Douggyfr3sh

Good

Last week was a good week overall.

I am aiming for 5,000 hands per week, but I want to be careful not to force volume just to achieve this. I want my volume to be high quality, and would rather play 3k hands of A game than 5k of half A game, half B-C game.

Last week, I played 4781 hands online, and no live poker. I won $750 for a winrate of a little over 20bb/100 (majority 100NL, but some 40NL).

I started shot taking 100NL with only 11 buy-ins online, not "properly rolled". The equation for me is a little different, since I do not rely on Poker for income and have a job. I am now approaching being rolled (20 buy ins) for this stake.

For this current week, I am slightly "behind" my volume target, but not by much. Feeling good about my approach to poker lately, and feeling GREAT about my execution at the tables. Things seem to be clicking for me.

I am planning to play some live cash tomorrow night, and may play again on Saturday if it goes well. Sunday I am going to see The Odyssey, and then probably playing a lot of online cash.

I'm starting to find myself feeling a little bored during sessions this week - and that's something I need to work on. Sometimes I have trouble focusing and not chasing distractions/dopamine hits. That has historically been a much bigger problem for me in live games, and is a big part of why I've mostly stuck to online poker.

All in all, I'm good.

REBOOT

I let this thread die for a while. I'm feeling motivated to start it back up, and will probably be posting a few times a week.

Some recent changes
- Got out of a bad work/income situation and got a new job about 3 weeks ago. Now I have a stable paycheck, health insurance, paid vacation, and a regular schedule with enough time to play poker
- Started working with an excellent coach (focusing on cash games). We've had 1 session so far, and have 7 more scheduled
- Got a new puppy! A mini Schnauzer named Ozzy. He's awesome.

Currently I am focusing on NLHE cash games after a somewhat disappointing WPT online series where I fired pretty hard. It didn't go terribly, I was around break even for the series. But lost some really big $EV 80% equity spots deep in some of the biggest events I played, and put in a whole lot of hours to make roughly $0.

It's just impossible to regularly grind tournaments and have any kind of normal life outside of that. I have decided to play zero tournaments for the month of July, and plan to play the WPT Gold Million on 8/2 - which will be the next tournament I play.

My main game right now is 0.10/0.20/0.40 with 0.10 ante on WPT. I have been having a lot of fun playing that game lately, and my preflop game has improved MASSIVELY by making a few simple adjustments that in hindsight seem obvious. I really want to get up to 100NL 3 blind, and believe I can make a $2k monthly side income at that level.

I want to aim for 5k hands per week online. That's going to be 19-20 hours a week 4-tabling. Very doable, sustainable, feels good.

When it comes to live cash, I will play if and when I feel like it. That will probably be once a week, and even less than that this month. If I start playing and fall back in love with live poker, that could change. But for now, online is still where my heart is at. There's a new live $1/3/5 game very near me on Sunday afternoons, which is kind of ideal for my schedule. I have access to 4 pretty close $1/3/5 games per week, and could get in a lot of live volume if I wanted to.

Playing more live poker is the single easiest way I can make more money. And, I don't want to do it. Money is a factor, but not my primary motivator. I've gotten more clarity on that recently by sitting and writing for a long time, following my feelings. I have ZERO interest in optimizing for short term maximum $$ at the expense of life balance, health, and happiness.

A few of my recent sessions have been the best poker I've played in a while. I have been locking in. I played one live cash session (first time in 6 months), and made some huge mistakes in PLO bomb pots which resulted in a -$600 session. Felt bad, but just simple adjustments in the bomb pots would have resulted in winning. I was locked in preflop in NL, here are a few hands:

Some Hands

EP open to $15, I flat AQs on BTN (it's not a 3bet I promise).
Heads up flop AJJr - EP opener cbets $30. I think maybe 10s and just fold. They show AK.
^ That one was not the easiest fold ever, but I was pretty confident.

I open CO $15 with AK. BTN OMC quickly min 3bets to $30, folds back to me. I snap fold and it's the easiest fold ever. BTN shows AA. (I did fake tank for a few seconds...)
^ In this hand, I would have bet my entire stack and whatever I had in my pocket that the guy had AA. I had never played with this person before. I saw a hand earlier in the night that was helpful, though even without seeing that hand I would have folded here (earlier, saw the guy not 3bet KK pre and just call an open).

In a recent online session, I felt like I was playing damn near as well as I possibly could have. The one "big mistake" I made was not folding KK preflop. I think almost everyone in the pool would just snap stack off and never think twice about it, but I had a very strong feeling villain had AA. Part of it was the timing of their preflop jam (I believe it was a 5bet), part of it was stats on the nitty side. I didn't trust myself enough and clicked the call button. That cost me a buy in.

Lately I have been doing a bunch of things well which I usually don't do so well. Checking value in the right spots, having far more dynamic preflop ranges (and pushing my opening range wider in late position), finding folds I often don't find, etc.

If I can keep this up, the 100NL pool better WATCH OUT!!

mike Absolutely!

I would definitely recommend it. Another one I am currently reading which is not about poker, but very much applies to poker, is the inner game of tennis. Very good book.

If you are ever curious about taking Jason's stuff further and joining the performance lab, I would be happy to tell you a bit more about my experience with that. So far, I think it's one of the best investments I've ever made. I'm not affiliated, just someone who jumped in and really enjoying it.

I might be in love with poker again

Hello!

Since my last post, I have been doing a lot of work and have made several changes in my approach to poker. I've gone back to playing exclusively MTTs, which has always been my favorite format, but am now doing it in a way that is sustainable and allows me to consistently get good sleep!

I've gotten back to studying in a way that feels good. I am using GTO Wizard and HRC. I am watching UP videos. I have rejam ranges down and have been playing ICM spots well.

I think the biggest reason for this is that I've started working with Jason Su and joined his performance lab. The stuff he teaches really works, and has helped me to get back in touch with what I love about this game. Combining that with moving most of my volume to playing smaller field events on Coin Poker, with a schedule that ends around 11 PM every night even if I win multiple tournaments, feels like it's been a game changer for me.

