OK so like I said at the beginning of this thread I am currently un-employed hopefully not for much longer but for the time being I am going to try and instil some routine into my days.
My typical sleeping hours are 3pm-11am.
I like to get most of my chores done first thing after I wake up and then the rest of the day is my own. I am thinking if I start my warm up/preparation stage around 2pm then I can still get maybe 2 x 1.5 hour playing sessions in before I start the gym around 7-7.30pm, plus 15-30 mins to evaluate my first two sessions of the day by reviewing my hand histories and posting any hands that really troubled me on this thread.
I get back from the gym no later than 9.30pm so by time I get myself sorted I am ready to grind from 10pm onwards when the games start to get a little better. I can then put in another 2 x 1.5 hour sessions in before bed.
Warm up/preparation: 2.00-2.30pm
1.5 hour session: 2.30-4.00pm
1.5 hour session: 4.30-6.00pm
Evaluate: 6.00-6.30pm
Gym: 7.30-9.30pm
1.5 hour session: 10.00-11.30pm
1.5 hour session: 12.00-1.30am
Evaluate: 1.30-2.00am
If I can do this 6 days a week then that gets me 36 hours play per week. This is depending on my internet connection as because of where we live you cannot get fibre optic and say for instance if some one else is in the house watching YouTube or doing something on Sky Q then I get a real bad lag at the tables if I can even get on at all.
This is also one of the biggest causes of tilt for me bad connection. It shouldn't be as there is nothing much I can do about it it so I shouldn't let it bother me but it does.
I have just been looking at a box that EE do that creates a 4G environment in your home which I might have to buy. I think you pay £80 upfront and then £28 per month rolling contract for 30gb of data. I rang EE yesterday as my connection is real bad. They done a line test and said the package I pay for offers a minimum speed of 1mbps and at the moment I am only getting 0.3mbps. I have an engineer from BT coming out on Tuesday anyway. I think with this new box I am considering getting I will get speeds of around 14 mbps, so for £28 it seems a no brainer as I probably lose that amount every week just through disconnections at the tables and time outs.
OK so like I said at the beginning of this thread I am currently un-employed hopefully not for much longer but for the time being I am going to try and instil some routine into my days.
My typical sleeping hours are 3pm-11am.
I like to get most of my chores done first thing after I wake up and then the rest of the day is my own. I am thinking if I start my warm up/preparation stage around 2pm then I can still get maybe 2 x 1.5 hour playing sessions in before I start the gym around 7-7.30pm, plus 15-30 mins to evaluate my first two sessions of the day by reviewing my hand histories and posting any hands that really troubled me on this thread.
I get back from the gym no later than 9.30pm so by time I get myself sorted I am ready to grind from 10pm onwards when the games start to get a little better. I can then put in another 2 x 1.5 hour sessions in before bed.
Warm up/preparation: 2.00-2.30pm
1.5 hour session: 2.30-4.00pm
1.5 hour session: 4.30-6.00pm
Evaluate: 6.00-6.30pm
Gym: 7.30-9.30pm
1.5 hour session: 10.00-11.30pm
1.5 hour session: 12.00-1.30am
Evaluate: 1.30-2.00am
If I can do this 6 days a week then that gets me 36 hours play per week. This is depending on my internet connection as because of where we live you cannot get fibre optic and say for instance if some one else is in the house watching YouTube or doing something on Sky Q then I get a real bad lag at the tables if I can even get on at all.
This is also one of the biggest causes of tilt for me bad connection. It shouldn't be as there is nothing much I can do about it it so I shouldn't let it bother me but it does.
I have just been looking at a box that EE do that creates a 4G environment in your home which I might have to buy. I think you pay £80 upfront and then £28 per month rolling contract for 30gb of data. I rang EE yesterday as my connection is real bad. They done a line test and said the package I pay for offers a minimum speed of 1mbps and at the moment I am only getting 0.3mbps. I have an engineer from BT coming out on Tuesday anyway. I think with this new box I am considering getting I will get speeds of around 14 mbps, so for £28 it seems a no brainer as I probably lose that amount every week just through disconnections at the tables and time outs.
