2015 Goals in Review

Automotive Career

• Succeed in new role - I feel I have a solid grasp of all the processes and now and can start focusing on gaining valuable product development experience.
• Pass P.Eng exam - I wrote my exam in December and although I don't get my results until next month I'm confident that I passed.

Health and Fitness

• Keep getting better at badminton - Results of training every week with Coach Lee are starting to show. I only played one club tournament this year and my brother and I managed to take home 1st in doubles. My singles game needs a lot of work though, as I lost every game.
• Exercise 5 days per week - I had a couple weeks where I had to take breaks from this goal due to injury or studying. But overall I stuck to it pretty well. Leading up to the tournament in December I was active 5-6 days per week for ~2 months. Tiring, but worth it in the end.

Poker

• Maintain Platinum Star for July+ - I maintained Platinum Star for 3 months but then fell behind once I decided to replace my poker time with studying for my P.Eng. 2015 was not a good year in terms of volume or winnings. I barely played much poker, and overall ended the year down $2.5k USD mostly due to spending a lot of time trying to learn a new game (PLO). I'll consider it tuition. PokerStars has significantly reduced their VIP rewards for 2016 and so for this year I've decided to focus on playing more live poker.
• Stretch Goal: Did not achieve Supernova.

Motorsports

• Attend 3+ track days - Went to two days at TMP for remote tuning with Sasha at OnPoint Dyno and we managed to get a nice safe power level with no signs of knock. Also did a day with the HANSON school and another at Grand Bend Motorplex with some friends. Overall it was nice to be back on track and I had a lot of fun battling other fast cars despite being a bit rusty. Looking forward to some more casual lapping days this year without breaking the bank.
• Keep the shiny side up - Done!

2015 Goals

This year so far has felt a bit lackluster in terms of overall direction because I haven't written down any goals to hold myself accountable for. So let's get started:

Automotive Career
There's a lot for me to learn in my new job as Product Development Engineer. Considering I spent the past 6+ years in a completely different line of business, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve here. The important thing is that I work on developing the skill set needed to succeed in this new position. Another thing I want to do this year is write the Professional Engineering exam so that I can become a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario. I plan to submit my experience forms shortly and hopefully write the exams being held in December.

• Succeed in new role
• Pass P.Eng exam

Health and Fitness
I feel that I've struck a great balance with badminton and fitness that works for me. Currently I'm training once a week with my brother and play games on 2 other days. The remainder of the week is spent in my home gym doing StrongLifts 5x5 (2 days) and either light cardio or rest. If I can fit in exercise at least 5 days a week I'm happy. I'll be turning 30 this year but I won't let that stop me from being in the best shape I've ever been in.

• Keep getting better at badminton
• Exercise 5 days per week

Poker
I haven't played online at all this year but I'm feeling the itch to click buttons and make money again. Achieving Supernova in only 6 months will likely be impossible. But maintaining Platinum Star might be doable. I'll start small this month at 50NL and move up to 100NL once I feel comfortable.

How am I supposed to play poker with a steering wheel ... ?

Since I stopped playing, I converted my poker grind station into an online sim racing station. Playing poker behind a steering wheel might take some getting used to...

• Maintain Platinum Star for July+
• Stretch Goal: Supernova??
  

Motorsports
The car has already raced once this year in CSCS Round 1 with Richard Boake behind the wheel. He managed to grab 2nd place which is not bad considering we decided to run the car at 11PM the night before.

Richard killing it at CSCS Round 1 (TMP)

Photo by skootermedia

This year my plan is to get back behind the wheel for a couple events (not competitively) just to enjoy the track again. Online sim racing has been fun and all, but it just doesn't compare to the real thing.

Safety upgrades for 2015. Dobaru approves.

For 2015, I've made some safety upgrades: roll bar, 6-pt harnesses, HANS device, and a new helmet.

Looking serious now.

The car also received some front end aero upgrades: Prodrive hood vents and Can-Jam custom canards.

Temporary setup: GTX-3076R stock location. 

The hood dampers and 20-cell Antigravity battery are new.

Here is how the engine bay currently sits with the loaner turbo. My own turbo should hopefully be in the car and tuned by next month. It will be a rotated GTX-3576R .82 A/R tuned by OnPoint Dyno.

