Huh?

Heyo, it's been a long long time since my last post. I haven't really played poker a  ton since Black Friday and have not visited DC much either. I started grinding STT-s again on PP since I really hate the thought of getting a real job for summer. I'm playing 6-man normal speeds at the moment since there are enough of the games running, haven't really done very good but can't complain much either. I've been studying a lot and I think I'm getting back into the correct mindset pretty quickly. I started out playing $3 STT-s which was pretty difficult since I used to play more than 10 times bigger STT-s just a year ago. I've been getting into the $6 ones lately as well, we'll see how that goes. Anyway...

What I really wanted to talk about was the marathon that I was supposed to run yesterday. I started training almost 3 months ago I think, I thought it would be possible to run under 4 hours since I was quite fit when I started training + I had a coach who ran the marathon as well(he finished with a pretty darn good place). BTW, I was supposed to run the Nordea Rigas Marathon. Well after a few weeks of training I got injured pretty bad(ITBS). I maybe didn't focus on curing it as much as I should have and  2 days before the marathon I did a test run. I had been cross-training for like 6-8 weeks, no real running. I could run about 500 meters on my test run before my leg started killing me and I had to basically limp home. I decided I wouldn't run at all but would still go to Riga to cheer for my friend and have a good time.

Once we arrived to the expo I somehow got talked into doing the 10k run. I planned on quitting once the pain got too bad. I put some gels and painkillers on my legs and planned to run for a few kilometers although knowing myself it was obvious that I'd either complete the race or run until I couldn't move my leg anymore. So yeah, I got to the start corridor, put on some more gel and started out running really slow. I hadn't even crossed the start line before I could feel my leg getting tight. It started hurting shortly after crossing the starting line but I decided I'd keep going until the first energy point at around 2km mark I believe. Once I got there my leg was pretty bad, I put on some more gel that brought with me, drank a bit and kept going thinking that I'm already almost halfway to 5km mark. Soon after the water stop while stretching my IT band on the road I decided that it was all the shoes fault and took them off. I continued running barefoot and stretching every few minutes. I was limping and running at the same time but I didn't feel as bad without shoes. My legs were a bit more relaxed.

So I continued until around the 5km mark. Right before seeing the 5km sign I again though about quitting pretty seriously but didn't since I was about to cross the bridge and I really wanted to run on it. I decided that if I didn't get any painkillers on 6.5km from the volunteers I'd quit. I didn't get any and I didn't quit since it was 'only 3.5km to the finish'. If you've ever had ITBS you know that every climb and descent is like hell. I don't know, maybe my brain had decided to block out the pain but I didn't feel it as much after I came back over the bridge at around 8km mark or somewhere around there. I started passing some people that had been with me near the start, I felt like shit but I was also really really really happy because I thought that I might actually finish this thing. I had run with an old Latvian lady for the first ~4km and met her again. We didn't speak the same language and couldn't really communicate but I was really happy to see her and I think she was pretty happy to see me still going on bare feet as well as she had a big smile on her face and slapped me on my back. In a way she was keeping me going I guess.

Up to that there had been an occasional cobblestoned road here an there but nothing too bad. Once I got off the bridge it was mostly only cobblestone road as far as I remember. Running this ~1.5km distance felt like 5km. I hadn't taken that into account when I took off my shoes. I remember being so very happy once I got off the cobblestone(I had almost fallen a couple of times running these roads) that I just started sprinting for the last 500m. I passed a ton of people, didn't really care about that, only cared about completing this hell. I was running really really fast and it was awesome since I didn't feel any pain anymore, pure adrenaline I guess. It felt like one of the fastest 500m runs in my life. And then came the finish line. Right after crossing it I could barely even walk. I congratulated my friend and vice versa and slowly started limping towards the medical booth where they did the best they good to help me. I had some bloody blisters and some normal blisters on my feet since I haven't run that long of a distance barefoot before and I could barely move my right leg. Got a quick massage and some gels on my thigh + some stretching.

