Zankaa´s

I hope you have had a great year, it seems like it from all these social medias, Jackie binking tournaments etc. I think you would like to hear what I have been up to, and also i would like to thank you. 
the things you learned me about following my instincts is huge, i dunno how much you realize this, i guess you know that its big, but heres what i have learned. I started to think about this and I found out that all of us are in one of 4 different states.
1. When we are born we are a blank page in our minds, we dont know anything and we are "free" in the way we think. ( This is why children can ask so interesting questions, they dont have theese mental blocks that most grownups have.)  We are following our instincts and we learn how the grown ups do.

2. Then, during our childhood/teenage years we are affected by everything around us, and most of us arent aware what is going on, we might be afraid of hights (rats, spiders, public speaking, etc etc etc)  just because our parents ( or our enviroment, but esp parents imo) are.     This state can extend for the rest of our lives if we dont take us to number 3 on this list. If you look around you, how many people are really aware of whats going on, sure they want an Iphone or a nice car but they dont know why, they just want it bc they belive in things that arent real.      Also, when a person is in this stage, they are very easily manipulated by media and everything around us, they are like a swamp just sucking everything up and not filtering anything, they get overloaded with information and they cant structure their thoughts at all.     Once we start to question our reality, we might go to stage 3        Oh, This is important, people in step 2 often call themselves a "feelings person", ie they say they follow their feelings, only problem is that its not their feelings, its medias/parents/friends/work mates and just our environment that puts those "feelings" in their heads.
3. The logic state, ( also named cleansing state ) This is where we start asking ourselves and others one important question: WHY? Why do i want that Iphone, why do i want to live in the city, why don't i like hights, why dont i quit my job, why dont i ecercise, and the more question one person asks the more he or she will start to realize what really is important in life. During this period, we usually cant really stay here for that long because this is a pretty rough state to be in. Realizing that people around us lives in sort of a haze and they aren't just thinking by themselves at all. In this state we don't listen much at all to our "feelings" but we are more structuring our thoughts and question our believes. This state often means that either we go under and get depressed, or we move along to number 4.

4. The Instinct and logic state: This state is where I am starting to be today. After years of depression ( in state number 2 ) I learned how to be a very very logical man ( state 3 ), everything should be backed up by logic, but when I learned that I can follow my instincts, and that it could be a good thing, I tried to do it and guess what happened... I found out that in The Logic state I was taking out every little mental block that I had in my head, from why I dont want to talk on the phone- to being so confident in myself that i now know I can (and will) change the world. So when my mind really truly understood that I AM IN CONTROL, that was the biggest kick i´ve ever gotten. This is the state where your instincts can work freely and naturally ( as we humans were supposed to be ) together with logic and structure to make sure that we are doing the right things for the right reasons.



Also i want to point out a few things: Its a hard road to walk, confronting every fear that you have, and every negative side of your personality, but once a person starts to change one thing  he will soon realize that it in fact arent a great big wall that holds us back, but instead its just our own ego.  


Its like everything that ive learned the last 4 years have lead me to the right places, and now once i have reached state 4, my life is just escalating in so many ways. All my relations are 100% great (or at least soon will be 100%) Im having new ideas about business opportunities almost daily, im starting to write now, writers block are an illusion as everything else. 
Im reading people in 10 seconds, I know exactly how they behave and whats behind it, I can sort of pin point who is happy and who isnt in a matter of seconds, im right over 95% of the time. As i said ive learned alot of things the last 4 years, working with you last year helped me to put everything together and after i met my dreamgirl about 6months ago, I could just let go of all the "hunting" thoughts in my head and just focus on whats important: LIFE

again, Thank you so much for last year, and if you want to discuss things further i belive I have tons of thoughts that you might find interesting, this theory above are just one of many, and im constantly developing them more.

I hope you are well, and I hope to hear from you soon.


