Making a living with STT SNGs

5am Club Day 3 Update:
- Woke up 5am
- Took 15 minute bath
- Studied 0.5 hour (HU SB lost hands as well as going over all positions since 4 tabling)
- Grind 0.62 hours with super strong focus energy and crushing (10 buy ins won, cEV 225 in 18 games)
- NO WORK OUT

So will start with work out. Yesterday when I was running 1st lap in tempo, as it was cold outside (probably 2,3 degrees +) and was sweating, I pulled/strained my back. As I finished training it was hurting a bit, very unpleasant since I felt I couldn't move my upper body as usual. I stretched out a bit went home and remaining of the day hopped that it would go away after long night rest (10pm to 5am). I was wrong. As I woke up, pain was and STILL IS there. It decreased sure but I feel it in the upper part of back between my shoulders. I am considering option to rest today and see if it hurts tomorrow, if it does to go and take massage. If it doesn't hurt to resume training.

Waking up is going well, I feel my body is already accepting this habit. In my mind I have set it up that way that I simply don't accept other solution. I was curious about waking up, would Iphone alarm and laptop be enough or would I need to buy 3rd device. Turns out that yesterday I woke even before 5am (4:30ish) and today I woke up with 1st alarm going on.

Working on the game helps always as it warms me up for grind and I also focus on area that I need to improve the most which is to bring back up my SB in HU win rate to 12 (its +4 now past 1k games 4 tabling).

Now, there is a time management I plan to implement in future days and in May as well in order to fit 5 hours of grind, training, working on the game, sessions with Phuketinho and Rocky and teach music and guitar lessons.
It goes something like this:
- 5am wake up
- Finish 1st grind session (0.5 hour) with study by 8am
- Finish training by 8am
- 8am to noon finish 2 more hours of grind
- Noon to 1pm breakfast/lunch
- 1pm to 2pm session with Rocky
- Between 2 to 10 pm 2.5 more hours of grind, 1 music lesson and coach Phuketinho

This is super solid time management as before noon I will finish half of my grind + study as well as work out. Remaining of the day I have half more grind in and to do sessions which require less energy then super focused grinding. Also, I plan between 2-10pm to squeeze in some short nap like 30 mins to 1 hour tops after which I want to finish grind 1 to 2 sessions. Think this would be most +EV because body would get that extra rest and waking up after nap rested jumping straight to grind with short SB HU HH review will rock. There are days when I am teaching 2:30pm as well as early morning and 8pm. So time management will have to adjust based on that. But, whole idea is to have set times for my grinding and then rest will have to fit in as grinding and printing money will be priority in future month.

BR wise, I am now above starting point 14$ in profit or 4783.65$. I will likely cash out over 200$ as I will have guests in Nis in May + to have extra money just in case I need it (now have 20$ cash which is just for coffee ♦ )

Enjoy your day on and off the tables!

Originally posted by Tichwich85
What do you think about the cold turkey training method?
Going on an interval training of an hour, first thing after waking up, just drinking a coffee and taking water along...
Divided into:
10min warmup
10min 65-75% max heart rate
5min 50% max heart rate
10min 65-75% max heart rate
5min 50% max heart rate
10min 65-75% max heart rate
10min cooldown

Its my max fat burn training when i need to loose fat fast.
Just the last 20mins can be a pain with no food in those early mornings...:f_eek:

Training on empty stomach will burn fat faster especially if you are using intermittent fasting , eating 8 hours window and fasting 16 but most people can't handle it. When I was doing CrossFit last year with my Sensei, I was fasting all the way through and the way I surpassed the hunger was having 1 coffee cup before training and lots of water (I would say 1.5l in the morning). Water decreases your hungriness. Many times we misinterpret what our body wants. We feel hungry when in fact you could be just dehydrated for lack of water.
Interval training is fun but also very hard. If its your cup of tea, I would say go for it, if not you can do lower intensity workouts and still have very strong results. Its about consistency of doing it not about what you are doing. If it makes you happy and you follow through with it always go with it as there is no downside really.

