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A year in retrospect |
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ToT)MidiaN(  United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 14:46. Posts 5070 | | |
Don't really know where to start with this, perhaps a warning to all readers that a very long and most probably very boring rant is about to commence.
I've not posted here in a long time, intentionally so, I withdrew myself from the community because of some shit I was going through irl. It all started last summer when I was in Korea trying to make things work with my then kind of ex kind of girlfriend at the time. It was an up and down roller coaster and stress levels were at an all time high, not helped by the fact I was going through a terrible downswing in PLO at the same time. To cut the story short, as I'm not here to tell tales, point the finger or talk shit about anyone, but it ended a year ago today and for that reason it seems like a reasonable time to talk about the situation. Both parties were at fault really, but I didn't deal with the breakup well. Shortly after the breakup I incurred some big losses which rounded off a $30k downswing overall in PLO which was something along the lines of 100 buyins given the average stakes I was playing, so I withdrew the remains of my battered bankroll and took to some quite heavy drinking for comfort to overcome the breakup and downswing.
I would frequently blow £100 on a night out, which is very easy to do in some parts of the world, but where I live, that's a lot of alcohol. 10-12 double JD and cokes was the norm, which for a 155lb guy is quite a lot, it was ugly and the follow day(s) were invariably a blur but it dulled the boredom and pain of life for a while. It went on from the end of October to the end of December last year, and on New Years I decided enough was enough. I got some money back online and started playing Hold'Em again, I drew up a workout schedule and started to figure myself out. Despite that, I was not over the breakup and the constant reminders of her on facebook were a major problem, it was clear from her posts that she cared not a jot about the breakup and that just rubbed it in and made it hard to forget even a couple of months on, so I decided to delete facebook for a month. This was fine for a while, she was no longer on my mind and January was a good month. I enjoyed the entire month, however deactivating facebook wasn't a good long term solution as there was a lot of stuff from friends that I wanted to see, so I reactivated, but went a different way about removing the constant reminders from her and instead decided to delete her and every mutual friend I had with her. This was a total of about 160 people, the vast majority of which I really really liked and most of whom I wish I still had contact. Unfortunately only 2 or 3 of those 160 people ever bothered to message me to see how I was doing or show any sympathy about my situation so in retrospect I probably didn't lose out on any real "friends", just acquaintances that were fun to be around at the time.
I'm not going to apologise to those people for doing what I did as they never showed me any sympathy and it certainly helped me overcome the problems I was still going through, but I do hope they'll understand my point of view. Naturally, the way I acted, shutting out so many people from my life including some friends I'd known for years just to avoid seeing anything of my ex on facebook sounds very naive, immature and unnecessary but, I was struggling real hard to overcome it and at one point was seriously considering the prospect of marrying her. I'm not here to try and reconnect with said 160 people or even apologise, but I do wish to explain my feelings at the time and hope that any of them that read this at least understand my thought processes at the time.
One of the reasons I felt inspired to post today, as well as the fact it's been a year since the breakup is due to the fact I was going through some old blog posts I made 3 years ago. I've cut off this community for a long time, but memories came back of how positively I used to be viewed here. So many people were writing in my blogs that have long since equalled or surpassed my level of success in poker and I do kinda miss the positive reinforcement from the community I guess. I don't expect any of that after this blog post, but still, it was nice to reminisce about the past and I have connected with a couple of LPers lately in Oddeye and sChOuA and have enjoyed interacting with them about poker and life and whatnot in the past couple of months.
Anyway moving on, working out was a real help in the first 3 months of this year. I went from 155lbs 20% body fat to 140lbs 12% body fat in that time frame, which ok, that's very light for a guy who is ~5ft 10, but the plan was to cut to lower body fat, then bulk afterwards rather than bulking from a starting point of 20% body fat and cutting later. Unfortunately, in March I injured my shoulder and until 2 weeks ago never bothered to get back into it. I'm really enjoying it again, and even after just a couple of weeks am seeing some progress again which is one of the most motivating things. It's an enjoyable process and that is more important if not more important than the end results. It's something I've spoke to Ket about a lot recently, and it's obviously key to spend as much time doing things we enjoy as possible. I've certainly been more productive this year than the last couple and that's the route I've wanted to take for a while and spent more time enjoying myself than I did last year.
