So this month started off terribly and I went on a huge downswing right off the bat. I think I started with around 850 in my acount and I dropped 10 buy ins quick in like two days. I freaked out and cashed out 220 quick so I was sure that I wouldn't leave myself with nothing. I quickly realized that this was a terrible idea because I was now underrolled to for 25NL and starting to freak out. So I then quickly cashed out 20K VPP's for a 285 dollar Pstars bonus, not realizing how long it would take me to cash in on the 1900VPP's that you have to get before they would actually reward you with the credit.

So I didn't really know what to do at this point, play 25NL with about 14 BI's or do the unthinkable and drop all the way back down to 10NL. So I decided that I had to take the rest of the day off, and figure out what to do.

I decided that it wasn't quite time to drop back to 10NL, but just for the record I did log about 50 hands at the level and this is probably what made me decide I coudn't handle it. I have always been good with bankroll management and this was really quite out of my element to be playing with under 25 BI's. So I decided that I was going to play like a nit and if I dropped down to 200 dollars I would have to go back to 10NL and the 20BI's would be plenty, but it would be an unthinkable amount of grinding at this limit to cash in on my 285 dollar bonus.

On the 5th I was down 250 dollars, and this was the first time in my life I saw numbers in the red for the month on PT.

Then on the 6th, for the first time in the entire month of September, I felt like I could beat 25NL. I ran at 10.5BB/100 for 2.7K hands and made 6 BI's. It was a Friday so I rationalized not stopped at 2K hands or 4 BI's, and I was actually sitting back down to the tables when I got a call to go out, so I prolly got lucky.

Then the next day I really wanted to get my numbers in the green for the week, and I did for a couple minutes. I was up about 70 dollars after being down, and then stayed at the tables and ended up down about 30 : (

I hit the tables today and ran hot right off the bat, and after 500 hands I was up 3 BI's and logged off. I got back after eating some lunch and continued the hot run and was up 2 more BI's in about 250 hands.

This was the point that I knew I should log off, but I was playing 200BB's deep with a player playing 88/10 so I couldn't get myself to leave the table. At one point I was only one tabling because I was playing so bad on the others. I spent most of my time 4 tabling but still lost.

I finally logged off and was up the original 3BI's, but was so dissapointed in myself because I was so close to logging off, but it was only like 2pm and I didn't know what Id do for the rest of the day.

Well here's what your going to do from now on...

1. Post HH's, either on a forum or here.

2. Watch vids, either at DC or here.

3. Go through my previous sessions and analyze why I won this session, and not in previous ones.

4. Once the PCA steps begin I will prolly give those a shot

5. Last and maybe least, get a life outside of poker

Quit being a fag and take your own advice!!!

I am really hoping that my goals for this month go better than the ones I have had in the past, to help ensure this I am going to try to do everything right now, that I have done wrong in the past. One trend that I have noticed is extremely common in my play, is getting up fairly big and then fizzling away all of my profits by staying on the tables for too long.

There will be plenty of times that I will play good/run well in the beginning of a session, get up 4 BI's in under 1K hands, continue to play because I think this is how I should run all of the time, and end up playing terribly/ running bad and playing 2-3K hands and being back at even, or even being in the red for the day.

Needless to say this is killing my results, as it keeps happening over and over again. After reading Verneer's blog today I noticed that he said he played a session today and after 40 minutes he was up 3 BI's and cashed out because he knew that he wouldn't run that good forever.

Variance is going to hit me it is just a matter of when. If I have gotten lucky and haven't been coolered yet and I'm up big, don't think that this is how it should/ will be all the time. Just realize that I should probably get off the tracks before the train hits me.

So from now on I am setting limits for myself playing this school year. To make sure that I am not spending to much time playing these will be my restraints that I have to stick to for at least the month of September.

1. On any week day that I am up 4 BI's and realize this, I must immidiately cash out and log off for the day. Do some homework or watch a vid or something, and ride the happy wave that this will give me.

2. I can not ever play over 2K hands in one day. I just never play optimal poker when I have already played this many hands, meaning I am always on tilt after prolly about 1.5K hands.

After I get up aprox. 4 BI's or so things just never seem to go well for me. My moves quit working, I start getting coolered left and right and this leads me to playing worse. I just don't think that it is at all +EV for me to play after I am up this much. If I looked at my poker results for all hands that I have played after being up 4 BI's, I would be a losing player for sure. It is disputable how big of a loser, but I proabably would be startled by the results.