• Attend 3+ track days
• Keep the shiny side up

2014 Goals in Review

It's June and I haven't posted anything this year? Better late than never... But before that I need to review what happened last year. In 2014 I had two big goals:

2014 Goal #1: To become a better poker player

Supernova is the 2nd Highest VIP Tier on PokerStars

I can say that I met this goal. Not just from a monetary perspective, but from an educational Game Theory perspective as well. I can’t say that I've developed a strategy that’s even close to optimal – but the key is that I now understand the mathematical concepts necessary to do so. And it’s definitely helped me gain a competitive edge in other games as well (especially board games). Counting all the profit since I returned to poker at the end of 2013, I made just over $15k CAD in the time I spent playing online.

Terra Mystica, one of my favourite board games

I decided to take a huge break from poker after hitting Supernova status in Q4 2014. Mentally and physically I managed to burn myself out. Also things at work started getting very busy. December to March is crunch time for my line of business. It’s very difficult to come home from a professional 9-5 job every day and put in a solid 2 hours of A-game poker and another 1-2 hours of studying concepts and reviewing hands. For those who aren't aware of the intensity of the games, think of it as writing an exam after you’re already exhausted from your day job, every day and on weekends too. And putting in anything less has the detriment of causing you to lose money.

QA Truth

It's a good thing I decided to take a break. With the extra time and energy I had, I was able to focus on excelling at my career and I'm happy to announce that I managed to earn a promotion at work. I've finally moved out of the Quality Assurance line of business and into Product Development Engineering. This is going to be an exciting change for me as it's something I've always wanted to do.

Naturally, I'll want to focus on getting up to speed with my new job so there will be less time for poker in 2015. I actually haven't played online at all this year. But the long break has actually revitalized me and I might start to dabble in the games again.

2014 Goal #2: To become a better badminton player

I'm not going to rehash the reasons why I didn't have much time to focus on badminton. Clearly it was a secondary objective for me. But I do think that I got a lot better overall. Mostly in part to meeting a lot of great new people who are much better at the sport than I am. That's the way to get better at anything!

Passmore Badminton Club

Excessive poker playing in Q4 2014 resulted in a rotator cuff injury but I've since recovered 100% thanks to an amazing physiotherapist (shout-out to Mr. Physio!). One thing was for certain – I needed to start training the rest of my body to prevent injuries from happening again. That shoulder injury was NOT fun. 

Basement Gym

So in January I purchased some gym equipment for my basement. I've been doing a modified version of the StrongLifts 5x5 routine (2x/week instead of 3x) and have seen some pretty solid results so far. My core is much stronger and I no longer get as sore from intense badminton games. I plan to continue what I'm doing for 2015: 3-4 days per week of badminton followed by 1-2 days of lifting. 

November Update

It really upsets me to say this but I'm going to have to bail on my annual stretch goal of achieving 200,000 VPP's. I was actually on pace to achieve this (currently sitting on 150,000 VPP's) however due to some circumstances surrounding my health it no longer makes sense to pursue.

Back in September I injured my rotator cuff playing badminton. I haven't played in 3 months and have replaced all that down time with grinding big blinds. But in doing so, I've actually exacerbated the condition in my shoulder and the pain is just too overwhelming now. It might have to do with my new battlestation setup. The lack of arm rest on the saddle chair was forcing my shoulder to sustain increased static loads.

The muscle I injured is the Subscapularis

Currently I've been receiving physiotherapy and acupuncture weekly. I'm also doing exercises to strengthen it daily. It's slowly recovering now. But with no badminton or poker I'm going to have to find something to do with my spare time until I'm back to 100%.

One Year of Poker

Here are the results for my poker playing over the last year:

Figures are in U.S. Dollars

I haven't made as much money for 2014 as I would have liked. But there's nothing I can really do about that other than study harder and grind more.

September was a brutal month. During the first week someone flipped the 'doomswitch' on me and I was running worse than I have all year. By the second week I was down $5.5k at NL200 so I forced myself to drop down a limit to regain some momentum.

It took a ton of grinding and hitting my annual goal of Supernova 3 months early to finish off the month down just under $1k. This in and of itself was a huge victory and I'm happy with how September turned out despite ending in the red.

