So I’m back with an update on my approach for the first 3 months, I’ll be revisiting my goals and strategies pretty regularly so nothings set in concrete, my main priority will be making sure I do everything possible to reach my desired outcome. I have come up with a number of regular milestone goals for myself to achieve, with the overall intention of putting myself in a position to turn pro, in addition to a few other happy outcomes. Setting the right milestones I think, and then consistently achieving them is the important part- if I do all of the little things right, then everything else should take care of itself.

Milestones

Volume Goals

• 300 MTT’s per month
• 5 hours each week dedicated to the additional format I’ll be focussing on that week
• 20 Hours of live cash games each month

Study Goals

• Review all individual hands marked for review each day (prior to playing)
• Do at least 1 full tournament review each week
• Dedicate at least 5 hours each week to working with Holdem Resources Manager and Flopzilla
• Participate in at least 3 strategy forum posts each week
• Watch at least 8 strategy video’s each month
• Watch at least 1 online sweat/session review each month (in addition to above)
• Read at least 3 strategy articles each week

Intended Outcomes

Goals that I Recognise are not Entirely Within My Control

• Win first 4 figure score
• Win first 5 figure score
• Crack top 3 of the pocket fives leader board for my home country of Australia
• Win first triple crown
• Win first major live score
• Quit my job and play poker for fun and money 

My volume goals may seem a little low to some, but remember I still have a full time job and a fiancée to spend time with, so this is how I’ll start out, and I will ramp things up/scale things back as the pressures of real life deem necessary over the next 12 months. I expect I will be playing 500 MTT’s by the end of the first few months, and then 750 soon after, ideally playing around 1000 each month by the time I hit the 6 month mark. I decided to base my target for the additional format I focus on each week as a time requirement, given that there will be a mix of sng’s, stt’s and cash games.  

Also during the first 3 months I am inclined to spend more time working on my game away from the table than at the table, so note that all of my study goals are set as minimum requirements, and when time allows I will look to exceed these targets as a priority over squeezing in extra volume initially. Ideally I will be able to drop back to part time employment at some point over the next 12 months to further increase my volume, but that will depend on how things go and I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. For now as I said I want to focus on doing the little things right, and I think this is a good start from which I will build on/fine tune as I need to.

I will of course be multi-tabling, but probably less than most people as I will be focussing on trying to keep my ROI as high as possible. With a limited bankroll/income to dedicate towards playing poker, I will be trying to offset variance as much as one can while playing MTT’s, and after playing around extensively over at Pokerdope researching the topic at length, in my opinion good game selection and maintaining a high ROI are superior ways to go about this than sheer volume alone. My current ROI overall on Sharkscope looks pretty abysmal at the moment, but when filtered out to only consider the games I’ve played this year it is a much more respectable 27% over a sample of roughly 800 games, a figure which I feel is much closer to the level I’m currently playing at since revamping my game earlier this year.

I also believe firmly that life away from the tables affects your mindset at the table, so in a future post I will be discussing my real life goals away from the poker table. In my next post though I’ll be back with a set of rules that I will be abiding by for the purpose of self-management in terms of protecting my bankroll, avoiding tilt and playing my A game as much as possible. I’ll also start talking about my experience of 1 on 1 coaching with Matt, and when I think it’s a good time in a players’ development for them to start thinking about investing in a coach.

I'll be putting in some decent volume over the weekend so hopefully I'll have some positive updates on that front also.

Good luck at the tables TPE members!

Nervous Mike said:

It feels cheap to just write a few lines of text after reading all this. But I wish you the best of luck and I will follow along.

/Mike

All replies, short/epic and cheap/expensive are welcome Mike- thanks for following!

ttwist said:

this is going to be a lot of fun to follow, I wish you the best of luck!

Thanks ttwist! Good to have you in the thread!

BigSnowball said:

Good luck fella
Hope you Dig In better than your (and our for that matter) batsmen !

Haha thanks Snowball, pretty sure I run a bit worse than my fellow aussie batsmen, but hopefully we'll see things turn around on both fronts!

So I wanted to talk about my experience with coaching, it's a topic that seems to come up in the forums a bit- just how essential is it, and at what point should someone consider investing in a coach?