/ Pontus


ps. theory arent 100% finished and i didnt spend enough time to make everything perfect, but i hope you will get what im talking about

i play few tables. The reason for this is, we are in 2012 and everything has changed again. In the beginning of online poker, no one was solid, so you could play weird styles and still crush the tables, then we had a middle, that i think just has ended, period were multitabling got so profitable, it was almost stupid if you played fewer than 10 tables at a time. So where are we now? I think we just entered a time where everyone is so solid that it is hard to stay at the staked we are used to, we get bigger swings and poker is a war every time we sit down for a session. So how do we stay at the stakes we want to and most off all, how do we make it into something fun instead of just an endless grind day in and out? 

We start to play weird again.

I have just had a very profitable period of poker last 2-3 months and i can tell you this: People dont know how to adjust, and they dont know how tabledynamics works anymore. Most regs these days (mostly 100-200nl but also alot of 400nl) play like robots. So many of them have no idea how to adjust to donkbeting, minbeting, overbetting, min3betting etc etc that my winrate have gone up the roof because of taking advantage over things like this. Not to mention timingtells, seriously, i have timingtells noted on a lot of the regulars and im shocked every time i discover a new one. 

So if you are struggling with the multitabling, start exploring the game of non standard plays and create funky lines that no one have seen before. Just cut down on the amount of tables until you can really think about how to adjust and what is going on on the tables and i promise that some of you will be amazed how relatively easy and fun poker can (and imo, should) be.

Peace

and my skype is: Jaxgard ,if anyone want to talk more about it

Haven't played any poker last months. I realized I needed to move on to something new, and that something was writing. I have no experience and no formal education but it is the most fun I have had in years basically. 

Im starting a personal development skype group, everyone is welcome, just holler at me.

/ Pontus

edit

http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/28-Secret-HQ/topics/480751-Personal-development-Skyp?#post_4187361

All my life ive been told that the perfect way to learn is by doing mistakes, this is a widely accepted concept and a thing that almost everyone holds as a truth. Lets look at an example too see if this really is the best way to go about it. 
Lets say that you picked up a guitar for the first time in your life and someone played a g chord for you and told you to play the same chord but they didnt show you how to do it. Then you could put your fingers on the guitar and hope that you can find out how to play it, for everytime you put your fingers down wrong you gain so much knowledge about how to play, right? Not really.. The problem is that on a guitar you can put down your fingers in a million different ways and still dont hit the chord right, it is the same with life, you just dont have 3 or 4 different ways to live your life, instead you are bombed with small decisions all the time and you can probably keep making one wrong decision after another, thinking that you are learning from your mistakes but in reality you have no idea how to stop making different mistakes over and over again.
So how do we learn how to take the g chord? We ask someone that know how to play it and just learn how to do it the same way.
How do we learn how to live our lives? This is a far more complex question than the above because in life only YOU can answer what is wrong and what is right for you so it is up yo you to find out what makes you really happy. How do you know what makes you happy? This might be easier than you think, just use a couple of days, live your life exactly as you normaly do, but be mindful about what you really feel and think about all the things in your life. Is eating unhealthy making you feel good or bad? How about exercising? socializing? Cleaning? Sleeping? partying?  If you take notice of what really benefits you, and what make you a better and happier person an write these things down every day you will see a dramatic change in your life, i know im starting to see it already!
Gl

Around 4-5 years ago I was very unhappy with my life, I had no real friends too hang out with , I had no confidence and I was very scared of change and new things. I was actually so scared of the unknown that I wouldnt try anything that I didnt know I was good at. So my life basically was, waking up, going to school, practice football in the afternoons and hang out with my girlfriend ( I always had a girlfriend since I was scared to death to be alone ). I was scared to try out snowboarding, I wanted to learn playing guitar but since I wasnt good at it I just wouldnt do it and just saying to myself that I wasnt good at stuff like that (shooking since I had 0 hours of practice huh? ). I could make this list very long and I could say thing that I now find so ridiculous that I wouldnt know how to tell them. 

As you can see my graph was moving slowly down in the beginning and it had done this for a long long time, but once I really embraced what Jamie wanted me to do, and when I really belived that a change was necessary, The results came with it. 

