On a New Grind Until I Learn More

Hey

I am now going to only play turbo style tournaments and the ones that have rebuys in particular because i like to have a deep stack but with a shallow structure and that plays into my style perfectly and i have noticed this is where i have made the most of my money over the years.

I am limiting my grind to this because i need to improve my game in the slower structured tournaments because i have many a leak on them. I am getting increasingly frustrated in them and am just uncomfortable so decided to drop the trouble tournaments completely until i can get to the bottom of all my problems.

From the top my problems lie in:

LACK OF A HUD: This is the box that can appear next to all of the players at your table with the amount of hands you have played with them along with aggression factor and other stats to help build a picture of how you should play against this person. I haven't set one up for myself yet and feel that i am at a disadvantage if i continue to neglect using one.

FULL GRASP OF POKER MATHS: I obviously know a great deal already but i am not 100% on the optimum strategy for what to do with a particular stack in a particular spot with a particular hand, the likelihood of my hand getting there on the flop, if it is clever to go chasing it on the turn and so on and so forth. I have to make sure everything i do is working towards me having the best possible opportunity towards winning the tournament in question.

GRASP OF DIFFERING TOURNAMENT STRUCTURES: What it says on the tin really. Have to know how slow and fast the blinds rise as well as the starting stack and the steepness of the blind increases and to know what strategy i should have on each level with whatever stack i have.

Ultimately i have to be ridiculously comfortable in any grind i play. At the moment i am only like this in the turbo tournaments as i feel i have a good pre flop game. Need to develop my deep stack post flop game however, as i am definitely too tight and i get abused too often. Need to exert my chips a lot more.

So i think it is clever to carry on playing what i am adept at and in the meanwhile learn how to better myself in the games i am less comfortable in. How to do this?

READ AS MUCH FORUM HAND HISTORY MATERIAL AS POSSIBLE

WATCH AS MANY TOURNEY VIDEO TUTORIALS FROM GOOD PLAYERS AS POSSIBLE

HAVE SOME FUN WITH POKER CALCULATOR TO KNOW ABOUT HANDS IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.

That is about it at the moment. I am looking forward to taking responsibility for making my poker game as good as it can be and to stop burying my head in the sand to my problems and to address them and increase profitability in the process. This is the start of the process of me playing as optimally as i could possibly can for the rest of my days.

Only then can i properly gauge if i can make this into a consistent £50k+ a year salary.

East Dulwich hit in Riots.

Well they hit my hometown tonight, and in true journalistic fashion i just bopped down to have a look at what was going on. They smashed the glass doors to the londis and ransacked the place, apparently not getting away with too much money from behind the till when i asked the bemused worker about what happened. He said around 20 of them rushed in and took all sorts of things. Maybe they did take the money behind the counter and this guy was just trying to hold some pride that he held them off, i don't know.

Beside it is a pharmacy. This was in a much poorer state and hopefully below i can attach some pictures of it. Massive pane of glass had been kicked in, they went in and made a lot of mess and assume that a lot of them went into the drug section at the back where most of the expensive prescription drugs are. When i got there to take pictures apparently the shop was left bare for anyone to walk into for about an hour, but when i got there to take pictures, there were at least 5 police officers there orchestrating workmen who were putting up makeshift windows. Oh how those guys are on to make a lot of money tonight. The police were also pretty casual as i was taking 3 pictures, instantly thought i would be told to f off or that my phone would be taken if i was to record this mess in anyway but if i would have asked one of them to move for a better shot i think they would have!

The third place which was across the road and i didn't get a very good look at was a post office which the bottom half of the doors were caved in through i assume excessive kicking and ramming. What did they think they were honestly going to get in there? It is like a bank with all the safes around the back well guarded, was a complete silly move and i didn't take a closer look as i was actually pissed off that these rioters weren't even thinking properly there. Obviously i know they may not generally be the brightest bunch but this got to me.

On the way home i passed a less saturated spot in terms of shops where there was really a very small chance that any rioters would be interested in looting, but found my local newsagents donning a pretty powerful sign. So much so it did take me aback quite a bit as i took a pic of it. I think the shop closed and a disgruntled regular of the place might have put it on as a big statement to any potential idiots.

I think that the trouble in East Dulwich involved only three incidents as i had a good look around and many bars remained open but would be interested to find out if anything else happened. Anyway the pics are below (hopefully), if you can't see them i had trouble uploading them on here and you are welcome to see them on my twitter @antgaughan

Plans for the weekend.

Today has been full of procrastination for a 3000 word essay i need to do by tomorrow. I need to do 50 pages worth of reading, plan an essay, locate quotes and formulate my arguments by about 14.00 tomorrow but i am lost in a spell of online episodes of the US office and listening to music. So i am using this as making a clean break from that to get on with things. After i finish this post of course!

I think tomorrow is going to be a poker night for the first time in a while. I did have a day session yesterday that ended in me being a little bit above break even, but i was unlucky in spots so never mind. Tomorrow the emphasis is going to be on confidence building, so i am going to count the bankroll and then play lower than i normally would so that i can experience better results from poorer players just so i can start to feel good about myself again, building up slowly until i start laying down some wondrous plays to nail the biggie tournaments online.

Saturday is my birthday and i have a leicester square get together planned at a weatherspoons then a move on to the clubs around there. Should be a blast especially as a few faces are gonna be there that i haven't seen in a while. The day after is going to be the more formal meet up for lunch with the family and that will end that weekend and another year older.