All in all it was awesome. It was not the smartest thing I have ever done for sure, it was quite dumb to be honest but it was awesome. I wanted to go running again as soon as I finished. I've never been so proud of any other physical achievement. I honestly couldn't believe that I had actually run 10km that day, I didn't know I could take that much pain. The people there were very nice. Someone gave me their pain killing band aid(I couldn't get it to stick for some reason though), a lot of people told me to keep going and asked if I needed any help. The cameramen and announcers seemed to try motivate me as well although I didn't understand a word they were saying. IMO runners are the nicest people that I've met. I'd do everything again right now if I could. I'll run the marathon on 9th of September if my leg allows it. I don't think I'll ever quit running now.

FWIW, my leg isn't as bad as I thought it would be today. I started curing it as well as I know right after the race and it's actually pretty good today. I DEFINITELY don't recommend running like this though. I can't wait to run again! Hopefully i can start running some shorter distances in a month or so. I know it wasn't the same as running the marathon would be but it sure as hell felt like a marathon, it definitely changed me in a  good way I think.

I might post some poker related stuff soon as well. Cya!

This post will have 0 poker content in it, instead of whining about FT problems I thought it would be nice to share my thoughts about the 11th Estonian Youth Song and Dance Celebration in which I took part as a dancer. I must say that I'm not an emotional guy at all but even now as I'm watching replays of this event I am forced to turn my eyes up to keep tears from trickling down my face. Weird.

 The festival itself took place from 1st to 3rd of July but all the dancers spent the whole week in Tallinn practicing. Almost every practice lasted 12 hours(most of which we spent sitting down). Sometimes we woke up at 7am and got back to our school where we were supposed to stay for the night(we rarely did) at 11pm if I remember correctly. This was one of the most difficult weeks physically in my life, especially due to the weather. It was 30+ celsius  the whole week(we rarely got to spend time in the shadows), and most of us didn't get much sleep. 

I think I got less than 16 hours of sleep during the whole week(slept almost 2 days after the festival), that was my own fault though :P. I regret nothing though, all of the nights spent outside in the Old Town of Tallinn were simply amazing. Although the whole week was very tiring it was also one of the best weeks of my life. I could have gone out at any time of the day or night and I would have found some people to spend time with. We were given wrist straps so that we could get into nightclubs, ride buses for free etc and after the week you could simply walk up to someone who had this strap and chat as if you had known the person for a long time. It's astonishing how this week brought different people together. There is no way to put the whole experience into words, I can't even get close.

This was not my first dance festival and it won't be my last one. Although it was probably the last youth one that I could take part in as a performer, the next one will be in 5 years and I'll be too old to participate as a dancer by that time. The next full-scale dance festival takes place in 2014 and I will be at that one one way or another. We had a total of 33 000 singers and dancers participate this year, 2014 will be even bigger.

I could go on and on telling you a bunch of stories from that week but I really want to continue watching the replay so I'll save these stories for my grandchildren or smth =). Participating in something like this is something that I will definitely remember for the rest of my life. There were three performances and I think I heard somewhere that there were ~80 000 people participating/watching during one of those performances. I'd guess that more than 10% of Estonian population saw this live, even more watched it on TV and it's not even the "main event". Amazing how folk dance and choir songs bring a small nation together.

A few pictures:

 The crowd continued up the hill even behind the photographer, a lot of people were under the trees and behind the stage. I think it's the second performance, most singers weren't even there if that's the case.

 The map of Estonia.

 A teddy bear made by 10-11 yr olds(might have been 7-9), if I remember correctly =). The little ones started the performance and the older ones ended it. The pictures will be in that order as well. It symbolized how a person grows up, gains experience(perhaps outside their home country) and then returns to home.

 Estonia, written by the same age group.

 Father, child, mother. Slightly older children now(10-14 yo probably)

 Older gymnasts

 The title for the party was "Maa ja Ilm". Maailm=the world

The last two pictures deserve to be here just because the women dancing this dance were super awesome. I was on the right side of the stage preparing and I swear that you could only barely hear the music over clapping. Freaking awesome, I don't know how they managed to dance because some people were clapping in the wrong rhythm... 

