Poker, fitness, university and investing - A student’s blog

April Goals

Poker
- Play 400 games

Fitness
- Bench press 8 x 100kg
- Break PR of bench pressing 1 x 120kg
- Start squatting again!
- Improve deadlift form.

Investing
- Set aside 500 euro’s on my investor account.

University
- Don’t miss any classes
- Prepare stuff for every group meeting

Hey vetani,

Welcome back to the blogs.

Nice first post. Now we just need to get you winning regularly so you can pump more money into long term investing and secure your future.

And I always like someone with a plan. Plan = Serious.

Happy Grinding

Laz

Originally posted by Lazza61
Hey vetani,

Welcome back to the blogs.

Nice first post. Now we just need to get you winning regularly so you can pump more money into long term investing and secure your future.

And I always like someone with a plan. Plan = Serious.

Happy Grinding

Laz

Thanks!

Went for a 5 km run today, and trained my back at the gym. Did a deadlift form check with the trainer, which has helped a lot. Also picked up a textbook I'll be needing for my next class.

No poker yet, but I'm gonna load up some tables in a couple of hours. I six-table btw. Optimal amount for now. I see grinding as some sort of muscle, which can become stronger with the right training. Playing six tables, I'm just pushing myself enough to be 100% focused. As soon as I notice that playing six tables will not take all my focus, I'll add another table.

Slow and steady wins the race?

Graphs from my rise through the 1.50s:

And my 3.50 lifetime graph:

Hi mate...I am also student who works full time and plays poker so making schedule is one of the key things to be good in everything you do.
Will be following
Cheers

Originally posted by goldenbode
Hi mate...I am also student who works full time and plays poker so making schedule is one of the key things to be good in everything you do.
Will be following
Cheers

Thanks buddy! These last few months have really helped me improve in planning my day/activities. Regular 15h work days have left me with little spare time, so utilising those free hours to the max has really been something I've been paying attention to. I pretty much stopped watching tv series, in favor of sleep and exercise. Shows are such a waste realy, too bad they're so fun to watch :/

I actually can't wait to start following classes again, as it makes it so much easier to stick to a regular schedule. First class starts april 28th, so untill then I'll have to manage my own time, gogogogo

Played a sick total of 9 games yesterday, and it went as bad as expected. When did I start sucking so much? Let's look at the possible reasons I played bad:

1. Pokerstars is rigged.
2. My computer is hacked and every villain could see my holecards.
3. The general player pool got better since I last played.
4. I got worse since I last played.

Yeah, 1 and 2 are obviously not the reason. That leaves 3 and 4.

3. The general player pool got better since I last played.
This seems only logical. While I was busy not playing, other regulars were improving their game and learning more about their opponents. This means, regardless of whether I got any worse, I'm behind the curve as of now.

4. I got worse since I last played.
To relate this to muscle strength, after just 2 weeks of no training you'll see a significant loss of muscle. Not having played for months, it's fairly logical that my game has declined significantly.

So, time to up up up studying again I guess. Re-learning my opening ranges seems like a solid starting point. Once I've refreshed my standard ranges, I can easily adjust them in-game based on gameflow. So that's the goal for the weekend. I have to work tonight and tommorow, but I'm free saturday and sunday.

Oh on a sidenote, I've stopped drinking alcohol for the whole of April. Not that impressive considering I only drink about once a week, but still. Gotta be fresh to excel!

Things aren´t going that well so far. To help me improve, I´ve sent 10 complete hand histories to a coach, who will review them within 48h. Untill then, I´ll be dropping down to 4 tables at the 1.50 buy in level.

While I firmly believe that playing more will help improve my game, I know that right now I´m just burning money at the 3.50s, which is rather pathetic. So time to suck it up and drop in stakes, even though I'm still comfortably rolled for the 3.50s.

I've also joined a SnG skype group with active and experienced members, who are sure to help me improve, given I put in the required work.

So far this month:

Horrible isn't it? I've been writing down notes while playing, about stuff I'm doing that shouldn't happen. I hope to combine these notes with the notes from the coach, and work on them with help from the Skype group.

Despite playing bad, I feel like I'm starting to enjoy poker more and more. I find myself thinking about it randomly during the day, which hasn't happened in quite a while. Mindset is improving, that's a start.

Had 1.5h of coaching today with someone from the new Skype group. We went over a couple of situations from my hand histories.

Key concepts for me:
- Pre flop bet sizing
- Continuation betting

We'll be focussing on these for the next session as well. The coaching itself felt really good, I made a lot of notes which I'll be reviewing tonight. I dropped my table count to four, I've decided to stay on the 3.50s though.

Also looking forward to receiving my reviewed hand histories from the other coach.

