Daruma

I’m slowly (knock on wood) bouncing back from a 5k downswing, which has been a little rough for me. Just when things were going well and I could smell the 20k mark I got dragged down all the way to 12k. I’d like to say that my game was fine etc etc, but of course it hasn’t been. One big problem I have is not sensing well enough when I am playing on autopilot, which unfortunately is a bad habit that I have when I am losing. I tend to lose my concentration a bit and play too fast not thinking my opponents moves through well enough. I’ve tried to change focus, and so far it has helped me bounce back 1.5k with a looooong way to go this month.

On the upside of things I have played the most ever and have played 21.5k hands so far this month, which is amazing for me so early. However I will have to slow down soon as school will take up more time again. Since it is my last semester I will TRY to motivate myself and write a good bachelor project. I owe that both to myself and the guy that I am writing with. Since I know that I will be rewarded with at least one year of freedom, I think I can pull myself up to this one.

About this blog I have decided not to try and update daily. It simply gets too boring and the content I come up with is forced because I have to. I like writing, but only when I have something on my mind that I need to reflect on etc.

Keeping a daily routine with the blog has helped me get some planning done and increased my daily activities. Something which hasnt been incorporated into a 100% routine, but has at least helped be more aware of things and have me doing more stuff.

I will probably still fill the blog with daily goals once in a while, but since it is my blog and I can do whatever I want with it, there is nothing you can do about it ;)

There isn’t much more to say, the next 3 months or so are going to be rather dull. I have a goal of having at least 30k on my roll when I finish school in june, which should definitely be doable as I still put efforts in improving. Things with my buddy has been pretty quiet lately, but we should continue coaching next week, since he is done travelling for a little while. The sessions we have had so far have been really good so I am optimistic for the future. I am still chasing the dream :)

I feel the joy of a set program and following it. It is those small victories every day that just makes you feel good :)
I struggled like hell on the tables today but stuck it out and finished up a tiny bit. I’ve recovered from a 10bi downswing which is nice. I feel better and less tilted when things don’t go my way and just keep grinding even though I am stuck vs an opponent. so far my patience has paid out pretty well, which makes me proud.

Goals for tomorrow

35×2 push ups + some abs workout
Morning session once I wake
School at 1.30pm
tennis at 6
dinner and movie with 3 friends at 8
university bar afterwards!!! ill make sure not to drink too much so that ill be ready to grind it out friday. I need to get more hands in this month!

I feel the difference already. It is indeed good to be home and getting back into a better rythm. Too bad school is approaching, but a slight comfort that it will be the last 4-5 months of school in a while. Poker has been going so so. resultwise pretty meh and feel too lost in many spots still to really feel comfortable with my game (thank God there are so man bad hu players out there) But I am working on it and have a new coaching session tomorrow.

Today was weird. I started out getting outdrawn constantly winning no flips and coolered to an amount where I almost found it amusing. It does indeed hurt to lose a lot vs players, who are immensely bad.
However things turned around completely in my second session of the day. I won 7bi vs one single villain, who seemed good, but very very aggro. I was fortunate enough to hit well and could sit back and have him do all the work most of the time.

goals for tomorrow

- 35×2 push ups in the morning
- poker session
- do some house-shopping
- coaching session
- maybe one more poker session

(+ status for January)

It has been waaaaaaaaayyyyy too long since I gave my blog a break for the holidays. It is amazing how easy I fell back to old patterns and how hard it was to get this thing going again.
On the plusside – I was aware of it this time and noticed the difference of my performance/well being, but STILL it took me a long time to get going again.

I guess I used the excuse for myself that I was too busy with school, but srsly, who is too busy to keep up a blog with 3-4 daily goals. Big personal fail imo.

For those who are interested was january a decent month pokerwise. I netted about 2.5k but with an EV of 4k+, which indicates to me that my game is definitely good enough for nl200. furthermore I have begun to get some coaching from one of my very best friends too. I cannot state how happy and grateful I am for this and hope he keeps up his motivation for a while yet.
on the “life-side” january was bad. My daily rythm was a joke and it effected my daily life. I got through the things I had to and finished my semester in Vienna ok I guess, but that was pretty much all I had energy for, which meant not enough hands in in poker and not enough activities outside of poker.