Certainly, I've been more productive in terms of volume at the poker tables too. I've been aided quite significantly by the introduction of zoom poker, which has helped me get in a yearly total of a little less than 500k hands so far. That is probably double what I achieved in 2010 and about 50% more than last year and far more than half of those hands have come in the last 2 months where I've really made an effort to increase my productivity and reduce the procrastination to a bare minimum. Despite the positives, I haven't ran well this year, and off the back of the $30k downswing at the end of last year I immediately ran 50 buyins below EV at Hold'Em in the first 80k hands. It wasn't helping me in any way having to overcome more bullshit after the last half of 2011, but I got through it just seeing that my EV winrate was quite decent and seeing the unreal retarded plays people were making on a frequent basis. The first half of this year I was actually down money in cash games after running 25 buyins below EV @ 100PLO and, at this point, about 55 buyins below EV @ 50NL, eventually I said fuck it, said to myself "stop wasting time at these dumb stakes" and put more money online and started playing Zoom 100NL and 200NL. I immediately started running much better and in the last 2.5 months have made 5.8k at 100NL, 9.5k at 200NL, but unfortunately dropped 4k at 500NL, still, given an average of more than 1.5k VPPs/day I've made a decent bit of rakeback on top and am up over $10k in donkaments this year thanks to a 2nd place finish in some Sunday Turbo tournament for $15.5k. Overall, including rakeback I guess I'm only at about +~$30k for the year which seems abysmal for all the extra productivity, but I am about $4.5k below EV in cash games still and think I've ran pretty bad in tournaments in general, including the 2nd place finish for $15.5k where I started the HU with a 4:1 chip lead. Still, it's been drilled into my brain by constant self reinforcement that dwelling on the past is a complete waste of energy, and looking forward I have to say I'm confident about poker for the remainder of this year and the entirety of next year. Zoom NL is fun, I'm playing as well as I've played in a while, the games are very beatable and my productivity and general happiness levels are higher than they've ever been in the past year. In short, I'm well over the past and I'm looking forward to the future in every aspect of life. I may have alienated a lot of old "friends" and hope they can understand why I completely segregated myself from the community, I would not be against reconnecting with some of them, though the vast majority of the 160 people are not poker players and will never read this so that's not likely, either way, it's out there now and I'm happy with the direction things are going regardless.
Graph of bb/hand for the year... Still 60 buyins below EV for the year -.-;
Stats:
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| One day good. One day bad. And some days, even hope | Last edit: 23/10/2012 11:31 |
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DaEm0niCuS United States. Oct 22 2012 15:00. Posts 3292 | | |
Always interesting to hear life stories, do you have a college degree or any other options? where are you living? is zoom really that good? does it beat tabling selecting regular games?
Zoom seemed mega nitty when I played it, although I didn't play much. I guess you get a ton of hands per hour.... |
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I've liked you ever since I DL'ed some replay pack for starcraft 1 you made. I've been in a similar situation to you except that I'm engaged and haven't been drinking that hard the last years. Might not be similar at all, but whatever. Let's be facebook friends. Send me a msg and I'll give you my facebook details. |
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RaiNKhAN United States. Oct 22 2012 15:02. Posts 4080 | | |
I don't think anyone you deleted has any ill-will towards you, and I for one still think you're the man from when we met in korea. awesome story about lifting btw BuilT)MidiaN( |
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| The biggest Rockets, Sixers, and Grizzlies fan you will ever meet! | |
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ToT)MidiaN( United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 15:09. Posts 5070 | | |
| | On October 22 2012 14:00 DaEm0niCuS wrote:
Always interesting to hear life stories, do you have a college degree or any other options? where are you living? is zoom really that good? does it beat tabling selecting regular games?