You sleep from 3pm till 11am?
Think i read wrong Those are the hours that you typically sleep?
Is it possible to use your mobile phones data as a hotspot?
Not too clued up on using my mobile data as a hotspot but is something I can look in to. Surely this would be the same but probably cheaper than this box I am on about buying as it will be doing the same thing would it not by creating a 4g environment ?
Evaluate: 1.30-2.00am, is this the best idea to be evaluating at 1.30am?
Guess I could do my first evaluate when I said in original post and maybe extend my warm up/preparation to an hour from 30 mins before I start playing in the afternoon and do a 30 min hand history review then either 30 mins reading or video watching.
I suppose it will be a lot better to evaluate with a fresh head after morning cardio and decent breakfast. Thanks for pointing this out mate. Have you ever done anything in the way of a warm up/preparation ?
For anyone who is interested there is some sick action going on at £10/20NL, 2 tables of HU @alancarr12 vs Cosmeoww with about 16k in play.
Mad to think that @alancarr12 was only playing 20NL 4 years ago when he first started playing at Sky Poker. Just goes to show where hard work and a strong work ethic can get you.
I wouldn't recommend setting a rigid playing schedule.
This might lead to you starting sessions when traffic is bad and games aren't great, or even worse, ending them when the tables are great and you're playing well.
Putting aside hours in which you wish to play is a good idea in terms of structuring your day but won't necessarily help you make the most of the hours you spend at the tables.
I wouldn't recommend setting a rigid playing schedule.
This might lead to you starting sessions when traffic is bad and games aren't great, or even worse, ending them when the tables are great and you're playing well.
Putting aside hours in which you wish to play is a good idea in terms of structuring your day but won't necessarily help you make the most of the hours you spend at the tables.
This.
Even 6hrs/day in itself should be flexible. If you're playing well, enjoying yourself, games are good etc then play an extra hour or two. If you've played 3 hours with a break already but you're tired, running bad, playing bad or generally can't be bothered then it's probably better to stand rather than tilting off a few BIs just because you've 'got to play 6 hours'.
It's not terrible to plan out "Okay I want to play 36 hours this week so that's 6 hours a day with a day off" then have a rough guideline based around that, but still make sure you build some flexibility in there to be able to stay in the games for an extra hour, or stand early and make that time up later on.
In general, I think if you're going to do anything like this, then I wouldn't go with anything more rigid than x hours/week. You can then fit things like study/evaluation in when there's less tables running in the morning/early afternoon, or use it for a warm up for the second session of the day perhaps. Especially if things start getting serious and you end up in a HH review group or something like that, things like evaluation which you can normally do whenever you want might not be flexible any more.
BTW, going forward I would suggest looking at that gym session and the midnight session start - It's probs fine for this month/4nl because of the sheer number of tables that run, but once you move up stakes where there's fewer games running and we get into summer when everyone's outside and there's less tables running across the site, you're likely to run into problems with trying to start games outside of peak times with fairly low liquidity. Mid-afternoons on weekdays in the summer can be pretty reggy and/or dead, and midnight onwards is often a lot of short-handed tables and games breaking.
If the schedule is set in stone going forwards, like if you absolutely can't move your gym session to earlier in the day and play peak time in the summer, then you may have to consider looking at a second site to play which will no doubt be tougher than Sky, possibly getting a HUD for those other sites etc, just to keep up a decent number of tables at certain times of the day.
@The--Don@EvilPingu some good valid points there, a few things that I have not really thought through. Changing my gym time could well be a good start.
To be honest the 4 x 1.5 hour sessions where more of a rough idea of how I could add a bit or routine to my day. If the tables where really soft on a said day and I felt I was playing well enough I would never even consider coming off as soon as the 1.5 hours was up.
I think I may just be better off implementing the 30-60 mins hand history review and warm up session before I start playing and then just fit my sessions in however I feel free depending on traffic, how good the games are, how well I am playing, how good my internet connection is.
