general stuff and end of year

I didn't play a ton over the Christmas holiday. I should surpass my most hands in a month by a few 1000. Starting in January I should be hitting 100k hands regularly
Only 2 more weeks of full time work and I can't freaking wait. This place sucks the life out of me. I don't have plans yet for new years and my gf is going out of town.

Looking back on a year is always a bit strange because it's easier to look back on a school year + summer. A year ago I was living large playing live 1-2 and moved up to 2-5 when I took a shot with $1500. lol That is so sad. I went broke when my hot streak turned cold, got a job, and started the trek online. Summer kind of seems like a blur but consisted of going to denton, tx to stay in a 3 bedroom apt alone while playing poker, video games, drinking and hanging out with my gf.
Since moving to nl100 4 months ago I paid off my credit card, bought a truck, have 2k in savings, and at the moment have 44 buyins online. The whole year up to the last few months I was on a strict budget. I'd get paid on the 10th and pay 3-400 on my credit card and 50 on my student loan leaving myself with about $250 for 2 weeks of food/beer/entertainment. Then I'd use the paycheck on the 25th to pay for the apartment have $250 left over.
It's kind of sad that the highlight of this year was going to Austin when I first got staked.

drifting

I've continued drifting in and out of good play for the entire month. Bad play is characterized by not being in complete focus and trying to figure out what they have. What happens is I turn into a little bit of scared money and haven't been going to showdown as much, which has increased my w$sd % but I bleed profusely in non showdown pots. When I am on my better game I feel like I turn into Negreanu despite still having appropriate aggression on each street. I start calling down with any pair in certain situations raising my wtsd and lowering my w$sd but overall increasing my wins and not just giving up pots. I think the reason my overall $ goes up has something to do with people not being able to continue aggression w/o monsters or air and missed draws. When a blank hits the board I get the extra bet out of a bluff and get a free showdown against hands that have marginal to medium value. The good news is that my win rate for the month is still over 2ptbb/100 and overall at stars is right around 2.97ptbb/100.

I let my boss know I want to go part time starting January 12, telling him I'd be taking some classes again. I might take 1 to 2 at the most but probably won't. My goal is to play a minimum of 100k hands/month which would put me at approximately 420k vpp's = $28,500 in bonus.

My schedule will be some thing like this for monday through friday.
8-12 work
12-1 lunch and nap
1-3 2k hands
3-4 exercise and shower
4-6 1.5-2k hands
6-12 relax, put in another 1k-2k hands, video game, go hang out and do whatever

I'm going to finish my christmas shopping once i get off of work and put my plan in motion by getting a membership to a small city owned gym.

I haven't been pressing myself the past few nights playing a little over 1k hands each night instead of ~2500 to get rid of some long term tilt and make sure I'm playing my A game. I felt like I wasn't thinking clearly about each decision I was making and getting a little too far marginal situations when I didn't lay out plans. Of course hind sight is 20/20 when I have my first solid session in a week and a half where I wasn't recovering losses, hitting sets and sucking out when the villian gives me a free card.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code:
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382966

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progress and grinding

So far I've played 20k hands which is a ton. I should be able to play more hands than I did last month for a new personal record. Yesterday I stayed home and played 5k which I believe is the most I've done in a day.

Grinding is not something that comes naturally. I've been steadily increasing my hand average/day and it is coming more easily to me. I still find it very difficult to play for very long outside of my room and desk.

I'm $1250 on my way to my $2000 goal for the month. While the goal was low and $3000 should be easily attained each month I found it messing with my mind set. Getting a session started with the pressure of winning 20 buyins caused me to play a little scared and erratic. I hope I've gotten over it. Also I hit 50k fpp's and bought a $650 bonus which I should be able to clear in a week or so.

Over the weekend I played a hand at 1-2 where I was still playing badly and got in a very unconfortable spot. Normally at .5-1 there's never more than 2 people with much more than 100bb's so deepstacked situations arrive much more infrequently. The hand I played was one that, based on his hand, would make me feel like the best player ever or retarded and spewy. I'm at work so I don't have the history.