I am approaching poker with a spirit of being playful, trying things, and not taking anything too seriously, while at the same time doing my best to win.

I crushed tournaments last night, getting a 1st, 2nd, and a few other cashes. I am even very close to placing ITM on Coin Poker's weekly MTT leaderboard at the moment - which is nice for someone playing low stakes part-time, competing against many full-time grinders and stables.

Highly recommend taking a look at Jason's teachings for any poker player, and any human for that matter :)

Still Trying

I am still trying to earn a side income from poker. This year has not gone great, and I've not come near my $20k goal. But I am winning, and I'm a better player now than I was at the start of the year, or even a month ago.

I am currently working with Jason Su in his performance lab group, and presence training and mindset work has been my primary study focus. I'm also working on technical study through various sources. I think the next step for me needs to be getting into using solvers and also working on MDA study (more so MDA for now).

I will probably continue posting here occasionally and keep this little journal rolling through the new year. Lately, I am quite enjoying playing.

Failed 200NL shot

A little over a month ago, I took a shot at 200NL and it started off really well. I won 11 buy-ins in about a week. I started to think I was playing well and figuring things out, but the next week I lost it all back, and continued to lose, going on a 15+ BI downswing. Back to 100NL for me (for now).

As a California governor once said - "I'll be back!"

Good Poker

Been a while since my last post. Since my last post, I have not played much until this week. My last few sessions, I think I have played some of my best poker all year. I think for a lot of this year, I have struggled to stay focused and present in most of my sessions. Lots of thoughts keeping my mind distracted, and just not feeling great.

But my last 3 or 4 sessions, I have been locked in. I haven't won a ton, but I just know that I am playing better. I think a big reason for this change is that I have started to pay a lot more attention in sessions, and have been very focused on taking a lot of notes on players and thinking about how to maximally exploit them.

I have not been studying or improving my technical game much, but going from playing at like 30-40% of my potential to maybe 80-90% has been huge, and I am actually enjoying playing!

The reason I have been much more focused is...

I BUILT AN APP!

I have had 2-3 ideas for my own software apps for a long time, probably all of this year. I have been pretty busy, but last week I had a period where I didn't have any client work for a few days, so I took that time to start building a note taking app for online poker! This was prompted by ClubWPT not having any note taking functionality in their games. But also, some other sites I play have very poorly implemented note taking that is hard to use.

So - I built a really awesome little web app that allows you to take notes on players, assign them avatars and color codes, and is easy to use in-game. It has a gameplay mode where you can set 1-6 tables, assign players to those tables, and very quickly view their notes by simply hovering over any player. It's sweet. I think it is quite valuable, and I am hoping to release it to the world very soon:

The app is currently already available on the internet, but is set up for private access for now (you need an invite to log in). For now it is just really good manual note taking, but I have lots of ideas for other features. The app is free to use and you can use all features with no payment, but can only create and take notes on 20 players with a free account. This will allow anyone to get in and try it out. While the app is in "private beta" stage, I am planning to start giving out a few free "premium" uncapped accounts to people who want to try it.

If anyone is interested in getting an invite and trying out the app, send me a DM! I will send some invites for free, no credit card needed.

End of Year

For the rest of this year, I am going to try to do something I have failed to do many times: play weekends only (Fri - Sun), and get in at least 1 hour of study per day Monday - Thursday. I am feeling motivated at the moment, and really want to keep testing and optimizing my little app. My goal is to launch the app fully, with some additional premium features I have not created yet, by end of year. I may be able to have the current app available within the next 3-4 weeks.

Finances

Hello!

Thought I would post in here and provide an update.

Since my last post, we have decided not to sell our old place, and rented it instead. We got it rented on a 1-year lease about 3 weeks ago. This takes a lot of stress away, as I had been very worried about potentially having to cover 2 mortgages for a little while.

It is a 2-unit property (one apartment and one storefront), and the storefront person is moving out in October, so we still will need to rent that and have some risk of having to cover it for some months, but fortunately with the apartment rented, we can swing that as long as we need to.

I also have reduced my monthly expenses by about $210, which gives me a little bit of wiggle room and will allow more saving/investing. Things are starting to fall into place, and that feels good. I will be reducing by another $150 per month soon.

Live Poker

On the poker front: It has been very difficult to squeeze in much time to play, as I've been focusing a lot on my business. I have built a few websites and taken on a new project since my last post. I went through a period where I was losing in online cash, and just couldn't seem to play my A game or remain focused. I kind of feel like I am just not into it enough to do what it takes to be a really good winning reg.

So, I decided to cash out most of my online balance. I left a small amount on 3 sites to have the option of playing some low stakes MTTs on Sundays ($33 and under), and may play a session today - but outside of that I am going to try to play live cash 1-2x per week, and any money won there will just be set aside.

I played live cash last night for the first time in over 6 months, and have mixed feelings about it. I lost a small amount (all due to completely butchering one big hand where I could have gotten away from it), but that doesn't really matter much.

I somewhat enjoyed socializing and seeing many of the local regs I have not seen for a long time, and overall it was a good time, but as is almost always the case in live poker, there was also a share of misery at the table. The 2 guys to my direct left were a bit degenerate, and between them lost at least $2,000 in the 5 hours I played (in a $1/3 game). This made them not great to be around and it wasn't the ideal seat to be right next to them. They went from somewhat happy and cordial to quite unhappy over those hours.

Live poker is kind of the dumbest thing ever, and kind of beautiful, all at the same time. I'm sure I will be back in there soon and will see how much I enjoy it. I tend to socialize a lot in these games, and had some good conversations with a few of the players.

Adventure

Not sure if I have mentioned this yet in this blog - but I bought a dual-sport motorcycle last year and have been taking weekend off-road rides on it, maybe 4-5 trips this year.

