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Operation Learn How to Do Things
So this likely wont have much poker content and is more of a life blog following my progress to develop different skills [currently skiing], but hopefully it will be interesting. Oh and TLDR warning. I have a habit of writing really longs posts, so be warned that my updates will probably be big walls of texts without pretty graphs to break it up.
Background:
Up until now, I never really was good at poker, because I never really had to be. I bonus whored in high school and didnt have bigger ambitions because that was a lot of money at the time, and I just assumed those opportunities would always be around. When I went to university, I tried moving up and made it to 2/4 when UIGEA hit and continued trying to grind there without doing much to really improve; never really thought too deeply about poker even though it was a huge focus for me. That didn’t go too well, then got hacked and lost a decent amount of money, and then shortstacked out of necessity. Put a lot of work into that because even though it wasnt that simple [there weren’t as many tools available then] it was something that I felt I could figure out, instead of all the uncertainty involved with deepstack nlhe.
Made ~$120k first full year of shortstacking, my 3rd year of university, with the majority of the profits coming in the last few months and then took time off from school and went to Thailand. Staked a friend who came with me, he lost a decent amount of money and I basically broke even. Decided the only way to salvage the year was to do a SNE megagrind, and I did while going back to school. Lost a lot doing that, still came out ahead on the year, but that time would have been much better spent actually trying to improve. Got really burned out from that grind and barely played at all the last year until summer in Vegas where I grinded the $500+ live SNGs at the WSOP and crushed them for awhile before hitting a big downswing, but still finished with a decent profit.
During that time I really became interested in the draw games when I saw Danny messing around with them. I didnt play much at all when I got back to school, but spent a lot of time studying heads up limit 5 card draw. Started playing part time on a stake from Danny in the beginning of November and did incredibly well and was by far the biggest winner in these games during this period, playing as high as 200/400. Throughout the summer and fall as I was working on finishing my honors thesis, but had gotten distracted a bit by poker when I started playing again, so after finishing classes in the fall, I went to PCA with Meeloche and Alexos and took a break from poker. When I got back I grinded out the first draft of my thesis, and shortly after moved in to my current [temporary] condo.
Current Situation:
I am currently writing this post from the condo I am renting at Sugarloaf Mountain in Carrabassett Valley, Maine for the next two months. Before moving in, I had only skied twice before, but decided that living in Maine and doing nothing during the winter absolutely sucks, so I should learn how to ski. It might seem a little premature to decide to do this, but I firmly believe that the easiest way to change your habits is to force yourself to. Its easy to make lofty goals, but its pretty hard to work towards those when you need to change your habits to do so and have so much distracting you.
I think as poker players, we are given incredible freedom to travel and make our own hours, and the vast majority of us completely waste that. Im no less guilty of this than anybody else, but now that I have school behind me, I am really going to do my best to achieve the goals I have and hope that this blog can help hold me accountable.
Right now my immediate plans are to learn how to ski by getting a lesson once every week or two and then going on my own as much as I can, hopefully only taking 1 day off a week. Im going to start going back to the gym to lift and swim [another skill that I want to learn, but not really as seriously as skiing] and develop a better diet as well. Ideally, I am going to balance all of this with a decent grind of the five card draw games.
After these two months are up, I am strongly considering doing something else Ive never done before and going back to Thailand to do Muay Thai training for about a month. A lot of that depends on how things go financially until then, but its the current plan right now. After that Im going to come back and meet up with some friends to go to CigarFest in the Poconos which should be a great time, and then get ready for a move to Boston. My girlfriend currently lives in Philadelphia, but just got into dental school in Boston and we will be moving there when her lease in Philly ends in July.
A lot of big changes coming up for me, but Im really excited for them. I really think that with school behind me and poker going well, I have a lot of opportunities to focus on other aspects of my life and really hope to do that. Im not sure specifically what that will be, but I want the freedom to try different things until I figure out what specifically I want to pursue, and luckily poker gives me that.
Im not too sure what specifically I will be using this blog for, but most likely will post updates about my skiing progress and probably any ramblings I may have. There will be very little poker content, but I can give updates about that if people are interested, dont really want to discuss strategy though.
So anyways, thanks for reading this, if you have any questions or what me to talk about my thoughts on something, just let me know.
andy-akb.
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