Anyway, villian and I have 175 bb's for 350. Villian was good and active. I have AKo on the co.
villian raises from mp1. I 3b to about 24. villian 4b's to about 70.
flop 7xx
villian bets about 75 and i shoved.

Now 100 bb deep I can easily shove or fold preflop. We had played a few hands together but hadn't gotten anything to showdown. Now obviously AA and KK never fold. QQ might but I probably wouldn't if our roles were reversed. JJ and TT can find a fold here but it isn't nearly as likely to 4b these oop imo. If he has AK he folds as well.
I'm quite embarrassed of the hand. Sure I could easily play AA and KK this way which I suppose was what I was doing. The problem was that I called the 4b preflop looking to pair mine. Deviating from a plan for no real reason is never good. Anyway he turned over 44 for a set and I was drawing dead to runner runner straight split.
I had 3b a few times on the table but hadn't been crazy. If I had any overpair he's getting very bad odds to hit the set and against my hand we're flipping preflop. Being deepstacked he can call the 3b and set mine. Everything about this hand pissed me off and him being oop was the worst part.

dec start

Well so far I've played 4800 hands. I'm about $250 below expectation, down $120 in non showdown winnings, and am playing horribly but am up about $40. All that is a pretty good sign of how easy nl100 full ring is and that I'm pretty good at beating it.

I've been going to bed very late and feeling pretty bad at work. Taking a nap before I play doesn't make up for being sleep deprived.

I have a good friend taking up the online poker fight again w/ $100 playing nl10. I convinced him to play full ring and he watched me play for about 2 hours the other night. He could be successful at it because he could win live but I have doubts about the work and time he will put in. Playing underrolled and at a micro limit where you earn nothing with dreams of everything can lead to frustration without insense motivation.

November!!!

happy 23rd to me which was on the 4th but whatever. I had the biggest profit and played the most hands i've played in 30 days. As you'll see in the graph some of it was running good at 1/2, but it doesn't matter b/c my overall win rate for 3 months or 111k hands is at 3.54 ptbb/100 = $7400. Add in bonus and I've made 2x what I've made at the day job in that span.

As of now im about 60% on going to part time and 30% on quiting all together. December will be a huge factor in that decision and if I can make at least $2k then it'll be pretty certain.

A friend and I went up to Oklahoma City last weekend to see the Reverend Horton Heat which was awesome despite horrible opening bands. It was definately a little trip I needed to take even though we went straight there and back that night. It's the type of thing I want to be able to do more of to keep some spontaneity in my life.

poker's effect on my life

Currently going through a downswing. I'm running bad and playing absolutely horribly. I deviate from the plans I late out for hands b/c I'm playing them differently than I should and end up in tricky spots where I end up calling and losing. Last night I caught myself not even planning a hand out or trying to put the villian on a hand.

My life with or without poker-
ideal situation:
I'd be going to school with a part time job grinding life. I'd graduate with a degree in journalism or business or something this coming spring and get a real job. I never actually found a decent job in Denton aside from the telemarketing hell. I'd have zero monies saved up, my car would be broken down, with any other regular $6-8/hr job I'd need assistance from my parents which would be cutoff once they split. Never get into poker seriously ldo.

More likely situation:
Stop going to school, get the job I have now, no car once my old one breaks down b/c I have zero money saved up, no goals, no motivation, have no idea what I'm doing. never get into poker seriously

What's actually happened:
Stopped going to school, started playing and building online last march, bought car, have made more money the past 3 months playing about 10 hours a week than at my job, credit card paid off, 30 buyins for nl100. Helping mom and sister pay the bills for the past few months as well.

nl200

I started playing nl200 over the weekend and have had some nice success. I'm up about 4.5 buyins over 6k hands or so. It's the same with a little more restealing and squeezing and a few more regs. Also, if I want to get on a table with a decent % of players to the flop I have to join waiting lists.

