I've ran badly the past 3 days at NL$25 to dumb fish, having a few -2BI sessions, so I decided to take my $225 and grind the $10+1 HU sngs (mainly turbos). These things are fucking CAKE. I forgot that micro HU players make so many mistakes. I managed to win like 8/9 of those today, so I now have $300. I'm expecting like $80 in rakeback and $325 from FTP as the end of the year Ironman bonus, so I'm looking at $700. I don't know if I really feel like playing NL$25 6max or if I'd rather grind $20-$30 SNGs until I get back to $1k for trying NL$50.

The past few days I had strongly considered redepositing, but hopefully for the next few weeks I can run well and put a decent roll together. I really wanna get back into poker, since I feel like sitting on a bunch of money, though I have plenty, is like being on a fixed budget. I didn't want to "retire" from the game, hehe. While it's certainly frustrating to look back and see I had like a $10k roll online like a month or two ago, I shouldn't have been playing 2/4, especially HU, with that kind of online roll, and if I did, I shouldn't have at least went off for as much as I did.

Don't know if I mentioned this, but I bought Holdem Manager from CR for $45. I had PT2 for the longest time before I got a new comp and was too lazy to email the PT support, so I was really considering buying PT3, since I had really liked PT2. I didn't do so much hand reviewing, but I did enjoy looking at my overall winrate over a numbe rof hands, my VPIP/PFR/AF, as well as my overall winnings and making a graph of it. PT3 was meh...I thought it was clunky and not much of an improvement from PT2, but I think HEM wouldn't accept credit card, but rather just Paypal (which I didn't have) or like UB transfers or something, so I didn't consider getting it. I'm very pleased CR dropped the price drastically and made it available to pay through credit card! I don't think I'll look through HEM for $10 SNGs, but I will start looking over hands when I go back to NL cash games or $20+ SNGs. One thing a lot of players do that I never really did was look through hands in my database. Though I did post tons of hands in blog and accept comments and all, I realized that I did more defending of how I played than trying to scrutinize myself. I should always be trying to look for errors when I play.

Anyways, New Years is comin up! Only New Years resolutions are get back to the gym (I'll do that) and grind up through limits until I'm grinding NL$200 or so again while being fully aware of my quality of play and being able to quit (I'll work on this...but it'll be hard hehe). If I do feel motivated enough to constantly analyze my game (if I have enough free time for school and social shit otherwise), then I may attempt to get a coach if I desire to move to 2/4+, constantly look over/discuss HH with others, etc, to try to hopefully get to 5/10 or something next year. As far as skill, I know I'm about at 2/4, and since 2/4-5/10 have a very similar player pool, I'd say having the pure skill as a 5/10 regular isn't too far-fetched. I used to be a 2/4 reg for a while, so I know how aggro the games are. However, I'm unfortunately a far ways away from having the grinding mentality or stability as a 5/10 regular :-( The main focuses are knowing when to quit, game selection, and swallowing my pride by being ready to move down if I'm downswinging. I'm ready to turn things around in '09. It's gonna take a lot of work, since many ppl at 2/4+ regularly work on their game and put in a lot of hands to stay at that level, so I should expect I need to do the same.