On our last trip, everything went wrong. I went with 2 friends. 15 miles into the woods, I got a flat tire and had to drive out on the flat. On the way out, a friend submerged his bike in a deep water hole. We had to get the bike out and hold it upside down to drain water out of the pipe. We struggled with it for a while, but finally got it running.

While we were struggling with that, my other friend got stung by a wasp. He was complaining about it hurting and being itchy. We didn't think much of it, and made our way back to the truck. By the time we got there, he was itchy all over. He took his shirt off and was covered with bumps. His tongue started swelling up. HE WAS HAVING AN ALLERGIC REACTION!

We had to rush him to the hospital. They gave him an epi pen and some adrenaline. He made it out fine, but what a day!!

Yesterday I went for another trip with someone new I had never met. He offered to give me a tour and show me around various trails. It was a great trip, had an awesome ride. We again had to cut it short, because he blew a fork seal and was leaking oil, and I was low on gas. We made it back with no issues.

Life is good, grateful for the one I have. Thanks for reading

Hey super1234 ,

Thank you for that! I am glad that you got some value out of it!

The business has been going pretty well so far. I am making just slightly less money than I was at my job (as I was there for 7 years and had a lead engineer position), but so far it has been well worth the small reduction in pay to have much more time flexibility and enjoy my life more. And I think it will only grow from here!

Binking By Proxy

A fun little story:

My friend is in vegas playing some WSOP events. He texted a few days ago selling some action for the $1k PLO Mystery Bounty. I bought 5%.

He busted fairly quickly, and I had missed messages asking if I wanted 5% of bullet #2. By the time I saw the messages, he had already lost a chunk of his stack for the second bullet. He said "You can still buy if you want, up to you". It was obviously not a great investment to buy 5% at face for less than starting stack well into a bounty tournament. But I decided ah F**K it, I'll support a friend, and said "yah I'm in".

He binked a $50k bounty, and cashed for around 5k. A nice little surprise payday for me. Soo... No gamble, No future, or something like that.

Aside from that, cash has been going OK. I went on a medium downswing for a few weeks, but then won $1k in an hour and had a few more winning sessions after that to turn things around. I have started to study a bit more, and I am thinking about using some of the surprise bink money to get a GTO Wizard subscription.

I haven't been playing as much volume as I would like to, and hope to ramp that up a bit over the coming weeks.

Self Employment

This marks the last day of my first week of self-employment after leaving my job.

Fortunately, I was able to get some more work just before finishing up at my job, so I should have plenty of work for the foreseeable future. However, it's been a little bit more of a roller-coaster. One day, I am asked if I can squeeze in an extra project and work 45-50 hours per week. The next day, the client for my primary project has stopped responding and will not approve more budget.

On average, I will make just shy of enough to cover my current cost of living each month. I will need to make that up with other income. I expect for some of that to eventually come from poker, some from more consulting, and can pull some out of the small amount of monthly cashflow my crypto DeFi portfolio is generating.

Setting money aside, though, I have felt much less stressed and have been enjoying my days a whole lot more. I get to spend the majority of the day writing code and building things, which is my favorite thing to do in my line of work. I spend way less time in meetings. If I were still at my job, I would have been at my computer at 8 AM on Monday, and in 4 straight hours of meetings. I hated that shit. Instead, I was able to sleep in longer, and take my time sipping on coffee and going for a walk in the morning. Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I got to go for a walk with my wife and mow the lawn in the afternoon. I never had time for stuff like that before. It's great. There's a little more financial stress, but I'm sure it will all work out.

Poker has been going OK this month. My biggest mistakes are in game selection. I have a nice edge in the cash games I play, but I am an idiot and still reg tournaments, even though they are lottery tickets and I probably don't even have an edge. I think I am up a tiny bit in tournaments over the past month, but my time would be better spent only playing cash, and my quality of life would be better too - I guess I'm a bit of a masochist :)

My main game is currently $1/2 NL, and I would love to be shot taking $2/4 within the next few months. I have actually already sat those games a bit, and have won, but I am not rolled for them and it's irresponsible to play them.

I have gotten back to regular exercise (took nearly a month off due to an injury), and that has felt really good.

I have two main adjustments to make in poker:

1. Stop regging MTTs (dummy)
2. Implement a consistent study routine

If I can do these, good things will come.

Cheers ;)

Interesting, was not aware of that.

EOP is so good. Have read it at least 3 times. If you haven't checked out "How to be a poker player" I would recommend it. Haseeb is kind of polarizing and there's some history of him being involved in some alleged cheating many years ago, though he has always denied it and it seems likely he was not involved. In any case, separate the art from the artist - it is a great book

Jason Su

Super quick post. I just finished Jason Su's new book The Joy of Poker: Win More, Be Happy

I just wanted to share with whatever small audience I have here that it is an excellent book, and should be required reading for anyone interested in performing well and winning money in poker. Hell, even if you don't play poker at all, I believe applying some of the techniques in the book to your life will lead to a happier and more fulfilled life.

While I can't yet say the book has directly resulted in better poker, I CAN say that it has directly impacted my life - as I used some of the techniques in the book to address a very annoying/frustrating situation in my life just yesterday (not a poker thing).

I won't elaborate for now, but maybe will give more detail in my next full post.

GET THE BOOK!

As an aside - the other two poker books I would recommend are Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker (timeless), and Haseeb Qureshi's How to be a Poker Player.

When it comes to technical knowledge, I don't think any book is going to be the best path these days - but all of these books deal more with soft skills and/or the philosophical side of Poker.

I quit my job

It has been an insane couple of weeks for me. A LOT of really challenging life situations have happened, and also, I quit my job.

I gave a 4 week notice, and my last day is June 13th. After that, I will be focusing on self-employment and doing my own consulting work. I will also be playing a little more poker, but will not be relying on poker for any income.