Having accomplished my goal 3 months early, I think my stretch goal of achieving 200K VPP's for the year might still be do-able. I'll have to do what I did in the first 9 months of the year in just 3 months. It sounds crazy but the challenge is appealing to me. I'll definitely need to re-prioritize some aspects of my life to make this work but I think I can do it.

I'm playing higher stakes and more tables than before, so my VPP earning rate makes this a real possibility. I went from playing 50NL or 100NL on 4-tables of Zoom to now playing 50NL and 100NL on 6-8 tables and sometimes 200NL when the games and/or my confidence are running good. I can attribute this increase in efficiency to a new hotkey setup that I've adopted. Maybe I'll make a video in the future showing some crazy 8-table Zoom action :)

New Hotkey Setup

[Delete] Set bet amount to 30%

[Insert] Set bet amount to 50%

[End] Set bet amount to 70%

[Home] Set bet amount to 150%

[Page Down] Set bet amount to Pot

[Page Up] Set bet amount to All-In

[Up] Bet 2BB

[Left] Bet 3BB

[Down] Call

[Right] Bet
[Right Click] Fold

Poker Battlestation!

In addition to some ergonomic upgrades to my poker battlestation, I'm now able to put in solid 4-6 hour sessions on most weekends without breaking a sweat. So bring it on 200K VPP's!

Mid-Summer Update

I haven't updated my blog since April (!) so it's time for a mid-year update:

Got Married

May 10th, 2014

May was super busy getting everything done last minute for our wedding. We had an outdoor ceremony and the weather turned out perfectly despite several thunderstorms leading up to the big day. The whole day went by as a giant blur but it was definitely one of the best days of my life :)




No plans for a honeymoon yet but maybe in the near future we'll do something for snowboarding (Whistler?) or an Asia trip.

Travel

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

Work has been keeping me busy with travel this summer. Places I've visited include Montreal, Halifax, and Vancouver. I went to perform quality audits at our vehicle processing centres (VPC's). Before a vehicle ends up at a dealership to be sold, they first end up at one of the VPC's to be processed. This is where some accessories (seat heaters, radio upgrades, leather seats, etc.) and throw-in's (owner's manual, etc.) are performed. Unfortunately there isn't much time for vacationing on these work trips, but I did get a chance to visit Peggy's Cove in Halifax before leaving.

Poker

Two thirds there!

I wasn't getting the hang of PLO and the learning curve was really hurting my bankroll. Since switching back to NLHE at the end of May, I've been back to beating the games, up a bit over $7k since switching back. In the past 2 weeks or so I've been heavily experimenting with mass multi-tabling the Zoom games trying to get my VPP count up. I re-organized my hotkey layout and have been able to manage 6-tables of Zoom (~1350 hands/hr). So I bumped it up to 8-tables (~1800 hands/hr) but haven't been so successful. The quality of my game has dropped quite a bit in doing so and has currently put me in a bit of a downswing for the end of July. So for August I'm planning to go back to the basics and study a bit more and play less tables. I'm on pace to achieve my goal of reaching Supernova status this year at 67k out of 100k VPP's so I can afford to play less tables and work on improving my overall game.

Badminton
I enrolled in 3 tournaments since my last update:

10th Asian Community Games 2014 - My partner/brother Jordan got injured and had to withdraw so I played with a ringer from my club. We lost all our games.

Ryerson Open 2014 - I injured my neck a week prior to the tournament and had to withdraw.

Varsity Blues Summer Open 2014 - Jordan and I came 2nd in pool play and made it to B-Flight where we lost in the opening round. The games were very close and we were disappointed with our sloppy play. 3rd place in our pool went on to finish 2nd in C-Flight and the guys who knocked us out of B-Flight lost in the semi-finals to the eventual winners.

Although my wrist condition has significantly improved, I feel that my overall game has stagnated a bit. I think I just need to train harder and play more.  Perhaps its time to start weight training as well. But on top of work and poker, this is proving to be an issue of balancing priorities. I really wish I had more time :(

Yonex Z-Force II

I was also forced to upgrade my rackets to something more durable. I used to use a Yonex Voltric 5 intermediate racket. I owned 3 of them and all 3 of them eventually broke in the exact same spot. I've always been in the camp of spending less money on equipment and more money on skills. So to spend $400 on two new rackets hurt quite a bit. But I have to say the new rackets I got (Yonex Voltric Z-Force II) are significantly better than my old racket and they also feel a lot more durable.

