MTT Peak Time Journey - Last Shot at Poker Success

Good morning!

First day is in the books, I must say it was very nice playing peak time. Quite a lot more tables, a lot softer. I have mostly always been a night owl that forced myself to get up early, I could really tell that when I finished my session I actually ended up studying for 2 hours. I would have thought from my experience playing off peak, where I really struggled to focus post session that this wouldn't have been possible.

1. Completed a focused study session
2. Studied every 10bb+ hands and all marked hands from the session
3. Stayed off my phone
4. Was present with partner and spent some quality time together
5. Exercised today

Going forward, if I finish with enough time to spare e.g. by 3am then I will do my studying that night. Its really quiet, easy to focus and a lot of hands are fresh in my mind. The other thing I set up today was some drills, 8 in total I am going to play 20 hands of each drill whilst going through mistakes before each session in the day time and hopefully track my progress over time.

I was going to do daily graphs, but that feels a little bit overkill so I will keep it to updates like this and do a weekly graph update on a Sunday evening / Monday morning.

Well that is the first week in the books. It has been quite an interesting one. I had a few issues with table numbers, got knocked out of everything very quickly on the first session, so added lots on the next one and was absolutely swarmed. Overall numbers have been pretty good, its been enjoyable playing in a much bigger player pool and the huge extra amount of fish. It definitely feels like a decision I should have made quite a long time ago.

So a few of the goals that I have set have been really good and some I have really struggled with. I worked out four times this week and I do feel a lot more energised. I have stuck to the drilling, every session. It has taken just under 1 hour to go through all of the set ups, but I have really enjoyed it and definitely got a lot out of it. I have made a spreadsheet to track daily scores / EV loss so we can track over time if there is much of an improvement.

I haven’t kept up well with the marked hands or going over 10bb+ pots. Few factors for this, one being that the GTOwiz upload feature for tournaments is a bit broken, groups stacksizes so if the BB is at 20bb, the SB is at 20bb you have 100bb in the CO and the BTN has 100bb in the CO it wants you to shove a 20bb range. You end up with a ton of hands like this, then add in ICM, PKOs etc and its not super useful. Secondly, its been a lot more tables than I am normally used to which has lead to less time marking hands. Thirdly, when I made all the goals I kind of didn’t think about other real life stuff that would come up during the day and stop me from having two+ hours to study. Long story short, I failed with the other studying goals and I am going to go through all the marked hands I have now.

Next week I want more of the same, keep the exercise and drilling set in stone. Try really hard to get some hours of studying in outside of this and it will have made for a productive week.

Weekly Graphs

Thanks a lot, that would make things easier!

A really embarrassing session today. I ran quite bad, so generally ended up with a low table count and I just played very distracted, spewy all day. Ended up listening to loads of random podcasts, pretty much no marked hands. Absolutely no excuse for this. So I am adding a new rule.

ABSOLUTELY NO PODCASTS / DISTRACTIONS OF ANY KIND IF WE ARE ON LESS TABLES WE SHOULD BE MARKING LOTS OF POTS AND MAKING LOTS OF GOOD NOTES

Another week down. Apart from the one session, that you can read about in the post above I think we can say it was a success.

Pre Session

We kept to pretty much all of our pre session processes and exercising. I have added in an extra study component to pre session, generally watching and taking notes on some kind of training video. Two were watched last week on GTOwiz, both by Phemo, both theory videos and they were very good. The drilling is still paying off, I can feel so many spots in game where I think this is similar to the spot earlier that I drilled so accuracy and confidence are increasing. The exercise is going well, its very basic and the weights are far to light but it gets me moving and is definitely helping with sleep, which is something I can struggle with when playing nights.

Session & Studying

The sessions itself were a fairly mixed bag. We added in Monday to last weeks review accidentally so there were only 3 sessions this week. Good focus and execution in two of them and one that was really terrible and showed a complete lack of respect to myself and this profession. It did however, make us implement in some new rules and I don't think it will happen again. The last two sessions, were really good focus wise, even when tables dropped we really tried to focus on playing each hand well. I have been going through the marked hands, this has been fairly eye opening to some spots / sizing / value thresholds being missed. Today I am not working but when I get home, I plan to go through all the marked hands from Sunday.

This week coming is again, quite busy. Still have family down so I am going to shoot for 4 sessions but it may end up only 3 and that is fine. My main goals are...

- Exercise on working days
- Drilling pre session for 1 hour
- Study video pre session with notes
- Go through all marked hands
- Complete focus throughout session

We haven't quite managed to hit all of these goals, lets hope this is the week!

Graphs

Also just noted, the after swinging 500bb a few times we landed exactly at our evbb/100!

Good evening!

Another week in the books, we got in some great volume. Four pretty much fully focused sessions, slight blips here and there but with the hours we put in I think that can be expected. I stuck fairly well to my routines this week, I had to sacrifice some of the warm up or the study period on a few days just because life got in the way.

3/4 drill warm ups
2/4 videos analysed
2/4 Exercise
All marked hands were completed

I should add the hands marked from today will be looked at tomorrow when I wake up. I also didn't sleep as well this week and feel the zombie like feeling of being a night owl, I do think this is linked a bit to missing out on the exercising. This week should have had some really big scores I didn't execute very well on final tables, especially today. I would like to find something ICM wise to study next week.

Next week is going to be a low volume one, its looking like it might just be 2.5 sessions. I will have a few forced days off which are out of my control, I do have times those days to other productive things. So goals for next week.....

4 exercise
3 drill warm ups
2 study videos
All marked hands
ICM study of some kind

Some graphs...

