Hey all,
I just randomly saw that there was a marathon going on here for this month. I won't be able to participate in the promo because I am leaving on vacation in a couple of weeks but I still wanted to blog about my insane week marathon that I set myself! I decided to do it a week ago but today is my first day of the challenge.
For those who don't know me my SN is GodlikeRoy and i'm a part of Team PokerStars Online. I've randomly decided to have myself a little poker marathon next week. The details are simple: 100 hours of poker in 7 days. It's not totally insane and probably lots of people would have done this before. I'm not taking bets against me completing it or anything like that - it's just a little experiment/challenge. I think it will be particularly cool because i'm going to attempt to live as healthy and balanced a life as possible while still putting in this much volume, and i'll be updating my progress as I go along.
Why am I doing this?
- To improve my game. Over the years i've noticed that I play my best poker when i'm playing the most poker.
- To motivate my future self. Sometimes I slack off with poker and sometimes I find it really hard to play more than a couple of hours a day. If I can manage ~15hrs/day while still maintaining a good quality of health & lifestyle then 8hrs a day should be a walk in the park and my future self has no excuse for being a bum. Neither do you, for that matter.
- For money, VPPs, fame and glory. It stands to reason that if i'm playing a lot, and playing my best, then i'll reap some pretty nifty rewards. I don't necessarily need the extreme boost to VPPs (I am comfortably ahead of SNE pace) but it'll be nice.
- For fun. Yes, this one is weird, but I am weird that way. I really think it'll be fun to track my progress and post about it each day. It's been a long time since I did any sort of regular poker-updating and I miss it.
Thing I want to do throughout the week
- Get a minimum of 6 hours sleep a night, but no more than 8 hours.
- Carry out my normal morning ritual every day.
- Refrain from overeating. One of the most common reasons I get the "ugh I don't wanna grind" feeling is after eating too much.
- Keep my back healthy. I'll be switching between my standing desk setup and my regular one to ensure I don't put too much strain on any part of my body.
- Stay active. Besides the daily stretching from my morning ritual and the standing up while at my desk I want to add additional exercise.
- Blog once at the end of each day about how things went. I doubt the posts will be large but a simple graph + thoughts on the day will suffice.
- Strive to play my A-game as often as possible. I'm already eliminating one of my greatest grinding distraction vices this month by quitting Reddit, so that's sure to help keep my focus levels high.
- Do a quick warm-up and cool-down each day before/after I play - another thing that will help me play my A game and make it easier to get into and out of the poker mindset each day.
- Play at least 50,000 hands. That's only 500 an hour and should be relatively easy - my only concern is that during the day time there are very few tables running of 2/4+ sometimes, so my sleep schedule might need to be slightly adjusted. This is mostly in there so I don't feel like I can get away with 1-tabling for half the time.
- Maintain a winrate of at least 5bb/100. If that's impossible due to variance, i'd like an evbb/100 winrate of 5. If that's impossible due to variance, i'd like at the very least to be able to say that I played great poker and be confident about it.
What preparations will I make for the week?
- Get all my meals ready beforehand. Breakfast will be muesli, lunch will be a sandwich or a salad and dinner will be some sort of take out: thai, sushi, charcoal chicken & salad, etc.
- Keep snacks and tea/coffee on hand so as to not need go hungry / want to take breaks. I do this anyway with a kettle and nespresso machine in my office + containers of nuts and a fruit bowl nearby.
- Minimize distractions. I've cleared out my calendar and have almost nothing scheduled for the whole week. Aside from one physiotherapy appointment I can wholly focus on the challenge. My only other distractions will be unexpected.
- Set goals - see above.
- Set aside motivational aids. I won't have time to feel sorry for myself if I run bad or to take a day off trying to get myself back into the mood to play. Motivational aids are a great way to push you back towards the right mindset when something kicks you out of it - things like videos, graphs, quotes, stories by successful people. I have my own little stockpile of these.
- Ensure that I start off on the right foot. Sleep well the night before and be fully rested and ready to go.
Lastly, obligatory graph (ytd):
:f_biggrin: 