So to get back into things I will now start setting up daily goals again in the hope to get back on track.
For today they will be:

- 35×2 push ups
- 2+ poker sessions
- Tennis + fitness at 6pm

that’s it for now, until tomorrow !

yeah sorry for quitting on you, dear blog during the holidays. But a man needs his vacation ;)

However vacation is over and its back to beating the devil.

I guess I will start by rounding off 2009 in short. I had some goals written in january last year:

300k hands
bb/100 of 7+
nl400 reg by the end of the year.
30k profit

I played maybe half, like 150k, which is very poor. However to my defence I forgot that I was going to Vienna on exchange and deliberatly toned down poker while I was (still am for 3weeks) there. bb-wise I kept it above 10, which is very good for my confidence. my laptop has my hu hands registered, where Ive run with 13bb/100 over 100k hands on nl100 and currently 5 after 20k hands on nl200.
Due to the sad amount of hands played I didn’t get to nl400, but I feel comfortable on nl200 now, which is a good start. I’ve got some plans for when I get home, which I am very excited about and think will take my game to new levels pretty quickly. It involves some coaching from one of my very best friends. He is basically the reason I got started with poker at all and I already owe him so much for his advices and cheering up when things looked bad.
I also fell short of the 30k profit, but compared to the amount of hands I played I am happy with my results.

2010 will be split into two parts. the first half will go a little like last year, where the amount of hands probably will be somewhat limited to about 20k a month due to school. It is my last semester before I get my bachelors degree, so need to put in a little work there too. It is my ambition and clear goeal to be able to play full time by july first, meaning that I need to spend a lot of time the first 6months of the year on improving my game and getting my confidence up to a level where I am sure I have the skills to make it, also in bad times.
Second half of 2010 will be dedicated to poker. I will try to double the amount of hands played and going for 40-50k a month.

bb-wise and money won is of less importance. All I want to focus on is making the best possible decisions when I play. I think/hope the rest will follow automatically :)

Goals for tomorrow:

35×2 push ups
2 pages done for the examn paper due jan. 10th
farewell dinner for my rommate, who leaves monday morning

Not much to write about at the time. I have forbidden myself to play poker before I get started with the paper and have a clue on things. So far it has resulted in a lot of staring at a blank screen and not much else.
I’ve never been this lost and discouraged before..

Goals for tomorrow

• 30×2 push ups
• write
• write
• write
• write
  ..at least 1 page Goddamnit

Sorry for neglecting my blog the past two days. It is amazing how travelling and moving messes up your daily routines. I’ve still managed to do my push ups every day though. I am beginning to become addicted to them – which is very nice :)

On the pokerside I am on a bit of a downturn having had two doomswitch sessions costing me, at one point, all of my profit this month. I didn’t feel like I tilted too much, but obviously I have misplayed some hands during the two sessions. However when looking at my hem EV (still don’t know how much that counts) it seems like I did a whole lot better than what the numbers in my poker account are showing me.
All in all I felt somewhat ok after these rollercoaster days. I am improving in thinking of deceisions instead of money, but still catch myself staring at my account too often, to see how I am doing.
Another thing I noticed again is the amount I play when I am stuck compared to when I am up. I guess it is a question of confidence and fear – but with improved play comes improved confidence and increased ability to really pound on your opponent. I learned that from my tennis career. So I guess the better I get at poker the better I will get at this too.

Today I had a wonderful session where I was gifted with a british hyper aggro/calling station donk on a £200 hu table for 45mins, which swung my profits back up a bit.

Back to poker I am in a dilemma at the moment. I am thinking of investing a large part of my roll in high class coaching from fx Krantz. I figured that now is the time to improve and I still have 6-7 months before I am taking the jump to go full time, which means I must prioritize my developing as a player. I would feel a lot more confident if I knew I had the abilities to make it. On the other hand I need a healthy roll to get started on, so it is costing me quite some braincells to figure out what to do.

on the regular “life” side it feels really good to be home and even though I have enjoyed my time in Vienna I can feel how much I am actually looking forward to return to Copenhagen. The holidays are not going to be as relaxing as I could wish for since I have a paper to do in a course where I, for the first time in my life, felt completely lost. I have to write 10 pages of something that might as well could be in Chinese to me, so I guess I have to use my blog to man up and get started. I need to pass the class to get the semester approved :(

Goals for Tomorrow

• push ups 30×2
• 2 sessions of studying for that freaking paper. Geez, where to start.
• I am gonna have to write no poker because I tend to play poker before schoolwork, which I can’t do now due to time pressure.