Incredibly beautiful dance and music.

 Not quite perfect but hey, it's the thought that counts ;)

 Märt Agu

 The end.

Wow, it seems that I haven't blogged for more than a month now. Time flies if I get to do math.

In the 2nd of April post I told you about a "bet" that I made. I had to bring my classmate a bar of chocolate if I don't do 2hrs of math that day. I ended up giving her 4-5 chocolates which is a pretty good result imo taking into account that the bet lasted for ~45 days. The exam was on 13th of May and I think I did pretty well, made 1 super dumb mistake but should still get more than 90%. I was hoping for 100 but meh, can't win them all I guess. The result should come mid June, I'll let both of you know how I did. If you ever need to put in a ton of hours studying then a bet like that will be a lifesaver, trust me. I wouldn't have studied half as much if I hadn't made the bet. You need a very specific type of person to make this "bet" with though.

In other news, I've started playing poker again. Too bad I lost my iron man thing though, I was on ~7th month or something. I was away for almost 3 months it seems so the 2 months of iron man I can buy from the store won't really help me much. If I had to guess then I'd say that I've put in about 100 games over a week or so. It's crazy to think that I used to play more than 100 a day sometimes before the break. I've dropped my BI average a bit, I'm mixing in 6-max and 9-max games from $12-$36 turbos right now, hopefully I'll get my stuff together soon and move up again. It feels good to be back.

Oh yeah, I also decided that I'll run a marathon in 2012. I'll make some stupid bet about that if possible and tell you guys here. I really really really don't want to stay indoors right now, I want to go out and run but I can't because I messed my leg up a few days ago... If uni doesn't take up too much time and if I can train during the winter then I'm hoping to run the marathon in less than 4 hours. I'm built for running but haven't trained seriously for a long time. I think the London marathon in full already so I'll be running either in Amsterdam or Paris, haven't decided yet. Paris would probably be more awesome as there are more ppl participating but I have a good friend who lives near Amsterdam =/. Oh well, I have a full year to decide on the location. I'll definitely be running a half marathon this autumn in Tallinn.

I hope to post a thing every week in the future, won't promise anything though just in case =). I've planned out 4 big blog posts(details in previous posts, probably) but I have no idea when I'll actually write them, I haven't forgotten though...

Goooood luck!

You've probably read a ton of stuff about this already, sorry. I'll keep it short.
I just found out what has happened and I really think that this might be it. My first thoughts obviously revolved around my own money but that's not really important if you think about it. Money can be made again. Or at least money could have been made again before yesterday. I'm not really worried about my own money but about the impact that this news will have on the poker economy.
I believe that this will be talked about all around the world. Think about how many fish will never play online poker again. As long as there won't be any big news about online poker being legal, the online poker economy will quickly die in my opinion. Some people will never play again even if poker is legalized.
I hope everything works out for all of you and online poker.

There have been a lot of motivation bets made recently so I decided to go with the flow. I randomly got the idea that I should do 2 hrs of math every single day unless I'm really really ill(hung over doesn't count) until the final math examination. I knew I couldn't do it without any additional motivation though. I had recently read a blog post about motivating bets and figured that this would be a good idea. I checked my MSN messenger to see if a certain person was online. She was. I told her that every day that I fail to do at least 2 hrs of math I would bring her a bar of chocolate. She only had to ask me every day how much math I had done. All of this was done very impromptu, I now wish I had thought about this a bit more :D. 2 hrs is quite a bit of math to do each day. By the way all the weekends and such count as well. I didn't leave myself a single day to rest. I barely made my goal yesterday and left myself only around 15 minutes for showering and getting my suit on before going to the theater. In addition to that I have a lot of other exams coming up. But a bet is a bet and I won't break it. All of this is based on honesty. She won't be checking what I have done or anything like that. There's really no point in lying to myself.