Then times when I feel like I am not playing my best, the games are not that good or I am a little tilted I could take a break and focus on studying. I think for now the most achievable goal I can set is a volume goal of 40 hours combined playing and studying time per week.
Do either of you two ever do any warm up/preparation before your cash sessions ?
@The--Don@EvilPingu some good valid points there, a few things that I have not really thought through. Changing my gym time could well be a good start.
To be honest the 4 x 1.5 hour sessions where more of a rough idea of how I could add a bit or routine to my day. If the tables where really soft on a said day and I felt I was playing well enough I would never even consider coming off as soon as the 1.5 hours was up.
I think I may just be better off implementing the 30-60 mins hand history review and warm up session before I start playing and then just fit my sessions in however I feel free depending on traffic, how good the games are, how well I am playing, how good my internet connection is.
Then times when I feel like I am not playing my best, the games are not that good or I am a little tilted I could take a break and focus on studying. I think for now the most achievable goal I can set is a volume goal of 40 hours combined playing and studying time per week.
Good to hear plan isn't as rigid as it appeared.
Yeah I think if not playing well or tilting, that's definitely a good time to take a break and fit in some study.
Do either of you two ever do any warm up/preparation before your cash sessions ?
Only when I used to play more regularly. I went back into education in September 2016 and since then, I've not played Poker anywhere near as frequently or taken it as seriously. Can't even remember the last time I watched a proper coaching vid start to finish or did a HH review tbh.
I'm currently playing micros anyway (TY Tories for student finance that doesn't even cover my rent...) so I tend to just skip the whole warmup thing and take whatever volume I can fit into my day, especially as at 4nl I can still beat the games even if I'm playing my C-game for the first half an hour when I would otherwise be doing a warm up.
But definitely when I start moving back up/rebuilding the bankroll over the summer it's something I'm going to get back into doing. It's definitely a +EV habit and once I get back to 20nl+ I think I'll get punished for just going into sessions completely cold.
@ALAN_18 In the past, I used to try to warm up before a session and found it quite useful but that was when I was high volume and had clean access to hand histories and comprehensive statistics on my recent sessions which would quickly identify any pieces of sloppy play that had crept into my game.
It isn't easy to do that on Sky since it isn't possible to access data on how we have played and have been playing. My warm ups (if you could call them that) now pretty much consist of reminding myself of what I am currently working on in my game that isn't yet coming naturally to me (ie changes to my sizings or ranges in various spots vs specific types of players).
I don't put as many hours in these days as I used to. When I used to force myself to play sometimes, I found I didn't always set off playing my best game and I learned that was probably because I didn't always feel like playing. When we don't feel like playing but guilt trip ourselves into putting a session in, it is much harder to bring the best out in ourselves, so I think warming up is essential in those cases.
Nowadays, my warm ups tend to go like this. Do I feel like playing? If no, then I simply don't play. If yes, then my first port of call is Sky. Is there much action? If yes, then I just join tables and crack on. If no and I really feel like playing, I'll put in a $16nl zoom session and use it as a kind of poker gym session, not expect to make much money but knowing I'll definitely get something from it.
When I first realised I could make money from poker, it became an obsession for me. A way out of a job that I didn't like and a path to a different life. At the time, I had hopes of that life being as a full time poker player.
That didn't pan out, partly because I wasn't good enough, or motivated enough to do the work that needs to be done to be a consistent winning player at 100nl and higher and partly because when I did spend a few months playing full time after being made redundant in 2012, I discovered that playing poker full time wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be and had a negative impact on other parts of my life.
However, it did lead me to be able to take a job I love on part time hours that doesn't pay well and just use poker as a supplement to my income. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to expand on the day work and now pretty much have full control over where and when I work, which whilst not being especially financially rewarding, has been life changing nevertheless.
I'm beginning to ramble now and go off message, so I'll wrap it up.
My advice is not to try and force anything. The joy of playing can quickly evaporate if you impose too many rules on yourself. Most of us poker players are dreamers, free spirits, the types of people that don't like being told what to do and want to plough our own furrows.
