Hey, great blog.
I've spend around 15-20 hours working on my game/mindset which is what I was aiming for. I think I'm getting a better grip of how I want to work on my game, sort off learning how to learn.
I am interested in this part as well, especially in the second part, can you share a bit more about it, how you go about it? Do you prefer reading or watching? Any good articles or books that have helped you and you could recommend?
GL at the tables.
@Rufus433: Thanks man! glad you like it:)
I am working through The Mental Game Of Poker 2 - great read! Step by step, this is not a book to read, more like a textbook that you should read 3-5 times, makes notes etc 
GL!
Sometimes Fish is doing the owning 
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18167241_9FFA1351C3
Thanks, probably would be wise to take another look at that book it's been a while since i read that. I remember that i once read The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin about his journey from being chess prodigy that later transitioned in being a MMA fighter. Maybe worth your time to check it out.
Thanks for recommendation, seems interesting:)
Finished my extra Saturday grind! 6 day workweek, feeling pretty good after not so great start of the month. Last two days were excellent!
Another sick, above the plan Saturday grind! It was raining all morning so why not. 120 games @19% evRoi, say what?
Hey! nice that you've enjoyed life in Medellin! are you still there? If you come to visit Bogotá, make sure to say hi and we can have a drink 
Pretty nice results, and I wonder, based on your experience what is the ratio of regs/fish in $100s?
hey mate!
We are coming to Bogota in April for Coldplay concert Not sure how long/where we wll stay, let you know later!
Reg/fish ratio, around 40% unk 60% reg, not sure thou, last months maybe 50/50.
Time for mid-March update! Doing pretty well, 2200 games at 3% ev ROI and 43 cev Increased volume and number of sessions I play on 5 or 6 tables. Plan for next half is 2200 more or 2300 If I stick in another Saturday. Analyzed for 13h and hit the gym 5 times which is in line with my goals. Feeling great, about to join coaching and after - start my sessions! GL!
March wrap up!
Best month in my Spin&Go career! 4800 games at 3,5% ev ROI and 45 cev :D. Played for 27 days, all Saturdays, skipped Sundays. Started playing more often on 6 tables. Extremely content with keeping seeing progress in my game while increasing volume again. Looking at what Spin4play (he is doing biggest Spin&Go challenge up to date and just done 10k games in a month with 4% roi, sic!) is doing I feel great motivation to again study, work on problematic spots and improve my multitabling skills. So happy to see the ceiling in our games is way, way higher than we have expected.
This month I've stopped using google calendar ;). Paper is easier. I've done 24 hours of work on my game. Which counts in coachings and mindset work. Which is a little above of what I was planning for which is great. The second half of the month I've hit the gym way more regularly, totaling to 14x 30 minutes workouts. I am surprised that it starts to feel like a good part of my routine and stops feeling like a drag.
I've meditated 36 times, last week starting to increase up to 3x sessions per day. Still 10 minutes. I think it's the most powerful mindset tool. Even if you don't play poker I highly recommend it. You just feel so much balance and way more creative and sharp. It makes huge difference.
This month I've also stopped looking at results while playing :). I used to do it sporadically during sessions, thought that in days when I am not motivated it gives me a kick to buckle down and focus, which was true.
But I've started analyzing the days and part of the days I was playing my A-game and one of the most common causes of why I was stopping to play at maximum of my capabilities, was checking the results. So yeah, playing experience got a little bit more boring over the last few weeks but incredibly more enjoyable and balanced.
Strategically I have learned quite a bit about sizings on different structures and positions, went in depth into some boards. But mostly cosmetic changes. Which is good. Yesterday I got my Leak Finder - one of biggest perks of being in Smart Spin, it shows me which areas I should focus on in the next weeks. What I want to do the most this month is work on leaks from LF and pin point spots that are making me stop and think while playing, and solve them after closing the tables.
Life wise, Mari and I we both worked Saturdays so our only day off was Sunday. We did some sightseeing, went to Parque Norte, Parque Arvi, Guatape - trying to get out of the city and breath some fresh air.
Again, if you want more pics visit my https://www.instagram.com/ytrer_on_the_road/
Hope you guys had a great month and GL in April!
Congrats for great results! Nice to see hard work pays off. When you read posts like yours you see there are many smaller parts of the puzzle that show the whole picture. Keep up the good work and sharing your experiences.
Good luck.
April wrap up!
Played 4725 games at 1,3% ev ROI, 33 c/g. Which is not great but I did further increase daily volume this month as I played only 22 days. Have to buckle down and focus on analyzing a bit more and maybe rethink the volume approach.
But small adjustments as, ridiculous as it may seem 5k games is not a great sample and field remains rather softish. So In May I will push few extra hours in analysis and slow down the volume increase a bit and observe
I've hit the gym 15 times! Which is a great number considering the trip to Bogota. But decline in work on my game as total is 18 hours. Definitely will aim to get better in here in May.
I've meditated 56 times for average of 2,5 times per working day. It. Which is great, it gives such smooth transitions during break, even if i do some emails/skype msgs i can disconnect for 10 minutes and come back to tables focused and fresh.
I still don't check results while playing, slowly getting to checking them less often. But I have my concerns that it would result in too high disregard for results which might make playing... boring(and worse in result as when you are bored you don't focus well enough and lack those high level lines:D)
So far it seems that few hours of relax and night of sleep is enough for me to recover from "bad" days so it might just be the sweet spot for me.
Strategically I was focusing mostly on Button 3way but I am not entirely happy with my progress which is probably skewed by worse results. Will keep working on Button this month for sure.
Life wise, this month got some extra days off as we went to Bogota for 3 days to sight-see, meet with friends from Venezuela and go to Coldplay concert (which was awesome:D). Not a huge fan of Bogota thou - too big, polluted, chaotic and always traffic jammed as they lack metro system. The old part of the city was really nice and Botero museum, which we found by accident, was great.
