Life is what happens in between

Day 78 (2016.02.16)
I'm getting so tired - I guess all the challenges are starting piling up. The last week was tough actually and this one ain't easy neither. Actually I forgot to mention that my wife went out for this week to some conference in Austria. Or more like - skiing I guess. It's really good that he could get out and have some fun, for both of us I guess. But of course on the other hand - it makes things more difficult for me because the kiddo is on me this whole week. It's day two - and it feels so exhausting already. On the bright side... well, not actual "side" or anything... but - the good thing anyways! I put 8 Gb more RAM into my PC yesterday. It already had 8 Gb but with the Unity and the whole poker streaming, HM2 and tons of other software everyday - I had a lot of "run out of memory" issues recently. So now I got 16 Gb and everything is perfect now. The next upgrade I'm thinking of is the second screen - it's useful both for streaming and developing, so hopefully I will buy myself a little present when I reach the 1000$ bankroll challenge.

Speaking of which... damn, it's getting tough... it feels like I'm stuck, not moving forward for the last 3-4 weeks now. I'm tilting and feel frustrated more recently too - although I've checked my last 30-35k hands - I'm actually having around 2-3bb/100 by EV - but running below EV for like 6-8 buy-ins. So I guess running bad makes me feel bad, will have to take this into account. I've also checked my plans in the page one of this blog - according to it I still have the whole February and March to beat the 10NL, so there's no rush. Of course I'm eager to move up but gotta calm down and relax a little... I'm doing fine... just 1.5 months into the 10NL and 1.5 months still there to go, all I need is steady winrate and some patience.

So yeah, what about today? I start off by playing 100 hands regular tables 10NL for yesterday's challenge. I actually thought it's just tickets - but I got 10$ instant cash prize! Was a little surprised by that and decided to sign up for the today's challenge as well - playing MTT's. I spent 4.5$ to register in those, and actually got 2$ back getting ITM in the sitout mode Not bad I guess - but I didn't get any cash prizes this time, just another two tickets for the shootouts. So we'll see, I might continue with the challenges, it's been +EV so far.

Then I switched back to Zoom tables and... didn't do too good, dropping 3 buy-ins during the day. I dunno... just didn't feel good... tons of entries though, ton's of fish, just can't handle it I guess... but I spent some time analyzing and meditating over my issues and I think I learned something. The overall stressful environment, being in a rush and losing confidence - altogether are the obstacles I'm going to overcome on my way to my goal.

So good luck to me and everyone!

Hands: 2092 (total 23786) in 5 session of 10NL Zoom SH and regular tables
Net: -19$ (total -34$) and -22$ by EV
Bankroll: 762 (+7$)

[v] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (afternoon)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[v] Study (Deutsch 1/2 hour)

Day 79 (2016.02.17)
Was going to play some more - but so tired again, I'd better go to bed earlier tonight...

Had a rough start this morning. Signed up for the Spin & Go challenges to play 8 of them - and I did. Lost almost all of them though But as I promised yesterday - tried my best to stay positive. Got the Shootout ticket though, no cash prize this time. But that's alright. Then I played some 10NL and dropped around a buy-in in couple of annoying spots. Still - stayed strong. Then even later still I sat down to play one more session - and yet again, start off losing another buy-in. Did my best to stay calm and focused. And I guess it worked - or at least I got lucky with some good variance because I had a really nice patch afterwards and end up in profits in the end of the day.

Well, it wasn't the end of the day of course - I went out to play some basketball at last! Tried out the new shoes Actually didn't feel perfectly comfortable, was out of the shape and had to bring the kid with me. Don't get me wrong, I love the little brat more than anything in this crazy world - but I'd rather leave him at home when I wanna focus and play the game. But all things considered - it was a good session, feel really exhausted and calm now. And I thought I'm gonna play some more poker - but nah, to tired and satisfied do anything like that.