Poker is always there, day and night. Some days you might want to play for twelve hours, others, you might not even want to log in. Go with the flow. If you end up not playing as much as you like because you don't always feel like playing, then that is just how it is. Trying to force it during those times is futile. You're starting sessions already halfway to tilt because you don't really want to be playing in the first place and it doesn't take much to push you over the edge.
You're at the start of your journey. My advice is to be a purist. Enjoy the game first and foremost. Focus on mostly improving your biggest leaks, rather than always looking for something new to learn.
The road to being a professional players is a long one and the vast majority of us don't make it to the final destination. However, there are thousands of players just enjoying the stroll, making a few quid along the way.
Strap those poker hiking boots on. Have good intentions. Listen to yourself. When you want to go hard, go hard but remember to take it easy on yourself when you feel less enthusiastic.
I'm getting close to losing my marbles here, so I'm going to stop typing for now but I hope at least some of this ramble has resonated with you.
I think you're overthinking at this at the moment. We don't need to live the perfect life to beat 4NL. If we do then we're doing it wrong. You should be able to cruise through with just solid fundamentals. Get those fundamentals down to a tee and then Bob will be your uncle.
As rambles go, that's pretty impressive stuff @The--Don
When I'm not being a bellend I enjoy sharing my thoughts and experiences
Well I hope this won't come across wrong @The--Don, but I've much enjoyed the tone of your recent posts, & the way you have been so helpful to so many.
@ALAN_18 In the past, I used to try to warm up before a session and found it quite useful but that was when I was high volume and had clean access to hand histories and comprehensive statistics on my recent sessions which would quickly identify any pieces of sloppy play that had crept into my game.
It isn't easy to do that on Sky since it isn't possible to access data on how we have played and have been playing. My warm ups (if you could call them that) now pretty much consist of reminding myself of what I am currently working on in my game that isn't yet coming naturally to me (ie changes to my sizings or ranges in various spots vs specific types of players).
I don't put as many hours in these days as I used to. When I used to force myself to play sometimes, I found I didn't always set off playing my best game and I learned that was probably because I didn't always feel like playing. When we don't feel like playing but guilt trip ourselves into putting a session in, it is much harder to bring the best out in ourselves, so I think warming up is essential in those cases.
Nowadays, my warm ups tend to go like this. Do I feel like playing? If no, then I simply don't play. If yes, then my first port of call is Sky. Is there much action? If yes, then I just join tables and crack on. If no and I really feel like playing, I'll put in a $16nl zoom session and use it as a kind of poker gym session, not expect to make much money but knowing I'll definitely get something from it.
When I first realised I could make money from poker, it became an obsession for me. A way out of a job that I didn't like and a path to a different life. At the time, I had hopes of that life being as a full time poker player.
That didn't pan out, partly because I wasn't good enough, or motivated enough to do the work that needs to be done to be a consistent winning player at 100nl and higher and partly because when I did spend a few months playing full time after being made redundant in 2012, I discovered that playing poker full time wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be and had a negative impact on other parts of my life.
However, it did lead me to be able to take a job I love on part time hours that doesn't pay well and just use poker as a supplement to my income. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to expand on the day work and now pretty much have full control over where and when I work, which whilst not being especially financially rewarding, has been life changing nevertheless.
I'm beginning to ramble now and go off message, so I'll wrap it up.
My advice is not to try and force anything. The joy of playing can quickly evaporate if you impose too many rules on yourself. Most of us poker players are dreamers, free spirits, the types of people that don't like being told what to do and want to plough our own furrows.
Poker is always there, day and night. Some days you might want to play for twelve hours, others, you might not even want to log in. Go with the flow. If you end up not playing as much as you like because you don't always feel like playing, then that is just how it is. Trying to force it during those times is futile. You're starting sessions already halfway to tilt because you don't really want to be playing in the first place and it doesn't take much to push you over the edge.
You're at the start of your journey. My advice is to be a purist. Enjoy the game first and foremost. Focus on mostly improving your biggest leaks, rather than always looking for something new to learn.
