Yes that is exactly 1 of the 2 main problems. Reverse hand reading + Projection Bias.
Excellent video explaining reverse hand reading. Dwan's thinking process is spot on in that spot and he plays it like 1010 or A2. I think Eastgate should consider calling as he is on top of his bluff catching range + Dwan is super aggro maniac player. What made them fold is the size of pot and eventual river AI bet that they would face. Think Barry and Peter played money scared in that hand to be honest. Barry had a feeling he was ahead (was timing more than Peter) but still decided to fold. Dwan can own them post flop any day of the weak if they fold top of the bluff catchers on dry boards with reverse hand reading. I am sure Ivey or Antonius would be calling him down with AA or 2x any day of the weak (stronger 10x also and of course JJ+, with sick dynamic wider PPs depending on river run out). Just think those two guys understand Dwan's style of play and what he would try to pull therefore are willing to bluff catch him wider and are less money scared (they play huge pots always vs each other and are used to massive swings - this is just another standard hand to them!).
Update for 16th of February
Ate healthy and drank tons of water
Worked on the game 15 minutes with fellow reg (just reviewed couple hands)
Went back to Nis (3 hours 15 minutes travel)
Had lovely lunch with my family and best friend
Grinded online CG 3.5 hours total (2.5 + 1)
Went to Guitar Duo Jazz Gig where I also performed as guest star 3 tunes
Very productive day again
Poker wise it was one of the worst days. Pre flop AIs loosing to 2 outers or some 3 outers (KK vs AK etc). Post flop none of the bluff catchers worked + regs had some retarded hands in 3 bet pots so they managed to level my and take away buy ins (example SB 3 betting KQs vs HJ instead of flatting, donk opening and then defending to 3 bet HJ vs SB J8s etc). Just weird and sick day overall for poker. I am glad that I managed to put 3.5 hours of grind despite of all the other activities that went on.
Today (after breakfast) I will go through all lost hands, analyze them and brake them down. After I finish it will go for some coffee with best friend (if there is time as I have coaching 1-2pm) and then plan to play 5 hours minimum rest of the day + study another 1 hour minimum.
Jazz gig went great! My friend and guitar student invited me to attend. There was this young 23 year old guy from Banja Luka who arrived in Nis for gig and to hang around. He is super talented and can really go long way if he continues to work hard. I like that he is fanatic, his line playing is really good but like most guys he approaches improvising as some sort of show off or competition. As he matures he will start creating space/rests in his solos and his ideas and motives will come through more. Until that happens he will sound like some Jazz both who is playing Pat Martino lines 
Had a lovely evening hanging out with them and with another guitarist (Dusan) from my town. Played with young guy 3 standards that we absolutely crushed. They were of course unrehearsed but we played tons of outside and managed to bring it back with some brutal harmonic exchanges. Tunes that we played were very well known, MR PC (among my favorites) Impressions (again among favorites) and Billie's Bounce (blues in F).
Very happy that I attended and also performed. Was in the zone while playing, call it absolute A game if you will and that feeling nothing in poker can make up. Well maybe bluff catching somebody in 3-4-5 bet pot for stacks when you guess exact hand or combo could relate to it I guess
In future we arranged to organize 1 gig here in Nis with Guitar Trio or Duo + to do some gigging in Belgrade also (young guy studies in Belgrade now on Faculty of Music Arts (FMU in Serbian). So look forward to all those activities, should be tons of fun.
Finally when I got home I was so tired from everything (trip, grinding) that I just crashed in bed and slept like 7.5 hours (which is rare for me considering that I sleep 5-5.5 hours on average.
Very full filling day overall.
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
46.25/300 Study hours
28.5/300 Coaching sessions
169.5/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (17th of February):
Eat healthy breakfast and drink tons of water
Work on the game 1 hour minimum (review lost hands especially on river)
Coach Kornel 1-2pm
Grind 5 hours in sets of 2, 1.5 1.5
Eat healthy lunch and dinner in between and after grind
In the evening install HM2 on both machines and run the hands from CG in it + install new HUD
Do minimum 1 more hour of studying by reviewing common leaks (projection bias and reverse hand reading)
If there is time, go for 1 more hour of grind or study new video + take notes
Update for 17th of February
Ate healthy and drank tons of water
Had coffee with my best friend + meet with 2 of my friends from Nis that were in Gevgelija 8 days with me
Studied 1.5 hours (HH review + watched video from Janda and took notes)
Grinded online CG 5 hours
Talked with my coach about possibility for coaching and staking deal
Installed HM2 and imported my whole CG database
Very productive day overall.
