G1lius' Road to Triplenova

Had a though couple of days due to health issues. Not really bad, but it made me feel tired and I slept pretty much all day for two days.
So I didn't play a lot of poker.
One thing I might try on 3/6 is the 'table of interest' software. I've purchased it right after it came out, but it wasn't that good for my game.
At 3/6 I can play more straightforward, and since I play on there now anyway, I might as well play 8-10 tables with the software instead of 4-6 tables. Volume is such a key factor in poker, and I just don't play enough. If the software turns out useful at the 3/6 limit, I might just stick there and play more volume. It should mean about the same or hopefully even more return in $, but more importantly it evens out the variance a little bit more.

Lately I'm playing a lot of 3/6. Not because of bankroll issues, but just because the tables are bad on 5/10, and super on 3/6. It's been so long ago since I played there that I forgot how good it was I guess.
I'm also likely to have become a better player. Not as much for extracting good value from the fish, which I might actually be getting worse at (I've been paying off too much against donkbets in the past), but for exploiting those regulars (I'm rating them as nits, but for NL people reading this 28/23 might not really seem nitty). It's really amazing how accurate my assumptions are, and how exploitable they are.
If I self-reflect on it, I think I'm in between of the really good players and the nitty regs. I'm on the lower end of the range for good players on preflop stats (around 32/28 or something), while really good players might be 35/30, but I can't play that style because my postflop game is just too exploitable for it I think.
It's though to balance, while not losing (too much) value, and not starting to spew away chips. It's also player dependent. No reason to balance against players who don't realize you can only have one sort of hand in X spot, or players that never fold showdownable hands even if you're screaming you have it.
Things like my turnraising range are still pretty polarized. The only bluffs in that range are picked up draws. It might be enough to get people to think it's not polarized, but it's pretty hard to draw the line to where is enough.
When you play against really good players you're getting in a leveling-war, where it's very hard to decide if it's spew or not. A hand from 3/6 today: http://weaktight.com/2843436
I think this is spew from my opponent, but it might be closer than it looks. Since he has shown nothing but strength I might be able to fold some pairs here. It's very cheap to bluff for him, because he has very likely 12 outs or more. Against my range here, I think it's still spew, but I think it's a good example to show in what situations you can get yourself in against good opponents.
You can't beat those players with abc-gameplay. Even worse: they will crush you for it.
Anyway, main point of the story being: it's easier on the mind if you just see things that are without question bad, or feel like a hero for extracting the most, or losing the least amount of money. Instead of wondering what the hell you are actually doing, and if you're not just donating money away.

While it didn't last for a long time the last time I tried it, I'm going to try and make me a schedule again.
One extra plus on that is that I have a pretty steady schedule at my work from now on.
Which means I'll be waking up at around 4.10h in the morning (or night) 4 days a week, and on Saturdays.
Negative side is that if I want to get 8 hours of sleep, I have to go to bed at 20.00h. Or I'll have to take a nap in the afternoon and make it like 22.00h.
Weird thing about it is that if I'm feeling tired, and I eat, I often feel energetic after. While if I feel energetic and eat, I often feel tired after.
Adjusting to a nap-lifestyle takes time. So I'm just going to see at the moment if I feel tired or not.

4.10
wake up & stuff
4.45
work
12.00
go home
13.00
eat
13.30
take a nap
15.00
wake up, do my pushups once every two days
15.30
play poker
17.00
brows the internetz till dinner
17.30
dinner
18.30
play poker
19.30
take a break
20-20.30
play poker
21.30
take a shower and go to bed

If I don't take nap I should be playing poker for an hour instead, and skipping the last session.
It should be good for 3.5h a day. Which is obv. way better then what I'm doing right now.
I'll need to get a decent amount anyway to still hit the doublenova mark (15k hands or something) given that I'm mixing 3/6 into my games lately. Those games don't give a VPP-return as 5/10 does obv.

It shows how bad I've run lately, if I run good. It's really amazing when you hit hands, take it down with cbets, or even hit a miracle 3-outer once and a while. Or your A high calldown is good for once.
I hope more moments like these will come.
Couldn't play that much today. Did some work and I'm fairly tired from it.
Also found the aroma that should do the trick: Rosemary. Tried it once, felt like I was doing focussed things, but I didn't feel totally focussed. Which might mean that it actually works. Stimulation the parts of the brain to focus on things, while the other parts of the brain are in a different state.
We'll see how that goes.
I'm currently down 276$ for the month and played 6.3k hands. w$SD for 5/10 is 48.3, and for 3/6 52.4. Given that I played more than double the amount of hands at 5/10 I'm pretty happy with that result in relation to the w$SD.

Yeah, I couldn't find a decent title.

