[Nstphillips]

Daily update;

Rough day at the office. Crushed PLO2 on Stars and Party Poker and then got crushed on Runitonce Poker at PLO10. Hopefully I will receive the hands from RIO so I can review the session tomorrow. Going to have a study session finishing off final remaining video from Week 2 of Masterclass and going through a mammoth session review utilising the 6max pre-flop chart.

BR Open $1021.00

BR Close $984.89

[Adelaney]

Subscribed,

Best of luck with all your goals Nick both poker and non poker related, glad to see that you joined the PLO Mastermind after previously being a member to Fernando’s content!

How has the life optimisation been going so far do you think that can be attributed as well to the improvements in your game being more focused, rested etc?

Best of luck!

[Nstphillips]

Hi Ash,

Thanks for the message.

The life optimisation has been going well so far, of all the changes I have made I would say drinking 3-4 litres of water each day and sleeping solidly has improved my concentration and focus a lot and I believe this has had a large part to play in my results this week.

[Nstphillips]

Progress Update

Bankroll 990.41

Life optimisation – Diet stuck to for 3 days in a row, need to do better with sleep as been to bed at 1am most evenings. Goal for rest of week to get to bed by 12:30 with the aim to go to bed before midnight each night next week.

Would like to learn more about meditation so going to look into that this weekend.

PLO training progress. Well into week 3 now. Today I am going to pause and ensure that I develop a detailed training plan allocating time in the day for deep work, analysis, hand and session reviews as well as scheduling time to play and participate in live streams.

For the rest of the week I am focussing on completing week 3 of mastermind with a side goal of understanding UTG opening ranges a lot better by using the online helper and spreadsheet. I have also downloaded the PLO trainer and will be focussing on that at the weekend to get used to it.

Playing I am scaling back as was at least putting in 2 hours playing to every one hour learning each week.

I am going to attempt to put in 15 hours learning and 5 hours playing time each week until the end of the master mind course and re-evaulate.

[Nstphillips]

Progress update 19/05

Bankroll $1016.52

Completely failed with studying goals today which I am really pissed off with myself with. However diet, mindfulness and work goals all achieved today.

Positive note I did well at the tables today and increased bankroll by $26.11 playing a short session on Pokerstars this morning PLO5 and PLO 10 on RIO this evening. So far I have a basic grasp of opening ranges from UTG and have focussed on opening hands that I think fit in that range from every position. I think I identified two spots where I folded maybe too tightly post flop which lost me 0.5 Buy ins in total. I have to wait 24 hours for the hands but one of the benefits of playing on RIO is no matter what the outcome you get to see your opponents starting hands in the histories so I can see if my opponents were bluffing.

I will make it a goal to study more tomorrow and to post the two hands to the community to see if I was playing the hands correctly.

[Nstphillips]

<div>Having trouble posting the hands due to formatting issues.</div>

However they are not worth posting really as on reflection they are easy folds. In a nutshell Rainbow double pair with Aces that do not improve on a paired flop. At the time felt really hard to lay down the aces when quite heavily invested in the pot 40BB or so. However it feels like it is an easy lay down which I actually made so I should be pleased. Just need to work on making that a fold and forget rather then something that I fight my internal will to want to call to ensure I am not being bluffed.

Because RIO show you villains hole cards 24 hours after event I can see that he had a set on the flop and improved to full house on turn so good job I folded. Also after looking through other hands it really feels at PLO10 that people are playing pretty honestly with little bluffing so hopefully that will help me fold things that don’t have re-draws to stronger hands.

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[Nstphillips]

Daily update

Bankroll 1048.14

Had two very short sessions today playing zoom in the AM and 6 max on RIO Poker this evening ran extremely well in the AM and broke even in the evening session. Overall from a play perspective a very decent days work. I felt that I played really well and after doing a quick hand review this morning I found it a lot easier to give up on good hands that are most likely beaten and resist the urge to call try and catch a bluff. I also looked through a lot of random hands that I have lost and I can’t remember seeing any bluffs. It really feels like at PLO2 PLO5 and PLO10 people are really honest.

I actually thought I had not really studied much today and by normal accounts I haven;’t however I think the very small amount of work I put in with my database improved my mindset and took a bit of emotion out of making folds so it was a win.

Health update –

I have stuck to my nutrition plan have been drinking a lot of water as well and think I can attribute this to feeling a lot better both in my job and whilst playing Poker.

I have a weigh in on Friday so hopefully I will see some early results there to encourage me more to continue.

Anyway choosing going to bed rather then playing any more poker or studying this evening as I just don’t think I will take it in whilst being this tired.

