Moving Beyond 2020

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about mental health — specifically my own.

Let’s face it. 2020 sucked for just about everyone. I wrote all about it here and here last year. I’m not going to spend time today continuing to look backward. I’ve done enough of that. As many have been (and still are) during this pandemic, I was in a rough place. Everything was a grind. That wore on my mental state, which in turn, affected everything else in my life.

Instead, I’d like to focus this post on looking forward to the future. For the first time in almost a year, I am feeling upbeat and positive. I think a lot of that has to do with the attention and care I have placed on my own health and sanity. Over the past few months, I’ve tried to identify ways to improve myself. I set better goals and schedules. I focused on improving my mindset. I spent more time outside and not on the internet. I exercised consistently and ate better foods. Basically, I worked on taking care of myself.

As a result of those adjustments, I’ve noticed massive improvements in my mindset and performance. My attitude and mood are better. Consequently, I’ve become far more productive. I’m not back to any pre-pandemic levels just yet. After all, I think that I was running on all cylinders in 2020. But I am adding things to my schedule every week.

Now that we’re in a new year, I’m in the midst of developing my 2021 goals. I know that we’re almost a month into the year, but that’s by design. I set goals every year and have a process that has worked well for me.

During the final week of the year between Christmas and New Year, I start the process by writing down all of the things I might want to accomplish in my life the next year. I tend to be more aspirational during this week, so I find it good to stay broad with these plans. Some of the things on the list are continuations of my current work. Others might be related to health, family, travel and experiences, or anything else that piques my interest.

After I come up with this list, I try to go through each and create an ambitious set of goals for each throughout the year. For example, last year I wanted to learn how to play MTTs. My overall goals included working through a training course, getting familiar with HRC, and playing a certain number of live and online tournaments.

After I have the yearly goals put together, I set a more specific target that I’d like to accomplish in January. Usually, I set the marks so that it generally gets me about 1/12 of the way to my yearly goal. From there, I start the year and try to fit all of those things into my schedule.

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I can sometimes overestimate initially, mainly when I’m in an overly ambitious mindset. Knowing this bit of information is powerful, as I’m able to adjust estimates accordingly. So I generally expect to fall short on a couple of my goals. Instead of beating myself up about it, I reevaluate based on the first 2-3 weeks of January and adjust my 2021 plans. That second pass is usually a far better representation of what I truly want to spend my time on.

With all of that said, I think I’ve finalized my 2021 goals. I’d like to share them here as a sort of roadmap for the next year in my poker career.

I will play live poker again.

It’s amazing that this has to be here, but it tops my list. One of the very first things I plan to do after I get that second vaccine shot is to drive to the Detroit casinos to play live poker.

I have played live for almost 20 years, dating back to my first Atlantic City trip as a 21-year-old in 2002 (and even more if you go back to home games in high school/college). While my play volume has varied over the years, I had never gone more than a few months without getting a session in at a home game or casino.

This period of time is — without a doubt — my longest gap between live sessions. The last time I sat at a live table was about 11 months ago at the MGM National Harbor. I went with my friend Craig. We grabbed dinner in the casino steakhouse before the session and discussed COVID. We both could see that the pandemic might somewhat impact our ability to play live, but neither of us could have predicted that it would last as long as it has.

I’ve obviously been able to play online, but I don’t get nearly the same enjoyment doing it as I did playing live. I miss walking through the cardroom, listening to chips shuffling throughout, and looking my opponents in the eye as we play this game that we all love. I moved to Michigan from DC in August and have been waiting patiently to visit the Detroit (and Windsor, Canada!) poker rooms. I’d like to play in all of them this year if possible. I’m sure that a Vegas trip will be in order soon afterward as well.

I will improve the quality of my study.

Since I started taking poker seriously again in 2015, I have been consistent in my study. However, when the option to play live poker went away last March, my study volume also dropped significantly.

It would be easy to say that I didn’t have live-hand examples anymore. After all, most of my study comes from my observations at the table. I’d sometimes see a hand played that didn’t quite look right and dig into it later within my solver study, attempting to glean some of the insights that I could apply back at the table.

I could get plenty of examples online, playing many multiples of hands over significantly less time. But I have always struggled to dig into hands online due to the high volume. When playing live, I can take immediate notes and account for the mindset and thought process I had during the hand. When playing online, I don’t have the luxury of reflection because there are 3-5 other tables happening at the same time. In order not to lose focus, I have to tag the hand, forget about it, and move on to the next one. By the time I go back to study it later in my HM3 database, I have a hard time remembering details. This limits my ability to node lock effectively and study exploitative strategies.

As it turned out, I found that my study relationship is very correlated with my play volume. I’m working on breaking that connection by creating a better schedule. I plan to spend 4 days per week for about 1-2 hours per day in the lab. Those days will be split between watching training videos, building out construction examples using solvers, reviewing sessions from my previous week’s play, and general macro-level concepts (e.g. learning push-fold ICM ranges).

