave me this weird look.
I realized this is the pokermindset that comes into daily life. To me it seems very obvious trying to replace the screen is the most +EV thing to do. Other people however are pretty risk averse, they don't want to take a gamble while they should.
He's a smart guy, so after I fixed my phone and told him it only needed to work like half the time (it was like 40% or something) he got my reasoning. However, when trying to get some idea he asked me about the cost of the LCD screen and the new phone. He also asked me about the prize of the touch-part. I said there was a touch-part attached to the LCD I bought. He insisted on knowing the prize of the touch-part, because in his mind the total prize paid is how you look at the profitability, while for a pokerplayer it's obvious the earlier purchased part has nothing to do with it.
Anyway, that's likely a boring anecdote, but at least it got my blog a bit longer...
Cya
The time where I realize I'm way to many vpp's short.
2500 to go is the verdict.
Maybe I should just do some epic grinding from now on, until I got that stupid supernova and I can play whenever I want and feel like.
That'll mean no more other stuff on my computer. No youtube, no forums, no facebook, no twitter, no news, ...
That'll mean playing 2/4 when there are no tables higher up. That'll mean playing when I really don't want to, when I feel tired, when it's so hard to keep focus.
That, while actually making some money and not go into 'just clicking buttons' mode.
It's so hard to keep it going. I can do 2500 vpp's in two days, yet I never really got past 20k hands a month. Those days where when I could just fire up any random 4-6 tables and have a 1.5BB/100 winrate.
I'll be making some daily blogposts IF I'll do it. To put the pressure on. The other way to go about it is to get some propbets, but since those have to involve some kinda winrate I don't feel like I'll ever get the right odds.
People have a natural drive to be lazy. We don't like to do stuff that's not rewarding in the short run. Our brains are not yet evolved enough to actually wanting to do stuff that we rationalize to be good for our long term future. Motivation is nothing magical, not something we have to find or seek. Motivation is just a reason why to do something. People we call motivated are just people who decide doing X is good for their future, and then proceed to just doing it.
So my old blog still had some views going into it. Blogspot has a nice statistics page you can go look at. The most viewed page was a post I made about 2 years ago titled "sexy biatch".
I understand people googling sexy biatch and getting to the page. However, the results where coming from the google picture search. Again, I can understand people google pictures for sexy biatch, however, somehow, someway people end up clicking on MY picture. A picture of me sitting behind my computer with my gunnar glasses on.
It does show how much 'sex' sells.
If pcb wants a bit more hits on google, they just have to put into the description "there might be naked ladies posting".
Don't have a great hand to post, boomplayer is taken offline for a while, so not really any braghands either.
What does strike me lately is how many of my bluffs get through. Maybe I'm just on the upside of variance in that regard, but it seems people fold pairs or A highs more often in certain spots. Only against players I play against a lot though. For NL players this might not seem such a big thing, but in LHE a good rule of thumb is: if you have to think about it on the river, it's probably a call. But I've seen some tankfolds in 3 barrel spots that are tough to barrel since villains range contains a lot of made hands.
Played some 10/20 hands too this month, and ran really bad again. I'm picking only awesome table to play at, but still I'm down huge (given the amount of hands) this year.
Lifetime I have 17k hands on 10/20, being down 8.2k. I've played in some lesser games I have to admit, but overall it shouldn't have that big of an impact.
NL players have All-in EV's, the only thing a limit palyer can look at is his won $ at showdown.
At 10/20 lifetime, it's 50.52%, at 5/10 52.14% and at 3/6 it's 52.04% over 130k hands each.
I know some people will go "lol samplesize, 17k lol" but I'm only playing like 10k hands a month. Also 10/20 is a pretty big game if you're just a "casual" player. Therefor the whine.
I think I will continue to play when the games are awesome though. I didn't want to for a long time, since the variance might never even out (much due to a volume problem, since 10/20 doesn't even always run, let alone there being good tables). But why not? Being down a couple more k doesn't effect my life or bankroll and neither does being up. So I should choose the most +EV option, which means playing.
I've added some bb vs sb stats to my HUD since a couple of months and really wish I did that before.
The stats of regs out there really deviate a lot, so there's a lot of room to exploit players.
One of the most interesting, and annoying players is mister X. He seems to play pretty much a 33/33/33 style over 5k hands.
So he raises, folds and calls equally as much.
While 33% folds is still quite high, and therefor we should be raising pretty much everything, 33% raise is really high and is really hard to play against since our range is so wide. Since his range is so wide, and we gain initiative while capping it seems like we should be capping a ton of hands. But then again we're out of position.
Should we still raise all our hands to exploit his folds, or should we tighten up to exploit his 3-bets?
More information always leads to more questions... Like life.
I think I am.
Which is pretty weird, because I'm likely one of the quietest persons you'll ever meet, if you do.
People that really, REALLY know me describe me as (very) assertive. People that only know me online likely do too, since I'm pretty outspoken when I got an opinion on something.