Finally I want to share this with you guys. I saw it on the Danish poker community site and have been in love with the song and abusing it terribly ever since
The Rumour Said Fire – The Balcony

enjoy! I know you will. it is fantastic

It’s been almost a month since I started my blog and since I finished a class tonite and can begin something like xmas vacation I thought it would be a good time to start looking back at the changes I have made – or at least tried to.

Having daily goals have definitely helped me being more productive. I have been very consistant with my push ups every morning and been pretty decent in fulfilling all my goals for the given days. However I still tend to skip unpleasant ones such as studying for school. I believe that I have to finish all goals before it is going to have a real “life-changing” effect on me. But I guess a little is better than nothing. I just can’t start skipping things, because that will only lead to more skipping and eventually I will fail completely.

Luckily poker has been going pretty well since I started blogging, which might have had some effect on my studying on the game – or rather lack thereof. But school has been pretty busy the last couple of weeks.
Anyhow I need to improve posting hands and videos etc. There is absolutely no reason not to. But I guess you all know it. Once you win consistently you tend to forget how much you actually suck at the game :)
Again the blog has made me more active. I have responded to more HH’s and been active with my coach again. But I need to do more. I have 7months before I hopefully can play full time. It should be enough time for me to both put in some hand volume, but most importantly improve my game.

By the way, if there is a HU-player out there at around my level (nl200) with the same goals and dreams, please contact me. I think we can definitely help each other.

My general mood when playing has been really good since I started blogging. I have been pretty decent in focusing on decisions and not so much on whether I am up or down – however it still affects me. I tend to check HEM and my account several times during sessions to see how I am doing. I think this is wrong and affects my game, but it is a habit REALLY tough to get rid of since I do it without thinking of it. Again suggestions are welcome.

I think that’s it for now guys, tomorrow I am flying home for the holidays before I return in Vienna around the 29th of December. It’s gonna be nice except for this one assignment that I have to do. It is going to be a 10 page paper finishing a class that stopped with classes in november. Rarely I feel lost in school, but this was one of those times. I have to hand it in before jan. 10th but need to start now since I have to read up on everything. I tried to read the case and objectives of the paper and it was like Chinese to me :S

Goals for Tomorrow

• 30×2 push ups (by the way I don’t have a goal as to how many I must be able to do, I just add on when I feel I can make more)
• X-mas shopping
• Fly home, study on the way

I will probably stop posting results on how I did pokerwise every day, since I think this might be able to help me stop checking my account all the time.

Happy Holidays guys!

Fine day today. Could sleep as long as I wanted, which I enjoyed. finished my goals except for the studying. It always seems to be the schoolwork that gets left out. I am so sick of school. But I guess I can’t put ‘em in the daily goals without fulfilling it, so I guess I need to man up and do it.
Poker went well, won €400 or so withing a pretty short session of 500 hands. I am getting impatient with my pokersite problems though. I now have $4k total which I can’t move because of pokersite blow-ups. I am quite sick of it.

Goals for Tomorrow

• up at 10 and do my push-ups
• class at 11
• study with a friend afterwards preparing for wednesdays examn
• a little xmas shopping
• probably a pokersession in the evening

cya

Goals/program for Tomorrow:

• 30×2 push-ups
• 1 hour study
• a walk outside
• dinner with friends

today was an off-day after a hectic week and a sweet night out. I did some push-ups and played a loooooooooooooooooot of pokers, sadly losing about €150 over 3k hands, so about even with RB. But its fine, I was ok with my play, didnt make too many mistakes, but I think I was a little too passive overall. I need to improve my hand reading and be better at finding bluffspots and increasing pressure on my opponents.

Anyone got an idea how? :)