Considering that meeting with friends took 1 hour + coffee with best friend another 1.5 from which I grinded 1 hour + writing down all the things as deal recommendation for CG (2 hours easily) + all the meals and brakes , 5 hours + 1.5 hour studying was top notch today.
It was another brutal day at tables, about 14 buy ins loss pre rb. There were tons of setups but also bad plays on my end. It has gotten to the point that I am feeling huge mental pressure and therefore have made the decision to go for long term deal in CG.
I don't see myself honestly going back to SNGs after 2.5 months of studying CG and everything great I have learned from it. I know that there is so much more to learn and go and I simply won't give up!!! I know I will make it and by the end of this year I am going for 4bb/100 on NL100 ZOOM. This is just a number but what is most important to me is to understand all the spots in pre flop game plan, adjustments vs all different reg types, playing vs different types of ranges (GTO, Polarized, Condensed etc) and finally putting tons of hours into post flop studying.
If everything works out great and my coach accept the deal I sent him, this year will be brutal!
I will easily put 300 hours of studying on my own (starting from today!) + (around) 300 hours studying with fellow reg and another 100 hours of working with my coach. That is 700 hours total. If that is not enough to get me to NL100 ZOOM with 4bb/100 then I don't deserve to play ZOOM and I will bow my head down, accept the defeat and move back to SNGs to feel like a bully in playground without any motivation nor will to improve.
It is important to note that if my coach does accept the deal, I will go from one limit lower which is NL25. As I see lots of blogs on PS there seem to be lots of our members at those stakes. Look forward seeing some of you on and off the tables!
I have already mentioned parts of the deal that I sent over to my coach, hoping that he would accept it. Perhaps the most important part is the grind part. I have decided to grind around 80-90 hours per month (60k hands) max but to have additional 1-2 hours per day to study and fix all my leaks. I feel this is crucial at this stage I am in as there is still spots that are unclear to me range brake down wise + frequencies. You can just imagine that playing with current knowledge on NL100 would be BE at best and most likely loosing tons of money on Stars (rest of the sites are way softer of course).
What this deal should allow me is to fully focus on CG in 2015. Also the money that I have aside now will be used for life BR and to cover life expenses for me and my family. In the meanwhile my brother will even more times to get to crush 7s on Stars and I can without any stress just focus on studying very hard and grinding with maximum focus. It should be way more +EV then the current situation.
I feel my coach will get a lot of this deal also (expect to make him minimum 5k in 10 months, realistically 10+) but I will also get right coaching and approaches/tools how to beat NL100 ZOOM in today's games which are getting harder every year.
4bb/100 + RB brings around 42$+/hour (700 hands per hour, 28$ pre rb and rb minimum 14$ with SN100k) . Once I reach this, I can easily get 60k+ next year with same level of knowledge, without counting that I will continue to study, going for higher win rate, mixing NL200 ZOOM and even considering grinding other networks with higher RB and weaker player pool. Suddenly 60k+ per year in 2016 should be very realistic and should give me way more freedom + get me closer to my 100k per year goal.
Of course, entering coaching and staking could greatly affect profit expectations for this year. Instead of making 40k I might end up making way less but I am not worried about it at all because I talked it over and decided to go for it. It is something that will make me super happy, motivated, excited and thrilled to wake up every day and want to push myself more in poker. Many times I mentioned that money part is and should not be the priority in any poker players career. You have to have that love, drive, grit, dedication to the game and improving otherwise poker starts to loose its magic and becomes like some boring job. So yes, I am sacrificing my own hourly for future bigger hourly later. Who knows, that future might be in couple of months and not end of the year like I planned, I know I will really go 200% each day to CG to reach that goal sooner!
Keep following and expect update as soon as I find out about the deal. I am really excited about it and feel that to become the best I have to put difficult challenges ahead and push myself beyond my limits. This is the true way to improve, move your boarders and become master in your field.
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
47.75/300 Study hours
28.5/300 Coaching sessions
174.5/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (18th of February)
Wake up, eat healthy and drink tons of water
Work on the game 1 hour (start watching videos and doing homeworks in HM2)
Coach 11-12
Grind 5 hours minimum
In between sessions eat lunch and dinner
In the evening work additional 1 hour with reg (if he is available , if not continue with homeworks in HM2)
Originally posted by beertie1
Great thread.
Will be following this from now on.
Welcome beertie1,
Appreciate it man. Are you a CG player also?