My opinion is that there is a lot that one can do to improve their game without a coach; between online forums, blogs, books, e-books, online training sites, twitch feeds, you tube playlists, and the plethora of calculators etc available online, anyone can develop the fundamentals of a winning poker strategy on their own- and you should be doing so!

The trouble though, is everyone has access to all of these amazing resources, and most people who play with any sort of regularity at all, are using them to get just as good as you, just as quickily as you. Some players are naturally gifted and seem to have an inate sense for cardgames, but for most of us mere mortals I also believe there is somewhat of a ceiling on how much we can improve on our own, due in large part to an inability to see our own flaws.

Most poker players, especially players relatively new to the scene tend to overestimate their abilities, a phenomenom which Jared Tendler refers to as a 'silent killer' in poker, and is commonly linked to the 'dunning-kruger effect'. There's a great article about it on Zachary Elwoods website about it here, but suffice to say that if you're not taking a hard look at your game to find the leaks that are there, then you're not as good as you think you are. This is something I struggled with early on in my experience with poker, a problem that was compounded further by the overall weak ability of live players that served to re-enforce my beliefs. But I never stopped wanting to learn and get even better which was my one saving grace- as Tendler puts it in his blog– “Actual comptence weakens confidence'. 

I felt like my game was approaching somewhat of a ceiling when I reached out to Matt about coaching, and it was by far and away the best thing I could have done for my poker game. Over the course of the Zero to Hero series, Matt was able to identify leaks in my game that I wasn’t conscious of, and helped me see just how much some of the leaks I was conscious of were actually costing me. I came away from the series with a clear picture of what areas of my game need improvement, what steps I can take to improve, and feel I am better equipped to pick my game apart on my own moving forward. It was also very illuminating to see how differently we both approached the same poker hands, which gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I think about poker in general, and my decision making process at the table.

I feel it's important to realise though, that as powerful as coaching can be (provided you have a good coach of course) that just going out and hiring a coach early on in your poker development probably isn't really the best way to go about things. Given how easy it is to learn the fundamental concepts of poker through self study/online training sites, I think it’s best to have put time into utilising other resources, and put in a decent amount of volume at the tables prior to investing in a coach. Not only will this allow your coach to focus on picking your game apart instead of teaching you basic concepts, but having a decent sample of hands for your coach to analyse will allow them to draw more accurate conclusions about your game, and help them hone in on what areas you need help with most.

I highly recommend that anyone considering coaching, or just wanting to see how they can drill down deeper into their game to identify some of their leaks, check out the 'Zero to Hero' video series when it goes live. I think some of my own leaks will be common to many members on this site, and seeing how Matt analyses different spots with the various tools available online is pretty awesome and valuable in it's own right.

I said in my last post that I'd also be discussing some rules that I'll be abiding to over the course of my challenge, and for the most part for the rest of my poker playing days beyond the next 12 months as a form of self management. I'll be adding/refining this list as time goes on and as I continue to learn from my mistakes. There are a number of rules not on this list that I'm saving for a future post though as I have categorised them as Bankroll Management Rules, which I feel is a seperate topic. So without futher ado, in no particular order of preferance or importance, my self management rules are as follows:

1- No more mobile poker

2- Don't play straight after waking up

3- Don't drink while playing

4- Don't play while tired

5- Don't play while angry

6- Study comes first- must look over review hands prior to registering for any tournaments

7- No multi-tasking whilst playing (listening to music is ok

8- You can't play if you have neglected your health and fitness/nutrition that week until you do something about it

9- Don't pass up opportunites to spend time with people important to you to play poker

10- Keep self accountable with by posting regular updates in the PG&C thread!

Killingbird said:

good luck, lets gooooo!

Thanks KB!

It's been a bit long since my last post in this thread- much longer than I'd like, but I've been under the pump a bit balancing real life/poker for the past week or so. As far as news to report since my last post, Matt's let me know that the series should be up very soon, so keep an eye out for it, I'm looking forward to watching it myself as I think it will help consolidate some of the things I learnt during my sessions with the almighty ginger.