And one more thing... I was thinking about the second monitor for a while now and I know I was planning to buy it when I him my 1000$ challenge... but something snapped inside and I thought - what the hell? I need it NOW - for both streaming and programming. Especially recently with programming in this rather big project - having limited workspace is really a bummer. So I said - whatever - and ordered the screen. It's gonna arrive tomorrow and hopefully I'll have some great sessions later this week and on weekend. And it actually motivated me a lot throughout the last session

Hands: 1286 (total 23786) in 2 session of 10NL Zoom SH
Net: +17$ (total -17$) and +6$ by EV
Bankroll: 775 (+7$)

[v] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (basketball)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Day 80 (2016.02.18)
I'm tired to write everyday in blog that I'm tired! So I won't But I am tired! This must be the permanent condition for now...

Got the second monitor setup finally! Actually let me just take a picture of my desk right now...

Spent like hours trying to tune up the colors and brightness - but it's still not good enough, gotta fiddle some more. Played some poker, went for the swimming, also some programming, but not too much. And Deutsch is definitely falling behind...

Hands: 1739 (total 26811) in 2 session of 10NL Zoom SH
Net: +24$ (total +7$) and +14$ by EV
Bankroll: 779$ (+7$)

[v] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (swimming)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Is there a reason you only sleep ~6 hours? Think it's hard to perform optimal with such little sleep everyday tbh.

Hey, Varune, thanks for coming! How are you doing?

I did some research, looks like 4-6 hours of sleep should be enough for a human being. Of course intense physical or mental work requires additional hours. So this is just another experiment of mine, to see if it's gonna work. I also take short 20-40 minute naps once or twice during the day. But to be honest - I don't it works for me. Maybe it's the fact that I sit in front of the PC whole day and most of the time it's an intense brain activity, I'm not quite sure. But anyway - I'm gonna finish this month and then take some time to look back, review and make some adjustments to the schedule.

How do you sleep? Do you have a plan? What works for you?

I mean if I just let it go - I know I will waste a lot of time sleeping for like 10+ hours, and I read somewhere that that's also not good for your health. So I'll have to find as sweet balanced spot to be most productive and efficient.

Day 81 (2016.02.19)
I... have no words... I'm exhausted... broken... devastated... for some reason this terrible day brought good results at poker... why... god... why...

Hands: 2777 (total 26811) in 4 session of 10NL and 16NL Zoom SH
Net: +71$ (total +77$) and +78$ by EV
Bankroll: 866$ (+15$)

[v] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[x] Long workout (afternoon)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Week 18 (including weekend)

Bankroll challenge report.

Played at Zoom 10NL and 16NL 6 max: 10568 hands
Net result: +109$ and +82$ by EV
Current bankroll: 869$ (+15$)

Day 82 (2016.02.22)

Hands: 1746 (total 33002) in 2 session of 16NL Zoom SH
Net: -4$ (total +69$) and -17$ by EV
Bankroll: 865$ (+23$)

[v] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (afternoon)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Day 83 (2016.02.23)

Hands: 2042 (total 35044) in 2 session of 16NL Zoom SH
Net: -21$ (total +48$) and -17$ by EV
Bankroll: 947$ (+23$)

[x] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (afternoon)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Originally posted by DemonRax
Day 83 (2016.02.23)

Hands: 2042 (total 35044) in 2 session of 16NL Zoom SH
Net: -21$ (total +48$) and -17$ by EV
Bankroll: 947$ (+23$)

Spoiler

[x] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (afternoon)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Nice one sir

Day 84 (2016.02.24)
OK, so it's done. Challenge is completed. Here's the screenshot and today's results. I didn't expect I'm gonna be so depressed and upset the day I'm gonna hit the challenge to be honest... Grey sky... Sitting alone in front of PC... Is that what it was about? But whatever... I'm going to review and report the whole challenge in details later, with the graphs and everything, so stay tuned. And I have lots of things to think through and decide what's next.