Mostly SNG, but played cash for the first time recently because of less time. (moving to my own place)
MTT from time to time just for the fun of raising someone 100k or so. 
Also think that you pick up some skills playing more formats.
Originally posted by beertie1
Mostly SNG, but played cash for the first time recently because of less time. (moving to my own place)
MTT from time to time just for the fun of raising someone 100k or so.
Also think that you pick up some skills playing more formats.
Solid stuff man and couldn't agree with you more on picking up skills by playing more formats!
Update for 18th of February
Ate healthy and drank tons of water
Coached 3 hours
Worked on the game with fellow reg 1.5 hour + 1.5 hour on my own total 3 hours
Grinded online CG 3 hours
Talked with my students over Skype and arranged sessions
Super productive day, couldn't have asked for more really.
Coached Kornel + my brother total of 3 hours today. It was very beneficial and I am sure they will both take maximum from it.
Worked with fellow reg 1.5 hours. 1 hour we did database analysis where we found my main + other leaks. Main leak being light river calling due to projection bias and reverse hand reading tripping of course (expecting they would bluff me with higher frequency then they usually do of course). It was very useful and eye opening for me as we discovered some other leaks as well so I have TONS OF WORK ahead of me! Remaining 0.5 hour was used for live sweat on NL25 (dropped down limit, preparing/waiting to hear from coach about deal offer).
I just finished studying 1.5 hour. Watching video, taking all the notes + doing the assignment from the video. Again great stuff as it helped me understand where I can improve and what to do to get there.
Grind wise I did 3 sessions of 1 hour each with brakes in between. This felt like most +EV thing as my focus was solid and during and between sessions I always taught about biggest leaks in my games. Today I also had 2-3-4 lighter bluff catches but I think that 2 out of 4 of them were actually super strong and rarely folds so I am OK with those but could have folded twice that's for sure. Ended in profit for the day. NL25 seems way easier than NL50 BTW, I might be tripping but I see far more straight up post flop play from opponents + super exploitable tendencies. I feel that this limit will serve me great to get my river call down tendencies together and fix my other leaks. In the meanwhile print some money on this limit and then return even stronger on NL50.
So brutal day overall. 9 hours of poker related activities divided in 3 areas by 3 hours each (coaching, studying and grinding).
If I could do every day like this I am sure brutal things would happen!
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
50.75/300 Study hours
31.5/300 Coaching sessions
177.5/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (19th of February):
Wake up, eat healthy breakfast and drink tons of water
Session with Jernej 10-11
Session with friend and fellow reg 1 hour minimum (11-12 or 11:30-12:30)
Coffee with best friend with 0.5 or 1 hour grinding ZOOM
Lunch brake
Another 1 hour grind session
Coaching my brother 1 hour
Dinner brake
Grinding 1 more hour
Studying minimum 1 more hour, go for 2 more by watching another video + doing assignments (1 hour ) and HH review 1 more hour
Update for 19th of February
Didn't eat so healthy (nutella and pizza - cheat day!!!) + drank tons of water
Had coffee with my best friend
Coached 3.5 hours (2 sessions + video recorded with live play on 3.5 and 7s)
Grinded online CG 3 hours (3x1)
Studied 3 hours
Another very productive day.
Coached Jernej and my brother. Pre and Post flop game plan with Jernej and with my brother live sweat session. Think both of the sessions were very productive. They have tons of work ahead of them and I look forward to their improvement.
After seeing the same leaks and trouble spots + hearing how bad they are running, decided to record series of videos for my students that they can use as a guide to beat micro/low+ stakes.
1st step in that was done yesterday. Played live 4 tabling 3.5 and 7s explaining every single hand, putting opponents on range, discussing troubling areas where they and all the other regs make mistakes. Video was 1 hours 20 minutes long and judging from feedback it was excellent.
I have also uploaded 4 videos for pre and post flop game plan that I have worked with Jernej and Kornel on. Other guys in the program (5 more of them) can use those if they approach it right (rewatching, understanding concepts and why + how to approach things in different scenarios + take notes and study it daily).
I also plan to upload to them some CG concepts like for post flop range construction, as this will help them brutally own any reg in HU as well as in any HU pot really.
Also I plan to record minimum 3 more live play videos where 1 or 2 of them will be 4 to 6 tabling and remaining 2 will be 8+ and 12+ tabling. I want my students to see and learn how their focus and auto pilot needs to be as strong on tons of tables as when playing lesser tables. I will be discussing spots while mass multi tabling in that final video so personally I look forward to that one (hopefully with super little time outs 12+ tabling).