Originally posted by zyvy
loosing weight - exercise vs diet

Exactly man!
People think training will make them loose weight. Its one of those half truths that are around forever. Training will make your overall health situation better (you will feel better, stronger, healthier, stronger immune system and your brain will grow as you accomplish very hard tasks constantly) but for weight loss its all about numbers game.
You need to know you BMR for current weight and set up daily calorie deficit towards it. When I did body fat measuring as well as food tolerance tests, my BMR was 1912 calories. So I put in my fitness pal 1412 calories to create 500 calories per day deficit and followed up with it. That brought to 3500 calories per week which is 0.5kg of weight loss. On top of that I was working out 3 to 4 times per week with Sensei whose trainings were droping me down another 0.5kg per week (most of these trainings take out from 300-350 calories as a minimum all the way to 1000 calories per work out!). So that's how I got to 1kg per week weight loss on average while maintaining muscles but dropping weight strictly from FAT.
It is not easy to do because it requires calorie counting, choosing foods and meals that fit your macros for calorie deficit target and you need to train if you want to speed up the process and drop 4kgs per month this way, but it is totally worth it.
I did it once, I will do it again from May and 2nd time around it is far easier because I already did those things in the past and passed the finish line.

My goal is to leave for Thailand with 10% body fat. I went there with 12-13% on 22nd of January 2017. I aim for 10% or less for next Thailand trip with 60 trainings and calorie counting with my fitness pal (5 months of training, 20 weeks of 3 trainings per week).

Thanks for sharing with others this useful discussion about calorie deficit!

Important Financial Update

Today I decided to cash out 1/3 part of my BR as well as fill in BR of Phuketinho for 7s.
What I achieved is quite amazing considering that it is end of April and that I will have all rents and bills covered for the whole 2017!!! Only remaining expenses will be food (250 eur per month) and coffee in Nis (50 eur more). This money I make from lessons and more so remaining of the year from grind I can focus on saving another 700$ for Phuketinho BR (300 buy ins for 7s), Thailand trip (6k for 2 months, 3k for 1 month) and couple of other things like training (400 eur more) and for my dad's pension credit (2k eur). Outside of these things, I will open up another saving fond for live poker with my friend troll in different places around the Europe where we will go together. Sofia was great, we are planing to go to Prague, Bratislava, Malta, Varna, Holland and Germany places - those are all the options, we will likely go to 1 or 2 more places before the end of this year. Finally, I will save money to visit my friend troll sometime this year as well as invest later in some house things (fix my tv, get PS4 and PES).

So here is what I accomplished with today's cash out and money moving:
- 900 euro for 5 months of remaining rents in 2017
- 800$ sent to Phuketinho for mix of 3s and 7s (1.4k of my money in his BR now)
- Now have 3000$ instead of 4500$ as starting balance

Remaining of the year, my money saving priorities are as following:
- 700$ BR for Phuketinho more (300 buy ins on 7s)
- 400 EUR for remaining 48 trainings out of 60 with Sensei
- 6k$ for Thailand by mid January 2018
- 2k$ for dad's pension credit by mid January 2018
- 1k EUR for live cash game BR by July 1st 2017
- And finally for BR challenge from this point on 22k$ by the end of the year

I will pay food and coffee/water with money from lessons and from this point on my money saving mode from grinding will be very easy for other things. Once I save 700$ for Phuketinho and 400 Eur for Sensei, all remaining money I will use to build my Stars BR for BR challenge. I will pick a % of winnings to save for dad's credit and Thailand since 8k$ total is needed for those things in about 8 months so average 1k$ per month needs to go to that saving. Considering my hourly is now post RB around 30$, with steady 150 hours grind I should have no problem by the end of the year to make more then enough money for it all. On purpose I left BR 25000$ in the end because for me that is one of the last priorities in this year. All the things I mentioned earlier in the year and that I mention now are way more important to me. I will be super pleased with even 20k$ BR by the end of the year BTW because I see myself playing 30s in 2018 with 300 buy ins while using another 10k$ for betting on different sites to aim for minimum 20% ROI using Serbian Super League games as well as some NBA. Without any BR management increase, from this point on I need to make less then 10.5k$ to cover everything else I have planed!!! That is just huge relief and accomplishment in my eyes and mind.

Enjoy your week on and off the tables and keep an eye for the prize always!

5am Club Day 4 Update:
- Woke up 5am
- Started the day with warm bath 30 minutes
- Studied before grind lost hands in SB HU, marked some and wrote thinking process on close spots or bad ones
- Grind 0.67 hours, played with full focus but miss played several hands which I marked in after grind review. Despite miss plays, 23 games 63 cEV 4 tabling this morning.
- Work out very successful, ran 3 laps today, my back didn't hurt at all but I did feel some cramp in my calves (due to not running and moving for 4 months vs training 4 times per week with lots of movement)

All this took 2.5 hours total!

