I’ve been listening to a ton of classical music lately while playing. There is one song in particular that really seems to put me in the zone. I feel at peace with the universe, regardless of how variance is treating me. When I listen to it I am filled with a sense of satisfaction, relaxation, and gratitude that my ears are being filled with such beauty:
It helps that this tune is played at the end of Ocean’s 11 (one of my favorite movies), while the characters are observing the Bellagio Fountain show (my favorite water fountain!) in Las Vegas.
This song almost makes me want to get a piano and start taking lessons… who knows, maybe I will. 🙂 Any suggestions for songs similar to this one?
The end of the month has gone much better than the rest:
Highlights:
- 77,526 hands, averaging 378 hands/hr – my previous record was just over 50,000 hands in a month.
- 1.80 VPP/hand.
- Had back-to-back best cash game days ever on Jan 28th and 29th, winning 350 bets on the 29th. As it turns out, hitting every single flush draw is pretty darn fun!
- 20 “days off” booked, i.e. I am that many days ahead of SNE pace. I want to continue to book at least an additional 15 days / month until we travel to Seoul to pick up our Baby Boy Alex – at which point my playing time will be reduced dramatically! 🙂
I have been doing a lot of Hold’em Manager (HEM) filtering and finding some preflop leaks. It’s always nice when you discover preflop leaks because they are so trivial to fix once discovered.
I have also been doing a lot of HEM filtering on the opponents I play the most hands against. I have an idea for a future post about this topic. Stay tuned!
Impressive grind…Keep up the good work.
kc
Great month, congrats!
I’ve always liked Mozart’s piano concertos. A sample:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df-eLzao63I
You might check out Yundi Li playing Chopin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvm2ZsRv3C8
Then there’s Satie’s Gymnopedie No.1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xe2Rft62Kg&feature=related
And this one, a personal favorite — Wagner, so nothing like Clair de Lune, but awesome if you can handle Wagner. Tannhauser Overture, parts 1 and 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGmUHepwVE8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrDo8KIi9pw&feature=related
You can hear the strings better in the Karajan version of Tannhauser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNJxJDeHn38&NR=1
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for the suggestions! It’s amazing… I’ve had three different people independently recommend Gymnopedie to me, and I really like it.
If this is the Kyle I think it is, I hope all is well in Argentina. 🙂
Ryan
Hey man, great blog… lot of respect. I was really impresses that you find a way to grind over 200 hours in a month. What keeps you so motivated and what do you do when you feeling meh and don’t really wanna play but need to?
Hi IBettheMin,
Well, to be honest the first month of the year I was just super gung ho to put in a ton of hands. That is tailing off to a more reasonable level this month.
I am finding that setting weekly hand goals is much more effective for me than setting monthly hand goals. The shorter time period helps to keep me more on task. I know that if I fall behind at any point during the week, there are only a few days left in which to make up the deficit.
With a monthly goal, the time period is long enough where it’s easy to say to myself “oh I’ll make up those hands later… or not… whatever.”
Also, I know it sounds silly, but updating the little progress bar on my blog is a nice motivator too. 🙂
Finally and most importantly, knowing that our son is on his way is a huge motivator to get ahead of pace and to be successful for our family.