Overall this series I am creating now should serve my current students (not sure if I will continue to coach in 2016!) to beat both micro and low stakes + get the thinking process to beat mid stakes as well. I will do my best to present best possible content but the rest of the work, really hard work has to come from them. After all, I can't clone myself to sit down study and grind daily fanatically - they either have it in them or have to develop the hunger to become best they can!
Working on the game was interesting. I could only do 0.5 hour with fellow reg because internet was breaking (problems past 3 days with connections especially upload!!!). So we talked about OOP play which was useful. Remaining 2.5 hours of studying I spent watching Janda 3 vids (quickie + 2 longer ones) and took all the notes for it. Today I plan to go back to 1 of the videos and finish analysis on 2 post flop scenarios.
This brings me to important purchase - Today I plan to buy FlopZilla and use it daily in my study. Plan to study random flops with range vs range, construct and balance my ranges and prepare myself for some future times ahead to move up to limits with higher hourly. I don't mind sharing here my plan with FlopZilla as in reality many players out there will never bother to do such thing because doing 1 hand correctly will take anywhere from 30 mins to 1 hour or so. Now you understand why I choose to share the plan - very few players will actually do it themselves while I am absolutely 100% positive that best NL200+ ZOOM players do this or did this on daily basis and have fantastic ranges IP and OOP and many different flop types (this is where I am heading and hoping to get to with tons of hard work).
News about CG coaching and staking deal.
There has been turn of events yesterday on coaches part. I will wait by 1st of March for things to resolve on his end, if they don't I will return to SNGs. In the meanwhile I will continue studying with fellow reg daily + grind earlier times during the day CG (1-2 hours) NL25 or so to continue developing in all the areas needed to move up to NL100 by the end of the year.
This return to SNGs from 1st of March might be good and bad news, depends how you look at it. Good news is that I will play format and limits that I comfortably beat + make steady money for 1-2-3 months (to increase life roll); bad news is that this sets me back with my CG improving and grinding (takes away time from working on the game and additional grinding).
Grinding went OK. I had some post flop spots that I will look into tonight (after I finish grinding) but overall feel that NL25 has less regs per table and it is more straight up vs NL50 (tendencies are very different - more aggression on NL50). I feel that I dropped my river light calls, hoping that now I am not getting to exploitable with river folds. Might post some hands here in future...
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
53.75/300 Study hours
35/300 Coaching sessions
180.5/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (20th of February)
Woke up ate and drank tons of water
Working on the game with fellow reg 1 hour completed
Updating blog now
About to meet with best friend for coffee and some ZOOM grind (0.5 to 1 hour)
Session with my brother (leak fixing hh review)
Eat healthy lunch
Grind additional 2 hours online CG
Eat healthy dinner
Meet with grinder friend for drinks to pass him on some $ from a common friend (Soprano's style!)
Study additional 2 hours (rewatch 1 Janda vid, analyze post flop ranges, get FlopZilla and start running my own hands/flops)
Update for 20th of February
Ate healthy and drank tons of water
Had coffee with my best friend
Meet with fellow grinder for coffee and money exchange
Worked on the game 2 hours
Coached 1.5 hours
Grinded online CG 1 hour
Grinded SNGs 4.7 hours (100 games)
Purchased FlopZilla
Tons of things went on today. Will try to do quick review as tomorrow is going to be even more intense.
Coached my brother 1.5 hour. 1 hour was HH review and leak finding, 0.5 hour was sweat session. There is a lot of things to go over and fix but I am confident that with daily coaching within 2 months he will get to the place where he needs to be.
Worked on the game 2 hours total. 1 hour was with fellow reg and 1 hour on my own. Again fantastic session with tons of useful approaches and range construction idea. 1 hour of working on my own was rewatching Janda video and talking additional notes on other examples. Super useful stuff!
Went for coffee with best friend to my favorite coffee place where I also grinded NL25 ZOOM 1 hour. It went well, 28$ or so profit. Not happy with how I played some post flop hands (2-3 of them, 1 pops up in my mind whole day!). Getting better at it and fixing leaks way more then before. Perhaps have give credit to the fact that I made up my mind about what I will do remaining days/months.
SNGs!
Why did I play them today?
Was considering my options. To wait for coach a week more about coaching and staking deal, or not waste time and simply grind 100 SNGs per day + study and grind CG on the side? The answer was easy considering benefits : making money and increasing both life and br, improving with fellow reg, keeping the CG grind pace with 1-2 hours per day 3 tabling NL25.