On monday i start my routine for success. It is going to be to get up in the morning, have breakfast, wait an hour, then go to the gym for an hour, then come back and grind for about 12 hours and do that for 5 days a week but if i am in the mood, for as many days that i can get away with doing just so that i can get my bankroll going and that i can get my confidence up because it has taken a hammering recently with ill prepared grinds and obvious subsequent failures of nights.

So looking forward to the days ahead and hopefully will get into this essay now and hand in something decent tomorrow. Will post up on here again probably on saturday morning after tomorrows grind. Cheers.

Coursework to finish, then hardcore grinding! + Birthday!

Hello

I need to hand in the last of my courseworks for friday, but then i have to do 3 re-submittals for august which i have to make sure i don't put on the back burner too much because to start up again with two weeks to go i might be cold so i might get all those three done and handed in before the end of June. They make up 23% of my final year grade, so not to be taken lightly at all and with the amount of time i have to do them with only poker as the other pressing issue i should be looking for top grades here to consolidate for some of the not so good grades in the other assessments.

There is the boring stuff out of the way. I feel like i haven't played poker in about 2 years even though it has only been 3 days. I think its because it feels like two years since i put in a well prepared and well played session and that actually happened about 3 weeks ago and because of the ill prep i have been on a tough losing streak. However, i am happy that this fall is really because of my own demise in not being disciplined with sleep or fitness rather than being well prepared but just not being good enough at the tables. This said that means that I am a joke to be a pro poker player now and still take these things for granted. I think it stems from me not having urgent expenditure pressures of bills and rent and what not because i still live with the parents who have me on mates rates. I need to create that pressure so that i am never waning on the concentration front and to feel like i am playing for something rather than for the hell of it.

So I am going to first get back on the winning streak and once i feel i have my routine set, whereby i go gym daily and sort of social hours for the week, i can then think about putting a percentage of money away each week. If i was to set goals in how much i can put away it will give me that fight to play every table as serious as the last and to never give up despite the harshness of the game. That is what is missing, that will to fight to the very end. It will come with better fitness more steady success and a goal to make the money for. My distant goal is to buy a property in cash from my savings, my short term goal might be to put away £2000 a month. That is provisional of course, but hopefully when i am up and running i will get there. I also have to be more careful with my spending because i can be quite ridiculous with the amount of watches i buy and the amount i lose on takeaway food when preparing myself is the healthier and more economical option.

Also i will need to live life a bit more and with the freedoms of no university and just poker i will be doing that, and with that i should be having much more interesting stories to share on here other than the self turmoil battles with myself that can get repetitive and boring! So i will leave you with that. I will be playing again full time and near enough on a daily basis from the 6th June onwards. I would also like to note it is my birthday on saturday the 4th and would like to think i always give you a healthy reminder of when my birthday is through my website name!

Good luck to everyone playing and I hope that you get the luck you deserve. Also I would hope you guys appreciate the daily updating, it's pretty awesome don't ya think?

Shame I go for quantity over quality hey!

cricket + follow me on twitter!

Just to update you guys on how the cricket is going I got 1-15 from 3 overs of bowling before the rain came in and washed the game out.

I am doing a promo on my Twitter today that if you follow me and put up a run total of what you think I am going to hit today, you get a cash prize. @antgaughan. Have a golden duck, 37 and 87 so far.

Should have just not played this Sunday!

After promising myself I wouldn't play I am about 1400$ down for the night and went against one of my rules of only playing when fully fit to. I was pretty tired throughout because of my sleeping pattern. If I am going to be honest I haven't had a good session in a while now, always playing when I shouldn't out of boredom. My roll is now close to $10k which is not good. I need to be pushing on but am faltering by not being properly prepared for a grind, but from now on I vow to do something else with my night if I feel groggy/tired instead of lose money.

Like Cos (Greekstein) now I have to treat this lark like a profession, and when I do I see positive results and when I don't I hemorrhage badly. Need to find where I mislaid the jared tender book, read it and start applying some of the philosophies in it.

The one thing I am doing well recently though is going to the gym and actively losing weight. I will have a beach bod for the summer and I hope by the time my hols comes I am a well oiled machine both mentally and physically so I can make a killing on life in general. I know I can, just fucking hard to use the stringent discipline required.

Btw, If you did think of me topless and oiled when I said the above, It's only natural and I advise you give in to your lustful urges.

poker suspended, cricket awaits.

Playing two days of cricket tour tomorrow. I'm hoping that I open in both and that I get 150 runs. The standard is normally piss poor and I'm good at dispatching woeful bowling from my back foot. On my front foot I am a retard. I'm talking a propa terrible player. I can't generate any power from a forward drive whatsoever and it is frustrating because I have good hand eye coordination and can smash on the back foot but nuthing on the front so I may be paying for some coaching soon and see how good I could get. Already play for Dulwich 4th XI with loads of runs last year but I wouldn't mind knowing where I could be if I wasn't just using one dimension. In the poker front I really haven't been playing because I am trying to sort out my daily routine first without getting bogged down with tables and this has meant for the past two days I have gone to the gym and it was depressing. Never have I been in this bad a shape. There is a hill on the way to the gym I have to walk up to get there and I am panting hard. Can't jog for more than two mins without a walk and I have a huge gut, but I am determined to have a beach this for July/August when I go on a lads hold to Magaluf. Where there has already been side bets on who can what the most birds in the seven days we're there. But I have always been a romantic you see and think that I might fall for the first bird I get with so the bet has been changed to how many times you get it. Who thought chivalry was dead?