Poker Lifestyle

I’m still stuck on grinding out these 10 buy-ins at 1/2. I think I’m playing well though and that the games are very soft that I’m playing in. Today I deposited some money on Unibet (Prima) to try out the software. I’m sure a lot of you have heard about the problem Prima Players had with one of the major money transactors in the microgaming network and I am still slightly weary of it, however Unibet is also a site for sports gambling and I’ve found that those sites are usually much more reliable for the simple fact that they have more money coming in from different sources. I also know of a high stakes player who trusts this site with large sums of money, so I figure keeping a small roll on there is fine.

I put about 200€ on Unibet and burnt through it pretty quickly, running 230€ below expectation in all-ins. Most of the people I played against were from Scandinavia and they didn’t dissapoint by trying to make moves at me where- and whenever they could. Note: The currency is € not $.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3124834

I don’t like villains play here. I had been playing pretty tight and he isn’t repping much but a float. I manage to get it in with 86.4% equity on the turn, but can’t hold up.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3124837

Pretty standard blind on blind battle. I try to rep a light 4-bet preflop and I think for a second he thought I had AA, but he can’t fold here esp. given my stack size.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3124842

I thought this hand was interesting. By folding, I am basically putting him on 4 aces. I was fairly new to this table at this point and I wasn’t sure about villains playing capabilities and whether or not he was a reg. He types “chop” in chat and proceeds to shove. Which means he is telling me he has a T and he thinks I have a T. That play however is contradictory for a good player as he never get’s value from worse by shoving with a T, thus making a shove minus ev, because of the added rake and the times I have him beat. I think a fold here is best without any further knowledge of how villain plays.

I think I’m gonna grab some lunch and try and put in some more hands later, I’ll try and post some more hands if I come up with anything interesting. I don’t think I quite managed to hit the 40k hand mark this month, I’m around 35k I think. I’m however not displeased with the result. I think I showed a good work ethic by trying to play regularly and I also now know what it takes for me to put in a ton of hands. In the future I’ll try to put in 800-1.2k hands a day and also have a better play/study ratio.

I’ve basically just finished reading my book “THE 4-HOUR WORK WEEK” by Timothy Ferriss and I must say, it didn’t dissapoint. I thought I’d share a quote from towards the end of the book that I found quite inspiring:

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything-all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remebering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – Steve Jobs, college dropout and CEO of Apple Computer, Stanford University Commencement, 2005

I’m sure we are all put in spots where we would desire to do something, but for some reason don’t do it. We delay by making excuses for why we are not doing what we want to do. I think life is too short to live this way and get the maximum out of it.

I’m gonna start with Theory of Poker tomorrow (or I should say continue with it). I think I’m gonna set myself a time deadline till when I’ll have it finished. I’m thinking along the lines of 5 days. I often find it difficult to sit down and read “dry” theory books. Not that I don’t want to read the book or find it boring, it’s just not captivating if that makes sense, therefore the deadline.

I kinda toy around with different windows styles and backgrounds a lot, I’ve allways been like that. Right now I have reverted to the classic windows style with the blue background with no items on my desktop, besides things that need taking care of. There is something calming to it that I like, let’s see how long it’ll last till I get bored of it.

Tomorrow IKEA men are coming to deliver my new cupboard. I have a serious space problem in my place and I’m on the way to combating it. I’m probably gonna start rumiging through my stuff in my cellar and see how much of it I can sell on ebay. I’ll also give away some of the clothes I never wear to charity and rearange things a bit.

I should try and get some sleep, I really dislike late sleeping rhythms, but once your in them, they are so hard to get out of. Also going to bed early often puts you in a social dilemma. Good night.

I just completed a unit of training using my currently self-compiled training plan. It consists of a lot of excercises that use body-weight and some jogging/swimming. I also got myself a training watch a couple of weeks ago and tested it for the first time today. It’s a PC 15 from SIGMA GERMANY and I got it off of Amazon for roughly 40 Euros. It measures heart rate and shows in which zones you are currently running. After you complete your training unit it shows you various statistics.

Usually you have to spend about 100-200 Euros to get a good watch that can do this, but I was reading over an article in Men’s Health where I came across this bargain. I should get back to working a bit with weights when a good friend of mine comes back from vacationing. He’s pretty good at this stuff and has already read various material on this matter.

I’m thinking of getting into some sports aswell for the new semester. I tried to get back into football and contacted my former coach, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I might just do some research and try out some martial arts. I used to do some Karate when I was 8, but haven’t done anything since. A lot of the cool things I’d consider doing are not available in Innsbruck. For example Jiu-Jitsu and Wudan, but I know they offer some Krav-Megah and Taekwando, I might try one of those.

I’ve set myself a goal to play as many hands as it takes at 1/2 and make 10 buy-ins there. This is partly due to a suggestion Dodgyken made and I must say it is very relaxing playing 1/2, especially with the games being so soft. Today I realized that I play very high variance in some spots. I make some very thin bluffs that rate to be +ev, but often make my variance explode. These plays are sometimes so thin that they could be neutral ev, but create an image and thus are worth it agains the right opponents in the right situations, but not against every opponent in every situation. I need to discipline myself more in these spots. I also kinda miss playing without a time bank. I think this definetly affects my game, but I think the games I am in are soft enough to where this compensates for it.

I think I’m gonna hit the shower now and then throw a steak on the grill and hopefully get some night life action going later on.