Overall feel very happy and excited that I made the decision. If in next week my CG coach makes a positive decision, things will turn around and I will just be focusing on CG. If not, it doesn't matter really cause I feel super confident in my game thanks to all the daily studying.
My SNG game was strong tonight, was 15 tabling 2 sessions 60 + 40 games. It came out to 4.7 hours total. There were about 4 to 5 spots that I feel I could have played better but overall I think I had fantastic bluff catches and value bets through out the whole session. Of course after not playing SNGs in 2 months or so, tonight I realized how much more I find it interesting and challenging to do CG vs SNGs. Just that feeling that you play tournament for 30+ minutes and then get setup with some card distribution is not the way I see my future in poker to be honest. Still, thanks to all CG studying I felt I had even more control pre and post flop and feel that my ROI will go very high thanks to it.
Plan is to play 100 SNGs per day until end of the February and then re-evaluate. I am all up for staying on SNGs and grinding 3k games per month (150 hours) but also continuing to work with fellow reg (minimum 30 hours) + coach (30 hours) and do CG (studying + grinding 60 hours). So if I maintain this tempo in March I feel great things will happen in this year as that will be about 270 hours of poker related activities or 9 hours per day. I might do additional 1 hour of CG grinding so 150 hours of SNG and 60 hours of CG to make it total of 210 hours. Just seems right to do such thing but not to get lost in the process but rather keep coaching and working on the game 2 hours per day on average!
Once I rebuild life roll for family I can again stop with SNGs and continue grinding ZOOM full time on my own. This might take me anywhere from 2 to 3 months if I put solid volume and decent ITM follows (36.7%). Not worried about variance, player pool or anything. I just need to put the hours in, do my best with focus (not to play tired, eat well, drink tons of water, sleep 5-6 hours but in good position etc) and things will definitely follow.
For the return to the SNGs here is the graph for graph hunters.
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
55.75/300 Study hours
36.5/300 Coaching sessions
186.2/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (21st of February):
Wake up and eat healthy breakfast by 10am (going to bed late)
Coaching my brother HH review 10-11
Working on the game with fellow reg 11-12 or 11:30-12:30
Meeting with fellow reg for coffee at 1pm (1 hour or so)
Study 1 or 1.5 hour Janda concepts and start working in Flopzilla or divide this into 0.5 hour studying 1 hour grinding online CG
Eat healthy lunch
Watch Partizan Belgrade vs Vozdovac match (4pm-6pm!!!)
Grind 100 SNGs 15 tabling again (4.7 hours or so)
In between 2 sessions eat dinner and rest 10-15 mins
Update blog (if done by 3am) and reflect on goals/challenges
Update for 21st of February
Coached 1.5 hour
Worked on the game with fellow reg 1.5 hour + live sweat 1.5 hour (3 total)
Grinded online CG 2 hours
Watched Partizan game (3-3!!!)
Talked with coach about future deal (1-2 hours)
Quite a busy day but not with grind!
Happy with working on the game part and coaching + the fact that I just put 2 hours in until 10 minutes ago. All that was great.
Instead of grinding SNGs I talked with my coach over our future deal. Things are turning around and now it seems that I will be going for CG in next 10 months after all. What is great about future deal that may take place is the fact that I can continue to grind SNGs, make money for my family and in the meanwhile gradually improve my win rate and then switch to CG full time.
I fell this should be great because I get to 1) Rebuild life roll and feel less stressed by playing SNGs and printing money 2) Not rushing in for CG but rather setting goal for end of the year
Deal is not finalized yet. There are things to consider and write it all out. I am open, direct, honest, don't like lies or cheating to anybody so I in advance I want my coach to know what he can expect from my minimum. What I mean here is the hands per month that I plan to play in the beginning phase of coaching and then increasing to like 100k per month once we reach strong enough win rate and get to my goal (NL100 with 4bb/100).
Will write if something happens in this area within next week. Hope that this will be resolved before 1st of March.
If the deal does go through, I need to mentally prepare myself for 10 months of mixing SNGs with CG, doing 7 hour daily grinding, coaching 1 and studying 2 hours. That adds it up to 10 hours per day every day of poker related activities. I can of course decrease grinding once my brother becomes poker pro and once I get to sick win rate on NL50 (then it makes sense to stop with SNGs and just focus on CG!).