Im going to leave you with another good quote that really fits into this topic. 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (einstein obv)

A couple of weeks ago I went with my daughter to an amusement park, and my daughter is only 5yo so I thought I didnt need to go on any scary rides... Well, it turns out she has grown alot since I was there last time and I quickly realized I couldnt get away that easy. Oh did I mention im terrified of hights? Once Im like 3meters over see level im freaking out ;) Anyways, we are going up in some rolercoaster and my daughter looks at my on the way up and says; "Dad, are you scared?"  and i answer " Noo im fine" putting on the biggest smile i can. She just snap answers " If you are scared you know you are pretty safe on theese rides, you dont need to be scared". Soulread obv. We have an amazing day and I actually went on to go on a few other rides but chickened out on the biggest one she wanted to go on and let that over to my friend who was with me :) 
A few days later, I go out to have lunch with one of my friends, I meet him and he tells me one of his buddies will come to. We eat lunch and when we are finished the friends says that he will go skydiving later that day. And I have been telling my friends that some day I will go skydiving so without thinking about it I just casually ask him how to go about getting one of those tandem jumps. His answer was pretty interesting, he says maybe you can do it later today and just picks up his phone and calls somewhere and books one for me 6 hours later. Im sitting with my coffee in my hand and just freaks out lol. 
Later that day I show up at the very small airport that is located 1km from my app. The instructor had jumped like 15k jumps in his life so I was pretty calm with this and just felt excited not that scared. We talked about how everything will go down etc. Then we went on the plane, a small plane that only took 6 persons. 2 was going to jump from 1500 meters and me and 2 more was going for 4000.  From the moment we took of up to 1500 meters I was very calm and I was hearing Tommy Angelo in my head " Sit up, breathe" playing over and over. Then we come up to 1500 meters and 2 guys  opens the door (wich was like a small steal port) and I do the big misstake and look out.  Panic. Why am I here wtf am i doing I just want to go home. I say something loud like "jesus christ" and the instrucot asks me how im feeling. "Good, but im terrified by hights" is the only thing that comes out of my mouth. So we laugh a little and then he starts to hook us togheter. I cant really describe how scared I was at this time but then I start to think about what my daughter said. " If you are scared you know you are pretty safe on theese rides, you dont need to be scared". And after that I just said to myself to just let go and do this. We open the door, the other 2 guys jump out and we are right behind, 50 seconds of free fall and the rush from that is not of this world. Just insane, I have never felt anything near that. Then the parachute comes out and everything is still, the sun is going down in the horizon and I just try to suck everything in. 

This spring I will go and take my own certificate so I can jump by myself wich will be sick. And remember I was terrified by hights, Im not anymore :)



Poker.
I got in around 150h last month wich felt great, the results was really good, up there with my best month this year but I had a sick winrate but ran really bad at higher stakes. I was actually down in 3b pots at 3/6+ wich is pretty sick.  But 6 months straight with decent  winnings and if one would compare this to any "regular" job I would be a fool to complain:) Im working very hard with Jamie Glazier and its one of the best poker/life decisions ive ever made ( If you want to know more just pm me) 
September has been ok, up a few k now so I hope all hard work will continue to pay off.

Another thing about poker that i realized after beeing out drinking last week. This is going to end soon, making this much money will only be there for the very best players, ( ill try getting there in time ) so I have to take care of the time I have right now and the following year because if nothing happens with the poker business I think it will be very hard to make alot of money. 
No more drinking. No more seinfeld etc on repeat on my computer. More hands / month.
I can be lazy when im older.

See ya

Just finished my first real nl1k session in like, 1.5 years or something and im very happy with my session overall. I think I overadjusted a bit vs 2 of the most aggro regs in some spots pre but I managed to run decent so thats fine. 

I have been reading alot in the small stakes and some in the micro stakes forum last couple of days and there are a bunch of things that I have noticed; People rely way way to much on stats, they would develop 5x faster if they just shut down their HEM and played without it imo. One of the best things I picked up from Andrew (Baluga) was to be very aware of what happened around me at the table, timing tells, betsizing, game flow and that a 22/20 TAG isnt playing in the same way as every 22/20 TAGs, there´s actually a person behind a screen somewhere that thinks about poker in a way that no number ever will tell you.  Lastly one thing thats true for most players at midstakes to, there is no creativity left at all and everybody just bets the same amount as everyone else. I think its just because so many players watch these training site vids and learn alot from them but what happens to most players is that they dont develop their own strategy and they certainly never come up with anything new themself. 