I have also had some really shitty things happen over the last several weeks. A couple of weeks ago, we found out our dog had severe cancer. He was not very old, and was quite healthy otherwise. He was acting really odd, so we took him to the vet and they did an X-ray. They found that he had a large mass in his abdomen, and an enlarged heart. He also had blood in his urine. We couldn't do anything to save him, and had to have him euthanized. That came out of nowhere, and it was a really hard day. He was the best dog ever and will be greatly missed. We had a really nice last day with him, and he went peacefully. Lots of tears were shed.

Also, I woke up one morning a few weeks ago with a very swollen and painful right foot. Turns out, I have gout in my foot. It's caused by various things, but is also hereditary and my Dad always had problems with gout. After having it for over 2 weeks myself, I now understand how much it sucks. I have pretty much been stuck in the house, able to do very little- some days dealing with excruciating pain. I went for a few 2-3 mile walks, but it was a bad idea and made things worse. It may have been healed by now if I was better about resting it. Being unable to exercise or do much of anything, along with losing my dog and the stress of figuring out things like health insurance and so on for when I leave my job has been a pretty big challenge and had a big impact on my mental health. I have been trying to do whatever I can to stay in a good head space, and I'm sure soon this will all be in the rearview mirror.

I am mostly excited about leaving my job, but there's also a bit of anxiety and fear mixed in. It's a major change, and I have been there for nearly 8 years. I am shedding my old identity.

Despite all this, I have found some time to play poker. In some ways, it has sort of served as my escape lately, kind of a happy place. I realized that Club WPT was a new good option, and put a small deposit on there to check out the games. I was fortunate enough to final table a $110 turbo last weekend (got 6th), and had a nice cash game session a couple nights ago:

I am up a little over $2k since my last post.

I picked up Jason Su's new book, which is all about staying present in sessions. I think that this is something I am really bad at, and is probably the single biggest thing I could improve that would increase my winrate a lot. About halfway through it, and enjoying it so far.

That's all for now.

RunItTw1ce No, I won't quit if I lose money. The more important thing is enjoying playing. I maybe shouldn't have even said "I have to not be losing", as you are right - kind of impossible to know over the volume I play.

Having said that, losing at 50z is not the same as a bot breaking even against other bots that are very good (or even humans losing in tougher games than I am playing). I think the 50z games I am playing are still quite soft. If I were to lose over a year-long period of playing decent volume, yes - there is a good chance I would quit. That would also probably make me not really enjoy playing all that much.

Winning Player (?)

I haven't really been doing a good job of tracking my profit for the last few months. Today I decided to take a few minutes to look into my W/D history for this year.

So far, I have withdrawn $1724 (mostly into crypto). I believe I started with approximately a $2k roll (I think it was almost exactly 2k), and have about $1k online right now. So My total net profit so far this year is somewhere around $700. Nothing to write home about, especially considering the hours I have put in to poker so far this year. However, it feels good to see that I am at least up money and not losing.

At this point, I am basically treating poker as a fun hobby, but it still has to be profitable. I don't care if I am only making like $3 an hour, as long as I am having fun playing and not losing money. At the moment, both of those are true. Anything above break-even is acceptable.

I have automated investments coming out of my day job pay each month into crypto (not much). Ideally, I would love to get to a point where I can replace that with poker winnings each month, which wouldn't take much - that way I could divert the day-job investments into entirely index funds. Even making $400 per month from playing a little poker on the side and putting that into crypto would go a long way towards shortening my timespan for achieving financial independence.

Bout to fire up a session - cheers!

RunItTw1ce - Anything you task AI with doing needs human oversight (I have been using AI to help me write code for 8+ months, and it gets things wrong all the time). So, you need a human middleman to validate the AI's work and correct errors.

Also, AI is literally incapable of creativity. It is great at finding black & white answers to questions - and I use it for that, but for something like designing a website that embodies the brand, AI can't do that on it's own. It can help you to design a site if you give it good prompts, but it will spit out generic designs with no soul or uniqueness.

Having said that, anyone I build a website for could absolutely do it themselves with a few hours of research and then several hours of work (even if they use AI). Most of the reason why there's a market for what I do is:

a) Time Savings - Contractors in general are very busy doing their actual work and running their business, and don't have a ton of time to build a website or even to learn AI.

b) Creativity - AI cannot be "creative". It just scours the internet for resources and answers and throws something together. I recently listened to a podcast where an expert in AI said the same - unfortunately I can't remember the guy's name, but he was on the board of OpenAI for a while (maybe still is). Given the nature of how AI works, it isn't "creative".

My policy is to be completely open and honest with any potential clients. If they asked me a question like this, or "why don't I just build my own website", I would actually encourage them to do so if they have the interest and time. I don't want to do a job that the owner of a business has the desire/time to do.

Ex- my first client works 70-80 hours/week and is very busy doing Plumbing. I can barely get responses from them with info about what to put on the site. I had to spend 1-2 hours researching plumbing services and current state incentives for efficient water heaters, etc. to build the site. When I finished the initial copy and asked for adjustments, he just said "looks good!" - this guy makes great money applying his skills to Plumbing and doesn't have the time to put a site together. It is well worth it for him to hire me to do it.

Will AI eventually get good enough to make this service obsolete? Maybe - but I have my doubts. I think what is more likely is that the agencies that leverage AI will capture the market, and those who don't use it will die.

I am pro-AI and believe that it will bring a lot of positive changes, but I also believe that any work requiring true creativity is safe.

So basically, AI + Human = the nuts.

Recreational Businessman

Hello! I had a few mins and felt like posting here.

Development on my new business venture is well underway. I have built a website, facebook business profile, gotten a 1-800 number, set up invoicing software, and done a lot of research on other tools I will need. If anyone happens to read this and needs a website or custom software built, check me out at www (dot) pinefalldigital (dot) com :)

So far, I have sold 2 websites. The first one just got completed today, and I will be billing the client tomorrow. He is super happy with the results, and I am super happy with the work and pay.