Introverted and assertive don't mix too often, but I guess it's possible, but then again, last night I went out wearing the pokerstars baret kinda hat (ps branding taken off) and a red and black striped pants (like this one http://stealherstyle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cher-lloyd-motel-red-black.jpg but for men) which is pretty 'out there'. I'm also writing this blogpost, actually crossposting it since my blogspot still ends up high on google, so that all seems pretty attentionwhore-like, which is kinda the definition of extraverted I guess.
I'm just a weird person I guess.
Anyway, I marked a couple of hands in my sessions lately, and the only time I come around to reviewing them is when I blog about it, so here we go.
(sorry 'bout the []'s)
[b]PokerStars - $3/$6 (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players[/b]
SB posts SB $1.00, BB posts BB $3.00
[b]Pre Flop:[/b] [i]($4.00)[/i] [b]Hero[/b] has 8:diamond: 8:heart:
[b]UTG[/b] calls $3.00, [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $6.00[/color], [color=red]BTN raises to $9.00[/color], SB calls $8.00, [i]fold[/i], [b]UTG[/b] calls $6.00, [b]Hero[/b] calls $3.00
UTG and BTN are fishy unknowns, SB is decent over the small history I got with him.
[b]Flop:[/b] [i]($39.00, 4 players)[/i] 2:heart: 2:club: 8:club:
SB checks, [color=red][b]UTG[/b] bets $3.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls $3.00, BTN calls $3.00, SB calls $3.00
This is pretty standard, trying to keep the other players in the pot.
[b]Turn:[/b] [i]($51.00, 4 players)[/i] 4:club:
SB checks, [color=red][b]UTG[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls $6.00, BTN calls $6.00, [i]fold[/i]
This is the tough spot. UTG might have donked a flushdraw which got there, so I might be getting more action from him. There are still 2 players to act behind me though, do I really want to chase them out with the one-card flushdraw they might have? On the other hand, they might fold, and a river flushcard might scare UTG to bet his 2/8/pair, losing me a decent amount of bets. Also the A high flushdraw might call 2 bets on the turn anyway (and prolly should).
[b]River:[/b] [i]($69.00, 3 players)[/i] Q:heart:
[b]UTG[/b] checks, [color=red][b]Hero[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [i]fold[/i], [b]UTG[/b] calls $6.00
Cursed when utg checked, smiled when he showed his hand though.
Flopping the nuts and only getting 1 bet in on each street feels very weird and I really doubt my turnplay. As it turns out I prolly didn't lose any value, but we can't be result oriented.
[spoiler][b]Hero[/b] shows 8:diamond: 8:heart: (Full House, Eights full of Twos) (Pre 82%, Flop 100%, Turn 100%)
[b]UTG[/b] mucks 3:club: 3:heart: (Two Pair, Threes and Twos) (Pre 18%, Flop 0%, Turn 0%)
[b]Hero[/b] wins $78.57[/spoiler]
[b]PokerStars - $3/$6 (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players[/b]
[b]Pre Flop:[/b] [i]($4.00)[/i] [b]Hero[/b] has K:club: A:heart:
[i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [color=red][b]CO[/b] raises to $6.00[/color], [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $9.00[/color], [i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [b]CO[/b] calls $3.00
CO is a decent player. Standard play.
[b]Flop:[/b] [i]($22.00, 2 players)[/i] 8:club: K:diamond: T:club:
[b]CO[/b] checks, [color=red][b]Hero[/b] bets $3.00[/color], [color=red][b]CO[/b] raises to $6.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls $3.00
call with intention to raise turn
[b]Turn:[/b] [i]($34.00, 2 players)[/i] J:spade:
[color=red][b]CO[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls $6.00
pretty bad card, it made some straight draws and two pairs. I still have outs to improve so raise/folding isn't an option. If he has a draw he's might bluff the river anyway.
[b]River:[/b] [i]($46.00, 2 players)[/i] T:heart:
[color=red][b]CO[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $12.00[/color], [b]CO[/b] calls $6.00
Here I raise with intend to fold if I get 3bet. The more I think about it though, the more I dislike it. He can have K8 ,9,Q. but also a lot 2 pair hands and the straight. Although a lot of player would check a T on the turn, it's surely still in his range.
[spoiler][b]Hero[/b] shows K:club: A:heart: (Two Pair, Kings and Tens) (Pre 65%, Flop 73%, Turn 80%)
[b]CO[/b] mucks J:diamond: Q:club: (Two Pair, Jacks and Tens) (Pre 35%, Flop 27%, Turn 20%)
[b]Hero[/b] wins $67.90
[/spoiler]
[b]PokerStars - $3/$6 (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players[/b]
[b]Pre Flop:[/b] [i]($4.00)[/i] [b]Hero[/b] has T:heart: T:spade:
[i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [color=red][b]BTN[/b] raises to $6.00[/color], [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $9.00[/color], [color=red][b]BB[/b] raises to $12.00[/color], [b]BTN[/b] calls $6.00, [b]Hero[/b] calls $3.00
BTN is solid player, BB is fishy.
