The road to recovery….

In order to kick-start my recovery to set myself up to have a killer 2009 I’ve taken the time to identify and write down a bunch of goals (in no particular order) for the next 12 months in areas of my life that are important to me right now; health/fitness, self-development, my poker career and the development of my blog … www.pokerfitgroup.com

I will keep adding to this list as I set new goals and I will tick things off as I reach them, so I can look back on them at a later date and see all that I have achieved.

Poker:

- Re-build $25k bankroll ... by December 11, 2009.
- Earn $100k in 12 months playing poker ... by December 11, 2010.
- Get onto top 10 leaderboard on Pocketfives for Aussie players ... by December 11, 2009.
- Schedule a day off from doing anything poker related ... tuesdays.
- Schedule time each week to do some poker training and review hand histories.
- Buy a video replayer so that I can record my own training videos for the purpose of training, reviewing and critiquing my own play.
- Seek out players whom I admire (both live and online) and learn from them … also to expand my friendship group within the poker community.
- Schedule time each week to read & participate in a select number of forums and blogs and listen and learn what other players are doing and how they’re doing it!

Health & Fitness:

- Develop more physical energy.
- Sleep Less.
- Effortless physical and mental function.
- Develop more discipline and mental conditioning ... a winning mind-set!
- Make health/fitness a major part of my everyday life.
- Participate in a range of fitness activities for variety ... running, swimming, riding, boxing, golf, tennis, football, triathlons, dance, kickboxing ...
- 100 continuous push-ups.
- 10 one handed push ups.
- 25 continuous chin ups.
- 25 continuous dips.
- Swim 1km continuously.
- Do some sort of physical exercise before every playing session ... even if its just a 5min walk around the block, the goal here is mental conditioning, clarity and focus.
- Do a fitness test every month for the next 12 months.
- Start taking a quality nutritional supplement.
- Train with somebody at least once a week who is fitter/stronger/faster than I am.

Poker Fit Group

- Attract 1000 subscribers in 12 months.
- Write at least one quality content article each week.
- Get 1000 members to attend a group training session in 12 months.
- Buy or acquire the use of Poker Fit Island (PFG‘s future HQ)… now this one could take a while, but its my ultimate dream … to be able to wake up and run along the beach and swim on my own island!!
- Continually add relevant products and services that will add value to my readers lives.

General

- Find a new place to live, somewhere in the South Melboure, Port Melbourne, St Kilda area … anyone got a spare room???
- Get myself to a position where I can quit working for somebody else, unless I choose otherwise.
- Be more family oriented, visit my family more often and make sure I remember everyone’s birthday!!
- Be more organised and efficient. Use my daily planner everyday.
- Put a plan together to buy some real estate.
- Discover ways to be more focused and time efficient.
- Take the time to plan my days and weeks in advance with the use of a daily planner.

Saturday, December 13, 2025

I get up around 7am yesterday and I’m so excited about getting out of the city for a few days. I pack up my stuff, throw it all in the car, plug my ipod in and Im away, stopping only once for petrol.

For pretty much all of the 3 hour trip I got my ‘phat beats’ blaring and I’m singing and dancing away (not very well … but it was fun!).

I get home to the folks house only to find that its pissing down rain and they’re in Albury (about 5 hours away) seeing my sister and I have no key!! After a few text messages I sort out a way to get in and find out that they’re on their way home and only about 3 hours away.

For the rest of the day I just relax, watch a dvd, have a few beers, have dinner with the family, play dad in a few heads up matches and then watch the FT of the WPT Bellagio 5 Diamond Classic on Fox, where Daniel spews about 6 million chips in about 5 hands and gets knocked out when he pushes K10o into Joe Hachems 44.

It was after this, when everyone else went to bed, that I was reading through some old journals and I found a piece that I had written about 18 months ago after I completely busted my entire bankroll of $20k and was trying to figure out how to get it back.

As I was reading through this piece entitled ‘My Story’, I started realising how similar my current situation is to my situation back then and how pathetic my life was then … I really took the term ’anti-social’ to a whole new level.

Now I’ve definitely made significant improvements in my social life since then, but I find that in my current mind-set, beliefs and work habits … I seem to attract an ’easy’ crowd … people who are kind of happy (well as happy as they’re ever going to be … you know what I mean) to be just drifting, without any real sense of purpose, no major goals, no real impovement in their lives etc … which is definitely NOT where I want to be.

Let me share ‘My Story’ with you and I’ll discuss this further ….


“My Story …

Im sitting down next to Albert Park lake right now as I write this ... thinking and pondering after an extremely bad 60 day, 20k losing streak!!

Now while I would like to say that it was the cards, the poker gods, all the donkeys that play online and just plain bad luck that were responsible for my losses … that just wouldn’t be true.