Hands: 1549 (total 36593) in 2 session of 16NL Zoom SH
Net: +42$ (total +90$) and +18$ by EV
Bankroll: 1019$ (+6$)

[x] Woke up at 6 a.m.
[v] Long workout (basketball)
[x] Short workout (evening)
[x] Study (Deutsch 1 hour)

Great!!! Good job

The 33$ to 1000$ bankroll challenge report
Started: October 12th, 2015 Finished: February 24th, 2016
Days played: 84 days, cash games only - 11 days straight poker Total: 136 days, almost 4.5 months
Total profits: 1042$ (50$ cashed out by mistake) Total rake paid: 1324$
Cash/zoom games: 389$, Spin & Go's: 79$, Rest: 607$ (tournaments, challenges, bonuses)

Week 19 (including weekend)
It's been a tough week. As any other... But at least I hit the challenge goal and feel good about it. I had a great Friday too - most profitable day with 215$ of cash. But then I hit a bad steak and went down for 300$. Got recovered a little today - but that's fine anyways.

Played at Zoom 10NL and 16NL 6 max: 9452 hands
Net result: +53$ and +16$ by EV
Current bankroll: 1035$ (+34$)

2016 February results
Poker
Struggled for couple of weeks in the beginning at 10NL Zoom but then it got better and in last two weeks I moved up to 16NL and then to 25NL, successfully finishing the challenge with 1000$ bankroll. Another half of the profits came from bonuses and rakeback. Overall I think I'm on a right track. 16NL is especially beatable, so if I won't be able to deal with 25NL - I'll go back there and recover.

Other stuff
Well, what can I say. This month is probably the worst I ever had in my life. But Friedrich Nietzsche once said "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker." which means "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger". And Nietzsche was one of those philosophers who really struck me when I was younger. I guess I will recover and move on, other opportunities will rise, just gotta stay positive. Which is extremely tough to be honest... But because of this crap I wasn't able to do all the challenges, basically failed everything but sport.

2016 March plans
It still feels like I'm in the middle of a nightmare, so exhausted and devastated. But gotta plan out my month. I'll have to shift my top priorities to other things though - find a job, a new place to live and most importantly - deal with all of this. Learning German and sport are the next in the list. After that come poker and programming, unfortunately. Signed up for the new challenge - from 1k to 5k, have no idea how will this go. Hopefully I will be able to put at least 1k hands everyday.

I'm going to drop the waking up part. I was so motivated and eager to put in a lot of work back then. Now I'm broken and don't have the energy to do that. I'll try to keep waking up as early as I can, around 7-9 should be fine. I will also drop tracking my time via Toggl. It makes no sense - it helped a lot and I got the information I needed. So 23 working days in March. I'll give myself 3 days off - other 20 gotta do Deutsch and workouts, job search and on the free time - poker and programming. I'm not even sure what is going to happen to me next week - so I have no idea if I will follow those numbers.

And most importantly poker-wise - I'm not going to report here on a daily basis. Weekly at least, maybe some random posts and hands, we'll see... So yeah... Thanks everyone, you've been very supportive and you helped me a lot during this challenge. Good luck to you and see you on the other side.

Jay.

Week 20 (including weekend)
Sorry for not being in a mood to talk a lot, don't really feel too good recently. Trying to do as much as I can, Twitch stream, programming, etc. Actually played more than I expected even though it was a short week. Most of the time I practice some programming stuff at https://codility.com/ - need to learn some algorithms and Java for a job-interview test. Hopefully after that's done - I'll have more time and energy for more details and reports.

Here are the stats, graph and the bankroll challenge report.

Played at Zoom 25NL and 16NL 6 max: 5996 hands
Net result: +195$ and +174$ by EV
Current bankroll: 1234$ (+52$)

And a funny GIF I saw today.

Nawwww that fish is SOOOO cute!!!

Week 21 (including weekend)
It was such a long week - everything around is moving with the threatening speed and I have no idea when... and where this rabbit hole will end. I think I'm gonna fail all the challenges - don't really care about sport and learning German recently. At least I'm eating properly and actually losing some weight - but that might just be stress or something.