[Adelaney]

Good stuff Nick everything seems to be going in the right direction. Are you still playing a bunch on RIO or mixing up the sites?

Great call btw on just calling it a night and not forcing yourself to study, think that’s something many do, feeling like they HAVE to study constantly even when they’re mentally and physically exhausted and the chances of taking any information in is very low.

Keep up the good work with the poker and the health grind and hope the weigh in results are what you’re hoping for!

[Nstphillips]

Hi Ash,

I am playing a mix of RIO, Party Poker and Pokerstars. I mainly play on RIO but because it is a small site sometimes there is not a lot of action on there so play on Party Poker or last resort Pokerstars if I need to.

I import all hands into Poker Tracker however I find that Stars is the best in terms of the HUD being available and reliable hand histories uploads so I try and treat that as solely a platform to build up a hand history and learning tool. Once I feel more comfortable with game I will look to move money from there to Party Poker.

————

Update for yesterday BR $1038.00 I think my play actually broke even however exchange rate on Euro v USD went down so bankroll down a bit.

Last night I managed to do some Deep work UTG hands from my database that I RFI’d it took me a little while I to work out how to filter for those results as the database is not as intuitive as hm3 but I got there. Think I was correct about 80% of the time so will continue to review hands in this scenario and get that percentage up.

Now that I have moved through some of the sessions for week 3 I feel I can put together some what of a schedule to plan in my different study elements for next week and actually plan my play sessions in.

I have fallen a little behind on study however I feel l have still made good progress and have been involved with a few live stream sessions and watched some hand analysis videos for inspiration. If I can get my plan put together watch another Week 3 video and do some RFI UTG quizzes today and get an hour of play in this evening I will count that as a win.

[Nstphillips]

Bankroll $805.90 🙁 bad weekend

Bit of a mixed week in terms of poker and health this last week.

In England we have had a bank holiday and at the start of the weekend I wasn’t very well at all. I still for some reason pushed on and attempted to study and played poker and lost $200 of bankroll. I believe this to be attributed to not feeling well like I was not seeing flushes and straights or paired boards and making extremely bad raises or calls. I also watched the rest of the Week three videos in a not fit state so I need to rewatch them this week and catch up with Week 4.

One upside is that I don’t feel that bad about losing the money, I know I played badly and not in optimal health and next time I will just quit the game for a few days to allow myself to recover.

On the upside I have decided that I can afford to invest a little more in Poker so will be topping up my bankroll with the aim to build it closer to the $5000 mark so that when Coronavirus is over I can comfortably play PLO and No Limit live which is something I would really enjoy to do.

I am also going to invest a few buy ins to NLHE and PLO tournaments purely for enjoyment rather than purchasing video games. I have played a few SCOOP events this week and although I didn’t cash I got really close to making a day 2 in a PLO tournament and was in the top 10 for a while and could have just folded my way into a cash and it was just lack of discipline and not being used to playing a short stack that got me into a few situations that I shouldn’t have been. However as part of my dream is going to the World Series and playing in a few bracelet events then getting a bit of big tournament slow level tournaments will be crucial experience to get.

So my new goals for today;

Play in the $11 SCOOP PLO8 event – Have limited experience with this game and will be following the very basic advice “Don’t leave home without an Ace” and just trying to muddle my way through the game.

Play a couple of tables of PLO10 or 20 attempting to grind rakeback as on my site RIO Poker they are doing a promotion to double your rakeback reward this week so want to try and win back some of the $200 I lost.

Tomorrow I will be re-watching the Week 3 videos and designing a schedule for the remainder of the week factoring in Study time and playing time.

Anyway that is it for now. Take it easy all.

[Adelaney]

Ah that sucks you had a bad weekend Nick, but you’re likely right in your evaluation of the play in that playing sick is never a good idea, same way with being in a bad frame of mind or just in any state where it’s not a case of being fully focused on the poker for the period of your session it’s sometimes better to just take those couple days regroup, get well and then get back into it. However, you realise this and it’s something to learn from so there’s a positive to it 🙂

Good luck with the tourneys and hope the PLO8 went well for you!

Best of luck for the week ahead.

[Nstphillips]

Thanks for the message Ash 🙂

SCOOP – PLO08 tourney was fun unfortunately did not cash but enjoyed every minute of it. I cashed in the NLHE Bounty hunter SCOOP event last night which covered my entry to both tournaments which was nice.

Next tournaments will likely be on Sunday where there is a final PLO tourney for $22 and maybe I will play a few more NLHE tournament in the series to attempt to cash. Next year I am going to try and save some money so I can play as many tourneys as possible as I have really enjoyed this year.

