Unicorn

Didn't realize until now that it's June already so I will make an extra update and goals for June.

I think 18k hands is too much for week so I will lower my goals and make them monthly instead of weekly.

-60k hands with 6 evbb/100
-Update weekly here with graphs if possible
-Finally start the A-game masterclass and do it at least weekly.

BR: 4400€ (+1400€)

Thanks! Good to hear

I had somewhat low volume week. Next week I'll try to post some graphs if I get my hands together to some tracker

BR: 3100€ (+100€)

-This weeks goals: 18k hands NL100
-Creating simple study schedule and plan
-Playing more efficiently with 45 min + 45 min sessions with small break

Yes, river needs to be check-raised all-in. Villain might have a flush here from time to time but more often than not he will be bet-calling with set or even worse.

I would prolly tighten up a bit preflop and just fold preflop. Against NL10 playerpool it might be hard to make profit with these kind of holdings from UTG

Still lacking volume because had some stuff IRL I needed to do. This week I am aiming to play 20k hands.

Holidays are over and I will most likely start playing a lot more. I played one horrible session while being somewhat pissed off and could have saved a few buy-ins but obviously that is also mostly variance. Grinded it back though and feeling great now about fully starting my challenge!

Have you already tried it? These kinds of intensive exercises can have huge impact from the get-go too but the most important thing is to do them regularly. I don't remember all the science behind this but I like to think that I am teaching myself to be calm in high-stress situations.

Another great exercises that I can recommend take look at are Oxygen Advantage. Those will focus more on your base breathing and teach you to breath slowly, deeply and calmly. Many people are wrongly breathing through mouth and that causes them to have all kinds of problems in the long run.

If you want to take a test how well you are breathing try this test called BOLT. With empty stomach take a regular breath in, and breath it out. Then breathe a small sip in and then fully exhale. After that hold your nose with your fingers and hold your breath with empty lungs while timing your breath hold. When the first urge or physical symptom to breath appears you are done. Meaning that if you have to take a big compensating breath you have done it for too long. Here we are aiming for 40 seconds but many peoples results are as low as 10-20 seconds. If that is the case, it means that you are most likely breathing too shallow on day-to-day basis.

Another great trick to better your health if you happen to breath through your mouth during sleeping is to use tape to close your mouth. It sounds like a brutal way to do it but if you buy Micropore-tape and use it to gently keep your mouth shut. There are great benefits to be had if you are breathing through your mouth. And no, your nose can't be naturally blocked if you are breathing through it. :)

Volume is still lacking because I have had my days full of other things. Next week will prolly gonna be the same but hopefully I'll find my time to grind a bit more. We'll see about that!

Thanks!

I don't get bored easily so that makes these kind of routines a lot easier. I recommend meditation for everyone who is getting bored or distracted easily. At first it is really f*ing hard to sit down and watch your monkey mind which tells you to go do something that is valuable or entertaining but that will fade away over time with practice. Many people experience this (state of being in the present moment) when they do something they are really interested (or addicted) in but this can also be experienced without doing anything.

I've been lacking volume a bit but that was expected since I've been doing activities and such with my girlfriend on her summer vacation. I am really happy with the way I've been playing although I have played a bit more tables than I first planned.

I've been also tried to stand 1/3 of my sessions. Even though I've had standing desk for a couple of years already, I never really forced myself to actually stand. Sitting is really bad for body and energy levels if done for too long so I definitely recommend anyone to force oneself to switch positions if possible during the day.

A Part of healing my body is my somewhat new morning routine. I start my day doing A LOT of movements to open up my joints and muscles. I will usually do around 1000 reps of different joint and muscle opening movements which takes about 30 minutes. After that I do 3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing technique which I've been doing for the past few years somewhat regularly and would highly recommend this to anyone. After that I take a cold shower, do a my morning meditation and drink my coffee and start my grind. It is really hard to push yourself to do this long routine (except the coffee part and especially the meditation part) since your mind is trying to convince you to do something 'useful' already, but I believe that the more it resists, the more these things are needed.

I will write more about these subjects later.