Of the first 2 sales, after my expenses (domain name, hosting, etc) I will clear about $2400 profit. Obviously $2400 a month is not great, but this is on top of my full time job, so it's a nice extra income.

The first site is a business site for a plumber, and the second will be an auction site for a local Husky (dog) breeder. He wants to run auctions for puppies each year when his dogs produce a new litter. That one was a bit more challenging, as the client had a low budget, and typically the "right" way to do it would be to build a full-fledged custom app, which I would need to charge $4k+ for. But fortunately, I was able to figure out in a couple hours of hacking how to put together a simple auction system which uses Google sheets to store bids as a basic database. That way, I can get this done for a price that the client can afford, and a price that works for me too.

My first client has already hired me for additional work. I have created QR codes, set them up with a Google business profile, and will be doing some content creation for them going forward. I am super pumped about that!!

I started by simply cold-calling all of my contacts who own a business or offer a service to see if they would be interested in a website. That led to the first 2 sales. Since then, I have cold-called around 50 local businesses, and only got 1 response, which was a simple "no". That is to be expected, and I need to prepare myself to deal with a lot of rejection. I also need to find other ways to market my services.

I firmly believe that the service I am offering at the price I am offering it is a no-brainer super +EV investment for any small business. I believe almost every website I build will pay for itself within a year, and then provide annual returns of 100%+ for the cost of the site. As an example, for the Husky breeder auction site, I believe it will result in them getting on average at least $300 more per pup - and will also allow them to reach a MUCH wider audience (prior to this, they were only doing simple local advertisement by posting flyers around town).

The challenge for me is not going to be the work itself, I enjoy that and I am very good at it. The challenge is going to be marketing and getting clients. I know almost nothing about marketing and sales, and need to learn.

Things are going well - I am pursuing something that could be big eventually, and I am really enjoying it. Even if it doesn't work out, the 2 sales I have already gotten will cover my operating expenses for several years - and I will learn a ton in the process. For now, I am reinvesting 100% of my business income back into the business. Ideally, I would like to build at least 300 small business websites over the next 5 years. That's 5 websites a month on average - a workload I can comfortably handle. Just gotta get the word out!

As an aside - I also recently started on a new project and I am building a custom Shopify app. Never done that before, and I am working with several bleeding-edge technologies I have never worked with before. I spent the last 2-3 days really stuck on a difficult problem (3rd party request authorization), but cracked it yesterday afternoon. That felt really good. I love this shit!

Poker

Lately I have been playing poker whenever I feel like it and have the time. Pretty much playing only 50z. I am winning, and have made 2 small cashouts which went into crypto investments. I mostly only play on weekends. I actually am playing right now, but just took a break to update the blog.

I have a few poker friends and my social media algorithms make sure I see it any time they have a nice score. A close friend I used to play with a lot just won a small live tournament for $50k. When I see stuff like that, for a moment, there is a little bit of a feeling of "man that could be me". When I used to play more, I had several close calls where I made final tables of live events and lost critical flips. I came pretty close to huge scores a handful of times. The one I remember the most was 3-handed at the FT of an online $500, with like $32k up top and about $9k for 3rd. I was pretty much tied for chiplead, with the 3rd player being very short. It was something like 36bb, 34bb (me), 6bb. I got AIPF calling a jam with KK vs J3s from the chip leader and lost, out in 3rd. That is probably the biggest $EV pot I have ever lost, and it was kinda gross. I distinctly remember running the spot in an ICM calculator afterwards, and found that J3s was bottom of range and right around break-even due to immense ICM pressure in the spot. I remember at the time being totally at peace with losing after running the sim. Just kinda shrugged and moved on. Actually, the friend that just won $50k had a piece of me in that tournament and got like $3k of my 3rd place finish.

^ Kind of a random tangent. Just felt like sharing I guess :)

Anywho, I still like poker, play when I can, and might play more eventually.

Cheers!

F Poker

Whats up!

I wanted to pop in here and give a quick update.

I haven't been playing much lately, and have found myself less and less interested in playing.

Through a lot of self reflection and working with my mindset coach, I have decided that I really want to start my own business and get out of my day job. So I have taken massive action on that.

At the moment I am super excited, as I just got my first sale!! I will be building business websites, focusing mostly on contractors (builders, plumbers, electricians, that kind of thing). So a lot of my focus and energy outside of my day job (until I can leave it) will be put into this.

I'm sure I will still play some, and once I am able to leave my job and have more freedom, I might step more back into poker. But for now, I've got to really focus on getting my business going.

Ironically, I saw the Dominate with Data course just dropped, and it looks like probably the best course out there for NLHE. Not gonna be getting the course, but if I ever do get to a point where I am only working on my own stuff and have left my job, and want to get into more poker time, that's probably where I would start.

For now, I will be keeping this journal updated from time to time. The content might shift more towards my journey through starting a business, but time will tell.

Thanks everyone for reading and participating here. Best wishes and best of luck to you all!

Hey I meant to reply to you sooner.

Getting a coach to fix some mechanical things and do a database review will only take 2-3 hours max. The database review will give you plenty of homework to work and do on your own going forward. Maybe cost you $500 or so to get everything done.

Yeah I think this is prob true. Just have to work with the right coach. I have a few in mind. Not really interested in having my DB compared against GTO frequencies, but a coach who will compare it to MDA strategies makes sense.

Do you have a fear of failure online? Like you don't think you can beat the game any more?

No, I am confident if I put in enough time and effort I can beat the games. Crush them even, at low stakes.

Maybe this video will help. I hope you have a rio subscription

I do not have a RIO sub. I have had one in the past, though, and have watched this video many times as well as Nick Howard's other videos. Big fan of his content.

What is wrong with playing 10NL blitz on ACR or 50NL blitz...

I have been playing some 50nl zone on Bovada. I am beating those games, no need to play lower. But - I am not just trying to learn. I want to make money while I am at it (and already have the skill set to do so at lower stakes).

Thanks for the podcast link - I am also a big fan of the MOPP podcast and have listened to most episodes. I probably have listened to this one, but might listen again.