So this means that no matter what skills I have developed or how good the game is, it is -EV for me to be playing because at that point I am a losing player.

It will be so ridiculously profitable for me in the long run if from now on I just log off after being up 4 BI's and just using that time to go over HH"s and study my game and what not.

4 BI's is a ton of money for me at this point and when I get up this much in the future I don't want to risk it by staying at the tables for too long, it's just SOOOO not worth it in the long run, and anything in my mind that tells me different is lieing.

So after a very tough downswing at 25NL I was going through my PT stats to try to find some leaks. I might have found a couple, but the most inerresting thing that I found out was how well I ran in full ring games. When I first made my transition to cash games from tournys I played full ring. I assume this is how most people do it cause that's what they're used to playing. I played about 20K hands and ran at 8BB/100. I was going to through my HH and realized that I had pretty poor cash game strategy at this time, but aggression was key is winning at a big rate. All these pussies are WP as hell and my won money at showdown was ridiculous.

I was pretty bad at this time so when it did get to showdown I didn't do well and I was struggling to break even. But without showdwon my profits were crazy and realized that this is a much better strategy to apply because variance cannot lay it's deadly finger on my results. If my results are controlled my pots that aren't even showndown then my line should not show much variance at all.

So I am now switching back to full ring and trying to play a kind of LAG style and just steal all of these small pots that the fish are too afraid to take down. I believe this will show at least WR of 8BB/100 and it should be higher if I can stay out of mediocre situations. I will be 6 tabling fast tables and I my goal will be to grind out 2 buy ins a day 5 days a week. This would be a gir in profit and that would be money. Hopefully it all goes as planned

So I was going through my Poker Tracker stats a little bit last night and I realized that I am approaching the 100K hand mark, as I am at about 99.7K hands in the last 90 days. Unfortunatly my bank account is not near as high as I would like it to be for playing this many hands, although I do feel I have gained some priceless experience. Taylor Caby said that any player with average knowledge and a love for the game can beat Mid Stakes cash games. There are only two things that the player must do and that is get in as many hands as possible because nothing can substitute for experience, and study the game. I don't think that I have been doing the latter quite as much as I need to in order to move up through the stakes as quickly as I'd like. I am going to start watching a lot more videos and I need to start posting hands online. I need to always be playing my A game and if I get it in bad I need to know if it is because of a leak in my game. I have realized that it is much more fun/ less stressful if I play overrolled instead of the opposite. I am going to try to avoid "taking shots" as his has not worked well for me in the past, because it's tough to drop back down. I need to view this as my job, and I was to see a steady income. I had a bit of an epiphany last night and realized something through this grueling beak even stretch: at the low limits I do not have to try and make money, I just have to worry about not losing money. With how many hands I have played I should be showing a much larger profit if I just didn't gamble, and blow away all my profits. This is a job and money will consitantly be given to me as long as I am at the time, clear minded and ready to recieve what is mine. My job is just not to loose money in the mediocre situations and show a consitant profit. If I want to increase my hourly wage I need to gamble less and be LESS willing to get involved in big pots. I used to think that i had to force the action and the only way to win a lot of mony was to win big pots, but that is the exact opposite way of winning money in the long run. If I am losing money in big pots I need to save the HH and see what went wrong and not let it happen again. So from now on I am not going to try and make money when I sit in a small stakes game, I am just going to play as many hands perfectly as possible and just let the money come to me as it is deserved.

In my short career of playing micro stakes holdem I have never encurred such a long breakeven stretch. This may or may not be a lot for some people but I have played about 30K hands in the last 3 weeks and before my last session I was down about 8 dollars. This was almost all at 50NL and I guess isn't that bad considering I started on a 8 BI downswing at the level. So I didn't do too bad to get it back to even but it was still very frustrating to play that many hands and see no difference in my bank account. Oh well I decided that I got some invalueable experience and learned to crusial lessons along the way. So I guess I'm lucky to not have to pay my dues by losing lots of money and learning the lessons, I just payed my dues by playing lots of hours and having nothing else but FPP's to show for it. So I am happy with this result because I think I have found the key to winning money consistantly, at least at the low levels. If I can just do these two things I think that I will profit the large majority of my sessions. 7 or 8 out of 10 times I shoulds show profits if I can just avoid the mediocre situations and trust my instincts!!! I have played i alot of hands now and feel very confident in my poker instincts, from now on I will try to fully trust them and get out of the high variance situations. I now realize that poker is NOT a game of cards, it's a game of situations, so I need to analyze the situations instead of the cards. For example flopping second set is a really strong hand, but there are certain spots where it is NOT a good situation. There were two separte times in a session where I flopped second set and suited and connected boards in multiway pots and my poker instincts told me to fold. I instead called both times and lost money. I was looking at the strength of my hand, not the weakness of the situation. I will try to avoid doing this in the future and hopefully it will lead to less variance!