I am thinking of adding additional penalties to myself if I don't get the hours in. I'm thinking of upping the penalty every time I fail. I'm not quite sure of how to penalize myself though. I need something I can hold in my hands. Just donating to charity won't be enough because internet money doesn't feel like real money. It can't be something very big either because that will create the danger that I will start lying. I don't think that I would lie but the probability is greater than zero. Just the simple act of physically giving something away is a huge motivator for me. If someone has any ideas then please let me know. I predict to fail about 3-4 times.

I'm on day 3 of the bet right now. I'll do an hour now before dancing and an hour later before going out. Yesterday was difficult, I just didn't feel like it at first and didn't do much. I wasn't focused for the first 20 minutes or so and decided to not count these 20 minutes which left me very little time to get dressed. Later I didn't want to stop though. In the end I got quite a lot of stuff done. Not gonna get that first chocolate that easily :P.

I'd offer you some over/under on how many days I will fail but unfortunately there is no way I can get you any proof =(.

Firstly, this post will not be about happiness as promised. I've been thinking about other things lately. One of those is whether or not we should learn from others mistakes but I won't tell you what I think about it right now.

Secondly, the title of my last post was something like "Back, finally" or something in that direction at least. Well, I've failed on that one as well. Haven't thought, talked and played poker at all for at least a month by now. Maybe it's good that I don't actively post in forums and such, at least I'll get a good break that way. Probably another busy month or two before I can finally come back. I miss poker and I miss DC...

I've been doing a lot of drawing and crafting lately, I made one thing that was actually cool. Will post pics later. I've been either drawing or making origami. I would post a picture that I made but it's super personal. Actually you guys wouldn't get the meaning 100% so it would be actually great. Dno, we'll see. You would be the first to see it :D. I will post the picture I'm currently working on though. Assuming that it works out the way I hope. I've got so many ideas it's crazy... Too bad that I can't capture them, they kind of fade away if I don't start working on them right away. 

My personal life is kind of crazy as well. My definition of crazy differs a lot from the general understanding of what's crazy though. To be honest I will deliberately make it crazy. It's something that I seriously want to do and need to do in order to not have any "what-if" scenarios going through my head in the future. Super scared but excited at the same time. It's kind of fucked up, I don't necessarily want anything to grow from it. The human species contains some weird individuals(me).

Sorry if I made any comma mistakes or other typos. I went to bed at 1.30 am last night, fell asleep around 5am and woke up at 11. + I have a slight fever. I hate and love emotions at the same time.

The internet is a great psychologist if used right.

e: oh and the happiness thing will happen. There's more to think about than I originally thought.

e2: I feel bad for being such a lousy blogger and still receiving a bunch of views/comments...

e3: it might not seem like it but I remain absolutely in love with life. Also I will go and try to sleep now. This is the last edit.

Hey guys, long time no see. I've been experiencing a ton of trouble with my internet connection lately so I have not been able to post much. This'll be a quick update on what's up and I plan to most something a bit more interesting/motivating soon. Until then you're going to have to put up with this though. 

• First off, my sleep problems have gotten a lot better lately. This is at least partly thanks to int20h. Haven't woken up in the middle of the night anymore and feel a lot more energetic overall.
  
