I said that I'd update after 5000 hands and I ended up going about 500 past that. Not much has changed really. I'm still 6-tabling $25 nl and keeping a TAG strategy. I'm playing about 15/10 which is a bit tighter than most of these videos recommend. I've been watching a lot of Verneers videos of 25nl. I'm learning a lot from these videos. I need to start using the forums more. Anyway, here is my post-5000 hand graph.

I wanted to post today because I played 2 interesting sessions. My first started at about 4:30 this afternoon and as you can tell from my post yesterday I was feeling pretty confident about my game. Well I couldn't get anything going and ended up losing $36.65 in 52 minutes. I was only playing 4 tables because I was trying to focus more on each game and get reads on certain players. It was odd because aside from a hand where I lost about $8 (short stack slow-played QQ against my AJ on a 6288J board), I didn't lose more than 3 dollars in one single hand. I also didn't win more than 3 in any hand. Hands just piled up where I'd cbet the flop and get called down or raised. Most of my marginal pre-flop raises were getting re-raised too. I can attribute maybe $4-8 on tilting but I was just running terribly. Naturally this killed most of my confidence and I felt like my previous profits were from running abnormally well.

So I decided to play again this evening around 7, 6-tabling and tightening my preflop raises/calls. I ended up winning $40 in about 30 mins. I even dumped $8 on a hand where I should have stopped my bluff after the flop. This hand was at the beginning of my session where I was still pissed from earlier and just trying to get something going. I understand that swings are involved with poker but this helps me realize that I need to stick to my game and not get more loose/aggressive when a session isn't going well. If I wouldn't have played level-headed for the entirety of both sessions I feel my profit could be at least $10 higher. My bankroll is almost at 10 BBs ($250) which will help me deal with swings better. I'm also thinking 6-tabling might be better because I'm tighter pre-flop playing 6 and the additional "reads" I get from focusing on 4 usually arn't that great. First indoor soccer game of the year tonight should be fun.

I'm back at school now in the middle of my second week of classes. I was playing 10nl during my first week back. I started at 4 tables, got bored and moved to 6, couldn't handle it and moved back to 4. I wasn't really getting anywhere and was getting sick of playing for such small stakes so I put some money into my account and moved up to $25 nl. In my first 100 hands I doubled up twice and have stayed profitable since. I've played a little more than 1000 hands and this is my graph so far.
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Looking through my hand history my big jumps have come from fortunate situations but I'm also not making many mistakes. I lost about $30 on a set vs. higher set on an otherwise dry flop. I feel like I could be playing more aggressively but I think that will come after getting used to this limit and building my bankroll. I'm actually playing 6 tables right now after starting out playing 4. I know this is a very small sample size and doesn't mean much but I'm optimistic. I will post my next graph at 5,000 hands.

Now that work has picked up for my classes and other extracurriculars are starting up, I'm going to set a daily schedule for poker-related activities. It's going to be mostly watching videos and doing hand history when I have time during the day and playing at night. One of my goals for this week is to start participating in forums on cardrunners and other sites. Poker isn't one of my higest priorities right now but I think I can make a lot of progress in the next couple months.

I am going back to school tomorrow and I'm excited because there isn't much to do at home. Classes don't start until Monday so I have about a week to get ready for the semester. I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to dedicate to poker (playing and studying) once school starts but I'm hoping at least an hour a day and 10 hours a week, but that might be ambitious.

Until tonight I was on a pretty big 3 session upswing that I definately needed. Looking through my hands I don't think I've played spectacularly or even any differently than I was during my downswing. I'm just getting my money in when I'm ahead and now I'm actually holding. I'm also running into fortunate situations but I deserve them after the beats I've been taking. I'm gonna continue to look through my losing hands to identify weaknesses and I also need to just stop when I go on tilt. I'm still playing 10nl (4 tables) but I feel like I'm ready to move up. I'm going to wait until at least February 1 to move up to 4 25nl tables and I'm going to watch a lot of 25nl videos between now and then. I've noticed that the players for the most part are much worse when I play in the evening than during the day. I guess these are the people I should be playing against but it gets frustrating when the stuff they do makes absolutely no sense. I'm not sure how much better the players are going to be when I move up a limit but there's definately gonna be an adjustment period.

So I've been on and off poker for the last couple months, mostly focusing on school, getting in shape, etc. One of my new years resolutions was to get back into poker. I have this CR membership and some funds in my full tilt account so I'm giving it a shot. I finished watching Brystmar's 5 part series and started watching one of his $.25 nl videos. I'm also watching verneer's going robusto series. I've been using pokertracker to look through my previous hands and see where I'm losing money. I'm marking all the hands where i'm making blantantly incorrect plays (usually from being on tilt) and hoping to cut down on them. I'm still down overall but I feel like I'm getting better, but who knows. I'm trying to stick to a schedule of watching videos and going over hands during the day and playing at night because I feel like the games are looser at night. I also have a week left of winter break with nothing to do so I'm putting in as much time as I can before school starts. I play 4 $.1nl tables at once right now and I'm hopeing build a $250 bankroll and move up to $.25nl by March 1st. I'm going to the doctor's early tomorrow so I'm gonna try to crash early.

Hello this is Zeppein25 and this is my first blog post of any kind. I joined CR a couple weeks ago and have been watching Brystmar's SSNL series and playing $.25 NL. I've been playing online for a couple years but never continuously or seriously. I am an engineering student at UMD which takes up most of my time during the school year so I am starting to play seriously this summer and hopefully continue it into the school year. I'm up $60 after 5 and a half hours of playing which is a good start I guess. My goals are to learn more through videos and forums and to become profitable. This blog is going to be mostly poker related but I'll throw in some other stuff as well.