The road to being a professional players is a long one and the vast majority of us don't make it to the final destination. However, there are thousands of players just enjoying the stroll, making a few quid along the way.
Strap those poker hiking boots on. Have good intentions. Listen to yourself. When you want to go hard, go hard but remember to take it easy on yourself when you feel less enthusiastic.
I'm getting close to losing my marbles here, so I'm going to stop typing for now but I hope at least some of this ramble has resonated with you.
What a great post mate, respect Guess I am just looking to far into things and like you said I should be playing poker because I enjoy the game and not imposing too many conditions on myself and essentially taking the fun out of it.
It is something that I generally like doing so whether it is playing or studying I will manage to get decent volume in as it is something I prefer doing over other things.
As rambles go, that's pretty impressive stuff @The--Don
When I'm not being a bellend I enjoy sharing my thoughts and experiences
Well I hope this won't come across wrong @The--Don, but I've much enjoyed the tone of your recent posts, & the way you have been so helpful to so many.
It doesn't come across wrong at all. I'm very self aware and know I can be quite immature for someone of my advancing years. Can't complain if a few folk think I'm a bit of a pratt to put it kindly.
Still pugging away at 4NL been playing a mix of 6 max and HU. Also just won a £3.00 + £0.30 £150 Bounty Hunter for just short of £30 and £15 in head prizes
Comments
^^^^^^
@KOBAYASHI
I think he means 3AM not 3pm.
I suppose it will be a lot better to evaluate with a fresh head after morning cardio and decent breakfast. Thanks for pointing this out mate. Have you ever done anything in the way of a warm up/preparation ?
Mad to think that @alancarr12 was only playing 20NL 4 years ago when he first started playing at Sky Poker. Just goes to show where hard work and a strong work ethic can get you.
This might lead to you starting sessions when traffic is bad and games aren't great, or even worse, ending them when the tables are great and you're playing well.
Putting aside hours in which you wish to play is a good idea in terms of structuring your day but won't necessarily help you make the most of the hours you spend at the tables.
Even 6hrs/day in itself should be flexible. If you're playing well, enjoying yourself, games are good etc then play an extra hour or two. If you've played 3 hours with a break already but you're tired, running bad, playing bad or generally can't be bothered then it's probably better to stand rather than tilting off a few BIs just because you've 'got to play 6 hours'.
It's not terrible to plan out "Okay I want to play 36 hours this week so that's 6 hours a day with a day off" then have a rough guideline based around that, but still make sure you build some flexibility in there to be able to stay in the games for an extra hour, or stand early and make that time up later on.
In general, I think if you're going to do anything like this, then I wouldn't go with anything more rigid than x hours/week. You can then fit things like study/evaluation in when there's less tables running in the morning/early afternoon, or use it for a warm up for the second session of the day perhaps. Especially if things start getting serious and you end up in a HH review group or something like that, things like evaluation which you can normally do whenever you want might not be flexible any more.
BTW, going forward I would suggest looking at that gym session and the midnight session start - It's probs fine for this month/4nl because of the sheer number of tables that run, but once you move up stakes where there's fewer games running and we get into summer when everyone's outside and there's less tables running across the site, you're likely to run into problems with trying to start games outside of peak times with fairly low liquidity. Mid-afternoons on weekdays in the summer can be pretty reggy and/or dead, and midnight onwards is often a lot of short-handed tables and games breaking.
If the schedule is set in stone going forwards, like if you absolutely can't move your gym session to earlier in the day and play peak time in the summer, then you may have to consider looking at a second site to play which will no doubt be tougher than Sky, possibly getting a HUD for those other sites etc, just to keep up a decent number of tables at certain times of the day.
To be honest the 4 x 1.5 hour sessions where more of a rough idea of how I could add a bit or routine to my day. If the tables where really soft on a said day and I felt I was playing well enough I would never even consider coming off as soon as the 1.5 hours was up.
I think I may just be better off implementing the 30-60 mins hand history review and warm up session before I start playing and then just fit my sessions in however I feel free depending on traffic, how good the games are, how well I am playing, how good my internet connection is.