So this is the follow up to my blog entry this morning. Things didn't go quite as planned early on, because for whatever reason my charger to my laptop went dead and would charge it anymore. Obviously this made it impossible to chase my dreams of crushing 50NL, but this was not acceptable, so I raced to the nearest BestBuy to see what it would take too get a new one. It turned out my only options where wait for Sony to replace it, which would take about 1-2 months: not an option. Or they conviently had the only universal lap top charger adapter, for a clean 120 dollars. This was some bullshit but I decided it was definetly a +EV move, rather than wait for God knows how long for China to send me a new one. Oh well, I got home and immidiatly hit the tables. Me and my gf have been on the rocks lately which isn't good news, but I am an optimist and always try to look at the positive, so I have been happy for the extra time to log some hours on PStars during the week with double FPP's. As I stated in my last post my goal for this month is to play at least 20K hands, probably more, running at 10PTBB/100. That would leave me at a net profit on 2K and a full BR of 3K. I think this would be sufficient to play 100NL, but my game would have to be ready. Well I am very happy to say that I am off to a great start after today. Today I found out that I cannot really play to my full potential, in other words my A game, playing 6 tables, so I dropped it back to 4 tables of 6 max and now I am posting every hand that I get stacked on. Hopefully this will help me learn some more and find more leaks. I played 4 tables for about 10 1/2 hours solid, only taking maybe two half hour breaks. I ended up getting in 3.4K hands and running at 9.8BB/100. So this is a great start and after today I sort of feel that I am on my way towards my goal at the end of the month. Before today I was semi under rolled to be playing 50NL and told myself I'd drop back to 25NL if I lost 5 buy ins. I got lucky to play well today and now I fell like I am on my way, I'll try to keep this updated more than I have in the last couple weeks.

