Enjoying life @ midstakes (opal's BLOG)

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Welcome back to EN opal99!

Originally posted by opal99
A Brief Intro
I left EN community ~2 years ago when cs.pokerstrategy.com was opened [...]

C'mon, it couldn't be more obvious really. You left PS_en when TwiceT began to be less active here. Now that the head of the monkey crew is back, you obviously are as well.

Let's stick to the facts please.

Welcome back home my friend, will follow

Actually, I think I left first and you followed me but then realized you can't speak czech and was too ashamed to return here any sooner than these days...

Thanks for warm welcome everyone!

Hey welcome back

Hey dude,
Havent heard from u much lately. So i hope it could be good place to find about latest changes in your life/poker life.
hf

I coudn't play on FTP for about a month since their change in the hhs' format (HM2 alpha & beta updates didn't work for me), but I'm back there again.. leaking money again to be exact... Maybe it's the difference in overall dynamic between PP and FTP, maybe it's me not fully realizing the fact I'm unknown to the rest of the field, maybe it's the layout I use when playing on 2 rooms at the same time, maybe it's worse tableselection or maybe, just maybe, it's just bad play + variance.

I haven't played there any significant samplesize yet (few k's hands at the most), so can't judge anything about the site (or playerpool) other than it's a real pleasure to loose money there. Especially compared to shitty, lagging and constantly crushing PartyPoker. It's too sad there's abs no traffic on midstakes in the morning and very few tables can be found also during my primetime (i put the most volume 9am-6pm and very rarely play after 9pm).

I forgot to mention my plans/goals/targets for this month, so here they are:

• increase the ratio between NL400+600 and NL200 to 2:3 (it was 1:2 in May)
• maintain Diamond status on FTP (it depended solely on when new HM2 is released)
• 45k+ hands

I'm way behind the overall volume target for many reasons, but it's not a big deal as there're still 21 days to catch up (i'm flying to Prague on 28th); need to rake just $60/day to maintain FTP status (might be tricky because of traffic issues though) and 45% of the hands were played on midstakes so far. All in all, next 3 weeks are well defined.

Finally, a book recommendation.

I was watching one of the Schnitzelfish's recent vids, constantly thinking about dozen things I should do that day or asap at least when he recommended 2 productivity books: Eat that frog! & Getting things done. I read the first one some time ago and although it was helpful at that time, it wasn't solution for my specific problem in this area: I wasn't able to clear my head and be happy with everything I'd done as well as with everything I had not done yet. Even though I was doing things from my to-do lists as required, I was constantly thinking about all the others and never really reached that point where I would feel I've done all that should be done and the rest is irrelevant. Of course, I didn't know what's wrong back then, but seeing it in current light, it's incredibly obvious to me finally.^^ It's quite hard to explain it any better though...

I had no real info about the other book, so just gave it try to see if there's anything I could benefit from a bit. Oh and there was! The system decribed there isn't anything mindblowing, but it works like charm once you get really into it. Few hours of initial sorting and then a bit of practice are required, because you have to absolutely trust it to be able to really clear your head, but once you get over that period, you just know it was worth every minute.

The only downside are all those boring "empty" pages you have to get through, because all the helpful stuff could be fit into 40-50 pages instead of 250 imo. Nothing is perfect.

Oh hai, long time no see! I found the GTD system quite interesting, thing I liked best was the idea you could have a "40,000 foot discussion" ♦

Will Follow. Would be interesting to see a graph or two...

lol; nice resurrection of this 1&done kind of blog ! ♦

I don't have more than a minute now, so consider this graph to be a first step towards more serious approach to blogging in this community in a near future:

^nl200+; mostly 200 though

hey opal! cool that you're doing well in poker after so many years.
how come you play on party despite the player segregation scandal?

Well; what can I say?

I spent significant part of last year by grinding there and saving points, so had few the day they removed Palladium ellite status. I had to buy all I could and commit myself for another few months. The masterplan was to clear everything + earn some more points, change them all for $15k in cash and insta-leave with 0 points.

Not much later, segregation was "introduced" alongside with removing instacash options from shop. Great! I was forced to prepare new leaving strategy when they suddenly changed all bonuses to much worse effectiveRB values. Due to a mistake on their side, I had been able to buy few $3k bonuses just few minutes before they disapeared forever.

So here I am now: still looking at $14k locked in bought bonuses with brand new leaving strategy which includes another $4k in bonuses that I'm about to buy soon. All in all, I'll leave WPT after I rake another $12.5k there - not very soon obv.^^

They funny fact is, I probably won't completely leave that scummy site ever. There's also my PP account with not negligible amount of points to which I may return in future.