Yeah I am somewhat familiar with Gary Chapelle and other people have suggested his content/coaching. Pretty sick what he has been able to do at those stakes. He would probably be a great person for me to learn from.

You are not going to make this amount in live private games. People will run out of money or kick you out before that happens.

Yeah.. it's not really my goal to be making 100k+ per year in Poker. I would be quite happy with 15-20k as a side income. A pro friend of mine whose opinion I trust and value believes I can make $75/hr+ in these games. And he would know, he played these games for thousands of hours over 3+ years before moving away to play higher and travel to play MTT stops. He crushes now and is doing 200k+ per year in live cash/some live MTT.

Your point about live games not being flexible enough for a busy schedule is a good point and mostly true. I can probably play once per week live in the best game, and the rest online, or something like that. Right now my life is insanely busy (tough job, starting a business, renovating a house to sell it). I do not have a lot of time for Poker, and sort of trying to figure out if it makes sense to keep putting in a lot of effort. I really enjoy the game and have interest in getting better/making money with it, but I also am interested in doing my own consulting work which will take time to set up and get traction.

For now, until I can exit my job, I am playing/studying when I can and cashing out small amounts to BTC 1-2x per month. Would be great to free up some time to put a little more into poker, but that won't happen until I can sell my house and have weekends free (I am working on it every weekend). I appreciate your advice and insights! Best wishes, cheers.

In my first reply, I realize I didn't answer this:

Did you ever email your boss to set a meeting about how you feeling about not being compensated for adding on more work to your under staffed team?

The answer here is - kind of. I know that other members of my team have raised this concern, and I know that my manager is very limited in what she can do about it. So I didn't directly ask this question, but I did let them know that I am feeling overwhelmed and feel like I am doing too much. That resulted in a key change that I feel has been great for me personally. I started blocking off 2 hours per day on my work calendar as "focus blocks", and during this time I have made it clear that I will not be checking any messages and nobody should expect for me to be available. I have been using about half of this time to do my actual work, and the other half to do whatever I want - which usually involves meditation and personal stuff like learning new things in software development.

I know that at this job I will never get paid what I deserve for extra effort, so instead of trying to fight that or change it, I have simply decided to work less and spend some time on other stuff. This is not ideal for the company, but if they refuse to change, I just have to combat that by spending my time on other work, building skills, etc. That is fine by me.

Eventually, I will leave this job. I have been putting in a lot of effort towards that, and have a plan. I don't really see a future here - feel like I have hit the ceiling or at least am getting close to it. Putting in a lot of extra effort is simply not going to pay off, and this company has shown that to be true over and over. So for now, I am just doing what I need to do in order to keep my job, and in the meantime I am working towards leaving it in order to have more personal freedom, fulfillment, and eventually to be rewarded properly for my efforts.

Hey RunItTw1ce !

Thank you so much for the detailed post and suggestions, I really appreciate this. I will try to address some of the questions in your post, and also elaborate a bit on my situation, skill level, etc:

As far as skill level goes - it's hard to say exactly. To sum it up, I am a lifetime winner in live cash, online cash, and online MTT. I have worked with many coaches in the past, and had times where I was playing and studying a lot. In the past I have had a year where I did really well in MTTs online (playing part time, but a lot of volume), and my best success in cash games was a + $10k month playing a lot of 500NL and some 200NL, but that was something like 2 years ago.

Prior to starting up this journal, I took a lot of time off from poker. I am definitely still quite rusty, and probably have not done nearly enough technical work recently to get caught back up. I have thought about finding a technical coach, but not sure I am ready for that right now.

I kind of still feel like I am trying to figure out how much time/energy I want to dedicate to poker, and how it fits into my life now. Your suggestions about game selection are great, and make a lot of sense. I have always been afraid to play on ACR, as I just assumed it was full of bots, collusion, cheating, etc. But I never realized how bad those same problems are on Bovada/Ignition. I recently realized that there are for sure bots/cheating going on there too.

I am starting to think that live cash games are probably going to be the way to go for me. Not a whole lot of options around me, but there are some pretty good private $1/3 and $2/5 home games. I just played live cash last night for the first time in about 15 months. I am very rusty and lost a little, but the game seemed to be VERY good. The stakes are $1/3 with a $500 cap buy in, but over half of the hands played as $1/3/5, and almost every time I was UTG, we played $1/3/5/10 or $1/3/5/10/20. I think the hourly rate in these games is going to be much higher than anything I play online. But the challenge for me is being disciplined and dealing with boredom/slow pace of the game. I have access to a couple of $1/3 and one $2/5 game each week, but both play bigger than that.

I only play live these days, but if you are willing to share some hands I would be more than happy to provide some free feed back.

Awesome - really appreciate this. Thank You!

I think for now I am going to try to ease back into live cash, with a little bit of online play as well. Gonna shoot for playing 2 live sessions per week going forward and see how that goes. Setting the money and hourly rate aside, I actually enjoy playing in private games and socializing with all of the poker weirdos in those games. The games around me tend to be the same group of 15 or so regs every time, but they are all pretty bad at poker and I think maybe only 1-2 of them actually study.

Cheers!

A change of approach
(weekly? update)

What's up everyone!

I think it has actually been 2 weeks since my last update. I have been playing very little over that time. Lost around 2 BI over a handful of hours.

My net profit for all of February was - $1113. This mostly came from 200NL, with a few ill-advised 500NL shots in there. To be honest, I think I've played quite poorly for most of this month.

However, I have been making huge strides in the personal development/self-improvement department. I am feeling really good about the way things are currently going in my life. Losing at poker doesn't matter, really (especially in the short term).

What I think does matter is my approach to the game, and how it makes me feel. Since I started working with a mindset/performance coach, it has become pretty clear to me that my relationship to the game really needs work. I have a tendency to push myself way too hard. I work a ton of hours in a demanding career, and then try to compete in a difficult game at night, often drained of energy before the session even starts. I do have a great pre-session routine and do workouts/cold plunge etc- but that cannot make up for being over-tired, burnt out, etc.

