Noah123

thank you sir :)
there is a saying that failing is just new opportunity to start over but this time better. Evaluate what did not worked last time and made little improvements.

With referance to probiotics i just take the liquid version sold in local pharmacies. I didnt make any specific research for them or compare options to choose the one that suits me best. Eventually you can ask pharmacist but the differances between them should not be very significant. Try first bottle, than change product and compare. And yes, they help with you gut for sure.

While there is nothing too much going on besides working on my system of habits i just felt that i need to put some thoughts here to be consistent with my writing.

I dont know it for sure but propably for the rest of the year but at least couple of upcoming weeks i will still focus on studying instead of playing. I think that i have my own path for improving the game and with the amount of knowledge i need to accumulate i cannot see any other option. I had read many interesting blogs here and i found many sentences that was really resonating with me.
I want to put two of them, just for myself to read them more often and too described what my current feelings are.

Don't set goals, build a system. Focus on the things that are in your control. Work-out, study on a regular basis, meditate every day, eat healthy six days a week. Don't get too attached on the outcome. Don't focus on 'I want to achieve this within five years'. Just build a system that improves the odds of you succeeding as much as possible and then accept whatever result may come from that. >

And there is a second one :

... With only a few months of living expenses left, and a dwindling bankroll I could no longer afford to keep losing. At the start of the year I was living off government stimulus, which had now ended. If I kept losing it was going to be game over.

Knowing that I would be forced to quit soon, I made myself a promise: one last hail mary and if that didnt work, I was out. My strategy was very simple: I would take two months off playing, and commit to studying 14 hours a day every single day without ever a day off. And thats what I did. I simmed databases for every single formation of the gametree (SRP IP PFR, SRP OOP PFC, etc) and by hand, painstakingly went through EVERY SINGLE turn, and river within the weighted subset of flops. I broke down which hand classes took which actions, and wrote them down by hand in a notebook. I didn’t really eat or sleep much, and at the end of it all noticed that I had lost 20 pounds. Oops. In retrospect it was super unhealthy and I really cant make a good faith recommendation for anyone to do this.

The strategy worked. It was now december. I had not played for 2 months. I loaded the last of my money back onto global poker and immediately started crushing. Bankroll went from almost dead > $10k that month. And another $10k in january. $20k in february. I flew up the stakes and just kept winning. Turns out going through the entire gametree by hand is actually pretty valuable.
Feeling like there would be a diminishing return in continuing to study the GTO side of the game, I reached out to patrick for data coaching around April. Using the data he has shared I now try my best to deploy a blended GTO/data strategy which I hope will take me to crushing 2knl.

In retrospect, what I would do differently would be two things: First, play less volume. It really doesn't matter. If youre tired and not having fun you are just wasting time. Second, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STUDY. It doesnt matter if you feel like youre studying enough, ITS NOT ENOUGH. I really felt like I was studying a ton, but until I locked myself in my room for two month IT WASN’T ENOUGH. I would go as far as recommending a 75/25 study/play split for anyone under 200nl.

The second quote is kind of a story of someone who was on the edge with his journey, wanting to succeed very badly but something did not work out well so far. I like it so much because i think that i am in similar place. I know that i am capable of much more than i did before and that i cannot stand not seeing results any more. I dont mean monetary results because they really does not matter that much for me at this moment. I have a stable job. But i just want to feel that i am going in the right direction with my game and entire poker path. I know that i can do much more and put more effort. I am also kind of an obssesed person so i understand a guy who just closed himself in a room for 2 months straight and studied like crazy. I wont do it the same for many reasons but at least i understand.

Anyway, it is sunday. I wokeup at around 6am. At 6.30 i was already in the gym starting my stretching session. When i came back home i had prepared coffee and started my studying. I set a goal to have a rigid scheldue and to study everyday in the morning from 9 to 12am. It is a 3-hour block when i need to accumulate 5 intervals of 30 minutes uninterrupted study with some breaks betweens. Those morning hours will be devoted to specific topic i am currently working on. I started with the baseline : BB defending versus different opens. I estimate that building a whole strategy against specific range will take me around 3-4 weeks. After that i will move on to the next. That is a lot of work to be done. But brick by brick, spot by spot …

In the last two weeks i did not play a single hand. Purposefully.
My focus right now is solely on studying and i really enjoy that. I had developed a very solid and logical process for improving my game, so now my job is just to show up every day. I am also testing waking up a little earlier and stretch, just to make more time for studying after my morning duties in work.