To prepare, I will need to take day or two off from full time poker. Was thinking and am planing somewhat to go to Belgrade, visit my family from Herceg Novi, see my friends, play some jazz gig, go out enjoy it and come back home with mind reset for entirely new and perhaps most difficult challenge of all for 2015. Maintaining focus and drive through out full 10 months to reach NL100, keep grinding 2-3k games SNGs,study 2 hours daily and coach 1 hour on average + on top of this find time occasionally for other life activities.
Whatever happens in next week, you will all hear about it.
BTW, checked traffic for SNGs half an hour ago or so. Just ridiculous that there was 15 tables running on 15s at Saturday and such a peak hour? Really well done Stars with Spins, look forward to the addition of sports gambling lol
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
58.75/300 Study hours
38/300 Coaching sessions
188.2/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (22nd of February):
Wake up eat healthy and drink tons of water
Coaching 2 sessions 10-12
Working with fellow reg 1 hour minimum 12:30-1:30 or 2pm
Have coffee with best friend
Eat healthy lunch
Prepare guitar lesson and teach it 5-6pm
In the evening go for 100 games of SNGs if traffic is there, if not play mixed sessions (60 SNGs + 2 hours of ZOOM etc)
Update blog and reflect on goals and challenges for 2015
Originally posted by Dani75
Sve naj bolje Ivice!
Pozdrav od jednog grobara!
Hvala puno!
Takodje sve najbolje, jedan veliki grobarski pozdrav Dani
Update for 22nd of February
Studying - 1.5 hours
Coaching - 3.5 hours
Grinding - Fail!
Studying
Worked with fellow reg 1.5 hour. We covered post flop situation where we were UTG vs CO post flop on Js 7d 2d board.
We calculated all the equity range vs range on that flop, then we went on to work out what type of range are we betting for value, semi value and bluff, x/c, x/r x/f.
In the end we managed to construct our whole opening range in a way that we can't get exploited regardless of what opponent chooses to do!
Coaching
Worked with Darko, Jernej and my brother Zarko. Very useful and productive sessions especially with Darko and Jernej. Darko did phenomenal work on taking notes and concepts down from live video + questions that he had. Jernej did fantastic work defending his range OOP post flop not to get exploited on 4 different hand examples. We also found leaks in those hands and leak that could potentially be very -EV play long term! With my brother I did sweat session where there weren't too many spectacular spots.
Rest of the day
Went for big lunch with brother best friend and 5 more friends! After lunch we went for some coffee so it took over 3 hours away from home.
Didn't manage to do any grinding today as I used free time to talk to students, write responses on blog and facebook, arrange potential Belgrade trip this weekend and talk to my brother some more. Also watched 2 episodes of new tv show (don't usually have time to watch those but the day just felt like day off and right for it).
Sent my suggestions for final contract to coach for CG deal (awaiting response).
Created special part in private forum for my students that should boost their productivity by posting daily assignments, grind, thinking process, observations and questions!
Overall very happy with how coaching and working on the game went. Grind wise definitely fail but life wise it was great times and don't regret it for a single bit.
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
60.25/300 Study hours
41.5/300 Coaching sessions
188.2/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (23rd of February):
Wake up by 11am and eat healthy breakfast
Work with fellow reg 1 hour 11:30 - 12:30
Meet up with friend for coffee around 1pm (1 hour or so)
Grind CG 2.5 hours (2 sessions) + eat healthy lunch
Teach guitar 6:15-7:15pm
Eat healthy dinner
Grind CG 2.5 hours more or grind 60 games SNGs
Update for 23rd of February
Studied 1.25 hours with fellow reg
Grinded online CG 5 hours
Had a lovely family lunch
*Taught guitar lesson 1.5 hours*
Talked with my CG coach over skype (1 hour through out the whole day)
Talked with my friend Stanko in London + girl that I meet on my way back to Gevgelija from Belgrade (arranging some trip to Belgrade to hook up obviously)
Responded to all my students posts in our private forum regarding their daily tasks (1 hour)
Super productive day!
So many things accomplished despite the fact that there was no actual 1 on 1 coaching over skype, felt that this type of forum thing is making guys really work hard on putting things down and holding themselves accountable for their actions and promises.
Just a quick word about grind.
Felt that NL25 is easier then NL50 by a bunch (less aggression overall on NL50) but also today had bunch of river calls that are part of my projection bias leak that goes on for a while now. I was really among top of bluff catchers and ran into total top of the range. Regardless of it all I think my play is becoming much more controlled, less spewy, my x/c x/r x/f bet ranges are slowly coming into plays and work with fellow reg is most +EV decision that happened for both of us!