Since my last blog entry it has been a rollercoaster to say the least. I ended up running hot at 50NL for about a week and my net profit was exactly 1,000. Due to transfering way to many funds to my ass hole friends my account was at about 1,700. I had 6 winning days at 50NL in a row and really felt on top of my game. So when I was browsing through the lobby I noticed that there were more soft games at 100NL than at 50NL so I decided it was a perfect time to take a shot and I think I ended up 3-4 tabling it. It started great and I stacked a fish on my second or third hand at the table with top two. I got that stack up to 250 before it all went downhill. This was the beggining of, by far, the biggest downswing, money wise, in my short poker carreer. I started running terrible at 100NL and got sucked out on once. This tilted me drastically and I began playing my D and F game. I couldn't get out of this for the next couple days, but was compelled to keep playing. I ended up lossing the 250 dollar stack and another buy in at 100NL limit before forcing myself to move back down to 50NL. I then went on a 10 buy in downswing it two days. I playing horribly and lost about 300 dollars a day. Another 100 dollar loss brought my account back below 1K, before completely altering my approach. I won back 4 buy ins quickly on that evening, which happened to be the 4th of July. This wasn't good since I decided to 4table some 50NL after getting drunk, instead of watching my friends play a best of 5 beer pong series for a 600 dollar prize pool. Needless to say I lost 3 buyins quickly and was extremely mad at myself for foolishly flaming away 150 dollars like that. Good thing the pong series turned out to be entertaining as the entire match came down to one cup. When one team made it the last cup everyone thought the game was over and the shit talking began. The first rebutle shot missed hopelessly when it was all down to one shot. SPLASH, it was rebutled and the game was on. It only took two took for the other player on the team to make the last cup, and when his partner made it on top of him the game was over for sure this time, no rebutle. Legedary for sure. Laying in bed after this long night I feel that I have a bit of an epiphany. And all of the sudden I am no longer angry with myself for losing those 3 buyins tonight, and even better yet I am not mad at all for losing about 800 dollars in couple days. I realized that this is just change in my account that will rise and fall, but what is really important is that I better my so I can eventually play in the highest limits. So in the long term 800 dollars is just change, but if I can aquire knowledge to help further my game, then that will last forever. The lessons that I learned in these last couple of days were well worth the small 800 dollar price tag, because without this knowledge I would have never been able to beat 100NL or any game higher than that. So obviously these lessons will well pay for themselves in the future. So the key to moving up limits is just plugging leaks and bettering my game. If I have to pay a couple hundo to do this then so be it. The most important thing is that I actually do learn from my mistakes. When I have a big losing session learn from what went wrong, so that it was worth it to lose money. The only real losing sessions are when you don't learn anything. I have learned in the last couple of days that I was a flat out calling station. There is no better way to put it. My pots won at showdown ratio was horrific. At 50NL it was barely over 50% so this had to tell me something was wrong. I was flat out calling way to much. Esspecially out of position. If I raised AQs UTG and got 3 bet by the button I would call hoping to hit some type of flush draw, and then auto fold when I missed, or worse get stacked with a pair of queens or aces. This was pathetic, and I was even calling 3bets to much in position. If I had J10s and raised in the CO and got 3bet from the BB I would call hoping to flop some type of big draw, or try to outplay him with my position. But after the 3bet they Cbet 75% of the time and I have to fold about 60% so this is just not a profitable situation. I've decided that the key to winning, at least at the low limits, is just to lessen the variance and get away from the really tricky situations. The overall goal is to just play perfect and not make a mistake at all, but in these stick situations it is a MUCH bigger mistake to put more chips in the pot when your way behind, then it is to make a hero call when your slightly ahead. In these situations that are tricky if I call and am right I will usually be about a 60 percent favorite. Needless to say this isn't much of an advantage and I'm going to get sucked out on a lot. Making these playing really high variance, because when I make the call and I am wrong I am usually way behind, happy to have a 20% chance, if I'm not drawing dead. At these stakes I just don't need to commit myself to these situations. I can find much better spots, players just aren't that good. I feel I understand this much better now and I think I can play a much lower variance style. I am not going to be calling basically ever. If I have a hand that I think is good then I should get more money in the pot, if I have any reason to feel that I am behind and not getting the correct odds to draw then I must auto muck. I am going to start folding to 3bets alot more often, and 3betting people a lot more often. And the main thing that I have realized, that I feel will really increase my BB/100, is that I am going to completely and totally quit slow playing! It is just killing my WR, because when I slow play I let people stay in the pot that have outs, now I start getting sucked out on and instead of at least winning a pot, I end up getting stacked. This is just destoying my WR and I cannot let it ever happen again. If I get sucked out on it better be when all the money is in the middle and not because I slow played him. The most important thing is winning that pot. If I can take it down right there then GREAT!!! You just found the lowest variance play in poker, winning money without showdown. Now variance cannot even touch me because the pot is already mine. To crush 50NL all I have to do is make 10$/100hands. This should be simple! Just take down pots whenever you can and remember that all you need is a measly 10 dollars to steal from these pussys in 100 hands. So I feel now I am starting to understand small-ball poker. Before I was eager to get involved in a large pot and would do it whenever I could. I thought that was the key to winning big, but that is actually the key to letting variance torture your results. So from now on I am going to try to AVOID big pots at all costs. I am going to try to take down a pot whenever I can, it doesn't matter if I have the nuts or it is just a Cbet. I need to win as many small pots as I can. So my new style of poker is going to be very LAG as long as the pot is small. Once I have contributed over 1/4 of my stack to the pot and it starts getting bigger I am going to be very TAG. I only want to be involved in big pots when I have position, and I have to trust my reading abilities. There are so many times that I know exactly what my opponet has, but I just can't believe it and go ahead and make the crying call anyways. This is pathetic and I am not going to be this calling station any more. I want to increase my pots won at showdown to at least 70% consistantly before even considering the jump to 100NL again. Today is the 5th of July and my goal for this month is to make 2K playing 50NL building my account up to a nice 3K. This would leave me rolled for 100NL, but I will not make the jump unless I feel my game is ready and I can at least beat the game. To make 2K this month I would have to get in 20K hands running at 10BB/100. This is my goal and if I can do this I think I will be able to get in a lot more hands than that and hopefully keep the WR. My BR is at about 1K, so I will be using this to play 50NL. I feel my game is ready, but won't be ashamed to drop back down to 25NL if I have to. The last note is that earlier I was reading an article in BLUFF where they interview WestMenlo, and he says that the best tournament player without a doubt is ActionJeff. And the best cash game player is SBRugby. So I have all fo there knowledge at my fingertips on this website and I need to take full advatage of it as I try to move up stakes.