In addition, I will devote a significant amount of time to my own mental health as it relates to poker. Other than what I have mentioned above, I started working with Nick Howard and Jason Su to improve my mindfulness and presence.

I am confident that this structured, well-balanced approach will refuel my passion for my studying and put me in a good position to jump back into the live arena later this year.

I will continue to develop my own game in my tournament play.

I had actually planned to learn MTTs last year. I started going through some study materials in December 2019 and entered a couple $360 2-day events in the DC area in January and February. Prior to last year, I had played in a handful of online and 1 live daily event, but I had never taken the time to learn the intricacies of MTTs. That goal was obviously thrown off due to COVID.

I still did play more tournaments online last year. I even binked three of them, including a $50K guarantee for almost $10K! While I’m definitely more comfortable in tournaments than I was at this point last year, I have a lot more work to do. I’m going to continue studying the tournament content at RYE, analyzing solves using GTO+ and preflop sims using HRC, and playing a regular schedule of online tournaments at ACR and the Michigan online poker rooms whenever they open.

My goal for this year is to be fully prepared by the time I can…

Spend a week at the World Series of Poker playing events?

Last year was supposed to be my first WSOP. I had planned to spend a week in June playing the sub-$2000 events. I’d like to make that trip a reality this year. This goal is obviously dependent on the vaccine rollout and when the WSOP happens. If it goes off in May/June and I don’t get vaccinated until late summer, then 2022 will be my WSOP debut. But I’m optimistic that I’ll get out there this year to fire in some events.

I will increase my posting frequency on the site.

My posting fell off over the 2nd half of the year. I still wrote a few posts and recorded some videos, but at nowhere near the frequency that I maintained through early 2020.

I plan to increase my posting considerably this year. I’m not quite sure the volume at which I’ll be able to post just yet, but it’ll definitely be more. I don’t want to necessarily commit to a schedule now. There are a lot of things in flux at the moment. But at a minimum, I’d like to add content to the site once a month — even if it’s just an update on my work.

All of my posts generally derive from interesting things that I see in my study, but I will continue to use different formats, such as videos or long-form, to share insights. I’ve even thought about a live YouTube or Twitch stream to go through range construction using a solver.

I will grow my product page.

I released 2 free resources and developed a product for sale last year. The free resources are simple Excel templates that I think can help people in their studies. And while the Flop Analysis Workbook is definitely for a niche audience, I think it’s the most comprehensive report of 100 BB equilibrium flop play on the market. I believe that the organization and scope of the data can provide a ton of value for those looking to do their own independent study on flop play. I’d like to spend time updating the product this year to increase its value by adding data views, increasing the metrics examined, and visualizing the data more effectively. I also think that there’s an opportunity to branch off into different markets by replicating the product using different ranges (e.g. tournament play at 40 BB stacks).

My other goal is to develop 1-2 more products this year. I have started to study turn play more, so I may focus more on developing a way to analyze the data at a macro level a bit more effectively. This is a bit less defined at the moment and wouldn’t take place until the 2nd half of the year if I get to it.

I will increase my coaching hours.

I have somewhat limited the hours that I have devoted to coaching in the past because I was afraid to cannibalize my time. Specifically, I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to complete my own independent study projects. However, one of the things that I’ve found is that I also get a ton of value out of coaching. Explaining concepts and how they apply to a solver output helps me understand them better. So I plan to increase the amount of hours I can devote to it per month. If you’re reading this and are interested, check out my coaching page for more details.

I will play at a stake (or several stakes) higher than I have in the past.

My final goal is probably the most fun one. There’s nothing like taking a shot and playing bigger. I jumped into $5/$10 in 2019 — I loved the adrenaline rush I felt the first time sitting in that game with thousands of dollars in front of me. That only increased last year when I played $10/$25 a few times. I haven’t been able to play higher than that, but I’d like to get into some bigger games this year. I guess that means sitting in a $25/$50 game at some point. Those don’t appear at all up here in Michigan, so it’s obviously going to have to be in Vegas at some point, but it’s on my list.

As I wrap up this post and move on to 2021, I look back on my goal-setting post for the site last year. I closed by sharing a lesson about control:

There is a lesson that I have learned over the years as a poker player that helps — there are a lot of things you can’t control, so focus your efforts on the things you can. I can’t control what’s going on in the world. But I can control the effort that I put into the things that do matter — my family, my friends, and my work.

Pandemic depression is in my rear-view mirror, and I see nothing but good things looking forward to 2021. I can’t always control the outcomes, but I can control how hard I work. I am committed to staying focused and drowning out the noise. I’m not sure what this year will bring, but I’m ready for all challenges. 2020 hardened me, and it’s time to start moving forward again.

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-Lukich