Late New Years Resolutions 2012

Well its 2012 and every year traditionally for the last 4 year's I've made some "resolutions"... but they're more like goals really. I think its a really good thing for everyone to do, stating some goals for the year and to look back on them to see how you've done. Here's what I wrote last year;

1. Move out. [x]
2. Take care of family. [x]
3. Travel more (Thailand, Vegas, Japan, Vancouver are likely candidates) [x]
4. Bboy more. [X]
5. Get moving on RSD. [ ]
6. Make friends, socialize! [x]
7. Visit my nephews more. [ ]
8. Study more poker. [ ]
9. Study more philosophy and anthropology. [ ] Not so much as well haha, not enough time is my excuse
10. Love Puyan!! lol [ ]

I think one of the weird things about the goals I set last year was that they were so freaking vague! Not so helpful in terms of making small goals to reach a bigger goal. Anyways, so I'm gonna state my goals for 2012;

1. Play more Poker. Play 2 sessions most days, one being a VPP based one in 18m's, and the other being a 180m/MTT session when I have the evening free. My target is to play more then ever before (soooo lazy last year in comparison to the previous year), and achieve Supernova Status.
2. Go to more international breakdance events and enter the competitions. The standard is so much higher outside the UK, and I will learn so much more. Train more, Cypher more, and Battle more!
3. Visit cousin in Vancouver. Maybe hit up some poker heads there too while I'm there.
4. New York is next on the list.
5. Save up some moneysssss! But yeah, some of my previous goals are gonna kinda make this goal hard to do. Maybe just have to earn more money then?
6. Date more! More being more then zero! She's out there somewhere, right?
7. Blog more! Yeah, sorry guys I should do this more... and plus its so therapeutic.
8. Get to Platinum League in Starcraft 2 (man I have a long way to go haha)
9. Learn XCode for Mac Iphone Apps
10. Be POSITIVE!!

I might have to add a few more to these during the year I think, since I might have missed some ones out... I dunno. I'm trying to be a lot more specific this time... feels better that way.



Looking Back on the Big Two-Oh Eleven

This January, I've been playing a TON! A ton being liek 70odd hours so far... which probably is like totally standard for all you pros out there. Last year, I totally bailed on my game man, just didn't commit as much at all.

After moving out, it took us ONE MONTH before we got internet. It was possible to play on my dongle, but it felt uneasy having 18 tables up and a little stick powering it all. The fact that the flat that we rented was a new build worked against me coz that added to the time of installing the internet.

Once we got it, I was itching to play. Aggressively. Opps. First 3 days pretty much lost all my roll, and only the saved fpps managed to rakeback myself up to a small amount to work on. It took me the rest of the month to win that money back.

As time went by involvement with SNG Protege grew on improving the site and helping Glitlr. This is basically how I have survived for so long here. But working on the site was my own excuse to basically not play. Well, not exactly, not play, but to do such newbie things like "Playing when I feel like it!". There really was no structure or plan at all. On top of that, my studying faded and my jugging of other commitments took more of my time then playing.

So that is basically why I have totally sucked in 2012, despite being totally a better player. In fact, I'm pretty sure I made the same amount of money playing in 2010... when I was mass playing $3 Super Turbos on the RIP Full Tilt. lol

My mind was the to do the bare minimum/even less in terms of putting in the time to playing. In fact it should be the opposite. I should be playing more then ever before. I look at other pros and really realise that hard working mentality is mainly what makes them win, not just the talent and skill. So that is what I intend to do.

In terms of bboying, travelling, moving out and making new friends and stuff... that was all gravy man! I had some really cool experiences up here in Manchester, and I still love this city as much as when I moved here. Its the best city in UK! But totally 2012 is the year of making money for me. I'm gonna totally commit to this and give it my best shot! Time to step it up!






SOPA Off!

It really totally pains me, to see my friends in USA have to keep seeing unbelievably unconstitutional things like this. I mean, what good is having something written when eventually the rich who wants to protect themselves find ways of ignoring it?!

The land of the free? Just seems like there are a small (but powerful) number of people who are trying to stop this from being that anymore.  The Stop Online Piracy Act, if passed, will block and limit certain access to illegal sites. All links or anything to do with those sites will be blocked. The American Internet will not longer be fully open anymore. If you are an American please support anti-SOPA.

Enjoy this hot chick from my new favorite educational yet sexy site, Facts and Chicks.

Its really shocking at some of the policies that has passed in America. Especially during the Bush era. How extreme is it to say that America is a country that is taking policies moving towards fascism? Naomi Wolf explains how in "The End of America", its a really shocking documentary;

Are You Practicing Efficiently?

I was reading an interesting blog forwarded about how a famous Piano player practices. He admittedly puts in less hours comparatively to his counterparts. Just shows that sometimes its not the quantity of time put in but the quality of how you practice.

[quoted from here]


Strategy #1: Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy.
“The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people ‘playing’ by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.”

Strategy #2: To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder.
“Strong pianists find clever ways to ‘complicate’ the difficult parts of their music. If we have problem playing something with clarity, we complicate by playing the passage with alternating accent patterns. If we have problems with speed, we confound the rhythms.”

Strategy #3: Systematically Eliminate Weakness.
“Strong pianists know our weaknesses and use them to create strength. I have sharp ears, but I am not as in touch with the physical component of piano playing. So, I practice on a mute keyboard.”

Strategy #4: Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness.
“Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task. They start, and react to their performance, fixing problems as they go along. Strong pianists, on the other hand, have an image of what a perfect performance should be like that includes all of the relevant senses. Before we sit down, we know what the piece needs to feel, sound, and even look like in excruciating detail. In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image.”

So why do we instinctively practice without these strategies? Because its EASY.

Easy things means you don't have to think, you just blindly do it and hope for the best. Kinda like religion I'd argue, but that's for another discussion maybe later on.

We can apply these strategies to everything we do... or well want to get good at. Its strangely quite scary to do them actually... learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and accepting it.

I can definitely say that my last 6 months I haven't been practising efficiently. In fact, I've had more of a bias towards playing, rather then "practising" (altho I haven't been playing as much either lol). Meaning, studying off table. Relooking at HHs, and evaluating certain spots. Its easy to think of the game as being something that is solved. 

I like the analogy of looking at what I do as a sport. In professional tennis, a player has to practice and has to play. Practicing keeps his skills up to par when performing. But he must do both all the time, he cant leave out one or the other. Competing is not practice and just practicing is pointless without the experience of playing.