It was much more likely to be my impatience, my lack of discipline and my over-aggressive, over-compensating ego that were to blame. The exact opposite of what had allowed me to build my bankroll in the first place (sound familiar??)!!

You see I got to a point where all I wanted to do was play poker. I hated my job, I didn’t go out and do very much (other than work full-time), didn’t exercise, didn’t socialise very much and played pre-dominantly online (the most anti-social game on the planet!! … especially when you lose! … look out cat !!).

That scenario certainly wasn’t my intention when I first started out, but that’s where it got to!I started out with the best intentions: schedule my playing times, keep records of every session (which is one discipline I did manage to keep), review my playing sessions, eat properly, exercise regularly, get enough sleep before playing and schedule to take time off and do other things non-poker.

But the problem was I never actually had a plan. I might have scribbled a few notes here and there, but most of it was just in my head, so it only lasted a few weeks and then my life consisted of just poker, work, sleep and eat ... and in that order!!

But I did well. I managed to turn my $1000 initial investment into just over $20,000 in less than 6 months (also in the 6 months prior to this event, during 2006, I managed to win over $35k (actually it was $35,405) for over $20k profit ($21,611) playing part-time, mainly on paradise … back when it was good!!). But I took 2 months off work and spent it all over the summer ... it was then that I decided I could play poker as a seriously profitable hobby and so I started keeping records.

Now I don’t say this to impress you or to brag, but rather to let you know that I do know what I’m talking about and that I’m not just full of shit!

OK, now where were we? … that’s right … doing well!

But then something happened …

My ego decided that I was plenty good enough to just play poker. So I started finding excuses to leave work early, took weekends off to party and live like a rock-star, then pretty soon I was only working 5 hours a day, 4 days a week and then not at all. I decided I didn’t want to work anymore and I quit!

Now that was great! … for a while???

Great lifestyle: get up and do whatever I want, go to bed when I want, play when I want, party when I want etc.

Unfortunately the more freedom you have, the more your life costs and I luuurve spending money!!

I love going out for dinner and drinks, love going out on the weekends for breakfast, love trying out new places, love all-day Sunday sessions, love shopping for ‘stuff’ without having to worry about what things cost.

I soon found that my bankroll was being eaten up by my lifestyle, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to win one more tournament or have one more really good day on the cash tables and I would be back on top.

So … I started playing in bigger and bigger games and tourneys (games that I had previously been doing well in, but now had neither the bankroll nor the mind-set for), but now my impatience had really kicked in because I needed another win!

My ego kept telling me that I was much better than the donkeys that kept beating me and then I just got more and more frustrated and started blaming everything and everyone for my losses ….

Have you been there???

I blamed the donkeys for chasing me to the river with a gut-shot and hitting it. I blamed the other donkeys for calling with a middle pocket pair against a raise, a re-raise and an all-in and then hitting their trip 6’ on the flop. I blamed the poker sites for being so predictable. I blamed my computer chair for being so un-comfortable (now I was really getting desperate!). I blamed my stiff neck for being so sore. The list went on and on. But there was only one problem ….

I WASN’T ON IT!!

I had forgotten the simple disciplines that had allowed me to build my bankroll in the first place and pretty soon, as you can imagine, my $20k bankroll was reduced to ZERO bankroll and I was left alone to ponder what happened, go back to work, re-visit my playing journals and start again from scratch!”

The End


After reading through this story again and again and after my last few weeks and really after my last 10 years, I’ve decided that enough is enough of just being average. I’m not doing what I want to do, my life is not making me particularly happy and I really don’t see any reason for it to change in the future ... IF I DON’T CHANGE!!

Yes … I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, had my fair share of experiences and girls and drugs and drinking and parties, but I’m really not where I expected I would be at age 30 and I’m certainly not the person I want to be at age 30, therefore there needs to be a significant amount of change in my life, I need to figure my direction, my purpose, my goals and then take MASSIVE ACTION to make it so … and I ask you to come along for the journey?

What if you could wake up every single morning and feel 100% excited about the coming day?? What if you could wake up every single day and do whatever you want to do?? What if you could wake up every single day and be surrounded by people who are fun, exciting, smart, independent, motivated, energetic?? What if you could wake up every single day next to the woman (or man) of your dreams, who you could share your life and happiness with???

Now that is something to get excited about yes???? Thinking about these kinds of possibilities will keep you awake at night … at least that’s the way I feel about it!!

Wow, this post is already too long and I’m trying to be mindful of the fact that people will be reading this so I will continue in my next post with my plans for my brand new future … I do hope that at least a few of you will join me on this journey and at the very least I hope you’ve got some value from this story.

Please drop me a line and introduce yourself … jason@pokerfitgoup.com


Cheers,

Jason … the102

I've been feeling it building for a little while now (actually its probably been a few months but I just havent really acknowledged it until now).