Moving forward I would like to dedicate one day a week to tournaments as it is something I enjoy a lot and it feels like in the bigger events you are deep enough with slow enough levels that you can wait for good hands and play TAG and get a cash.

[Adelaney]

Yeah tournaments are ‘fun’ but naturally extremely high variance so can get annoying real quick haha especially those huge field sundays but hey it’s good to break things up have 1 day where you have some fun in some really soft tourneys!

[Cookiesareforever]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for posting, was a nice readthrough 🙂
I’m also using PT4, how do you see your RFI ranges?
I sometimes feel really lost in PT4, sometimes I don’t xD.

Best of luck with both your health journey and your poker journey, will be fun to follow you since I’m playing PLO10 myself, but not at any of the sites you are currently playing at it seems :).

Take care

//Cookies

[Nstphillips]

Hi Cookies,

Thank you for the well wishes and for reading my blog.

I was (still am) pretty apprehensive about starting it however it seems to keep me somewhat honest about my progress, and has made me refocus to get back on track with studying.

With regards to Poker Tracker 4 I agree, it is not that intuitive however I feel you can achieve the same results as Hold ’em manager you just have to “tinker” a bit more.

I’ll give a quick example to create an RFI UTG situation then you should be able to tweak it for every seat and action imaginable.

1. Go to the stats tab and open up the “more filters” section on left hand column

2. Select “Action and Opportunities” and then “Action and Opportunities Pre-Flop”

3. Scroll down to “Pre-Flop raises” and then check on “Raise first in” then click on “Add to filter

(At this stage as a filter you could just then filter all hands that you RFI’d which in itself is pretty useful.)

4. Next to add a seat position – Back in the More Filters section click on “Hand details” and then check on “Position of Selected” then you have to select a number depending on the seat which is easier said then done. It gives an example of 0 being the button and I can tell you that UTG is 3.

Hope this makes sense,

Cheers

[Nstphillips]

Update;

Health – I have lost 7kgs since starting with the nutrionist, the food hasn’t been that bad and I feel actually like I am eating more then I normally would. I did have an episode of feeling really ill last weekend that I think was the catalyst for throwing my studying and bankroll discipline out the window. However I feel pretty good overall and I am hoping I am starting to make a bit of progress.

Poker – Bankroll $865 + $17 dollars from last update.

Study efforts have been poor this week. I was unwell over the bank holiday, however I cannot use that as an excuse for not studying this week. I haven’t lost the passion for poker in fact it is the complete opposite. I have let playing poker take over from studying the game and it has taken me 4 days to get back on the road towards PLO Mastermind success (sounds cheesy but I’m going with it)

I also came up with an ill thought out plan that I could top up my bankroll each month to justify moving up to PLO20 however without completing the Mastermind is maybe not suitable as I have very little PLO experience and don’t know some of the simplest strategy yet. Therefore I am going to stick with PLO10 until the course is over and set aside some money in an account that I can use to boost myself should I need to.

I have got my study back on track today by re-starting week 3 and devising study plan. I have also done some deep work on RFI UTG range and it feels like I am still opening up with the correct hands most of the time.

My weekly study plan moving forward is below.

Monday – Friday

AM – Watch Mastermind video followed by 1 hour of deep work ( with a break in between)

Early afternoon – Mastermind video – session review from last nights session.

Evening (before play session) Quiz related to days study

Evening 1-2 hours of playing PLO10

Saturday – Quick week review, maybe work on something I have been struggling with however mainly a poker free day.

Sunday – is a free day, focus to relax and spend time with partner and if safe to do so go on a day trip. If I am desperate for a poker fix I am going to dedicate a bit of time to tournaments.

[Nstphillips]

Update 29/05

Bankroll $898.44 – Short 1 hour session this evening playing 2 tables of PLO10 on RIO poker and one FF table on Party Poker making $33.44 profit. Probably my best winning session so far.

Put in some deep work on 3-betting over the last 2 days and have really noticed a difference particularly when playing OOP. I also really felt like I finally understood the importance of blockers for the first time, when mixed in with 3-betting out of position you really get a feel for what your opponent has if they flat or re-raise for example when you have AKQx.

I also caught some of @JNandez live stream which I really enjoyed. Watching two pro’s that I admire playing on the site I mainly play on was really inspiring and also seeing Fernando stack Runchuck was great!

Target for the rest of the weekend – Complete Week 3 of 10 Week transformation spend some time working on mental game.

Continue to work hard health and fitness goals.

Spend some time focusing on my career. I have stagnated a little and have not been working as hard as I should be during Quarantine and I need to pick up my performance.