I am finally ready to say that my goal for the upcoming years is to become a professional poker player and made a living from that. I will do what it takes. I just cannot stop thinking about poker. Even if i go for a run i made combos calculations in my head and solve spots i studied. But in all this poker madness i still need to remember how important is to keep balance in life. Eat healthy, stretch and move, do some weight training and go sleep early.

MORNING ROUTINE
It is time to describe my morning habits i want to incorporate into my daily existance. There is a saying that if you want to take care of your monnings, just start the night before, and i cannot agree with that more. This is why sleep routine was introduced first. But the next step is on.
By saying morning i mean the time between waking up at around 6am until 12 am, so the first 6 hours of my day.

Habit 1 : Drink a probiotics.
I do this immediately after waking up. Healthy guts and flat stomach are important.

Habit 2 : Drink 2 glasses of water (before 12am)
I tend to forget about drinking during the day so monitoring this would definately help. I drink the first glass just after i drink probiotics so there is only one glass left i need to focus on. Of course i should drink much more but starting with 2 glasses until it became second nature is where i feel i should start.

Habit 3 : Stretch for 45 minutes.
This is super important for me. It has two benefits, firstly i suffer from lower back pain and upper back stifness but when i stretch routinely it goes away. Secondly : it drastically reduces the total time i need to warm up before my gym session. Fortunately all i need to do to keep this habit going is to left a little longer in the gym after my morning shift and just stretch. I can also use this time to listen motivational audios or interesting podcasts but not everything at once. Lets treat the audios as a nice bonus but not focus on them. All in all it is all about stretching habit.

Habit 4 : Prepare freshly squeezed juice.
The key word here is the word : prepare. I dont want to buy a juice in the shop, even the cleanest one. I just need to prepare it by myself from fresh vegetables and fruits.

Habit 5 : Take vitamin D3 and omega-3.
I plan to take it with my juice so buidling the previous habit will build this one as well. I have a problem to take supplements regularly as i am not a big fun of taking too much of them, however there are couple of them that are worth the effort and those two are one of them.

Habit 6 : Do not eat proceessed sugar (before 12am)
I like chocolate and cookies and couple other stuff within this group. The best way, at least for me, to reduce total consumption of it is to cut it off slowly.

It might be funny to write about those things in poker blog and not say a word about poker yet. Just to be clear, i want to play poker professionally and couple it with sport. This is my ultimate goal. But I believe that taking care about the health foundation will increase poker results and routines a lot.
Lets go back to PIO, good luck at the tables !!

thanks a lot guys for coming here, that will be additional boost for sure in the process of buidling habits. have a nice day :)

SLEEP
Sleep is the first habit i want to focus on because I need to be well rested to function during the day without energy crush and i think this the base on which we can build other things on.
There is no coincidence that human beings sleep approximately 25 years of their lives.

For me sleeping is important because i need to wake up from Monday to Friday at 6am. I work for 2 hours in the mornings from 7 to 9 o’clock and that cannot be changed. I am a personal trainer so fortunately i dont have a boss and extremly rigit scheldue but i work some hours in the morning and some hours afternoon. If i dont care about my sleeping routine and the things i do in the evenings i simply feel very tired.

What i want to do to improve my sleeping routine ?

First : cut off the blue light therefore any electronic devices to zero after 9pm.
It means to shut down my computer, set an alarm clock for 6am and not look at my phone any more.
It may seem like not optimal hours for poker player but to be honest even if i could be a professional player i would choose to play and study early in the day and have a normal scheldue instead of sitting at nights. Of course this is just my personal preferance and i dont blame anyone who play at nights because games are much better and winrates are higher. Actually the opportunity to play and go any time i want was the main reason why i choose the zoom tables and not mtt’s.

Second : I plan to go to bed 9.30pm at the latest and read a book until i feel sleepy.
Those habits allows me to sleep around 8 hours which is the amount i need at minimum.
.

This is not first time i try to implement above habits into my life, however you can image that if i am still writting about it, it wasnt a permanent change. I still have problems with going sleep early and not playing when its dark outside. However the feeling of being fresh and rested in the morning when you sleept very well is worth the efforts and trials. I am sure that my study which i plan to do after my morning work will be much more efficient.

Have a nice night guys.