It begins with all the little things ... people walking slowly in front of you down the street (and naturally they take up the whole fucking footpath), somebody says or does something that you dont really like, bad day in traffic, working with people that you dont really like, living with people that you really dont get along with, customers (I work in hospitality) who have no idea what the fuck they want, then they want to split their $30 bill 4 ways AND they all want to pay with credit card (all while you're in the middle of lunch service and they can obviously see that you're busy as fuck!), housemates who continue to put 80 litres of rubbish into a 60 litre bin (just in case its turned into Mary Poppins' fucking bag!), work colleagues who are lazy, messy, not punctual or just plain stupid! ... etc, etc, etc [INSERT] 101 little things that really shit you and condense them all into one day [INSERT]

I've also been finding most mornings when I wake up, that I'm really not looking forward to the day. I really seem to have lost my sense of humour with the world and its definately NOT a good thing! I seem to spend far more time in reaction (to external influences) than I do being pro-active and I'm really finding it very stressful! ... I just snap at people who dont really deserve it (I even sometimes find myself baiting people into an argument so that I can snap at them later), I frown more often than I smile, I tilt so easily on the poker table (playing in a $10 game), I continually find myself having to consciously stop what I'm doing, take 4 or 5 deep breaths and calm the fuck down ... and it all compounded today while I was doing something that I love (playing poker).

I was multi-tabling SnG' and playing in the 10K 1R1A on stars and having a pretty shit run! I was getting 3 outed all over the place, couldnt win a race and just wasnt picking up many good hands, which is normally fine (well its a pain in the arse, but its part of the game).
Anyway, so I'm 15 games in and have only cashed in one, but I have a 70k stack and Im chip leader in my tourney with 175 to go (paying to 90 spots) when the following hand occurs:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3569847

OMG!! In my fragile mind-set this was enough to make me want to commit homicide!!

This was exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about (and I know it's far from a bad beat, but this was the last straw!), some idiot decides to 'just call' off 40% of his stack with nothing but air to a possible 3-outer (if I had AK) or worse and then he hits his hand and naturally I have to bet the last 13k whick I do and now hes got more chips than me! ... when I had triple his stack at the start of the hand!!!

"What bullshit", I yell angrily at my screen as I unconsciously decide to waste the rest of this tourney with some ridiculous pushes!!

That was hand #176 and it takes me just 5 more hands to unload the rest of my 47k stack before I punch the wall, kick my fit-ball at the door, quickly grab my keys and head out for some air as I feel my heart rate quicken, my stomach in my throat and my fists clench ... my only thought is,

"I have to get out".

"I have to get out of this room, this house, away from everything and I definatley dont wanna talk to anybody".

I just start walking ... through Albert Park, through Port Melbourne and end up on the beach, where I sit to ponder ... but already feeling much better as I feel the cool ocean breeze blowing, but there's also enough sun so that it's not uncomfortable in my t-shirt and shorts.

How do I get out of this rut? How did I get into this rut?? Why am I in this rut??Now that I am in this rut, what am I going to do about it??? ... are all questions that are flowing through my mind as I sit and watch some ship sail off into the horizon.

Let me consider my situation for a second ...
- I'm 30 years old (today)
- I'm single
- I'm debt free (I dont even have a credit card anymore)
- I'm in good health
- I work part-time in hospitality (which I dont love, but I've been doing it for most of my life, I'm good at it and it pays the bills) at a great venue with awesome views, its a 5 min walk from home and I dont work nights or weekends!
- I live in a house with 3 others which I now find quite boring (I live with 3 older people who are lovely, but are more settled in their lives and are just moving in a different direction than I am).
- I havent really had any stable relationship for a while and even my sex life over the past 2 months has been non-existent! (so I'm absolutely sure that sexual frustration plays a part here! ... hellooooo redtube!!).
- I often find myself being much less productive than I would like due to far too many ideas flowing through my head and therefore my focus is spread far too thinly and I end up wasting alot of time! ... which I hate!!
- Im also very easily distracted and find it hard to focus on too many things at once ... in my current environment.
- While I dont have any debts, I also dont own anything either ... the most expensive thing I own is my car and its only worth about 5k.
- I'm 30 today and I really had a belief that 2008 would be a big year for me and I was kind of really waiting for something big to happen ... guess what?? We're nearly at the end of 2008, nothing BIG has happend and to be honest not that much has changed since the end of 2007 :(

I've got dinner on tonight with a few friends and I really dont feel like going, but I'm going to make the effort (since it is my birthday), then I'm going to get up early in the morning and drive down to the country to see my family, I havent seen them for about 6 months and really miss them and I just cant wait to get out of the city for a while and clear my head!!!

To be continued!!