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This is my 1000th post. Tried to make it special, but as said in step 10 my PC decided to delete my rough plan. So typed it all today. Please feel free to add more advice in. I have been told from a lot of people that advice on how to balance studies with poker would be worthwhile.

Note - I love how i was consistent with the capitals in the heading. Any admins reading this, fancy making each beginning letter a capital?

First and foremost, im sure those who are reading this are or have been at university (Uni means college for all y'all Americans/Canadians) If not, ill explain briefly.... University is usually hard work and you must dedicate a lot of time to it.
Similarly, online poker is tough and you must dedicate a lot of time to it.
Sounds tough!!! How can you split your valuable time with poker and uni? Well, it can be done.

1/ Time management. Get a diary or a scarp piece of paper. Write down the times you are going to dedicate to both uni work and poker. Give time for studying both, playing poker. Be university biased.

2/ Its not that easy. You can't simply go...'ok, ill spend 3 hours doing uni work then ill play poker'. This is where you must prioritise UNIVERSITY over poker. If work needs done, poker MUST wait. You need to mix in other things into your life too. I can't say exact ratios, like 3 hours uni: 1 hours poker. Its more the amount of work you feel you have put into uni. Poker is your treat once you have done uni work.

3/ Get active . Especially if you are a slob, you need to have some fitness in your life, going out a run clears your head, you sweat, you feel good. Doing some sort of physically demanding activity has its benefits. It will make you healthier, the opposite sex generally love that you are doing some sort of fitness. Being more fit and healthy helps you can focus more on tasks in hand (In most cases anyway). Tips on fitness. Find a route. Set yourself an ambitious time to achieve. This means you are going out running and not jogging. Then increase the time or the route as weeks go by, it makes it more enjoyable and more challenging.

4/ Get socialising . Go out with friends, meet new friends. Talk about things, get drunk, be sick all over the place....then do it all over again. Going out and socialising helps both uni and poker. It helps you forget the essays, the bad beats and everything else (Thought don't do it the night before a big exam)

5/ Lots of studying . Understanding your subject is crucial. Too many students leave it till the night before. THIS IS BAD. You should not expect a good grade doing an essay that requires lots of information/ research and references if you do it the night before. Like poker, it requires lots of attention to detail. Find out your leaks at university. Ask how to improve them. If your knowledge on a topic is bad and ill-researched. Ask one of your lecturers how to improve it, where can you find the books to read, what chapters are relevant etc etc etc.

6/ Choose wisely . Who you talk to about poker should be a big decision. Don't aimlessly talk about poker to anybody. Most of the population don't care and don't want to understand it. Talking about poker all the time is a good way of alienating yourself from people. I advise to talk to few people about it. To combat this....

7/ Poker friends . To counter part 6, get skype, add a bunch of people from DC and talk to them. Let them be the ones you gloat about your winning month, your ownage of other regs. Let them be the ones you moan about a bad beat or general run bad. As said, non-poker players don't give a fuck.

8/ Addiction . If you find yourself thinking about poker during lectures or when you are doing things completely non-related to poker. My advice would be to get away from poker for a short time. This is bad mentality. Remember, online poker or poker in general will be there when you finish your degree or course. Your degree can take you places poker can't and won't. Your degree will get you into a stable job, it will be the stepping stone to your future. If you get so carried away with poker that you have dreams of becoming a 'professional' in the near future. Take a step back from poker. Its an addictive game.

9/ Discipline . Be strong. Don't let poker dictate whether you are going to go to a class or not. Put uni first, i think i have made this clear but it a more worthwhile choice and its the sensible option. There are very few situations where you can put poker first. If you are making so much money that it would be silly to put poker second, then yes...put poker first. But few people can make that amount of money quickly nowadays. Unless you are grinding and winning substantially at midstakes NLHE or PLO, stay in school kids.

10/ Additional advice . I'm sure i have missed a ton of stuff out. I originally had a plan and started to write a very long article on my PC. But somehow my PC has managed to remove it all. So i have literally just typed this all in a one-er. Please feel free to add things in at the bottom. If you are going to, start it with 10/ Then bold letters. University is harder than you think. Get studying!

EDIT: Just skimmed through this, sorry about the grammar. I'm sure you can all deal with the odd grammatical error here and there though. Ah, another point....read through your work thoroughly at uni, they care about grammar/spelling.

Mike

i was waiting for that, thanks for the great post Mike.

it's gonna be one of the most difficult years in my life. hope i can manage it.

I didnt mean to post this in the 'article' forum. Probs get moved when someone notices it.

I have just found this topic, very good points Mike, as a student I can't disagree with you. Remember about goals - although setting them is a very good thing, you won't always be able to complete all of them, just because of the uni. Make some sort of general plan, for example: "I will try to play about 25k hands this month and play my A-game most of the time", instead of forcing yourself to play 3 hours a day/2k hands a day. And of course never ever set any financial goals, because there is a variance involved.

Just play solid and you shouldn't complain about money during the school days

Mati

Great post Mike, I am going to uni this year and have been thinking about how I am going to balance: University work, Socialising and poker (in that order of priority).

Some people find it very hard. GL to you, hope you can work it out.

Buby2132, great post, and I see you as a 5th-year student Can you say what country do you live in?

Buby2132, great post, and I see you as a 5th-year student Can you say what country do you live in?

He is from Scotland.

Very good post - wish I'd read something like this 3 years ago tbh - my time at uni would have probably gone better. Great resource for students.

Thanks for the posts guys. Appreciate it.
Add to it if you wish.

thanks a lot! Very good read. Will have to do this in a month. MAybe I'll add some stuff in a couple of month

i would add, going for a pokerbreak during test periods (maybe 6-7 days for each test)
i know its pretty tight, but I give it a trial and the results were awesome and make me much more interested in my studium (in the eralier semester I only go for 2-3 days pokerbreak for each test)

also i will break poker for the time I write my diploma thesis in a few semester ( I hope I go for that point^^)
yeah and before the final test I quit poker

awesome post....i very much needed this since my grades have started to fall since i started playing poker....

Really glad this got some good responses. Made me smile.

I think playing poker and going to college at the same time is a bad idea. From my own experience, when you have a mentality where you think, "if I fail in school I can always go back to playing poker." You will never give your school work 100%. Or vise versa, "if I don't succeed in poker I can always go back to school." My point is this, when the going gets tough in school (e.g., term paper, finals, or clinical), it is very tempting to just say, "screw this I'm making 25 dollars an hour playing poker I don't need this". Or when the position being reversed, "I am having a down swing, I can't take the swings anymore, I think I'll concentrate on school and get a stable job." You will always be in a state of flux and what happen is both your school work and poker game will suffer.