Remaining of the day plan is to:
- Coach Phuketinho
- Grind 4 more sessions
- Go over marked hands with miss played and close spots

For the end of update, graph for April from my desktop where I am 4 tabling 15s whole month. Super low volume but red line tendency as well as all the other positions having solid win rates is what keeps me happy.

P.S. For April, SB in HU 4 tabling win rate is now ev 8bb. In 2016 I had it between 12 and 13, I can get close to that or even better. Adjusting my strategy in 2017 for SB HU, once its improved results will be much higher then 60 cEV 4 tabling.
P.P.S. This win rate 4 tabling surpasses my EV expectations in 2017. I will keep pushing and set next targets in my mind as well as on paper. On next couple thousand games I am looking for 60cEV and after that going to 65 and then 70 all on 15s 4 tabling.

5am Club Day 5 Update:
- Woke up at 5am
- Started the day with 30 minute warm bath
- Worked on the game (went through lost hands from yesterday in all areas, marked ones and with specific lines)
- Grind 20 games, cEV over 300 4 tabling (super large sample!)
- Work out, warm up and stretching + 3 laps running and cool down
- Shower after work out

All this took me 2 hours and 44 minutes (including update I am writing now).

Waking up is feeling now natural, don't have trouble to get up when alarm rings.
Warm bath 30 minutes is ideal time. It takes a 3-4 minutes for bath tub to fill with warm water and in the meanwhile I brush my teeth and get ready for it. In the bath tub I split my time to regenerate (just chill and let warm water relax my body) as well as name things I am thankful for each day and life I am living right now for. This helps a lot to get a sense of reality I am living in currently, appreciate and stay in the present and not to wonder to distant future much but rather focus on things at hand (example studying, grinding, keep improving and increasing hourly while making money in the process). I then made coffee and prepared hands for review for studying.
Working on the game was excellent. I got my mind to be in the zone because during HH review I saw 2 or 3 bad plays from me (talking about big hands of course for stacks!!!) and tons of profitable plays that didn't go through (opponents calling super wide or simply set up pre and/or post flop). This got me in the zone to play and after 1st morning session I maintained my focus through out which worked out great. I didn't check results until the very end since I won 4x as the last game and was curious how I was running. End result was +8 buy ins or 120$ pre RB + cleared 25$ RB. Considering that yesterday I dropped 420$ with BE cEV for ITM and ROI, this kind of swings totally make sense and are normal for 4 tabling with 55-60ish cEV. Yesterday reminded me about last year where I had 1 swing of 200 buy ins and several of 100 buy ins. The difference between then and now is that I feel much more confident about my game and now when under swing I make less mistakes then before. I very much like direction I am heading, just need to stay on the path I choose and that I am on.
Work out was very good. Between 2nd and 3rd lap even though I had 40ish second rest (running on every new minute after lap completion), it was still uneven breathing and feeling dizzy a bit. Glad I completed 3 laps both today and yesterday. Tomorrow I will go for 4 laps and idea is to get to 5 before Wednesday the 3rd of May when I am starting/resuming to work out with Sensei.

Things for remaining of the day in no specific order:
- Eat healthy and continue to track macros
- Get weight scale to measure my future progress
- Meet Phuketinho for coffee
- Teach guitar and music lesson 5pm
- Potentially meet Noisy for coffee around 1pm
- Grind 4 more sessions
- Study/warm up with HH review before each grind session, biggest lost hands, close spots and miss plays!

Hope today money will arrive from Skrill so that I can pay off remaining of the rents for 2017 and be just left with other financial targets I set. That would take off additional financial pressure and let me focus even more on things that matter which is working on the game and volume.

Enjoy your weekend on and off the tables!

How can one start the day with a warm bath? :f_biggrin::f_ugly: I would immediately get tired and fall asleep again. ♠_zZz:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
How can one start the day with a warm bath? :f_biggrin::f_ugly: I would immediately get tired and fall asleep again. ♠_zZz:

That's a good question and point Prim. I feel it helps me prepare for training because body is warm, relaxed and when I stretch/warm up I don't get any muscle pulls that way. Also, like I said above, its more of regeneration, starting the day right by relaxing body and activating mind for gratefulness as well as visualizing day that is to happen.