I could pull off about 1800 and pay off the 1300 on my credit card and almost have enough to buy a new computer or laptop and have 30 buyins for nl100, but I'm just going to keep pushing forward because nl200 is where a significant ammount of money can be made and it was my goal to play this level. If I break even or lose over the next 10k hands then I'll definately consider moving down and retooling.

best day yet

1500 hands. w$wsf 43%. went to sd 25% won $ at sd 70%. makes poker seem pretty easy

figures

Some basic figures according to my winrate and the stars bonus program if I were playing full time...

Over 95k hands in 12.5 weeks at stars my winrate for all levels is 2.82ptbb/100 but is 3.1 adjusted for equity. I'd be playing a minimum of 100k up to 120k hands per month. Under the stars bonus program you can get a $4000 bonus every 100k vpp's with a milestone bonus every 100k vpp's starting at 200k vpp's. Currently I've gotten about 15% rakeback on stars, but this volume of play equates to around 62%.

100k hands/mo * 12 = 1.2million
1.2 million hands/year * 3ptbb = $72,000
1.2 million hands * .35 vpp/hand = 420,000 vpps
$2k + 3k + 4k milestone bonuses + 5 * $4k = $29,000
$72,000 + $29,000 = $101,000/yr

Now I could average more than 100k hands/mo and I definately could improve my winrate and move up in limits. The converse could also happen as I would surely feel burned out. Currently I make $19,000/yr. Even if I didnt come close to the figures I posted I would make somewhere in the range of 3x what I do at work. Other than needing to get some money saved up I dont see any reason not to go full time.

I could continue playing 8-10 hours a week and making the same $1500/mo I do while going back to school. I hate the feeling of being trapped in a dead end job and unable to travel or go back to school or do anything else but wake up and go to work. I don't really have any passion to do anything with a degree but I still have the drive to get one.

I'ts been quite a while since i've even looked at this thing, but I find it pretty funny that my bankroll is just about where I left off at about $2400. The reason for my time off is that I've had a few really crappy things happen in my life. I got up to almost $4000, took a small shot at nl200 and played a little scared for 3-4k hands, then I withdrew 700 once I lost 2 buyins so I could finally get a taste of the work I've done.

Not more than a few days later I found out my parents are getting divorced meaning I have to help support the family for a little while. So I then decided to pay my friend/staker back $600 which at that point left me with about $2000. A few weeks later I was back up to $3500 w/ about $450 worth of fpps and my car died. It leaked oil and water and I wasn't doing a very good job of checking on the levels consistantly. A seal cracked or something that would cost $1500 - 2000 to fix on the 1988 crown vic that I paid $950 for. On the following tuesday I bought an 04 ford ranger for $10k, pulling out $3k from stars for the down payment.

I was left with $500 w/ the $450 in bonus so over the course of 2.5 weeks I played 10k hands of nl25 and 4k hands of nl50.Onto the reason I'm coming back to this blog, I'm getting the full time pro bug again. It always seems to come when going on a long run of playing well and the cards cooperating. Over the last 35k hands I've been winning at 7ptbb's/100, which was helped by playing nl25 and nl50. My overall winrate at pokerstars over 90k hands since early august is 3ptbbs/100. I don't dream of being Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey, I just want to get to a place where poker allows me to do anything I want, most importantly finish college.

Several things need to change to help me progress to this goal faster. Simply, I need to play more hands/week. I've been averaging 9-10 hrs/week at 800 hands/hour since I left my apartment where I would grind all day saturday and sunday. On weekdays I need to set a very strict schedule for myself, which includes a nap after work and excercise 3-4 times a week, so that I will play 2k - 2.5k hands/night. Also in my way is WoW which I will stop playing completely. Like everyone I need breaks and WoW filled this time nicely, but was taking too much.
My posts should not ever be this long again

br ~$2480. I've had a lot more ups and downs recently. Maybe I'll get around to posting a graph soon.