I'm trying my best to feel positive about poker, but it's nothing you can really change in a day.
One of the problems of volume is because I'm doing way to much other stuff on my PC. Therefore I'm going to cut back on the other random stuff I'm doing.
If I'm bored and don't want to play I'll just need to find something else to do. Playing or studying poker should be the main thing I'm doing when I'm sitting behind my computer.
I'll be watching some stuff for entertainment, like my usual youtube channels (freddiew, sxephil and tabs24x7), twitter on occasion, Bryce Paradis' blog and Pokerstars Big game, poker after dark cashgames, High Stakes Poker, and that thing that's recorded in london right before the WSOPE (dunno when that'll be broadcast or what the name is).
And my mails and this blog obviously.
I think if I really try to cut off all the rest I'll be much more productive when it comes to poker, and other real life stuff.
It'll also mean I'll be making blogs more often, cause there's way fewer options which I can do :p

Yeah, I know, I didn't update every day :(

It struck me that the problems I face in poker have mostly nothing to do with the actual play, but always with the mind.
At this moment I have two problems. Motivation and concentration.
I might have found the reason for my lack of motivation.
In the latest blogs of Bryce Paradis he touches on this subject a couple of times. He's going through some serious problems, so it's not really related, but I can find my 'pokerlife' in it.
I think the most relevant video is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3o5NHFVX_E
The lesson to be learned is that you have to accept the present, and preferably be happy with it.
I was never really happy with my pokerlife. I was going for the major goal. It's a good thing when you reach the things you wanted in order to reach your goal, but when things aren't going as planned, it's a failure and you're not accepting it, because you don't want to be where you are now, you want to be in the future, you want to be at your goal.
2009 was a pretty big step in my pokerlife. I moved up through the limits pretty fast, I got supernova level which I've set for a goal that year. I thought the whole setting goals thing was the reason why I did so good, so I did it again.
Once things go bad, like they are going right now, it's a downwards spiral, because you're not happy with the current 'pokerlife' you have, you don't reach your goal in time and might never reach it, so there's little reason to play at all.

So I need to learn to be happy with the things I got. Living in the present, not the future.
If I think about it, it's all nice. Even while I'm down 6k if profit this year, with my rakeback I'll prolly have about 5k up. Which is obv. way less then I hoped for, but it's still nice, giving the downswing.
If I want to quit at the end of the year and cash everything out I'll have a very nice car to show for it. At the moment I'm buying my gas for my car, and small online purchases with money from poker. I even went to see the u2 360° tour, which was the best concert I've ever seen by far. I'm going to see Avenged Sevenfold in a week or two. All for free. Oh well, not for free, but just for clicking a couple of buttons online.
I need to realize that what I got is pretty good, and future things are things I can not control. I can try and make my current situation better, but I can not force it to happen. I need to be happy with the current situation and the road I'm on.

2nd big problem I got is concentration. I just realized that I have some serious issues with that. I've paused the video of bryce (10 min.) twice to just think about other stuff, I got up from the table and wandered around at least 7 times while I wrote this blog. It's pretty hard to keep focus on one thing. When I do something for a time, it just becomes more of a drag, so I do something else.
The easy solution would be medication. But I'm really not into medication. Medication is to heal, not to make things easy. So for now, I don't have any solution to this yet. I'm not saying I'm never going to take medication, but for now I definitely don't feel anything for that.
I might try some aromatherapy although I'm not really a big believer in that sort of stuff, but my mother is into it, so I just have to ask for it.

As for the volume, it all went good until I got down 600$ in a session again, and I just quited. I know it's all long term and stuff, but for now I'm just going to focus on being happy with the 'pokerlife' I have.

So I'm trying to get back on track, playing some volume in October.
Going to update almost daily.
My goal is to have a couple of 1.5k hands days, and doing 1k days almost every day.
Yesterday I've played 1034 hands, at various stakes. Even played a bit 0.25/0.50 rushpoker, just to see what the level of play is like. It's pretty nice for a grind, but playing abc poker is all you can do. It takes a lot of the challenging part away. It doesn't really run at 1/2, and there are no tables above that, so I wasn't considering playing them anyway.
Also played a bit of 3/6 since the tables where pretty bad at 5/10 and 10/20. Pretty amazing how big of a difference it is between 3/6 and 5/10. There might be some merit into playing those regularly, since I can 6 table those pretty comfortable I think, while I'm 4-tabling 5/10 and really doing a lot table-switching. Tables seem to break up a lot after I join anyway. It's a good sign I guess :s
I feel like one of those SNE grinders when I play 3/6 though. The play is not as challenging, playing overrolled and pretty robotic.
But I guess it's a better alternative for not playing because the tables are just too bad.