I got obsessed with poker after the first couple times I played way back when I was 16 years old, and the only reason was because I loved to play. Over the years I think I've built up some poker trauma and often find myself not feeling good in the middle of a session. Beating myself up with negative self-talk, and unconstructive criticism. On one hand this can be motivating and lead to positive change, but on the other hand I am doing well in most other aspects of my life, and I don't really need to make money from poker right now. I definitely don't need to add more stress and pressure to my life - have a lot going on. What I need is to get back to a place where I am playing simply because I enjoy the game and the challenge, and enjoy improving at something competitive and engaging. I need to view the game differently, and not worry about winning X dollars next month. So, I am changing my approach for March.

For the month of March, I am completely getting rid of any volume or profit goals. I want to just take a month to play when I feel like it, study when I feel like it, and just focus on enjoying the game. TPLancaster commented something along these lines at the start of this blog, and I think they were right. My main focus is going to be holistic self-improvement and reflection. I am excited to have my next session with my mindset coach (Paul Salter) and to keep doing work on myself. I have already made huge changes, very hard changes.

I have not mentioned this yet in this blog - and actually haven't really told anyone in my personal life except for my Wife and a few close friends - but here goes:

For a very long time now, I have been heavily addicted to Kratom.

If you don't know what Kratom is, a quick Google search will tell you all you need to know - but to quickly explain: Kratom is a natural plant medication/drug/supplement whatever you want to call it. Here in the states, it is legal in most states, and highly illegal in others. Where I live, I can go to the store just down the street and buy it as much as I want. I started taking it to address severe back pain (which I am still struggling with) and it is the best thing I have found to help with the pain - but I have become far too dependent on it. So 2 weeks ago I decided to quit. I got to a point where I was taking 20-25 capsules every single day. I went 6 days without taking any, and felt like absolute shit for most of that time. I could barely sleep, felt like I had the flu, and was irritable all the time. Over the last 2 weeks, I have gone from 20+ capsules a day to not taking any during the week, and only taking one dose on the weekend, just one day a week. I started to get over the cravings and withdrawals this week, and I am really glad I made this change. I had to take a step back from poker to do this - but I am ready to get back in and play.

Instead of taking drugs as a band-aid for my back pain, I finally went and saw a doctor. I got a referral to OMT (Osteopathic Therapy), but they can't get me in until April. So I will suffer for a while longer and do the best I can to address the pain with ice baths, sauna, etc. I have tried tons of solutions over the years: chiropractor, yoga, hot yoga, sauna, acupuncture, strength training, etc. All of these things help a little bit, but nothing has resolved the root cause. It's time to get serious about fixing this problem so I can move forward and be the best version of myself.

I have a little whiteboard in my home office which I update each month with new poker "guidelines" for the month. For March, here are my guidelines:

• Play when you feel like it.
• Quit sessions when you feel like it.
• Study when you feel like it.
• NO volume or profit goals.
• NO pressure.

I am also gonna move down in stakes. My goal for this month is not to necessarily become much better at poker. My goal is to change my relationship to the game, and get back to loving it like I used to. So, when I play, I will be playing 1 table of 50z (fast fold) 6max, and that's it. I have to repair my logistical approach before I can move up, play more, and win consistently.

(>'.')> Just be a chill guy. <('.'<)

BoldPlayer

Yes, I have been thinking about playing more 6max and actually my last 2 sessions were 6-max. There are tradeoffs. I believe the full ring games are softer and lower variance, but they are also pretty boring, and IMO optimal strategy for full ring is VERY different from 6max, and involves doing a lot of things that are far away from GTO, even preflop.

I think the main good reason to play online full ring is if you play a lot of live cash, as it is closer to the same format/meta and gets you more practice with common situations. I am not playing any live cash right now, but I may start doing 1-2 sessions per week soon.

I think actually this month though, my volume will shift more towards online 6-max. We will see how it goes ;)

I am working with Paul Salter, who works with Eliot Roe and his group of performance coaches. We have only had one session so far, but I already feel like I am getting a lot from it, and would highly recommend him if you are looking for someone to work with. After the first session I spent probably 3-4 hours the following week on some mindset "homework" he assigned, and he is in constant contact any time I need anything from him. Great guy.

Not Ideal.

(weekly update)

Results: -$289.24
Volume: 9h 9 mins
Study: 4h 26 mins*

I've had a bad week. Results aren't great, but more so, I have struggled a lot this week with lack of sleep and back pain. This weekend I had a really hard time sleeping due to pain and some drinking. I received a bottle of whiskey as a gift on Valentine's day, and did some damage to it Friday night - before and during playing. However, Friday night was also a decent session - I won nearly 2 BI.

My first session with a mindset and performance coach was good. I feel like it is going to help a lot. I received a lot of homework (mostly poker related), and that has been the majority of my study this week. It forced me to sit down and reflect on how I approach poker, and what things need to change to get me where I want to be.

While I am not on track to reach the goals I set out, losing money doesn't affect my life basically at all. For now, I still plan to continue on this path, and will keep roughly the same goals for next week.

I have been thinking a lot lately that I should just abandon playing at all early in the week. Instead of a handful of short sessions and a few slightly longer sessions, I think just playing 2 really long sessions on the weekend might be optimal. Games are much better, I feel more relaxed playing knowing I don't have to be up early the next day for work, and that frees up more of my weeknights for study and other pursuits outside of poker.

I am going to try to implement this - but next week, I am going to a comedy show on Saturday and probably can't play. Still, one session of A-game poker in softer games is probably better than 5 sessions of mediocre poker in tougher games, even if that means much less volume.

Targets for next week

• Study 4 hours
• Do not force any sessions, even if that means I don't play at all.

(>'.')> Put yourself first! <('.'<)

Meh.

