July review: We're on ten, we're going to eleven.

I'm pretty happy with July in general. I guess at the beginning of the month I set tons of goals & I realised I'm trying to do too much, I was in the right ballpark setting my volume goals but I had split it across a couple of sites which wasn't really working. I realised this pretty quickly & adjusted my goals quite simply by dropping the targets from the other sites. I still play on Stars, but I don't set a goal for the number of games I play as I tend only to play in the evening where I have to share some of my concentration with other things, so although I'm still trying to win, it's less serious.

I didn't get the hours of poker, I'm finding that the more time I'm playing poker, the bigger the disparity between amount of time in a session & actual time spend in a game. I'm not too disappointed in not achieving this target, I've exceeded the volume goals& that is the main thing to hit, if I'm finishing games earlier (not saying I am though!) then this will effect my hours played.

[X] 180 games on Full Tilt - 
[  ] Play 55 hours of poker
[X] 15 hours of poker study

So, the final thing I want to look at is profit. A pretty decent month, it's not my best month, but it ain't a million miles away & considering I was still losing money half way through the month, it's an acceptable return. A 7% ROI is good enough at the minute. If I'm gonna move up after next month, I can get away with about 4.7% ROI putting me exactly at the BR I need, so anything better is only going to bolster my roll.

Goals for August:

[  ] 250 Games
[  ] Continue to watch videos on HUSNG.com
[  ] Have 2 HHs reviewed by Hokie

Good luck at the tables.


Jay

Treat your poker like a business

Part of my goal for July was to read the book by Leatherass' Treat your poker like a business. It's not the biggest book by any means, but in the 200 pages it manages to pack in 41 chapters spanning topics such as dedicating yourself to one game, studying effectively & maximising the value from your time.

Many of the points made are really quite simple & there are tons of comparisons to the business and golfing worlds. It's many of the business references that make the most sense, explanations of how money is the inventory you use to make profits & how a large inventory enables you to take advantage of 'sales' opportunities.

For me, the most important underlying message is total dedication is needed to succeed. Dusty's story is quite remarkable, but ultimately deserves the success he's had. An emerging golf star, that was until he suffered a heart attack at the ripe age of 23. Personally, I'm not sure getting into poker after suffering from a heart attack is the best move given the number of close calls I've experienced getting it in on a coin flip, but it obviously worked out for Dusty! From the back of his attack, medical bills mounting, only $1k to his name & rent due imminently he deposited the $1k & racked up 400 hour months just to hit bonuses. It wasn't always a highly profitable business for Dusty, starting out he had all his money online, no money for food & when he did eat it was from the McDonald's Dollar menu. He soon made the same money as he did at his job & from there he didn't stop.

It's this dedication that so many people lack, that's the most important message I took from this book. Dusty isn't a poker genius, he's just put in his 10,000 hours & more. He's made sure when he should be playing, he plays as much as he can & to the best of his ability. This is a common theme amongst the top players, put in the hours work at your game & you can achieve great things.

Above all, this is a great book. You would do well to buy it & take note of the many tips it has to offer.

Jay

July Update 3: Early bird catches the fish.

A couple of things I wanna muse on this week, volume wise things are ok. On one hand I've missed a couple of sessions, Tuesday I was jus a lazy mofo & didn't get outta bed. Friday I got up but felt like sh*t & didn't want to aggravate it any more by donating my BR to donks. So the majority of the week I was behind target in getting the number of games in which isn't too bad, I'm still on target to beat the number of games required, however I'm not pushing the boundaries as much as I should but I don't want to play substandard poker.

On a positive note, I've started getting up a little earlier now. I'm up at 5am to hit the tables at 5:30 after breakfast & coffee. This is prob one of the reasons that I hit my weekly target this week, instead of hitting 6 games on average a morning I'm up to 9. I'm gonna keep at this pace for a month or so to get used to the early morning, hopefully stretch it a bit further if I can handle the lack of sleep with the intention of starting the grind at 5am till 7:30 which should get me 12 games a day or over 300 games a month which I actually think is a great target for the amount of time I have available in my day. It does mean a 66% increase in games from where I am now. initially I'm looking to increase the games on a monthly basis by 40 games, with a target of October to be fully up to speed with my 300 games. Obv if I find I can get there quicker, I will & I'll also re-evaluate my targets, it'd be pretty sweet if I could get to 400/month but 1 step at a time.

