Not the best week..

I would love to talk about huge scores I’ve made the past week. Unfortunately it was a rather bad week. I’m not going to complain about my bad luck, because I know nobody likes to read whiny nonsense. The week hasn’t been the most productive one, I haven’t met most of my goals and I was having doubts if this is want I want to do for the next months.

After finishing my blogpost on Sunday, I was motivated to start the session. From the beginning I got real unlucky to the point where my mood got affected. In the last few tournaments, I played some terrible poker. The chances of winning serious money were really slim at that point. I was glad when the session was over. Losing money was less disappointing than playing bad.

I thought “Shit happens” so let’s work hard on getting in the right state of mind to grind again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday morning my new 27” monitor arrived - a graduation present – so I was real excited to hit the tables. Again the session started off poorly, and lost my motivation pretty quickly. It took a few hours to quit the session.

While playing out my tournaments, I spend the time watching a pokerfriend playing cashgames. Although cashgames aren’t my thing, it was real interesting. The moneyswings were pretty big compared to mine, which made it more exciting.

What the hell, let’s play some cashgames! That’s what I thought that night. Considering my losses from the previous sessions, I didn’t want to lose too much, so I played real low stakes. If it wasn’t clear to you already, I’m not big on taking risks!

It was pretty fun to play these cashgames. Although I suck at them, the change of pace was nice.

When I was talking to a pokerfriend on Skype about my frustrations, he told me that I should reconsider my future if I have trouble dealing with the variance already. He’s absolutely correct; there is absolutely no reason to be frustrated already. Besides, I really want to be successful in poker, so I can’t let these things affect me. The only things I can do are working hard and staying positive. Realizing this gives me some peace of mind.

Since the tournaments weren’t good to me I decided to try something different on Wednesday and Thursday. Some people I met through poker advised me to start playing more Turbo SNGs. These can flatten out my variance a bit, which is nice when the money swings in tournaments are pretty big. I played a dozen of them, it was pretty fun. I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep playing them, I try adding them to my schedule. Watching a poker instructional video really helped my game in these.

Results

After a terrible Sunday, I grinded back a part of the losses in cashgames and SNG’s, therefore I’m down a little over the week. Like I explained, I didn’t put in the volume I had planned. I’m actually quite embarrassed about my results and levels of buyins, but playing a bit lower when playing a new format (SNG’s) and feeling unconfident made sure I didn’t lose a lot of money.

Other stuff

After enjoying a band called Graffiti6 on the festival Pinkpop, me and my girlfriend decided to buy tickets to their concert at Paradiso in Amsterdam, real exciting! Unfortunately we have to wait a few months, because the concert is in October. Considering I live in Amsterdam, it’s pretty stupid I never go to these cool concerts, it’s so much fun! When we checked out the concert agenda, we noticed all the interesting concerts are sold out for the next months.

My favorite song by Graffiti6.

Other than my poker activities, I haven’t done much this past week. Tonight (Friday) and tomorrow I have some social plans. Sitting at home most of the time is pretty dull, so I’m excited to hang out with my friends and do fun stuff with my girlfriend. The isolation aspect of playing online poker is the biggest disadvantage in my opinion, hopefully I’ll get used to it a bit more.

A few days ago, I started listening to some self-help audio Cd’s about motivation. I’ve listened to these a few weeks ago and got really inspired. It had the same effect on me when I listened to them for the second time.

These CD’s are a great way to see the big picture and focus on your goals. The author (Brian Tracy) has written many books, so I’ll have to check out a few more.

What have I learned?

Playing a lot of poker can be really draining when it’s not going well. The days are often long and it’s rather isolating. These are aspects I knew beforehand, so there is no reason to complain about it now. The positive thing about a week like this is that it makes me more motivated to do better. In order to be more productive next week, there are a few things I plan to do differently. First of all, I’m not going to post in any forums, unless it is about pokerstrategy. Second I’m going to concentrate on playing every hand the best way possible. Even if I lose every hand, I’m only going to focus on playing optimally and learning. If I keep putting in hours and try to get better, I’ll get big results eventually.

Just typing these words gets me motivated to play again and work hard.

Goals

Last week

- Grind a full schedule on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Huge fail

- Hit the gym every day accomplished

- Watch at least two pokertrainingvideos and make notes I did this as well, however I did this at times I should have been playing, so I’m not too happy about reaching this goal.

- Write in my diary before each session I didn’t do this before the Sunday session and it showed. I wasn’t as focused as lately.

- Start including tournaments on Party Poker in my schedule. Those are real soft and the fields are way smaller compared to PokerStars. Accomplished! I deposited $200 and played a $22, a $11 and a smaller one. They are really soft, the structure is great. I have to get used to the software however.

- Update my blog on Friday! Failed. I finished 80% of the post, but should have planned my time better.

The fact that it was a bad week and I haven’t met any of my goals isn’t a coincidence. Being productive and reaching daily goals generates endorphins, the happy drug. These endorphins will stimulate you to work even harder and feel better about yourself.

Next week

Since I’ve been slacking a bit, I’m going to really concentrate on being disciplined.

Unfortunately I can’t grind a full schedule next week, because of some obligations like getting my diploma and dinner plans.

- Hit the gym every day.

- Grind a full schedule on Sunday and half schedules on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I’ll probably grind some SNG’s on some of these days.

- Write in my diary before every session.

- Update my blog on Saturday (because it’s not a regular week).

- Finish my book (Sex Blogs and Rock n Roll). Cool Dutch book about the life of a young blogger.

- I would like to write short articles about poker and add these to my blog in the future, In my next blogpost, I’ll post concrete plans for this.

- I would like to look back at a real productive week in which I worked hard and improved.

- Only post on poker forums about strategy or my blog, don’t waste time posting in the sports section for instance.

Bankroll

After a bad session on Sunday in which I lost ~$250, I won some back playing rather sort sessions of low stakes cashgames and SNG’s.

PokerStars: $3 641

Party: $175 (deposited $210)

On Monday I will cashout most of the money on PokerStars. I will leave ~$1K. I like to have as little money possible on the pokersites given all the shit that has happened in the last months. However this money will be reserved and still be counted as a part of the bankroll.

Cheers, hope everybody has a great week!

PS. Would love some feedback, so comments are much appreciated.