Then times when I feel like I am not playing my best, the games are not that good or I am a little tilted I could take a break and focus on studying. I think for now the most achievable goal I can set is a volume goal of 40 hours combined playing and studying time per week.
Do either of you two ever do any warm up/preparation before your cash sessions ?
Yeah I think if not playing well or tilting, that's definitely a good time to take a break and fit in some study.
Only when I used to play more regularly. I went back into education in September 2016 and since then, I've not played Poker anywhere near as frequently or taken it as seriously. Can't even remember the last time I watched a proper coaching vid start to finish or did a HH review tbh.
I'm currently playing micros anyway (TY Tories for student finance that doesn't even cover my rent...) so I tend to just skip the whole warmup thing and take whatever volume I can fit into my day, especially as at 4nl I can still beat the games even if I'm playing my C-game for the first half an hour when I would otherwise be doing a warm up.
But definitely when I start moving back up/rebuilding the bankroll over the summer it's something I'm going to get back into doing. It's definitely a +EV habit and once I get back to 20nl+ I think I'll get punished for just going into sessions completely cold.
It isn't easy to do that on Sky since it isn't possible to access data on how we have played and have been playing. My warm ups (if you could call them that) now pretty much consist of reminding myself of what I am currently working on in my game that isn't yet coming naturally to me (ie changes to my sizings or ranges in various spots vs specific types of players).
I don't put as many hours in these days as I used to. When I used to force myself to play sometimes, I found I didn't always set off playing my best game and I learned that was probably because I didn't always feel like playing. When we don't feel like playing but guilt trip ourselves into putting a session in, it is much harder to bring the best out in ourselves, so I think warming up is essential in those cases.
Nowadays, my warm ups tend to go like this. Do I feel like playing? If no, then I simply don't play. If yes, then my first port of call is Sky. Is there much action? If yes, then I just join tables and crack on. If no and I really feel like playing, I'll put in a $16nl zoom session and use it as a kind of poker gym session, not expect to make much money but knowing I'll definitely get something from it.
When I first realised I could make money from poker, it became an obsession for me. A way out of a job that I didn't like and a path to a different life. At the time, I had hopes of that life being as a full time poker player.
That didn't pan out, partly because I wasn't good enough, or motivated enough to do the work that needs to be done to be a consistent winning player at 100nl and higher and partly because when I did spend a few months playing full time after being made redundant in 2012, I discovered that playing poker full time wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be and had a negative impact on other parts of my life.
However, it did lead me to be able to take a job I love on part time hours that doesn't pay well and just use poker as a supplement to my income. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to expand on the day work and now pretty much have full control over where and when I work, which whilst not being especially financially rewarding, has been life changing nevertheless.
I'm beginning to ramble now and go off message, so I'll wrap it up.
My advice is not to try and force anything. The joy of playing can quickly evaporate if you impose too many rules on yourself. Most of us poker players are dreamers, free spirits, the types of people that don't like being told what to do and want to plough our own furrows.
Poker is always there, day and night. Some days you might want to play for twelve hours, others, you might not even want to log in. Go with the flow. If you end up not playing as much as you like because you don't always feel like playing, then that is just how it is. Trying to force it during those times is futile. You're starting sessions already halfway to tilt because you don't really want to be playing in the first place and it doesn't take much to push you over the edge.
You're at the start of your journey. My advice is to be a purist. Enjoy the game first and foremost. Focus on mostly improving your biggest leaks, rather than always looking for something new to learn.
The road to being a professional players is a long one and the vast majority of us don't make it to the final destination. However, there are thousands of players just enjoying the stroll, making a few quid along the way.
Strap those poker hiking boots on. Have good intentions. Listen to yourself. When you want to go hard, go hard but remember to take it easy on yourself when you feel less enthusiastic.
I'm getting close to losing my marbles here, so I'm going to stop typing for now but I hope at least some of this ramble has resonated with you.
As rambles go, that's pretty impressive stuff @The--Don
It is something that I generally like doing so whether it is playing or studying I will manage to get decent volume in as it is something I prefer doing over other things.
Thanks again for the great post