Recommendations for watching studying and implementing

- Fedor Holz conversation(s) with Joey Ingram
- Jared Tendler's videos from Stake Me To Play

These are the videos I have watched before bed time past 2-3 days.
What I loved most about Fedor's video is that he is constantly evolving, searching himself in a way that he wants to keep doing things that make him happy. He plays poker when he feels like it, he does things outside of poker that are of interest to him and he seems like a kind of person that truly cares about making people and world around him feel good and improving. I would love to team up with him in some point in the future, provide value in any way I can weather its help with his poker related projects or his ongoing PrimeMind project if they need some music articles/videos/service. Just enjoyed his last conversation with Joey, its a must watch as well as all the others of course.

Jared Tendler is the man. When I went through his MGOP part 1 book, it helped me a lot to deal with some of my tilt triggers. At the time I was grinding long hours and I had those silent type of tilts where I wasn't cursing, breaking things but it was just building up and leading me to rush my plays and make mistakes. From him I learned a ton about warm up routine, setting myself to play in the zone as well as finding optimal performance level.
In video I watched yesterday and today, I learned more in depth about focus, playing with bored or super excited as well as linear or set things when analyzing information. This video is definitely must watch for any poker player and I will watch it several more times, in particular parts where I feel I need to recap things. There is also part 2 of that webinar which I plan to go over in following days.
Thank you Jared for providing amazing value!

I recommend you all to check out on YouTube following : Stake Me To Play - Mastering Mental Game of Poker - Jared Tendler

Enjoy your weekend on and off the tables!

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

Originally posted by Primrose6789
How can one start the day with a warm bath? :f_biggrin::f_ugly: I would immediately get tired and fall asleep again. ♠_zZz:

That's a good question and point Prim. I feel it helps me prepare for training because body is warm, relaxed and when I stretch/warm up I don't get any muscle pulls that way. Also, like I said above, its more of regeneration, starting the day right by relaxing body and activating mind for gratefulness as well as visualizing day that is to happen.

I do it the other way round. Warm bath in the evening after work, training and grind, in order to be able to sleep well (have disturbed sleep).

Originally posted by Primrose6789

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

Originally posted by Primrose6789
How can one start the day with a warm bath? :f_biggrin::f_ugly: I would immediately get tired and fall asleep again. ♠_zZz:

That's a good question and point Prim. I feel it helps me prepare for training because body is warm, relaxed and when I stretch/warm up I don't get any muscle pulls that way. Also, like I said above, its more of regeneration, starting the day right by relaxing body and activating mind for gratefulness as well as visualizing day that is to happen.

I do it the other way round. Warm bath in the evening after work, training and grind, in order to be able to sleep well (have disturbed sleep).

If I was working out in the afternoon or evening, I can definitely see value of warm bath

Decision is made - will skip sleep tonight and stay up until 10pm tomorrow with just 1 nap.
Watching Boston Celtics game later vs Bulls where I placed 300$ bet on -3 on Boston at 1.91 via BetStars.

Let's go Celtics, let's go!

5am club is still on!
I slept around 3 hours last night, didn't manage to stay up and watch Boston game as I was super tired. So 3 hours sleep, warm 30 minute bath and since weather is cloudy and rainy, I will skip work out today and do following things now:
- Make coffee for studying and grinding
- Study lost hands from yesterday, go through all marked hands and do thinking process on close or bad hands
- Grind 1 session
- 9:30am teach guitar and music lesson
- Walk to my 2nd favorite food place, grab to eat while drinking coffee in my favorite place

Remaining of the day have 1 to 2 more coffees, grind on those steroids and hit the bed at regular 10pm time like in previous days.

I already feel huge body crushing due to this low sleep so grinding today will have to be lower as focus due to very low energy will be low as well.

Quick update related to Twitch stremaing:

Leaving home now to buy headset with mic and weight scale
I will test headset for video recording (HH reviews for Phuketinho) and also for Twitch streaming (HH reviews or DB analysis).

Will let you know when next Twitch session will happen. Likely later today.

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

I love the Bulls, and this was so painful to watch.

Weight/fitness update:

Got weight scale and as I expected, results are not pleasant. I currently weight 88.9kgs. On 20th of January, day before leaving to Thailand for 10 days, I was weighting 79.4kgs! So in 3 months and 1 week, I gained 9.5kgs!
Nothing unexpected, considering that I was drinking in Thailand, then back home drinking soda and eating tons of candy and carbs overall.