I just finished off my last grind for the week… good God I run awful. But in spite of running well under EV as per usual the past week, I managed to pick up a few decent scores over last two days, including chopping an $8 freezeout last night for just over $500. I was at close to a 2 to 1 chip deficit too so I was pretty happy to split it down the middle- yay money! That illusive 4 figure score still escapes me so far despite doing my best to put myself in a position to take one down, but the bankroll is growing at a decent clip for the stakes I play at so I can't complain too much. It'll come if I keep up the grind.

I've decided to post graph updates on a monthly basis, with one graph posted for my results that month alone, and one graph updating my results for the year to date. Below is my graph for the month of July:

Obviously my volume is well under par for the goals I set myself in my earlier post, but to be fair I only started this challenge in late July so July doesn't count too much. It does illustrate though that I need to be ramping my volume up pretty significantly to hit my volume goals moving forward. 

So far for the month of August I'm sitting at a total count of 46 tournaments- though it's still early in the month that does leave me quite a bit behind schedule. I tend to multitable at a number lower than what I suspect most of the sicko's are currently running with; at the moment I'm probably sitting at around 6 tables running until I stop registering towards the end of my session and let them drop off. This is partly due to trying to achieve/maintain a high ROI which as mentioned in a previous post is a key part of my strategy for combatting variance with a limited bankroll, but it is also a function of my poker station consisting soley of a 17 inch laptop.

I find managing more than 6-8 tables pretty hectic on the real estate my laptop screen provides, and find myself missing too many spots when I play 8 tables and above. I'll certainly be looking into upgrading to a desktop computer with dual monitors in the hopefully near future, but that's something that will probably need to come out of my bank roll so I'm stuck with the laptop for the time being. I do think my laptop has served me well so far, but to take things to the next level upgrading my workstation is pretty much a necessity I think.

For the short term, the solution I have come up with is to start mixing in a heap of 90-180 mans into my regular sessions to try and get my numbers up- the shorter player pools in these games will allow me to pump games out at a quicker clip, which I think will actually have a number of additional benefits. Certainly the smaller field sizes will help me in the battle I am constantly waging against variance to protect my bankroll. It will also help me gain a lot of experience in the different stages of tournament play in a shorter time frame, as I'll be churning through more tournaments in the same amount of time that I would normally spend playing. Lastly, I've made a small deposit on 888 poker, which I will be trying to build up into a 4 figure bankroll similar to what I've put together on Stars. I made the decision to branch out onto other poker sites to target both smaller and weaker playing fields which I expect will pay dividends in the near future- focussing on 90-180 mans will allow me to build this deposit up into a decent roll safely. I'll take regular shots at mtt's as well on this site, but my focus will be on SNG's on 888 and soon other similar sites initially. I'll have to mix in SNG's on Stars too I suspect until I have deposits on a few sites up and running, as there are not as many games running on 888 from what I saw the last time I was logged in.

Well that's me for the night, it's nearly 3 in the morning here in Brisbane, but I wanted to get a post up before heading to bed after my session earlier. It's becoming rapidly evident that a set schedule is going to be neccessary to keep up with all the tasks I've set for myself, more on that later- thanks for reading guys, I'll be back with more updates soon!

Hey TPE grinders!

Haven't managed to bink anything for a while despite putting in some decent volume, though I have atleast made it past the bubble a few times the last couple of sessions- definitely running well under EV at the moment. Going to get some solid hand history review time in tomorrow though, hopefully I can find a few things to improve on and help turn my luck around faster than the poker gods seem to have it presently scheduled.

Presently one tabling at the tail end of 7 hour session so far. One tabling at 4.36 in the morning is pretty gross, but I have a reasonable stack atleast, I'm sitting at 45 BBs in a $5.50 2R1A, with a $7.5 Gtd, and 180 of the 589 original entrants remaining… come ooooonnnnnnnn rungood! 

I try to avoid too many fields bigger than 3-400 in a bid to minimise the variance that I'm presently submerged in, but generally these 2R1A games are pretty soft at these stakes, I've made a few deep runs the past few days but lost some key flips.