Zoom seemed mega nitty when I played it, although I didn't play much. I guess you get a ton of hands per hour.... |
No college degree, I dropped out after 8 weeks at Uni cause I was crushing $4/$8, $5/$10 and $10/$20 at the time on Prima for ~8BB/100 over more than 150k hands and I wasn't enjoying the class or the people in my dorms. I'm living at home in the UK with my parents in a house I co-own with them. I just enjoy the constant decision making action of zoom, I'm not sure if they're the most profitable games, as they are infested with SNE chasers who are 4 tabling 200NL and 500NL whereas the fish only have 1 table running so you don't run into fish that often, but it's more involving and fun, which to me, as long as I can still win is more important. Plus you don't have to wait around trying to find games as you would be if you were table selecting hard
| | On October 22 2012 14:02 RaiNKhAN wrote:
I don't think anyone you deleted has any ill-will towards you, and I for one still think you're the man from when we met in korea. awesome story about lifting btw BuilT)MidiaN( |
Hah, not sure you can speak for everyone but thx anyway |
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| One day good. One day bad. And some days, even hope | Last edit: 22/10/2012 15:13 |
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Achoo Canada. Oct 22 2012 15:35. Posts 1454 | | |
Only care about the people who care for you... Some people are just leeches, they try to get everything they can from you without giving anything under the cover of a fake so-called friendship, have to sort them out and get rid of them. Oh and fuck your ex, she obv doesn't give a flying fuck about you so why would you give a fuck about her ? Welcome to the jungle mah friend. |
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| Odds are exactly 50%: it either happens or not | |
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ToT)MidiaN( United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 15:37. Posts 5070 | | |
Can't disagree with any of that |
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| One day good. One day bad. And some days, even hope | |
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rANDY United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 15:50. Posts 2223 | | |
Nice to see your doing better Jamie  UK Zerg bonjwa!
I think it will be a virtuous cycle - exercising, working hard and avoiding procrastination. |
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Smuft Canada. Oct 22 2012 16:00. Posts 633 | | |
I've gone through my fair share of tilted drunken bankroll spewing breakups so I feel for you on that one. GJ on moving on and refocusing on what you decided was important in life. |
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Ket United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 16:33. Posts 8665 | | |
was amazing to read, ur headed in the right direction my friend |
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morph1 Sierra Leone. Oct 22 2012 17:15. Posts 2352 | | |
glad you are ok , I kinda enjoyed your blogs and strategy posts here |
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| Always Look On The Bright Side of Life | |
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sChOuA Switzerland. Oct 22 2012 18:11. Posts 2302 | | |
good read, will talk soon i hope :-) |
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TheTrees United States. Oct 22 2012 18:21. Posts 1592 | | |
Knew you for a while back on BW. Good luck buddy, I'm sure you'll do just fine. Looking forward to more of your blog posts |
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Critterer United Kingdom. Oct 22 2012 19:09. Posts 5337 | | |
Actually read all of that, and suprisingly good read despite the lack of paragraphs :D
Keep it up~ |
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| LudaHid: dam.ned dam.ned dam.ned. LudaHid: dam.ned northwooden as..hole | |
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okyougosu Russian Federation. Oct 22 2012 19:22. Posts 963 | | |
Its better to spend less on alchohol and more on hookers after a break up. |
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thewh00sel United States. Oct 22 2012 19:28. Posts 2734 | | |
Good read, sounds like things are starting to turn around for you. gl.
edit: Might want to go through that text wall and push enter twice after a few complete thoughts though, I felt like a broken typewriter trying to find my way back to the beginning of the next line of text. |
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| A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. - Ayn Rand | Last edit: 22/10/2012 19:30 |
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Uptown . Oct 22 2012 21:16. Posts 3557 | | |
woohoo I'm one of the 3/160! 
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GoTuNk Chile. Oct 22 2012 22:25. Posts 2860 | | |
Congrats, I still remember a z v z we played at least 8 years ago on "Nostalgia" where I went for fast expand into hidras vs your muta ling. U won T_T.
I think you should squat more and gain weight now :D |
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PuertoRican United States. Oct 23 2012 01:13. Posts 13127 | | |
I still love you Jamie~
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