I just came back from a weeknd at my friend RAISEMENIT’s appartment in Italy. They had this new club opening called redclubbing and I decided to take a train down to Desenzano del Garda to check it out. It turned out to be a pretty reasonable club. When we first arrived there were hardly any people there though and the sound was incredibly quiet for a club. This was at midnight, but then we spoke to a waitress and she explained to us that the party was gonna start at approximetly 1 am and from about then on they amped up the sound and the dance floor started filling.

This mini-vacation was fun and I would have liked to stay longer had it not been for my goal to play 40k hands this month. I’m happy though with my choice and it won’t be long till I’m back in Italy where I’ll go on a sailing trip to some Italian and French islands. I got to meet some of the people I was travelling with and it sounds like we’ll have a pretty fun time.

I also had a lot of time to think about poker and I realized something about being a professional poker player. I think this will be true for most people. I think that real security comes from not having a big bankroll, say between 80-100 buy-ins, but from having sufficient savings in the bank. I believe that there is some merit to having a large bankroll, but it’s just generally impractical. Having a 100 bi bankroll online is just giving free interest to poker sites, because you’ll never burn through that much money at a given limit to justify having it all available at once. Further having part of your bankroll offline doesn’t work all too great, atleast for me. So I’ve decided to decrease my br requirements slightly and shift the excess money into my savings account. This keeps the line between my private bankroll and poker bankroll clearer (this is important imo).

I’ve been reading this new book called the 4-hour work week, which was recommended to me by a friend. It’s about this guy who writes about working efficently and less and by doing so creating an exciting and adventurous life style whilst making more money.  He also writes about a lot of entrepreneural stuff that I am very interested in. I can definetly re-recommend this book to people interested in such material.

I’m gonna try and grab some food and then go to a doctor appointment I have in the early evening. I’m thinking fish, we’ll see…

Right now, I’m about half way through my 40k hand month. I have been trying to play using a rough time schedule and it’s been tough at times, but I am not far off from it right now. Frankly the only reason I am off, is because I use time that I should otherwise be sleeping or playing to do stuff with friends, which I don’t regret, but messes with the schedule. Something I have also noticed is that most people don’t take me seriuosly, when I tell them that I should be playing poker. I allways get a laugh or a statement like “your just playing poker” or “you can play another time”. I’ve even noticed that other poker players I know locally don’t allways take me seriously.

Results wise things haven’t been going to great over the last 2 months. I had my first losing month in July, which was definetly a new experience, but one I was also prepared for. Thus I am also glad that it came at the time it did and not earlier, when I was just starting out. I really think that I’m playing 98% of the spots well and keeping the mistakes I make small. I’m constantly making an effort to work and refine my game, but not making any drastic changes as long as my results aren’t good. I think this is crucial to managing long break even stretches and/or downswings.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with my Wii lately, I recently picked up Super Smash Brawl, it’s a really fun game to play with friends and I am really suprised at how much effort it seems as though they put into the game. There are so many different playing modes and a fun thing they added are some mini games from Game Boy and Super Nintendo, it kinda brings back the days when I was young and used to play them. It’s kinda funny, but I’ve allways been the Nintendo kid it seems, even though I never really actively wanted a Nintendo. When I was 8 an uncle of mine asked me what I would like for christmas and I asked for the very first Nintendo.

Then I somehow ended up with a Gameboy, SNES, N64, Gameboy Colour, Nintendo DS and ultimately the Wii. I’ve never had any gaming platform, besides the PC, that wasn’t from Nintendo.

I think I’m gonna take the remaining amount of my Sunday pretty easy. I might try and play a small session, because the games are good on Sunday, but Sunday is definetly not one of my grinding days. Later on I’ll have a friend over and we are both going to try and complete the Super Smash Brawl adventure mode.

Sup guys! Welcome to my new blog. I hope I can get back to start blogging regularly. As you can see I changed the name of my blog to Poker Lifestyle. I was thinking that with a new blog I should also choose a new title for my blog and a new design. I still want this blog to be mainly a poker blog, but I also enjoy sharing my thoughts and experiences on lifestyle with you, thus the title.

Right now I’m in the middle of getting a better rhythm for playing poker. I’m trying to put in 40k hands this month, which will be the most I have ever played. It’s actually a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I think this is mainly because I’m on summer holidays and I always have friends wanting to do things with me, which hurts my schedule. Even if I just do things in the evening time, it’s often not possible for myself to get up early the following day so I can keep to my schedule.

I am also working on some psychological aspects. I remember reading a blog post from Raptor where he was saying that poker is bad for your health due to the immense stress. Even though I think that a lot of people have the stress reasonably under control, next to nobody is unaffected by what happens. The excercise I have been using to work on this, is trying not to be to excited about winning large pots and/or large sums of money. I’m not saying that I’m trying not to have fun whilst winning, I am trying not to be affected by variance emotionally and ultimately draw enjoyment from making good plays and not from making a lot of money, if you know what I mean.

Food, I really like food, but who doesn’t amirite? My goal from now on is to start cooking way more and avoid ready made meals. I feel kinda lucky, because I enjoy eating healthy food and being experimental with it. Today I cooked for a friend and myself with some cooking books that my mother gave me recently when I visited her in England. It’s time consuming and not a whole lot cheaper than eating out, but I think I’ll thank myself long term. If anybody has any cool recipies, please feel free to share them with me.

Right now I think I should try and get some sleep. I could’ve gone clubbing today, but I really appreciate the early sleep, plus I am invited to a friends house party tomorrow. I think I’ll get some tea and watch another episode of “Weeds” then try and get some sleep. I only recently just started “Weeds”, mainly because all my fav shows are on hold, but I also have been enjoying it so far. I think it’s worth checking out to see if one likes it.