On my mental training; the other day I just realized how often I klick on the mouse between my decisions and in my quest for decluttering my mind I decided to stop doing that. I feel a bit more focused and most important alot calmer, so if ure reading this, try it for a couple of sessions.

I have played around 65h of poker in August and aiming for 150+ while the italians have vacation (no offense to italians :P )

/ pontus

I havent been here for quite a long time, so what has happened since my last update? My winrate has gone trough the roof, I have just started to play 1knl when games are good and my overall life is super great. So what have I done to get to this point? First off all i have worked my ass of, looking trough my HEM i can see that ive played around 100h/month and if i would count all the work away from the tables i think im way above 100h/month. Other than that there are 2 major things that have helped me improve enormously is my mental coach Jamie Glazier who i work with like 2 sessions a month, and for anyone struggling with any aspect of their game i highly recommend him! The last thing is that i have started to hang out/talk poker/ play poker with one of my best buddies that have been a pro for 5-6 years, we have developed a very very weird playing style and a bunch of awesome lines, ( one that enables me to win 95%+ of hands vs fish in HU pots and a bunch of small adjustments to betsizing regarding 3bets and opening sizes that have made poker a lot more easy for me ). But the biggest thing is probably just talking constantly about hands and situations, the highstakes players that i have talked to really have made it very clear that having a couple of friends around you that also plays poker is awesome and it took me 3 years to realize HOW awesome it is. 

cliffs: work hard, get a mental coach, hang out with poker friends all the time, crush

Peace 

My christmas vacation ended up in bed with the worst flu ive had in years, could barely get up from my bed to go into the kitchen without resting like 2-3 times on the way ( its like a 5 meter walk ). And on top off this I didnt have my computer with me home so I was kind of going crazy for a while. But with 2 weeks to kill and nothing to do you get to alot of thinking and reflecting wich was perfect, partly b/c its a new years now but also since I have alot of new stuff going on that I havent been able to think about to much. 

Things I have been thinking about:

-How thankful I am for beeing able to do whatever I want, and im not talking about the freedom poker gives as much as just beeing able to get out off bed in the morning, make some breakfast without any help. I have nothing that stops me physicaly so Im def going to value this alot more in the future. 

-The above leads me into the next one. Im def going to start working out now, reading "The 4hour Body"  by Timothy Ferris in combination with getting so sick was a very good motivator for this. I only have one life, one body to take care of, its kind of hard to buy a new one atm so eating healthy and working out should be an easy choice so make for anyone. 

-Nothing good come out of watching TV.  The last like, 2 years I have spent a minimal time in front of the TV, i just hate all the commercials that brainwash you all day long. Just from an ev standpoint its kind of stupid to spend like 1/3-1/4 of your time at the TV watching commercials. ( and i dont buy that bs "im doing alot of stuff in the breaks, like going to the toilet and getting a snack. blabla." ) I rather turn of the TV and stare at the wall for a couple of hours, really try it, its awesome.

- Spending 1-2 days with parents and semi-close relatives is enough for a while. Enough said.


I probably have a bunch of other stuff but thats it for now.
I have been crushing last 3-4 days wich feels great and also Im waking up at 9am everyday now. spending 4-5 hours to eat breakfast, work out, do some errands and then the rest of the day from 2pm im working. 

Keep it up

So i have been spending a few days with my daughter again, feels good to move myself away from poker 2-3 days a week and then focus 100% the rest of the time. This is one thing I havent done before and thanks to Jamie Glazier i have realized just how good this is. 

Im in a time of change in my life, esp pokerwise, atm im starting to create a weekly schedule (when to, wake up, eat, work, chill, work out, everyting) and I know that this will have a really good impact on my pokergame and also my life in general. I cant remember when I had a regular sleeping/eating schedule, its prob 3 years ago or something. Anyway, it feels so good to be back in the groove, playing, coaching and also getting coaching from Baluga and Jamie! I will let you know what my final schedule will be, prob will know at the end of the week.

And hey. Marry christmas!

/ pontus

Bonus, Check this guy out, He has a serie on youtube that is called. Thank God Its Monday. very very good stuff!