First 4 days

Ok, lets do this again! Nothing special has happened poker-wise withing last 3 years. I have been lazy as f* and I can't remember why I stopped writing in this threat but I probably just forgot it after not taking my goals seriously and concentrated on other things.

Now i'm more interested in poker than in many years so let's keep that up.

MY GOALS FOR THIS AND NEXT MONTHS ARE:
1. Play 60k+ hands monthly and win with 7bb/100 winrate. (I will mostly be playing NL200z)
2. Study more
3. Write here at least weekly about my mental game feelings and post graphs regularly.

This month didn't start too well

Great video Ben! The mental process of thinking through a hand is so much more wearing if you don't have a structured pattern to follow.

I haven't been playing as much as I planned but thats ok, I'm getting there. I changed my sleeping pattern last weekend to wake up early and I've been kind of tired in the mornings when I have played most of my hands. I hope that will change within a week or so when I get used to this change. I feel like my a-game is very strong though so hopefully I will be playing it more ofter near future. I don't feel like updating this blog every day so I'll try to do that every 25k hands so that would be 2-3 times a month. ~25k hands almost now and the next update will be after 50k hands or so.

I haven't played as much as I planned for couple of days now. I felt a bit tired after changing my sleeping pattern and I didn't feel like playing that much so I decided not to force it. Tomorrow I will have a one day holiday and start to play again on sunday. The few k hands I got in went well though and I'm now marginally up after starting this thread
!

Thanks m8!

2nd day wasn't a game changer. I'm glad I am getting in the hours but still I have a lot to do maintaining my A-game. Today I will be putting in 3k+ hands and hopefully book a winning day.

I will be updating this graph here daily and if I get super exited maybe post couple of HH's in some point

Either way, I don't have strong opinion about this so you might be right as well. That said, as long as I keep writing here I am more than satisfied with myself whether I choose to out my long term goals or not.

Good stuff Seacombe! I believe my lack of motivation comes from not totally committing to poker and not caring too much about money or getting rich or whatever. Even though I haven't really done anything reasonable besides poker I have never really committed on studying the game and optimizing things 100%. I have just pretty much done what has been necessary but now I aim to do many things better.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dereksiverskeepyourgoalstoyourself

Thank you! I have my personal goals but I read somewhere that telling others your goals will make you subconsciously feel like you've already made it and hence makes you more likely to fail.

Also the goal to play x amount of hand in x amount of time is a nice goal for me because I am not that type of person who can force himself to play. Meaning that if I reach the goal then I have found my motivation and interest in game and that is already more than I would have expected to achieve few months ago. Now after I've started playing again, even if only for couple of days now, I feel like I am more interested in the game than I have been for a very long time.

Thanks Seacombe!

I had my longest session this year of 3 hours and ~2k hands . I felt a bit anxious and ended up losing a couple of buy-ings. Today I aim to play few shorter 1k hand sessions with better concentration. I have a lot to do with my mental game if I am playing longer sessions since I tend to lose focus every now and then

Fully agree!

Nice video. Have you made that zoom hud yourself or is it available somewhere?

My 3-bet range vs CO open doesnt have that many offsuit combos to semibluff with besides KK & JJ

I don't think I would bet any turn with AK or most of our range because there is too many flushes in our opponents range to valuebet it. We can get it in otr anyway if we want to. If I keep firing with something that would propably be with smaller flushes. I don't see many semibluffs in our range here so that might not be necessary. With AQ here I would check the turn aswell and be prolly c-calling the river. Any opinions?

Thanks for your vids, btw!

I don't like checking either, it's not a hand I would like to bluff on later streets anyway and if we check it will prolly get checked through majority of time and all of their medium flush draws, which would fold to flop cbet, will get a free card. 

I do like cbetting & c-folding the turn. Same goes with river.

What about AQ without flush draw in our shoes? Jam turn? C-call river?

No special reads about this opponent, but I think he would be 4-bet/calling KK+,AKo and calling with most of the time with TT-JJ and QQ maybe 50%, AQs, AKs and maybe KQs.