I keep going through phases about my thinking of moving to Austin or not. Some days I think of all the reasons not to go while the very next I'll think of why I really want to. The best thing to do is write them down and see.

To go: improve my poker playing more rapidly
start making 4-6k month = 2.5-4x what I make now
exciting and fun

Not to go: keep job for minimum of few extra months for security
girlfriend
security of living near parents
get credit card payed off and a few k in the bank

As I wrote these reasons out I got the feeling that staying home for a few extra months would not be as far a setback as moving down there and going bust would be. Also, my car is a an absolute pos that might last another year or 2 or might blow up tomorrow, so I need to get something else.

Lately I haven't been puting in the work that I should to improve. I don't go over hand histories because I think about them in my head. Obviously going over the hands in pt I get to think about all possible situations and there isn't any errors in memory. It's been at least a month since I've watched a video.

Interesting hand I misplayed from last night. frnl100 loose guy 25-35vpip 12-15 raise% limps in early position. I raise kk to 4.5 mp.

aa7r flop ($10)
check call $7
3 turn
i bet $14 he min chkraised me
a river
he shoves 50something and I call
he's got 78o

I should have chked behind on the turn. With a non ace rvr I should have called a bet or bet/fold to a raise. With the ace on the rvr I would have bet/called a raise or raised a bet.
Alright, back to work

movin up

I've started playing nl100 full ring the past few days, although I'm still getting comfortable and haven't played a whole lot of hands. Being uncomfortable at a higher level causes me to make mistakes. Luckily, though, I've had a good little run and a suckout to be up 3 buyins over 1700 hands or so.

Although my initial goal was to be beating nl200 by the time my current lease is up so that I can seriously entertain the idea of moving to Austin I am thinking about paying back my staker and withdrawing to pay off my credit card, which is at 2100, once I get to an online bankroll of $3000. At my current full ring winrate I'd be able to make more than I make at my job playing only 14-16 hours a week opposed to the 40 hour work week.

I'm very close to where I set out to be 4 months ago, which will open so many possibilities for me, whether it be going back to college, moving or traveling to places like Austin, Buenos Aires, and Thailand, or staying here to try and build up the bankroll.

full ring

I've been playing 8 tables of fr instead of 4 of 6m for the past week. I've got 3k hands of nl25 just to get my feet wet and 7k hands of nl50 and running at 6.5 ptbb/100 overall. I'm becoming more and more convinced that nl50 is the blackhole being down ~2 bi expectation. This goes along with my running horrible at 6m nl50.

Full ring definitely has weaker players and is easier, but my staker made comments along the line of not being able to learn as much at it. More multi-way pots do take some of the play out of it, but if my win rate is that much higher than I don't really have much choice when trying to climb up. Another thing is that I'm actually able to win some in non-showdown pots.

One disturbing statistic about the difference in my play from nl25 to nl50 is went to showdown %, in both 6m and fr it goes up about 8%. I need to look more into it to find out how much of that is people playing back at me and how much is me being looser and trying to overthink myself into calling.

goals

I started out wanting to move up a level a month, which is very possible with a decent win rate at 25-30,000 hands/mo and rakeback. It's been 3 months and I've moved up twice, so I'm a little behind, but I feel like I have been improving a lot. Each move up, twice for 50nl, has been accompanied by a combo of bad play and running bad for at least 10,000 hands. The goal is to have a decent win rate at 100nl or 200nl by September, when my current lease expires.

Aside from that I have several options. Live at my parents while working part time and commuting to school. If I'm winning at a nice rate at 200nl I could live off that in Denton and try to get a part time job or something. My mom also knows a guy with his own IT company who is just working for himself at the moment but wants to expand. He had mentioned somewhere in the area of 25-30/hr, but this doesn't really seem like it's ever going to happen because it's been at least 1.5 months since he mentioned the idea.

