Reflection

So again I've been doing a lot of thinking about poker and life in general and I want somewhere to write my thoughts down. This is the type of blog I always find interesting when others have written them so hopefully you guys don't think I'm just rambling with this post, but I'm still not 100% sure where it will go yet.

So I was reading a post by Bond18 today, where he discussed his thoughts and feelings about everything that's been happening etc with his life really and I realised how envious I was of him. He seems to live the kind of life I want to lead, he's a professional poker so pretty much has all the time in the world, and he uses most of it to grind, but still has time to do all the normal and lead a pretty sociable life. I'm so frustrated with school at the moment and how it restricts me so much in life by not enabling me to do all of the things I want to. It's just so time consuming, you are out all day, then you come home and have 4 hours homework to do, leaving you about an hours free time before you go to bed and do the same grind again the next day. It means I get to play 3 sessions a week, 2 MTT sessions and 1 turbo 180 session. There is nothing I'd love to do more than drop out of school right now and become a full time pro, spending 5/6 nights a week grinding the shit out of stuff and making a lot of money, giving me time to get better at poker as well increasing my potential to earn more money and win more, the only thing stopping me from doing this is what my parents would think of me. I still love at home and my mum would absolutely kill me if I were to drop out of school, pretty much commiting me to the shitty life that annoys me so much for at least the next 2 years, possibly longer.

Another thing that annoys me about spending so much time commited to school work is that there isn't enough time to get better at poker. I play on auto-pilot 30 tabling for pretty much all of my sessions, desperately trying to get volume in so I can make the money I am missing by having limited playing time. I'm a bad poker player because of it. I don't mind because I am +EV in the games I play and make money, but I know I have so much potential, if only I could spend time playing less tables and thinking about every hand properly. I'll never become the best in poker if I don't think about the hands I am playing, instead of mindlessly grinding, but I have no choice. I think I might spend my MTT sessions until the end of the year just 6 tabling and thinking about each hand very carefully and trying to make the best plays possible. Posting hands on forums etc and getting lots of feedback for my play. It means sacrificing potential monetary gain, but hopefully it will benefit me in the long run, enabling me to make a bunch of money next year.

I definitely want to win a bunch pretty soon so that I can get back onto my own money, instead of being backed. I like being backed in some ways because it means that I risk no money of my own and still get to play reasonable stakes. But at the same time there are so many requirements and rules that you have to abide by. I'd love to be able to play hyper turbo sats to the Sunday Million and play the occasional cash game, and spend my FPPs on items from the store, but I'm not allowed to do it because they aren't part of my backing arrangement. I also think I'll never make it big while I'm backed by anyone. Although I make money etc whilst being backed I play differently to when I'm on my own money and I don't think it's a good thing. Plus I'd like to be able to keep 100% of my winnings/cash out when I like etc, I think that I'm definitely losing EV by playing backed, and poker is a game where you need to maximize your EV in every way possible this isn't a good thing. Although I'm happy being backed for the moment it would still be nice to be on my own money again soon.

Off of poker now and onto real life stuff. I'm kinda tilted by real life atm too, as I realised how ridiculously lazy I am in all aspects of life. I'm ridiculously lazy at school, which seems like such a waste, if I have no choice but to be there I may as well make the most of it as there is nothing I can do to change how much time I spend there right? Well for some reason I still put in minimal effort and just scrape by even though I could do so much better. All of my friends obviously don't enjoy it either because it's school right? You're meant to hate it whilst you're there then want to go back when you leave, but they still manage to force themselves to do well yet I seem so incapable of doing so. I'm gonna have to try and teach myself to have a good work ethic. My brother recently got hypnotherapy to help him quit smoking, I wonder if that would work to give me a better work ethic too? I'll have to reaseach into it I guess.

I've also realised how unsporty I have become. I used to be a ridiclously sporty person playing any sports that I could try, but now that seems to go out of the window. I wanna set up my pool table again and get good at pool, and I've been playing squash recently at school and I've been really enjoying it so I might look into getting a membership for my local squash club if I can find anyone to play regularly with. The problem with my friends though is that they always seem to let me down. Seems to be a common trend in the area I live with, no-one can keep their promises, people are always commiting to stuff then dropping out or making other arrangements right at the last minute, so I can't really trust anyone to commit to doing this with me, I might have to see if I can befriend any current members.

I know there is so much more I want to write atm but I don't know how to put it into words, I'll think about it tonight and then try and make a new post tomorrow with the rest.

Laters

DoubtImReal