Motorsports

The new classroom at CTMP. BTW what kind of school is this???

Despite not competing this year I've still been out on the track instructing for the HANSON advanced driving school. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park had a big upgrade over the winter and the new facility / track layout is nothing short of amazing. The old classroom was a beat up portable with no AC or heat and covered in bugs everywhere. The new classroom is on the second floor of an air conditioned facility with huge windows overlooking the track. The new track layout keeps hints of the old layout but improves it in every possible way. The track is FIA width. The straights are longer. The pavement is smoother. What more can you ask for?

Although I've only been out on track in my daily driver Scion iQ, my time attack machine did get a chance to stretch its legs at CSCS Round 3. I wasn't driving because I had a badminton tournament that day. I lent the car to Can-Jam so that they could test some new parts. Richard Boake drove the car in Street AWD and ended up winning his class with a 1:19.110 on street tires. Not bad!

I've been putting a lot of thought into where I want to go with racing and what I want to do with the car. Knowing how competitive I can be, I know that open lapping might not be enough to make it "fun" again. But at the same time, I don't want to get caught up in an arms race and go 200% over budget trying to be competitive. So at this time of writing, it sounds like a return to Street AWD might be in the works. The car is legal and clearly capable of being competitive. And I won't have to deal with a full blown race car that can only ever be enjoyed at the track. Not to mention having to deal with the logistics nightmare of trailering. I had a lot of fun back in 2011 when I was first starting out with a car I could enjoy both on the track AND the street. So look for some updates in the near future. I haven't given up!

March Goals Review & April Goals

Poker Goals

1) Begin the transition to Pot Limit Omaha [Pass]
I feel like I'm beginning to understand the game of PLO now. I finished reading PLO Poker by Jeff Hwang and also finished most of the Donkr strategy guide. I also watched a ton of videos on RIO including everything by Phil Galfond and touching on some theory/math by Tom Coldwell.

Early on I had a tough time adjusting to what a good hand in PLO was. And I was constantly getting my money in WAY behind in big pots. For example, having the 2nd nut straight with a weak flush re-draw vs. the nut straight with a higher flush re-draw (dominated). Or overplaying AAxx and being crushed by a two pair combo draw. I've learned that it's really important to have all 4 cards working together, rather than having 2 separately good looking Holdem hands. Big hands for a big pot!

I paid a "learners fee" of around 14 buy-ins this month but this is totally expected when trying to learn a new game. Most of my losses occurred at the beginning of the month and I'm running below EV so I'm not overly concerned (yet). PLO variance can be high, so I need to focus my efforts on improving my game and making quality decisions rather than direct results.

April Goal: Learn how to use Odds Oracle
The next steps for me are to learn Odds Oracle syntax so I can begin doing my own equity calculations, and to start reading Jeff Hwang's other books if I have time.

2) Earn 5,000 VPP's on PokerStars [Pass]
I exceeded this goal quite easily, earning 7,700+ VPP's. I'm definitely on pace to hit Supernova status this year so I just need to keep up the pace.

April Goal: Earn 3,500 VPP's on PokerStars
April will be a busy month as my wedding is May 10th. I don't want to spend this month stressing about poker much, so I'll set an easy target of 3,500 VPP's to make it a clean 10k VPP's over March-April.

Badminton Goals

1) Continue to fix/strengthen my wrist [Conditional Pass]
I didn't do a lot of wrist strengthening but I did do a lot of stretching and self-adjustments each day. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

2) Badminton or Insanity workout 5 days/week [Fail]
Ok I totally failed this one. 5 days a week was pretty hard last month for me because I felt really burnt out from work, and badminton was starting to feel like a bit of a chore. Also, Titanfall came out, which is now my new favourite game. I splurged a bit on a PC upgrade so that I could enjoy the game to its fullest...

March was an interesting month. Third month of 2014, and already starting to feel the effects of burn out. Winter season is the busiest and most stressful season for me at work. So having a lot of additional goals outside of work can make life downright miserable. I ended up "dropping the ball" on my badminton related goals. But I used video games and building a new PC to stay de-stressed instead. Having goals that are set in stone can lead to a guilty feeling of failure when they aren't met. So in the future I'm going to try using a system of "staying fit" rather than setting hard goals and beating myself up when I don't meet them.

April Goal: Stay fit