Anyways - passed my online test for a job and last step is going to be the actual interview in Hamburg this Friday. Really looking forward to it because a lot of stuff are going to be decided when I walk out of the interview room. Time runs so slowly and I'm trying to not to think about it and just wait.

One of the ultimate highlights of the past week was the historical match of Go between one of the best player in the world of the last decade (and some say - the whole history of Go) Lee Sedol versus a computer program AlphaGo, developed by Google Team. The AlphaGo have beaten Fan Hui 2 dan professional in October last year, and not just beaten - swept him 5-0. And now they've challenged the 9 dan professional Lee Sedol in the same 5 games match. The games are played in Seoul, Korea, and start at 5 a.m. my time. I've missed the first game, watched the record later. But woke up at 5 to watch the other 3 games.

I was shocked by the strength of the AlphaGo. And not just me - the whole Go world is shaken. It start off winning 3-0 and Lee Sedol managed to win the 4th game with a brilliant tesuji move in the middle game. This is truly history in making. Computer have defeated human in Go. There only just one game left, it's gonna be played tonight and even though the whole match is basically over - this is going to be a ferocious fight. Lee Sedol mentioned in the interview that AlphaGo plays stronger with White and the last game it played Black when Lee won. So he directly asked for a permission to play the final game with Black vs AlphaGo's White. It is going to be absolutely legendary clash.

I know there are not too many Go players and fans on this forum, maybe just a few - but this might be a good time to check it out. All games records and the next stream can be found here on the special YouTube channel of the match.

Oh, right, the poker... the week started off really good at 25NL. I almost reached 1500$ bankroll at some point to be able to take shots at 50NL. We actually did that with the coach asimos and ended up losing one buy-in which is fine. But still - the last days were a little bit of a struggle so total profits are not impressive.

Here are the stats, graph and the bankroll challenge report.

Played at Zoom 25NL and 50NL 6 max: 9082 hands
Net result: +98$ and +40$ by EV
Current bankroll: 1326$ (+85$)

Do you think Zoom is easily beatable compared to regular tables?

Hi, Spazzaments, thanks for stopping by, it's getting a bit empty here recently.

Originally posted by Spazzaments
Do you think Zoom is easily beatable compared to regular tables?

It's a complicated topic, I don't think there is a simple answer to this. I haven't played regular tables seriously for years now, basically since the Zoom was launched back in 2012 - actually it's almost exactly 4 years since then, according to my old blog it happened March 17th, 2012. Yeah, so since then I've played just a few thousands of hands total at max on regular tables because of some promotions and stuff. My impression was - and a lot of people I know confirm this - that regular tables are softer and there are more fish on average.

But that said - this doesn't mean Zoom is something unbeatable or extremely tough. The dynamics is different, meta-game is different, strategy should be a little different too. But micros aren't really special, you beat it with ABC solid poker backed up with strong discipline and mental endurance.

Huge advantages of Zoom to me are:
1) more flexibility in terms of the playing times - you can sit down to play a session and stop at any moment or play a massively long session, it doesn't matter. On regular tables it would take some time to set up the tables, find good ones, start getting some stats - and then your kid wakes up and starts crying or something, and you lose the progress...
2) more hands played per hour, less time wasted, less tables to manage at the same time for the same volume - I think this is self explanatory. Currently I play 2 tables of Zoom, sometimes adding another one, don't play much - but feel comfortable with the volume and the rakeback speed.
3) less meta game and mental clashes - that was one of my biggest issues at the regular table. You steal or re-steal vs the same guy over and over again and at some point either he or you (or both actually) go into dark territory. You start overthinking, overcomplicating things, sometimes it's ending up in some aggressive actions at the table and grows into an argument in the chat or something. You can avoid most of this stuff playing Zoom.

So overall you might get less bb/100 but you might get more bb/hour and more +EV mentally, depending on your personal character and approach. So yeah, it's not an easy topic really... I might actually think about it more later this week and maybe will elaborate on that during the Twitch streams...

Let me know if that answered your question or if you have more of them. Good luck at the tables!
Jay.