• Secondly, I feel a lot happier than I did a week or so ago. Spoiler: my next post will talk about happiness. I realized some fairly obvious things that I knew before but didn't quite believe in them or smth. I'll talk more about that next time.
• Thirdly, I finally got a new laptop, WOOHOOO. No more freezing while 10 tables require my attention, booyah. It's a Dell Vostro 3700. I really like the big matte screen it has. Super comfortable as long as I don't have to transport it. It doesn't weight a ton(2.7kg) but just the size of it is huge. Very happy with my purchase thus far although they had packed it in with the US electric cable and didn't tell me but 20 minutes later and 6 euros poorer I had a new working laptop.
• Also, my internet is broken. That sucks. I have no idea what's wrong and I have a shared connection and the person managing it is kind of not good at it and the dude randomly changed our connection on thursday without ever mentioning it to us and now it's broken and he doesn't want to restart the modem and I'm going to get another connection soon because that shit is not cool and...and...and... Well, actually it's not too bad because I've spent a couple of days making origami(pics of super micro crane in next post?) and copying stuff from one laptop to another. I'm on my USB internet stick thing right now but it's not enough to play long sessions of poker.
• As I said, I've been busy doing other things lately so I haven't really played almost any poker. For about 2 weeks now, haven't played at all for the last 7 days or so. I'll play a ton once the spring break comes around and I get my internet fixed. I think I really needed that break, black card can wait, there's no point in playing poker if I don't enjoy it. I had a bunch of huge days(the 70 or 80BI downswing turned into an upswing) but didn't feel happy about playing poker. Can't wait to get back to the tables now though.

Aight, see you soon. I'm really looking forward to writing the happiness thing soon, I really think that somebody might gain something from it.

I'd like to thank both of you for reading this post, run goot!

Assuming that I live to be 75 years old I have a little over 20k days left. A third of this time I will spend sleeping, that will leave me with ~13 500*24=324 000hrs to do something. I will probably spend around 2hrs on average per day eating, that will leave me with less than 300 000 hours.  That doesn't seem that much, does it? If I continue to have a schedule like I do right now I will on average spend around 4hrs per day doing nothing productive(I got ~8hrs of school on weekdays, I did not count this as being nonproductive although it is a few hours every day). Spending those 4 hrs productively will gain me a total of  ~50k hrs of time that I can out into a good use. This is over 2000 24-hour days or almost 6 years spent doing nothing useful. I do not want to spend 6 years of my life doing nothing.

Most of us are aware that the earlier we start investing the more value we will accumulate during our lifetime. A few years can make a HUGE difference, especially if you start investing as young as I am. I'm not necessarily talking about investing into stocks or whatever. I'm talking more about knowledge. *I got carried away once I started thinking of investing and ended up writing a program that would calculate how much my purchasing power would increase if I would invest X amount of money every year. I could've gotten the results in less than 5 minutes if I had bothered to google it though... Whatevs, I like programming. Now I want to make it so that I'll invest the same amount of purchasing power every year so that I could take inflation into account. It's easy to do but I'm tired right now.*

Since I already got talking about investing I guess that I could share some numbers that I got from this program. Let's say I start investing the same amount of money every year. I think the average return on stocks is around 7% after we take inflation into account. So every year we gain 7% purchasing power.

• If we invest for 30 years, our purchasing power should be around 3.4 times the total amount of money that we put in.
• If we do the same for 40 years it'll be 5.3 times as much.
• In 50 years it'll be 8.7 times as much.
• After 55 years of investing our purchasing power will have grown 11.2 times the amount of money we put in.

As you can see, a few years will mean A LOT, especially once we get to 50+ years. If you could put aside $100 every month for 55 years it would grow to $739 492.31. And that is without taking inflation into account. This number will probably be multiple times bigger after inflation has been taken into account. Another thing to keep in mind is that I'm a very tired 18 year-old with nothing better to do on a Thursday night, I could've easily done something wrong here.

I don't know how I got from time management to here but anyway... I seriously have to take a look at how I spend my free time, I will write more in my next post once I have actually made some improvements. I will probably donate $X to charity Y every week that I don't study 14 hours(for school, not going to make something like that for poker atm). This seems to be the only way to get myself motivated again.

Haven't played much poker lately but I hope my 70BI downswing has come to an end. I'm feeling really tired because I haven't slept well lately. I get close to 8hrs of sleep but it certainly doesn't feel that way. I don't drink any caffeine in the evening either, don't know what's the problem. This is also the reason why I haven't played. I need to find a way to relax, I should go to the gym... Or maybe swimming...

Seeeeyaaa!!!1!!

