2025 - Time to Lock In
It's a new year, and it's time to lock TF in.
I've been playing poker on and off for the last 4-5 years, slightly losing with no meaningful change in my results, and I'm sick of it. During this time my dad has financially supported me and while I haven't lost too much on the tables, helping me with living expenses the last few years has added up and I need to start making substantial progress in paying him back, as well as becoming financially independent, and start building a bit more of a life for myself.
My immediate goal is to start making consistent profit with online poker. Over the last few years I've watched a ton of content from various training sites, YouTube, and courses. Although I've picked up a lot of concepts, I also feel like I've been "GTO brainwashed". Fortunately, I think I'm starting to see how these concepts truly fit together, and what really matters at the tables. My plan is to better hone this understanding, and apply these insights in practical ways to crush the games I'm playing.
To ensure I don't repeat the same mistakes I've made the last few years, this time around I'm going to implement the following practices:
• Nutrition & Fitness:
-- High Quality Meal Prep
--To make sure I can put in the hours behind the computer studying & grinding, I'm planning on dialing in diet & meal prep to limit time cooking & cleaning.
-- Fitness Regimen Optimized for Poker Performance
--A fitness regimen focused on cardio, HIIT intervals, heavy bag work, flexibility & mobility to improve mental endurance, stress management, posture & physical comfort while putting in long hours behind the desk.
• Study & Productivity:
-- High Value Note Taking
--To ensure I'm not just gazing mindlessly at the screen while another hour long theory video plays, I'm focused on taking more valuable notes that have takeaways with practical applications, as opposed to just taking in the information at face value. I'm using a Notion template to help me with this.
-- Structured Learning
--I've also started to go through content libraries picking out what I think are high-value concepts, videos & articles to understand better, and organizing them in a notion template to eventually put together a kind of syllabus to work through to get a more robust understanding of some of the concepts driving our decisions.
• Discipline & Routine:
-- Routines
--Ironically, one of the things that first attracted me to poker was the freedom to set my own schedule, and not have to adhere to a rigid routine. However I'm coming to learn that I'm going to need to somewhat flush out a structured daily routine for studying, exercising, and grinding to be successful.
-- Discipline
--Discipline is going to be very important too. It's not just going to be about sitting down and hitting play every day. It's about truly showing up, being present, maintaining a high level of performance for long hours and then showing up again the next day to do is all over again. A quote I really enjoy is "It is not enough to be a good player... you must also play well".
--Tracking Results
--I plan to split my volume across 4 sites, IGGY, Global, ACR, and BoL. Since IGGY is untracked, I'll be keeping track of my overall bankroll with a Notion template. I'm currently playing an ABI of around $9 and since starting to think a little differently about some of these concepts, here have been my results. While trying to apply some of these new ideas to my game I've had a rough session or two trying to play too many tables while implementing. I also noticeably punted two deep runs, but despite these hiccups, I'm optimistic that this is a good first step in the right direction.
My current plan is to prioritize studying over pure volume. I want a deeper understanding of how these concepts, heuristics, and exploits come together to shape our incentives and decision making at the table. I also need to spend more time on my preflop ranges and understanding how to adjust to different player types and ICM stages / stack configurations / PKOs.
Over the next few days, I’ll be dialing in my meal prep routine and finalizing the key topics I want to include in my "syllabus." Once that’s done, I’ll start working through it in a structured way. I'll also be dedicating time to drilling preflop ranges at various stack depths, and better understanding the nuances of them in regard to adjusting to different player types, and different ICM configurations. In addition to the studying, I'll play short, small field, low table count sessions everyday where I focus on implementing what I'm learning effectively.
As I become more proficient I plan to launch a YouTube channel to share educational poker content. My hope is that through teaching, I'll solidify my own understanding while helping others who have similar goals. Ultimately, If I can translate these efforts into meaningful results, and pair that with quality YouTube content, I'd love to offer coaching while expanding my YouTube content library
So with all that being said, I'm hoping this thread keeps me accountable and motivated, while giving me a platform to share my journey and hopefully helping others with similar goals.
Here's to crushing it in 2025!