[b]Flop:[/b] [i]($36.00, 3 players)[/i] T:diamond: 6:spade: K:club:
[b]Hero[/b] checks, [color=red][b]BB[/b] bets $3.00[/color], [b]BTN[/b] calls $3.00, [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $6.00[/color], [color=red][b]BB[/b] raises to $9.00[/color], [b]BTN[/b] calls $6.00, [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to $12.00[/color], [b]BB[/b] calls $3.00, [b]BTN[/b] calls $3.00
[b]Turn:[/b] [i]($72.00, 3 players)[/i] 2:club:
[color=red][b]Hero[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [b]BB[/b] calls $6.00, [b]BTN[/b] calls $6.00
[b]River:[/b] [i]($90.00, 3 players)[/i] 9:diamond:
[color=red][b]Hero[/b] bets $6.00[/color], [b]BB[/b] calls $6.00, [color=red][b]BTN[/b] raises to $12.00[/color], [i]fold[/i], [b]BB[/b] calls $6.00
I'm wondering if this is a spot to check/call or fold. It is very dodgy though. QJ is a very likely hand in BTN's range because there aren't a lot of combos left. With him calling the flop, I actually don't see any other hands really... So yeah, this is a good spot to check. BB is often going to bet his AK or AA so I can check/fold if btn 3-bets. If BB checks I just have to call since the pot is so big though.
[spoiler][b]BTN[/b] shows Q:spade: J:spade: (Straight, King High) (Pre 17%, Flop 28%, Turn 14%)
[b]BB[/b] shows A:heart: A:club: (One Pair, Aces) (Pre 83%, Flop 72%, Turn 86%)
[b]BTN[/b] wins $117.00
[/spoiler]
A couple of days ago I played against someone who I later thought subscribed to a pokerforum I'm at. I thought he might have looked me up, so I googled myself to see how high this pokerforum came up. It came up on the first page so it would've been possible.
One thing I did notice was how high this blog came up. I pretty much stopped using it and blogged on pokerclub.be
Being the attentionwhore that I am I figured I should double post from now on, so anyone who's looking for me can become a G1lius fanboy!
Also check out my twitter in the sidebar! Limit hold'em hands a volenté.
I know, it's been a long.
Reason for it is getting sick for the billionth time this winter, starcraft and other more fun things.
I still love the game of poker, but playing isn't that great anymore. The swings, the insecurity, the tilt, ... It's not all that appealing.
I'm at this stage in my "pokercarrier" where I know I lack the work-attitude to become really good, and I don't really make a lot of progress in my game. I confident that I can still beat 5/10 6-max, and you can make a decent amount there. However, money has never been a motivation for me. I'm looking out to buy a house, so the extra money would be welcome, but somehow that's very abstract in my brain.
It's stupid to have this skill and not do anything with it. Every time I write stuff like this I get pumped up and I think "let's grind my ass off from now on", but when I actually need to do that, I find excuses.
Just like I planned on running at least twice a weak, doing pushups 3 times a weak, etc.
Since I'm kinda failing and don't really have any goals atm, I find very little motivation to keep this blog up. However, it's a great tool to help and motivate you when you do have goals.
Other reasons for the lack of play is tiredness and emotional instability, which often go hand in hand. Tired because I have to wake up at 4 in the morning for work, and emotional unstable because the stuff with my girly friend that still bothers me.
I need to play at least 8k hands this month, because in april we might see the launch of pokerstars.be, which means I can't use cashbonuses. If I play 8k hands I'll have enough fpp's to get my 4k bonus and after that I'm prolly going to move to full tilt and/or others.
I hope I'll play a lot more, but my mindset has to change for it, and I don't know how.
Maybe I'll just go to bed at 20.00, and really try to be 'semi-professional'. However, once I have to move to FTP and others, traffic will be even smaller as now during the European afternoon.
We'll see. I'm just making this blogpost to say I'm still alive.
If anyone wants to see a blogpost about something particular, feel free to contact me. I'd be very happy to try and do something with it.
So yeah, I got a cold once again. 2nd time this winter.
I'm getting better at the moment. It's going pretty good with my other struggle too.
I do need a lot of sleep, and since I normally only play in the evenings, I didn't play yesterday, and likely not going to play today.
I did have a good session the day before yesterday, although I didn't play my A-game I feel. I did ended up 1k+, and that's been a loooong looong time ago since I had one of those.
I shouldn't stare at the results though, and realize that I actually shouldn't be playing too much unless the games are really good at the moment. I'm too tired to play my A-game.
This Friday I don't have to work, so I hope I'm back in good health by then I can grind some 6-max during the day, and masstable FR during the evening to make up for the days I didn't play.
My goal of making supernova before march is not really going all that well. I hope I can do some grind-days, and really do some massive volume.
This with hopefully a winrate.
Going to watch the BBC doc. "What is reality". Should be good I heard. After that, it's bedtime.