So now the goal is clear, visible and easily measurable. In next 60 training sessions with Sensei to drop from 88.9 to 78.9kgs which is 10kgs drop. Added specific goal is to drop very little muscle in the process and get to potential 10% Body Fat.

Training starts on Wednesday 3rd of May and will be 3 times per week on Mon, Wed and Fri 7am in line with my 5am waking up.

Originally posted by NIVEKii

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

I love the Bulls, and this was so painful to watch.

No Rondo, no win

GRIND HEAVY MAY

Since financially all my rents and bills are taken care of and now just have food to "worry" about, I can finally push myself hard and to grind heavy in May.

My goal is simple. Play 200 hours of 4 tabling 15s in May. I will be busy 1 day out of 31 for sure which is day where I will likely not have chance to play at all. Other then that day, I will have 30 days to put in total of 200 hours which is close to 7 hours per day grind. This would be easy for me if there was no sessions with Phuketinho, working on the game with Rocky and teaching guitar and music lessons. Those other things add easily to over 70 hours per month or on average close to 3 hours per day! Because of these other things, putting in 200 hours of grind will be fantastic result.

What I am looking to accomplish in those 200 hours:
- Play solid poker and have very little C- games moments
- Take note of my mental game and how I am playing when running bad or when I miss play hands (work on it accordingly)
- On that sample of close to 6.5k games, check my cEV 4 tabling and have realistic observation of my win rates for all positions (to keep fixing things)
- Pay attention to all the out of the tables things worked on, red line should be BE or positive
- Make in minimum 4k$ post RB which is 20$ per hour but realistically expect anywhere from 5k+ with decent running on such sample

Where did I get this motivation to do this now or why now:
- Past period was very hard to stand on my own feet and play on my own (since October until March pretty much since I played staked) but now I am on my own
- I improved a lot since last year and I want to see how much I can print money in this year
- I used to grind 180+ hours per month as standard when I started with poker, I want to experience this AGAIN (amazing feeling - going through daily battles both on and off the tables with myself, especially mental game tests)
- I want to win the fight of struggle with swings, mental barriers or games being harder to win in 2017 with stables adding tons of players to 7s and 15s
- I want to have study with grind happen on very high number of hours (like when I was starting with poker)
- I want to make in 1 month enough money to have for remaining of the year for food and BR increase (financial motivation to make life in 2017 even more easier)
- I want to see where I stand with my cEV 4 tabling this many hours (curiosity and confirmation on 6.4k games if I am making 30ish+$ or not)
- I want this grind to set up future months like that as well (continue in same fashion)

One of my main motivators or lets call it TRIGGERS came when I saw success stories. A lot of these guys I have followed and their formula for success is pretty simple. They were 10-12+ hours per day doing poker. Some had 6 out of 7 days for poker this way but most did it non stop. They were having 10, 15, 20k+ months while in the program. When you think about it, playing 200 hours with 50$ hourly is 10k$ on average so that's how that goes.
When I was on my peak for SNG 6 max 15s and 30s, I was making close to 5k with 150-180 hours per grind. Now at Spins, there is high chance to win much more money due to multipliers.
Maybe, just maybe, by 1st of June I will have 10k+ month on Spins. It is certainly possible, 1 100x win can make that happen with my current cEV 4 tabling. So chances do exist and I am setting it all up to prove to myself that I can do again 200 hours grind even though I don't really need to do it since financially I have my own BR, BR invested in Phuketinho, all rents and bills payed - so I have very little pressure in life right now. BUT! I am creating pressure or putting it on myself because I want to see what I am made of for heavy grind in Spins. If I go crazy spewtard tilting and donating money, it is clear lesson that I need to hire a mental game coach (Tendler or Eliot) as well as step up my tactical game (to have more certainty at the tables). If on the other hand I perform as I perform now with lower volume, it will show me that I can push even harder myself which could be any number of things (adding extra tables, moving or mixing stakes, increasing number of hours, pushing studying etc).

So that is May announcement.
I will open May Challenge thread where I will post daily graphs for May as well as monthly with hours played. Will see if I will post cEV EV ITM or not durring the challenge. Might just post EV line in the graph with red line and that's all until end of the month.

My BR right now is around 2.65k but I am in "make up" from starting balance 350$. So realistically 3k will be starting BR or 200 buy ins for 200 hours of 4 tabling 15s in May.

Good luck me and may the power of habit, following up, accountability and deep inner motivation prevail for May!

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