GL in May!
May wrap up!
Very good month behind me! 4740 games after 23 days of playing. Slight decrease in daily volume and I missed grind on couple of days, due to some real life events. Results wise pretty solid at 2,8% evROI and 41 cev/game, which is awesome after mediocre April.
I wanted to slow down volume increase and observe at the end of April, so volume wise I am gonna aim for something higher in June. I do have a 4 day trip planned thou (can't wait so much!) but besides that 6 days work weeks ahead :).
Gym wise, I went 14 times but changed my routine to a bit more demanding so workout time went from 30 to 45 minutes. Feeling pretty good here, will try to push extra 1-2 days in June thou.
I've worked on my game again under 20 hours, only 18,5h. Which is something to optimize/restructure. I am also starting to rethink my cool-off routine into making it more learning oriented and less "how did I perform today" type of report. Still no checking results while playing - still thinking 1/day after last session is best way. Let me know what you think :D.
Meditation wise, I've clocked 48 sessions which is a decline from last months. I also see less progress here in terms of quality and maybe I got too used to the format, so I am spacing a bit more. But still will keep it up.
Strategically I've seen some progress in BTN 3way play and my focus is on BB in Hu lately. Have a lot of great materials to work with here. Bakudranski and FCD are doing great job with their Crushfests and TeemTeem has gave me some new ideas from his production as well :).
I've also participated in a coaching with Killuifuplay and Baku which gave me few new lines. Recorded almost 3h game review with iJustGamble from which, due to Just great IT skills we have only 1 hour ;).
Life wise, I have done quite a bit of work on my projects and "life stuff" that I had pending. Everything looks a bit better and after few hectic days I have some clear headspace again. Besides that a lot of chilling in Medellin, went to Parque Explora (pics on instagram), some live concert/fest, ate out in some awesome restaurants and completed a 4 year old game from series I really enjoy - Borderlands 2 :D.
Soon we are starting Smart Euro 2016 - good luck to everyone!;)
Congrats on your succes.
If you come to Pereira let me know, i would like to meet you.
@aeusse: Thank you! Will do, maybe next time I'm in Colombia GL!
Wow, time flies so fast lately. I wanted to get down to this summary before, at beginning of the month and we have 10th already! Better late than never thou.
I have skipped last month summary due to ridiculous amount of real life stuff I had to organize and deal with, but this is just an excuse and nobody cares so moving on.
In June and July I have played a total of 9298 games with 1,2% evROI at 32,5 chipev/game. Both months were pretty similar. I am happy with volume and pretty ok with my results. Just sheer amount of things I had to do beside poker and stress connected with it and with moving to a new country, kinda justifies for me, worse results than average. UK gave me biggest culture shock since I've started traveling.
I played best I could at the time and hey, being perfectionist is unfortunately not the best approach to this game ;). Often made decisions to grind when I knew my focus/headspace is not in poker, coz it's better to play at 1% roi than not play at all 
(if you take well planned breaks).
Due to Smart Euro, vacations in San Andres in Colombia, moving to Manchester, last minute trip to Belgium's Tomorrowland, I pretty much grinded each day, never longer than 6 days in a row, trying to catch some weekend days to chill with Mari.
Smart Euro was a great tournament and a second wind I actually really needed starting second half of 2016. I met some great players, learned a bit, taught a bit. We did really well and got straight for finals were we lost to really strong Ireland ;).
It was extremely close thou, we literally fought till last minutes! It was great fun, again thanks to all participating and congrats to Ireland, Top Scorer - Pokerzysta90, and donIwan16 from my team who crushed and snapped Top Assist title! Don't be scarred and attack 100s asap!;)
Gym wise, on point till 9th of July when I arrived in UK In here I got sick and couldn't get nearby gym's membership till I got my UK bank account (no other way to make a payment than with an UK card). Also ordering chair online was pretty problematic as 2 or 3 shops I tried first, didn't accept payment with a card that had different address than billing address.
I already got settled in UK, as I am almost at the verge of second month, so it is past time to vent about it. And I also grew to like Manchester, food is awesome, have a great flat in center - walking distance to all good places - only if weather was better Thanks again to Debilne_Ucho for helping to find the flat!
Meditation - going strong with 2 sessions per working day Not much to add here, 3 times is still too much. One thing - don't use the same recording every day, mix it up. I've got too used to guided track, and after a week or so, I caught myself drifting in my head whole ten minutes.
Work on my game - decline here to 27h in last 2 months - pretty bad but again, had to prioritize other things and very often, talking with agents (spend over 40h on the phone with them) took time I would normally analyze.
Strategically, not much besides good work on HU BB position, some mindset work and I think I finally grew up to stop checking results daily and move into weekly checking mode ;). Running the test this month, will see how it goes. Pretty optimistic here thou.
Life wise - big changes, back in Europe. Moved in to Manchester and got my set up ready crazy fast - I even played a full session in hotel, day after arriving. Leaving Medellin was pretty sad, we had great time there, and living and working was so easy.
In June we took a small vacation to paradise island of San Andres in Colombia, beautiful place, miss beach so much.
We've rented some jet-skis and got light sunburn, drunk too much, ate some awesome fresh fish - generally perfect 4 days on sun.
In July I jumped on occasion to visit Tomorrowland, which was just incredible.
Already wrote about it a bit and really don't know what more to say, beside it is totally worth it's price. If you can - go, even if you don't love that type of music, whole event and place where it's held, awesome people and all-around happiness makes it worth it.
This is really becoming tl;dr so time to wrap it up!
Thanks for reading and GL guys! Make good decisions and keep them crushed!:D