The third option is to move to Austin with my staker, who is moving into a place with a poker friend of his at the end of July. He dropped the idea to me when he first staked me and we've talked a little more about it since. He and I would share a room, I know it seems kinda gay and sucks, but I did it when I first moved out, and I wouldn't have to pay any rent for a few months. It would definately be a grind playing at least 30 hours a week, but at 200nl I'd be making a lot more than I am anyway. It's a long shot but it's what keeps me going while pushing papers around at work all day.

Background

I just recently changed from being a lurker to posting some on 2+2. I play microstakes and there is plenty of bad info along with good when looking over posted hands. After being somewhat inspired by wcgrider's story and blog I figured I would make this to sort of get more involved with the community. Anyway, here's my poker background.

In high school 4 1/2 years ago I, like everyone who enjoys poker on any level, thought I was better than average if not good at poker, playing in the occasional $5 live sng or cash game w/ acquaintances and would do better than most going off of basic starting hand info as play hands that match 2 of 3 requirements: both high cards, suited, connected. I might have read a limit he book somewhere during this timeframe. Upon turning 18 I promptly deposited $50 on Pacific and would play a mix of limit .25/.5 I believe until I won enough for a $5 sng. I was actually a winner at limit w/ very little knowledge and a loser at sng's, but the ratio would gradually shift towards sng's until I was broke. lhe is boring and sng's are fun to win. This happened for 3 or 4 deposits until I got into cs:s

Counterstrike took up the next 2 1/2 years while I was working part time at a medical billing office and going to community college. Toward the end of my time at comm college I became good friends w/ a guy on my cs team and we then moved into an apt together in Denton, Tx to go to school at UNT. I was living on very limited savings and mostly my credit card until I started at a telemarketing place which was hell but great money. Eventually my friend introduced the idea of going to Winstar, 40 min north on the OK border.

The first couple of trips to Winstar did not go well based on no idea how to play a live game against complete randoms and having a limited idea of bet sizing using scared money. Maybe the 3rd or 4th time I finally booked a win. I read another book or two on holdem and got my credit card paid off after two months and quit the telemarketing hell. After several months of trying to find another job in Denton I eventually settled on commuting to my old job at the medical billing place 40 minutes away. After about 2 months of that in early 2007 I was having great success at live 1-2 and quit to become "pro". Commuting for a 9/hr job that was extremely relaxed was almost as bad as the telemarketing. I had a nice heater for the next 3 months working off my initial bankroll of about $800 until eventually going busto. So I was completely broke and still couldn't find a job in Denton, so I took a once in a lifetime opportunity to go on tour with a band for the the summer of 07. When I got back I was just as broke only I hadn't signed up for any student loans, so I worked as a server where I was only getting day time shifts and making about $20 a day on 5 hrs of work plus the additional $2.75/hr you get. So with the first $100 i got I went to Winstar and had a huge win and went "pro" again. This time around it lasted for about 5 1/2 months and I had been beating the 2-5 game, which was easier for me due to the rake being such a smaller % and not having a bunch of old retirees at the table. Eventual busto due to one night of missing every flip w/ monster draws and being sucked out on several other times.

I have a friend from high school who is a mid stakes nlhe 6max player who I used as inspiration to deposit $500 on full tilt during my 2nd stint as "pro". I tried to learn some but didn't put in nearly enough work. I never truly had a good feel for it playing 25nl and 50nl and went bust pretty quick.

I then went back to the medical billing where I am today working full time and splitting time between my parents and my apartment. So I had been talking to my friend who was paying for UT with his poker playing and he offered to stake me if I would follow his directions and go over hand histories with him regularly.

After a weekend trip down to Austin 3 months ago for a weekend of poker training I was given a stake of $200 to start at 10nl. Due to some bonus I had left over and a lot of hands put in quickly I moved up after 3 weeks when I hit $450. After another month at 25nl I was up to $900 and took a shot at 50nl but played terribly and ran bad. Finally after 3 months I am at $1150 and confident at my ability to beat nl50.