Expect within month (11 coaching sessions from tomorrow) to fix my river leak + tweak my game in spots that I am unsure of. Am positive that I will move up to NL50 again within 2 months from now tops with solid enough win rate for FT switch.
Quick word about CG deal!
Coach responded with a positive note so we are officially starting the deal on 1st of March! It will last until end of the year. I will really put the hours in to get to beat ZOOM NL100 with 4bb/100 on Stars by 31st of December. To do that my coach has agreed to give me an awesome deal, the one I would find nowhere in the market right now. I am super great full to him for it and look forward improving and making him (as well as myself) tons of money for being so cool about it and accepting my terms!
So there you have it, in 5 days I am officially starting to grind CG as part of long term deal (10 months long until end of 2015).
What is great is the fact that I will also grind SNGs along with studying and grinding CG. My coach is cool with this and again I am super grateful that he allowed me to do such a thing.
My plan will be in next 10 months to play 1 session of SNG daily or play 1 session per day until I get to point to comfortably beat NL50 with high enough of a win rate. Once that happens I will be putting my time into CG grind to make tons of $ for both me and my coach + get the hands down and prepare for NL100 shot taking.
Plenty of time left to accomplish all those goals so I am confident that I can do it. Will update the 2015 Challenge from March with CG goal and do some monthly challenge again!
Before starting deal officially, I will have 3 more sessions before end of this month from which one 1st is tomorrow (which I very much look forward to)!
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
61.5/300 Study hours
41.5/300 Coaching sessions
193.2/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (24th of February):
Wake up and eat healthy breakfast + finish house chores (laundry being main thing!)
Studying with fellow reg 10:30-11:30 or so
CG coaching session 12-1:30pm
Coaching Kornel 2-3pm
Lunch brake
Meet with best friend for coffee and grind ZOOM 1 hour (1st session)
Grind 4 more hours CG and in between eat healthy dinner
After finishing it all, respond to daily tracking threads of all my students + update the blog
If energy level is OK, put CG coaching video before bed to get some info into my head before falling asleep
Hi again, long time, no talk! I'm sorry to learn that you've failed to get enough live games going in Gevgelija and enough health to play at all those times when they did gather 
What do you think were the main reasons for the lack of games?
1) Is it vital that Gevgelija itself is a small town (with 15K inhabitants) and most players come from abroad or big cities, hence the player base is less stable than in a big city?
2) Did you find the managers and dealers competent enough? (At least you've written that they were in touch with you over the phone, which is already nice.) How many hands an hour do you reckon they were dealing in 5/5 PLO?
3) Were there no games (or only reg-infested short ones) running at all in some evenings, or were there decently filled PLO games running pretty always that you just didn't want to play? (Recall that I'm mainly a PLOler, might visit Gevgelija one day if PLO runs consistently! 
)
The reason why I've asked the blue question is that the same company has just opened a casino in Minsk and I'd love to know beforehand whether it's a good alternative to other local casinos. In particular, I'm rather afraid of overly smoky venues (I don't want to subtract many years from my life expectancy for no good reason).
Speaking of, I'm thinking of going to a similar challenge trip to Minsk, owe you a report afterwards. Afaik, the game selection there is immense: there are 7 venues with (deepstacked) 0.5/1-1/2 NL (more expensive games are all PLO) that are quite close to each other (almost all are in the northern part of the city centre), dealers are attractive if you care about that (even I do indirectly because cute dealers make fish more generous). (I have little info about most of them so far. At least one of those venues is known to be horribly smoky and have sub-par rookie dealers, as hinted above.)
I guess the staff speaks English pretty well, though the table talk is in Russian; but as it's similar to Serbian, I think you'd get around quite well. So, if things go well and I settle down in Minsk, feel free to be my guest! (You don't play PLO, and I don't play NL CG and am not so eager to play $100+R live MTTs either, so there's no problem, we'd hardly ever be running into each other at the tables.)
Oops, actually, there seem to be two casinos in Gevgelija that offer multiplayer poker, I was talking about Princess, not Apollonia. (I hope you tried to select games across them both, if Apollonia still has CGs and MTTs - it's hard to tell from its out-of-date website.)
Edit: I guess I've exaggerated the game selection opportunities in Minsk - apparently there's not a single PLO game running there tonight (but six $1/1-1/2 NL tables across the city); casinos aren't populated enough on weekdays, you know.
GL with your online CG deal meanwhile! 