Hopefully I can final table this puppy and have some good news to brag about in the morning (afternoon), otherwise I'll likely follow up later tomorrow or the next day with some hands I played to mix things up a bit in here and keep it interesting.

Hope you're all knee deep in some big prize pool tournaments, unlesss it's the one I'm presently one tabling- get out of my tournament I need a win :-p

So I’m well overdue for my latest forum post. This is a function of both stretching myself a little thin between competing goals (poker vs non-poker related), and a lack of motivation for posting updates- motivation can be a challenge when you’re bankroll is hemorrhaging violently  I’ve still been playing and studying regularly, I just didn’t have any updates that I was particularly excited about posting. I also couldn’t get the HH converter to co-operate when I went to share some hands a while ago. But it’s time to put my lack luster results aside and keep the thread going. In the grand scheme of things down swings are going to be a common experience as I continue to pump up my volume, so I can’t let it throw me too much. It’s almost a rite of passage as much as anything else. Looking at it objectively, it’s not even that large a sample of games to have tolerated a bad run, I think it’s only that the swing represents such a big chunk of my bankroll that it bothered me as much as it did. But I can either suck it up or move down in stakes so that the negative variance takes a smaller chunk of my money with it, and at this stage I’d rather just suck it up. Obviously I’ll move down to protect my bankroll if my ABI starts to represent too big a percentage of my poker funds, but I don’t feel like that’s necessary at this stage- I’ve definitely found some spots to improve and help turn things around, but I’m playing well overall and getting my money in good in most spots, so I think I just have to keep on keeping on.

The spiraling nosedive my graph was experiencing seems to have plateaued out a bit anyway, and has even started to tilt back up a little bit, so perhaps Pokerstars finally turned off my doom switch- I guess they got the angry letters I sent them haha.

But anyway, without further ado, here’s my graph for the month of August…

So after observing my latest downward slope, the first thing I’m sure you will notice, is that I once again came no where near my monthly volume goal of 300 tournaments. I’m putting the time in at the tables when I have time to spend, but obviously that’s just not cutting it as things stand. I mentioned in a previous post that I was planning to try incorporating some 90 and 180 mans to help boost my volume, and that’s still my plan, I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I’ve been working on my push/fold game and have watched a few of the video series available on TPE here and have tinkered around with a few games, but I just haven’t put in any significant volume in SNG’s just yet.

Another obvious answer would be to bump up the number of tables I’m currently averaging which is presently between 4 and 6 tables, but if that was my only option I’d rather just forgo the volume. I think I have a noticeably bigger edge when I limit myself to 6 tables, and have noticed I take notes a lot more too. Furthermore, I think there’s more to the problem than simply trying to cram more tables in; I’m a very motivated person, but I have a tendency to try and achieve more than what is realistically doable, and I instead of really completing anything I partially complete a number of things. So it would seem that narrowing my scope of focus is probably in order, as is a fixed schedule to keep me on track. I’ll be revisiting my goals and targets over the next few days and thinking about what things really matter, as well as reassessing my other goals outside of poker, and allocating my time accordingly. I’ve bought a whiteboard to write up my weekly and monthly targets up on, and have downloaded a daily planner app on my phone to help myself manage my time more effectively (another character flaw). So I’m looking forward to becoming a more focused and efficient version of myself 

I also have some exciting news to share, the Zero to Hero series is officially live in the members video section, so jump over and check it out- I think most of you will find it really helpful. I’ve downloaded the whole series and will be working my way through it over the course of the next 5 days or so- even though I’m in the video I expect I’ll still get a lot out of a viewers perspective, and feel it will help consolidate everything Mat covered with me. I expect there will be plenty of cringe-worthy ‘I’m such a fish’ moments, but that’s ok, I got a lot out of doing the series with Mat and I think you will too. I highly recommend coaching for those who have already put in some volume and time on their own!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with my all time profits graph from sharkscope as of the end of August, I guess looking at the graph now I pretty much finished August up only a little worse than where I started, which isn’t the end of the world, but it would sure be nice to round out September with a big bink or two to brag about in my next profit update. Come on Rungood! I’ll be back soon with updates on my targets and my new schedule, and other late night ramblings. Keep it real TPE!