I've been meaning to write a certain series of blog posts recently and the topic got me thinking about what makes a winning player. It's also inspired by a recent thread called "moving up through UNL Krants?" There's obviously math, theory and such. In my opinion they're not the hardest parts of poker. And they're definitely not all there is to poker. In this post I will talk about 3 other major aspects of poker that might keep you(and me) from making (more) money. There are more of those but I chose those three because they are, in my opinion, the most important.

3 difficult aspects of poker(not in any particular order):

• Applying what you have learned
• Controlling your emotions
• Adjusting to other players

All of them are somewhat combined, just as everything else in poker. You're only as strong as is your weakest link. Failing in one could easily mean failing in being profitable. For example, no amount of strategy and theory knowledge will do you any good if you are not capable of controlling your emotions. You'll be break-even at best.

If you feel like you know enough to beat the limit but you don't then I'd bet that you are simply not good enough in one of those three things. And that is fine, in fact it is great! It's great because you know where you need to improve. To maybe help you in this process I'll quickly elaborate on how you should do it. Feel free to suggest other ideas in the comments, it'd be greatly appreciated.

If you need to improve on how to apply what you have learned then go through your notes, crack open one or two tables and concentrate. I think that this will lead to huge improvements in your game. Maybe the end result will be the same but you will get there in half the time. If you try to apply what you saw in a video 30 minutes ago while 8-tabling then you will most likely fail. This could lead to new leaks and so forth. It is definitely not profitable. It won't help a ton if you do it once though. This should be done on regular basis.

If you have trouble controlling your emotions then watch EFPTPE/meditate before sessions/play ONLY when you're at your best/read the countless number of tilt control articles out there. Distance yourself from the result etc. This is something that I don't have a ton of trouble with so I don't know what you should exactly do. There are a lot people who know a lot more about this.

If you have trouble adjusting to others players then go through your hand histories, analyse a player and see how to beat him. Study and experience are key for this.Go through different scenarios of one hand + all the other things that coaches constantly try to hammer into our heads.

Have a purpose for what you do, know why you're doing what you're doing. Having a goal is THE best motivation. Find out why you play poker, other than just money. What would you use that money for? KNOW WHY you are willing to go through thousands of hours of study and play. And it will probably take thousands of hours, there are no shortcuts. I found my reason a little while back while I was watching Balugawhales Blueprint, I definitely recommend watching it.

Everybody is capable of learning the math and theory of poker relatively quickly and effectively enough to be able to earn a decent amount of money. In my opinion these 3 things are holding back so many guys stuck in the micros. They determine if and how successful the player is.

The next part aka the first part will hopefully be finished pretty soon, probably in a week or so. Depends how busy school will be. Let me know what you thought and if you'd like to see more. I certainly have some interesting ideas taking shape in my head.

Thank you for reading!

Yeah, sick rhymes...

Still haven't come off my downswing. AA vs KK ; AA vs 88 ; and KK vs KQ in the last ~15mins. I don't mind stuff like this because it's so obvious if I'm just running bad. Smaller, post flop stuff is where I'm starting to slowly feel insecure. Still haven't checked how many BI-s I'm down because it would do me no good anyway. It shouldn't be more than 70 and can't be less than 60. I started occasionally mixing in 12s in addition to 24s and 36s so I'm still well rolled for even 36s. It's great to play different limits at the same time. I have absolutely no trouble moving down. I also noticed that I swore a couple of times today when I lost AA vs 88 and KK vs KQ in my mind which is a sign of tilt for me. I never do anything worse than that anymore. I once punched a stone wall, not very hard though, and that was ~year ago. I have never broken anything and I've been working on keeping life and poker separate. I think that this downswing proves that I deal with my variance relatively well as it hasn't changed my regular life almost at all. I've spent a bit more time outside which is awesome.

Gotta set up a session with SiQ soon, he'll get me back on track.

Spent fri and sat in folk dancing camp. Got a bit hammered and came home to celebrate my grannys birthday. 5 hours of talking to relatives after dancing for 9hrs then drinking a bit more than I should have and then dancing again for like 3hrs is not awesome by the way if you get no sleep in between :D.