Hey Tony
Its a bit late + need to update the challenge so quick responses to your questions
1) People from Macedonia and Greece attend the games. During the week there is way less traffic, from Thursday to Sunday usually there is enough people to fill in 2-3 CG tables 1-2 2-2 1-3 combined.
2) Yes and No. Some dealers were more in tact with their work but I did have couple of really bad situations at the tables where other players were trying to determine the rules in the hand while dealer was totally lost. In those instances you call up floor manager but even he doesn't follow the rules that are obvious. So everything is not implemented 100% of time like with minimum buy in and rebuy with such. You play about 16 hands per hour of CG which is not that good to be honest.
3) There are Greek regs who play PLO and there was PLO pretty much every single game. 2-2 and 5-5 with sometimes mix 2-2 of PLO and NLHE. NLHE by itself is difficult because in casino people come to gamble slots, roulette, play games vs house... Those who do decide to play poker sit as as SS with 50 euros on NL200. Then you play a game with 25bb deep guys that call pre flop iso 5bb, post flop call 7bb and fold turn to river with less than half of the stack remaining. Super standard stuff that I kept seeing in every single game I played. Those same guys when busted, rebuy with 50 euro again for 2-3 times and then it is done. Table is not filled, the people that do have 100bb stacks are regs, the players don't have manners when they win to give the chance to rest of the table to win some money back (seen them cash out right after winning some all in which is retarded of course) + when they loose they are cursing dealers and talking back to players. So not perfect atmosphere to play in long term + all the smoking and lack of constant games. PLO games were super soft, people stacking off with trips on made flushes and straights type of boards turn to river on both 2/2 and 2/5 (+ saw guy fold on 2/5 2nd nuts after facing raise from super aggro donk and was like GL with this approach in live play!!!)
One more thing worth mentioning is that there is another casino opposite from Princess it is called Flamingo. There seems to be some back and forth between clients and I heard that there is actually more NLHE in Flamingo vs Princess since there is some poker manager capable of running things smoothly for NLHE.
I suggest you give it a go, hotel is amazing and service in it + I am positive that any online player with some solid fundamentals could be those casino games long term. If you have patience and can sustain the variance definitely it is +EV!
Thanks for the offer Tony! This year will be all about going for NL100 on Stars to beat the ZOOM and become much better poker player (invest in my learning and future). Perhaps in 2016 we can arrange something to happen
Update for 24th of February
Studied 1 hour with fellow reg (HH review) + 1 hour on my own (PG video)
Had coaching sessions for CG (1.5 hours)
Coached 1 session (1 hour)
Grinded online CG 4 hours
Grindend SNGs 50 games (2.3 hours)
Wrote to students via skype + read their daily tracking threads (some amazing things already happening for all of them!)
Did 2 batches of laundry (wish I had like 2-3 days off per week for all house chores cause they add up!!!)
Very happy about whole day in general.
CG coaching was very productive as usual. At one point my coach told me that I am using thinking process for NL500 and playing low limits. That made me feel happy but also laugh super hard because projection bias is something that is killing my win rate. He then went on to make a joke saying that there should be some device implemented in me that every time I want to do something on river (on current stakes) I do the complete opposite lol
Tomorrow/today another 1.5 hour coaching which I look forward to!
SNGs were brutal. Might write about ante addition and player pool some other time. Got called super light in 4-5 spots + brutal card distribution in HU's , opponents kept coming back 3-4 times after being behind. All resulted into like 5 vs 18 1st vs 2nd or so (PT4 closed now, don't remember exact stats). So ITM was solid but 1st vs 2nd put me down 4 buy ins pre RB which is like whatever.
Just preparing for what is to follow from 1st which I will write about on Saturday night.
Working with fellow reg was brutal as usual. Spotted leaks, working on fixing them , look forward to our work every single day!!!
PG video was fun and educational, watched it twice and learned from it.
2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
63.5/300 Study hours
42.5/300 Coaching sessions
199.5/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)
Here is the plan for today (25th of February):
Wake up and eat healthy breakfast + drink tons of water
Work on the game with fellow reg 1 hour minimum (11-12)
CG coaching session 12-1:30pm
Meet with best friend for coffee and 1 hour CG ZOOM grind
Eat healthy lunch and short brake
Grind ZOOM 2 more hours
Eat healthy dinner and short brake
Grind SNGs 50 games
*Try to squeeze 1 more hour of study doing HH review*
Respond in daily tracking threads for all my students + write out strategy on how to adjust with new ante structure in SNGs for them
Update blog + challenge and reflect on mission vision and goals