Letace Play Poker !

When I first joined up with deuces cracked I listened to the first couple of episodes of The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment. I Thought they were great but that I had to pull my attention to betting strategies and poker theory as I knew almost nothing about poker at the time. At the change of the year I looked back at my poker rollercoaster and realised that my biggest weakness had to be tilt – my graph looked like an 80’s punk mohawk (although slightly escalating ;) ) The decision to stay at 25nl instead of move up to 50nl when I reached 40BI’s gave me a great oppotunity to work on aspects of poker that are relevant no matter what stakes you’re playing – the emotional and mental sides of poker.

I’ve only been doing “Formal Meditation” and “Mindful Breathing” over the 3 weeks and cant belive the difference in not only my poker but also in normal life, how less tilted I am and how much more detail I am able to observe in any normally mundane, boring, laborous, daily situations. This makes me think back to why I love poker – not only is it enjoyable & potentially profitable, but it also gears you up for almost evert situation outside of poker. When you think about it you can probably apply 90% of what you learn about poker in real life situations – which I think is the number one reason why I am so motivated to do well in poker.

Anyway, now that I feel I have a method to work on my biggest weakness I am much more confident at the table and its showing in my results :D ! Pretty good month, I made a BI in my weekly prop bet with a friend of mine (see who can make the most money in 10K hands per week) and ran at just under 4ptbb/100 over 35k hands. Which is ok considering I only played 4k hands this week – had to sort out visas for my travels which required a trip to london!

I’ve got to play roughly another 15k hands in 2 weeks to clear my bonus on stars and them I’m off to the EAST!

Good Luck at the tables…
Brett.

Hey Guys,

Crazy week, started off with some mega tilting sessions, resulting from bad play & a couple run bad sessions. At one stage I was 12BI’s down! Scary stuff!

I friend of mine and myself had a prop bet to see who could make the most $ for the week, but you had to play 10k hands to quilify, which was great as it kept me grinding through the tilt and really made me focus on why I was tilting and not tilting rather than just quitting and forgetting about the session.

Worked out pretty well as I ended about 2BI up, ran at 1.71ptbb/100 over the week which is definently a below average week however looking at the spots I was in card wise I think I did as well as I could have hoped.

I’ll find out the results of the prop bet tomorrow moring, but I’m not too confident as I think he crushed all week through.

Goals for the next week:

• Finish listening to EFPTPE again
• Play 10k hands
• 2 session reviews
• Go to the gym every morning

Targets for the next week:

• Run at >4ptbb/100
• Focus on every hand in my session

I’ve only got 4 more weeks of play untill I depart on my voyage, times a ticking and I need to start performing.

Good luck at the tables…

Hey guys,

I probably should have started this when I started my challenge. I’ll start with a little about me. I am originally from South Africa and moved to the UK when I was 16 – 4 years ago. I used to work for a Merchant Banking firm as an Intern since I was 18, but due to the “financial crisis” we’re all experiencing the juniors in my firm were the first to get the chop – this happened at the same time I was applying for UK citizenship, a process that entails the British Embassy holding your passport for up to a year (including in my passport is my working visa – without it I cannot go for an interview).

So I was 20, jobless without any means of employment or future prospects for the next year – as University term had just started a week prior. Bad Times!

I had been a recreational player prior to my life as a hobo, and probably played about 40K hands total – without any means of tracking my process or even a HUD for that matter – probably the same was 99% of us started out! I found DC on youtube video and couldn’t believe how much I DIDN’T know about the game – and how hungry that made me.

For the next month I studied poker for roughly 6 hours a day – playing very little. And started my roll with $50 to my name – I had living expenses covered by my company for 4 months!

My intention was to make $2500 to travel around SE Asia from February till June (I have savings to add to this) – then come back to the UK, my visa would be sorted and University would commence in September.

I started at 5NL – quickly moved to 10NL and to 25NL. It was probably after about 40K hands and two months down the line I found my roll approaching the 1.5k mark. After a few unsuccessful attempts to crack 50NL, I decided that the least riskiest way of obtaining my $2500 would be to stay at 25NL where my edge was much bigger than 50NL and still make my goal!

That was mid November. Now, at the beginning of January I am currently sitting on $1500 in my BR – bad times! I know this is a part of poker – and I know it’s not all run bad – I have a TON of leaks in my game – any 25NL player would. All I need to do is focus for the next 5 weeks and I would have had achieved my goal!

I cant thank DC and as importantly the members of DC enough as they are the ones who have been replying to my posts – contacting me for sweat sessions and helping me out when I felt like there was no way I could beat this game.

“Muchas Gracias”

So, from here I need to play 40K focused hands in 5 weeks. Its f’ing cold outside – so I’m not worried about missing out on anything by spending time at the virtual felt!
I’ll be living life 3 fold when I’m away – so a bit of elbow grease for the short time sounds like a fair deal!

See you at the tables…
Brett.