In terms of profit this week it's been pretty decent. I'm running at around 14% ROI, which coupled with last week puts me in a great spot for the month & if I can continue I can put in another great month & puts the $10 well within reach for next month.

Last week of the month & I only have 18 games to get in to hit my monthly goal, I will prob complete this by Tue morning & keep going. Hopefully I'll exceed 200 games this month, giving me a good platform to go onto hitting 240 next month (baby permitting!!)

- Jay

July Progress Wk2: Volume, Volume, VOLUME!

This week as been pretty good for volume, the weeks overall target was to get in 42 games & I missed that by one but I'm still ahead of target by about 3 day. I've been getting up a little earlier than normal, around 5am so I can wake up & have breakfast before I hit the grind. This has been working out quite well, but I do have days where I just can't get outta bed which sucks cuz it wastes a day which is valued around 7 games so I need to make sure I'm getting in 7 games more than I normally would.

Results aren't that sexy, but I'm showing a profit so I'm not gonna complain. I've had a couple of bad sessions this month which has hampered my results, 0-4, 4-8 sessions have hit my return. However, I've handled these sessions pretty well & as long as I keep learning from my mistakes, I'm growing as a player.

The last measure for the month is my hours played, this is down & I need to keep working on this where I can, 6 hours back on where I should be & it leaves me needing 2 hours of poker per day. I need to be on my game completely these last couple of weeks, I need to  be up & playing & making my mark.

I'm just about done with my reviews with Hokie, this has prob been my single best investment in my poker career yet & recommend anyone to do the same. I fully intend on continuing getting coaching from Hokie & I'm pretty confident I'll move up to the next level within the next few month as  result.

So, focus for next week is to continue with the volume. Make good decisions & make them count. I also want to make sure I'm implementing all of the advice I can from Leatherass' book, I think this will hone my abilities as well as the coaching has.

- Good luck at the tables.

J

July Update: Poker Diet & volume crushing smoothies

So far this month the results are pretty meh, but I'm not too interested in my results. I'm trying to shift focus completely away from how I'm doing, I think it's impeding my progress. I'm trying to set my PT3 to only show games played so I have no idea where I am for the month as I'm pretty sure that once I get in the correct mindset on concentrating on the volume, everything else will start to fall in place more, so long as I continue to study correctly that is! In terms of volume, thats going great, I'm plus 17 games on my target so I just need to keep the concentration going & the momentum & shoud crush it.

Another thing I've decided I need to change is my diet, struggling to wake up at 5:30am every morning & I'm pretty sure its the shit I eat that contributes to this, if I'm going to be dedicated to this I need to look t everything & unfortunately that means banning myself from the regular sausages & burgers I eat along with the gallons of coffee too!  Been doing research on healthy energy foods & began to put together a meal plan for the week.Stuff like peanut butter, bagels, eggs, blueberries (I f*cking LOVE blueberries!) apparently do the trick so I've adopted these things into my diet.

I've decided to give up on the Everest challenge, I feel it's taking my focus away from where it should be. I'm dedicating my play to Full Tilt for the foreseeable future, the benefit of rakeback is probably the primary motivator for this. I think if I concentrate on playing at one site I should be able to move up quicker & start crushing the next levels.

One of my other goals this month was to read Dusty Schmidt's book, 'Treat Your Poker Like A Business'. I've done this already, I was totally engrossed from the outset & there is a ton of great stuff to think about your overall game that I've often considered implementing into how I play but never known how to, this has the answer to those questions. I intend to post my review of the book, but I want to give it another read first. Then I think I'm going to move onto 'The mind gym' which was recommended by HokieGreg, so thought I'd give it a try.

I guess my new goals should look  like this:

[  ] 180 games on Full Tilt (Currently +17 of target)
[  ] Play 55 hours of poker (-2.5 hours behind)
[  ] 15 hours of poker study (On target)

J