(weekly update)

Results: - $94
Volume: 13 hours
Study: 4 hours

I am feeling unhappy about my results and on-table performance this week. However, I am feeling good about getting in 4h of quality study, and staying consistent with my exercise all week. I had a few days this week where I went through way too much mental/emotional struggle just because of losing. My worst single-session was just over -3 buy-ins, which is nothing and shouldn't bother me, but it did.

I also spent way too much time "multi-tasking" during sessions. A lot of watching YouTube videos while playing, which is very much not ideal. Actually, I think it is impossible for me to play my A-Game while doing anything else. I need to be fully focused on the tables.

I really believe that my A game is already enough to crush the 200NL FR games, but the problem is not playing my A game often enough. I think my B game is probably break-even at best, maybe winning like 1-2bb/100, and my C game is losing. I would be better off playing less volume and having it all be A-Game.

This week I reviewed every pot from past 1-2 weeks where I at least saw turn, and lost. I also reviewed some winning pots too. I feel like the study I did this week was really good, and will help me to make some adjustments.

Main thing I need to work on is my relationship to the game and how I handle results. It's silly to get upset about any single session - especially since losing really doesn't have any impact on my life, but that has been a challenge for me. I hired a mindset & performance coach and we have our first session together tomorrow- so hopefully that helps!

For next week, I want to try again to not play until Thursday-Sunday, or maybe even just Friday-Sunday. I failed to do that this week (played at least 1 short session almost every day). I think I would be better off to do study-only Monday-Thursday. Games are best on Fri-Sat evening anyway, and I can use the other time to level up my game through study and planning out some standard lines and heuristics.

Targets for next week

• Study 4h
• Avoid playing Monday - Wednesday

(>'.')> One brick at a time! <('.'<)

Slapped by Variance

(weekly update)

Results: - $118.37
Volume: 13.1 hours
Study: 1.1 hours

This week I got in solid volume, but did not study enough. I spent all of Saturday smelt fishing with friends (something I've not done before). Had a great time, but got kinda drunk and was mostly in recovery mode Sunday. Next week, I need to make study more of a priority. I hope to spend a good amount of time Mon-Wed studying, and Thurs-Sun playing. No plans for the weekend at the moment, which I am happy about. I want a low-key weekend at home!

The week was going well and was up a good bit going into the weekend, but had a brutal session Saturday where I lost about 5 buy-ins in just over an hour. I may have made some mistakes, but this was mostly horrible variance. I lost 3 all-ins with 85%, 65%, and 48.5% equity, all pretty standard spots where the money just goes in. The result really didn't bother me at all, and I reacted to it better than I have in the past. After that, I moved down from 200NL to 100NL, and won a few buy-ins back to end the week.

I noticed myself sometimes giving up on a few pots that I probably could have fought for more, and that is going to be the focus of my study for next week. I want to look for situations where I can win more with red line. I also called in spots where I was able to narrow my opponents to pretty much an exact holding (and was right), where I probably could have just folded sooner in the hand.

Targets for next week

• Study at least 4 hours, focusing on Turn+River in non-shown-down pots
• No volume target for a week: I will play when I can, but not gonna force it
• Get better sleep

(>'.')> Going with the flow <('.'<)

Hey! Looks like you are closing down this blog - I couldn't help but comment :)

I just read the original post, and was thinking to myself "this person is very disciplined and has a great approach to the game, they are gonna make it".

Then I scrolled down to see that you made it from 5NL -> 200NL, which is not at all surprising.

As someone who started in poker long ago, way before solvers, it's interesting to see how different the possible (optimal?) approach to the game has become for new players who are hungry and motivated.

Well done! I am sure you will continue to climb, your work ethic is commendable!

January Summary

Just posting a quick summary of my first month playing after the time off.

Cash
Profit: $886.38
Hours Played: 60.78
Hourly: $14.58

MTT
-$632

Not a great hourly, but I am feeling pretty good about these results. I think next month I am going to make some adjustments to my approach to the game. Mainly, I want to stick to only playing one session per day, max. I have noticed that I very consistently am a bit on the fence about playing a 2nd session, and it almost always goes bad. I lose back what I won in the first session. I think part of this is due to the time I start playing- I generally seem to get on decent tables in my first session, but when I start up a second one, I am often starting tables playing HU or battling with regs 3-4 handed to get tables going. I don't mind playing regs HU, it's actually pretty fun. But I think in my second sessions, my WR is lower based on the pool and I also am just playing worse.

Also, I have -$500 in losses in this sample from sitting $2/5 and losing an AI in 3 hands in a pretty sick FH over FH spot, and some losses from playing the Zone games. I think being more disciplined with my game selection and play times is the biggest improvement I can make for next month. If I had made zero game selection mistakes this month, it would be at least a + $1390 month. But hey - at least I came out ahead (just barely) despite those errors.

Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to register several MTTs this month, most of which were $109's. 2 of them I couldn't even finish playing due to software issues. It has recently been exposed that there is mass cheating and collusion going on in these MTTs: stables are late regging at the last moment, all getting seated together, and colluding to ensure they all cash. They are also allegedly card sharing. Hopefully, this is enough for me to stop being a dumbass, and focus entirely on cash games next month.

Overall, feeling good about my decision to put some time & effort into poker again.

Goals & Adjustments for next month
- Do not play a single MTT
- Only play one cash session per day (max, some days will not play)
- New volume goal is 10h per week. If I go over that, cool.

Yeah absolutely. Small companies can have problems too. But I work at a company with around 8,000 employees and we are experiencing growing pains. Very under staffed and often feel like meetings are very contentious. I kind of hate it at this point.

I think I am going to email my manager and explain how unhappy I am and the reasons why, and see what happens. I don’t really think things will change - but I will give it a chance. Most likely I will no longer be at this job in 6 months.

If you would be interested in chatting sometime, shoot a DM! Seems we have a lot in common and both trying to play Poker on the side with a job. Maybe we could share some ideas and help each other with the grind!