Volume today was really good for me. I'm re-adjusting my goal of 400 SnG's this month to playing 230 more this month. This will get me Silverstar VIP status. With 16 days to go, this gives me a daily goal of 15 games, which is obviously do-able.

Hi vetani,

Nice blog and nice goals,

Go get that silverstar

Keep it up and keep us updated

Best of luck,
Fran

While I have been busy with poker, I virtually haven't played any games since last update. Work yesterday got in the way, and today I've had 2 seperate coachings for a total of 3h, plus 1.5h of watching a session from someone else whilst talking about it on Skype.

Studying is an important part of improving as a player, but I shouldn't forget to actually play haha. Therefore, tommorow is reserved as a playing day. 40 games is my target, as that would put me on track for Silverstar again.

The coachings have been very helpfull though, and I don't regret doing them.

Real life update: I applied for a room today. I'll find out whether I'm accepted this Friday. If I get acccepted, I'll be moving out May 1th. Really excited, as this would give me so much more time to play during my own hours. If I get the green light I'll post some pictures of my new room

Congratulations! You are now a SilverStar VIP until at least the end of next month. Earn the VPP requirement again next month to keep your status for longer.

So that went quicker than expected. I´ve been playing quite a lot the last couple of days. It´s getting so much easier to just grind away, I love it. Even though my results haven´t been as great as I´d like, I´m happy with the volume I´m putting in.

The sessions with my Skype group have also been a huge help, my game is improving nicely. Just finished a block for the high orbit, score will put me ~30th place atm, and I'm pretty sure I'll be top 100 come end of the week.

Month so far:

More news:

- I got the room I applied for. I'm officialy moving out May 1th. Really excited, I already packed most of my stuff, bought a new bed and I just can't wait to move out ♦ I'll post pictures after I'm done painting and there's some furniture in there. The room even has a nice little balcony to relax on!

- I benched 7x 100 kg. So close. Haven't gotten passed 1 x 120kg though.

- I've deadlifted with supervision of a personal trainer the last couple of times. Form has definitely improved.

- I'm thinking of going for Goldstar next month. ~1500 games at the 3.5s, 50/day on avg. Seems do-able. If the BR allows it, I hope to take some shots at the 7s next month as well.

Update! Finally...

Overall:

Life has been awesome. Moving out of my parent's house was the best decision ever haha. Got a new job over the summer at a local bar, met a ton of new people, went to festivals, partys, bbq's, you name it. Living the dream.

Financially I've been managing just fine. The second job has really helped in that aspect. The mostly free drinks at the bar have been of some help as well haha

Fitness wise, this summer has been okay. Not really lost the bodyfat I was planning on, but all my lifts did get stronger so the surplus calories haven't been for nothing I guess. Max 1RM benchpress is ~130kg atm, Max 1RM squat between 130kg and 140kg.

As far as the investing part of this blog, my investing account currently holds around 7000 euro's, but it's pretty boring - I just put money in the same funds when I invest. Boglehead style. It might get interesting in 30 years or so haha

University started last week, I have a pretty light courseload at the moment so plenty of time to do other stuff. Which brings us to... poker!

My laptop pretty much died after settling in to my new room, making me unable to play. Starting Pokerstars and PT4 made it overheat and such, and that combined with the awesomeness of living on your own made me lazy. Rarely played at all. And then came along my birthday!

I bought a new computer as my parents insisted on getting me something I could actually use. They offered to pay half, and I snap-accepted. I actually had the build for the new desktop ready for quite some time, a fellow poker player put it together for me actually. Made some minor changes to the design, and I'm loving it. Amazing to be working on a computer that doesn't take 5 minutes for pretty much everything. I also bought 2 extra screens because I'm a screen addict and I want to be surrounded by monitors as much as possible. Okay it's not that bad, but I still like to have a lot of screen real estate.

New grinding station:

So with this new beauty I've been loading up tables again. Kinda took a different approach this time. I've always had trouble with volume/longer sessions. Anytime I'd try to play for a longer time I'd get distracted and play my C game, which means being a huge fish.

This time I approached it with a fitness like attitude, increasing sessions with 10 minutes or 1 table at a time. I've been doing this for 2 weeks now, and I'm amazed to find myself 12 tabling comfortably for over 2 hours of regging. My max so far has been 16 tabling for 80 minutes and 14 tabling for 3 hours.

The below graph is a combination of roughly 170 1.5s, the rest being 3.5s. 95% of these games are played since August.

Games since last update:

I'm going to update this on a regular basis again. Might not be as detailed as this post, but posting keeps me accountable and I need to play and improve. Oh I also have a Pokerclerk subscription now, I really like Glitlr's way of teaching and the information on that site is aiding me tremendously.

Goodnight!

Hello everyone, was interesting to read your article. Usually i'm reading New York Times, but now i will read you too!

Hi Vetani,

Nice blog and I look forward to reading future posts.
Subbed!