Well I can definetly say that I have been on a rollercoaster since my last blog entry. I started running pretty hot at 25NL and was killing the game for about 13BB/100 for about 7Khands got my roll up over 1200. I decided that this was the time to take my shot at 50NL. I started 4tabling after 2 and 3 tabling didn't work out and I was losing at a bigger rate at 50NL than I was recently winning at 25NL. My EV over about 5K hands was about -15BB/100. Needless to say I was extremely discouraged and posted on the forum asking about what I should do. At first they told me to keep playing and just attribut it to variance, but after I was down about 8 BI's they told me to take it back to 25NL. This wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I have to say the transition was easy because I immidiatly starting crushing that game again and that did a lot for my confidence. I decided to start 6 tabling six-max and it's been going pretty well. I'll be trying to keep the same WR on all 6 tables as I did on 4, so I will see how that goes in the next week...

It took me a while to finally get around to posting again because I haven't gotten to much chance to play in the last month. I'm taking a summer class at MCC and balancing that with my girlfriend and tryen to get some hands in can be tough. I'm happy to say that I have really improved my game since the last blog post and I've used many tools to do this. Larry helped me figure out how to download the trial version of Poker Tracker 3 and PAHud. This has really helped find some of my leaks and now I've got close to 30K hands logged and a pretty realiable BB/100. After reading a forum on CR posted by citizenwind, on crushing low limit holdem it really opened my eyes. I really need to focus on the long term and do anything that can slightly help my EV. Just getting away from a few marginal situations will extremely boost my winrate. To do this I am trying to play a very low variance style. I am going to value 89 suited over AK suited for many reasons. I am looking to flop a monster and 89 suited has a slightly better chance of doing this because of more striaght options. Another huge plus is the equity. When I do hit a hand with 89 nobody will put me on it and I will get payed off a lot easier. Another even bigger advatage is I will be getting myself out of such marginal spots. When I flop a pair of 9's it will be a lot easier to get away from than a pair of aces. I will be folding AQ off UTG and raising suited connectors. My win rate is increasing quickly since trying to implement these changes and I have been doing much better in marginal pots. My BR fizzled down to 800 dollars over the past month, but in the last two weeks i've got it up to 1,156.52. Throughout the month of May my winrate was 4.81 BB/100 for 17,918 hands. It is the 12th of June (one day after the aniversary of my car accident) and I have played 7,554 hands at a WR of 11.83 BB/100. I have already made about 60 more dollars this month in 10K hands less. I want to definetly keep my WR in double digits and I have to be constatly looking for ways to increase my EV. Even an extra fold to a 3bet will up my EV 2BB/100. That's a huge number and I need to be as focused as I can on making the least amount of mistakes. This will keep me moving up through the limits.

So I came to the resolution that I am not any good at this damn game called Texas Holdem, and from now on instead of just playing and trying to learn from my mistakes, I am going to take studying the game as seriously as possible. I just took my last finals of the school year at MCC a week ago and have a month before summer school. Next week I'll be going to CO for a week with my girlfriend and don't plan to play to much poker. Hopefully during this time I'll be able to study it a little bit and plug as many leaks as possible. I'm going to be playing basically only cash games and I'm going to primarily focus on 6-max NL. I also enjoy playing full ring, but I'm just starting to get into 6-max. I'm also going to try to learn how to play some PLO as I see that as the game of the future. I think these will be the two most fun and profitable endevours and my goal is to basically be playing both games at the highest levels. This means 5/10 and 10/20 on poker stars. This means I need a bankroll of about 40K. I started out like most people depositing 50 dollars on PStars, (although I may have done it a few more times than other players) and since converting to cash games about a month ago I have my current bankroll up to 959.07, and I'm stuck at the micro stakes. I have been 6 or 8 tabling full ring 25NL cash games, but now I'm trying 2 and 4 tabling 6-max games. My goal is to have my bankroll up to 1500, and improve my game alot before fully moving up to the next level. To help improve my game I am going to try and start analyzing hands away from the table and posting hands online to get some resoponces. My first attempt at posting a hand failed miserably because it ended up on my blog and the hand didn't even come up properly, so I'll be working on that, and I definetly feel I need Poker Tracker and Poker Ace HUD before moving up to the next level. Withough having those tools I am putting myself at an extreme disadvantage to other players who have these tools.

So long story short I have just under 1 year and a half until my 21st birthday. I want to be playing, and beating, the highest stakes on PStars by this time and be bankrolled to comfortable play live as much as I'm able too.