A slightly fortunate week!

That is another week in the books. It was a very busy week with real life stuff (this is becoming a bit of a theme). I am quite proud how I managed to productively spend the first 3 days of the week even if I couldn't grind. The volume isn't great, but the times we did play I made sure I was focused and my attention was fully directed at playing the best I can. The session from the previous week that was very unfocused was really a blessing in disguise, because I feel more and more confident that I wont let that repeat again.

Lets look at our goals...

4/4 Exercise
3/3 Drills
2/2 Videos
ICM study complete
Marked hands complete

After looking at that you would definitely think that it was a very successful week, which it was to a point. I didn't manage to complete my pre session routine on all days, which I knew was going to be the case if I wanted to play but I do need to make sure that I don't let that slip into a habit on the days where I do have time. I also felt the desire to just let the blog die and not bother with updating, but I think that would be a really bad idea, the extra accountability with especially the study goals is important. I also let all of the people close to me know the exact days that I am playing every week and let them know that these will be pretty set in stone, so in the future we should be hitting four full sessions a week. People are in general very good with this, the problem is more on my end. I also slipped a bit with marking hands, this has been a bit more of an issue because of too high a table count with the addition of another site. I have amended the schedule slightly so hopefully that will change this week.

Goals for next week...

3 drills
Marked hands
ICM study
4 Exercise

No video study this week, I still feel ICM is a very big weakness of mine. I literally couldn't close a book at the moment. So I want to start going through the GTOwizard EVENTs in full including postflop and learn as much as possible about ICM for the rest of the year whilst keeping up with marked hands.

Graphs..

u could win the wsop main 9x in a row and go on to become number 1 poker player in the world. you could be on front of cardplayer magazine.

An end of Month Update (sort of)

I delayed the weekly update, so I can do a month round up since this thread started. I did start on the 25th so it is cheating a bit. I am also going to to do graphs monthly from now on, as it seems a bit silly to do this every week. Also Pokertracker has been importing hands very inaccurately, I will steal the blinds and it will have me winning 150bbs and vice versa so take that with a pinch of salt. Sharkscope is also missing my second biggest score for the month so the total profit is $8365

I have kept up with my marked hands this week and I have been marking quite a lot so I am really happy with that. I have been getting great volume in, with my new schedule which also allows some good room for real life and studying. I have to say my attempt at studying the GTOwiz ICM events has been a bit of a pathetic fail, I know its really important but I also know its quite hard work so seem to manage to prioritise other things.

I want to keep the goals for this month / week very simple.

1. 4 sessions a week (should leave us with 700-800ish games played)
2. Mark and study all marked hands
3. Study ICM events on GTOwiz
4. Workout at least everyday that I play

Graphs for the Month

great stuff, u obvs have skill / exp n everything - did u find coaching yet , or still looking , so many great options out there all depends what ur looking for in a coach

ill be following along GLGL

Amazing graph considering a 20$ abi.

You seem to play around 45-50 tournaments per session. That is HUGE. How many tables you play and how long are your sessions?

Gl

Thanks for the comments 😀

Canadian - Thanks mate, I am going to catch up on your thread in a minute. I haven't actually, not even really looked into the coaching. Any advice?

LeanPocketPair - Thanks mate, I think its important to remember I just ran way above EV. I think I have a good winrate but I am not going to regularly put in $8k months. My sessions are anywhere from 45-60 games and I register for 7 hours. I max late reg freezeouts and late reg PKOs at 50-100 bigs all with alarms so I can keep tables somewhat manageable. Generally on 6-16 tables, once I get over 12 my play level definitely drops on my less important tables and I will start to miss some 3bets / defends.

Quick Update

I am keeping up better with my drilling and just cleared all my marked hands. I am still neglecting study outside this, but I am already putting in quite a lot of hours and I find I am constantly learning quite a lot from the marked hands, so for now that will be the focus. I have changed all my drills from playing full postflop hands to drilling just vs flop Cbet or river shoves, I think this makes more sense and I have started to build some basic heuristics which play too a decent level of accuracy.

Really nice to get some comments, I appreciate it!

send me a PM on discord - ill send u some links

if u dont use discord ill just sent them here

Another month down, its funny how they really fly by when you are on a bit of a heater. Unfortunately I won't be able to play Sunday so that is a wrap from me.

Goals

We moved the ABI up a bit this month and the volume came down a touch, I think I could get the 700-800 games if I didn't have to take the occasional day off. Around Xmas time though it is always going to be hard get full weeks in and I genuinely have no idea how December is going to go! I have marked probably close to 500 hands this month and I have been through all of them. I am really proud of this and it is definitely paying off at the tables. I feel a lot more confident in my strategy and rarely feel completely lost in spots. I played 4 days a week twice throughout the month and 3 days on the other weeks, I am also quite happy with this although it is still a fail. Studying away from the marked hands was a big fail, but I genuinely don't have much extra time to put into poker whilst maintaining some semblance of balance in my life. I exercised most days, this has become a routine now, its not a lot but it does help me feel healthier.

Graphs

The final profit was $8994, definitely running way over EV. I am not sure about the 100 game discrepancy between scope and pt4 and I am also not sure that PT4 imports hands correctly still but its not very interesting without graphs.

Goals for Next Month

We are going to increase the ABI again and also have another go at adding some more sites. With Xmas / new year I think its going to be tough to make it a high volume month.

1. Mark hands and study all of them
2. Full focus every session
3. Exercise everyday
4. No drinking
5. 400 games.

Thanks for readying!