This is my graph, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

This graph shows all the hands I have played since purchasing Holdem Manager two months ago. I play exclusively on Bovada and until recently HM could not recognize the hands so this is my first experience with actually having a poker database. Around 45k hands I began to take shots at 4 tabling 400nl and at around 51k hands the train can definitively off the tracks. While at most I was only down 15 buy-ins in all in ev, the run bad not captured by the orange line was far more severe.

Before this graph I had broken even at 200nl for 80k hands, which was the entirety of the time I had spent at this limit. Around this time I picked up a copy of the moronically titled, but extremely educational "Applications of NLH" my Matthew Janda which really opened my eyes to things like substantially wider blind defense. Once I instituted this change and also increased my 3B percentage substantially I started winning at a decent clip. I have now been beating 200nl for 5.9bb per 100 for 50k hands which I feel is still quite low given the quality of the games, but not appalling so.

I think this downswing was especially trying because I had begun to integrate some new elements into my game and was not always sure if I was executing correctly. I find that my propensity to tilt increases dramatically when I am uncertain about the decisions I'm making. I had found that I had been struggling to play certain board textures OOP such as 764cc against tough villains and sought to add a lot more c/c and c/r to my range as the PFR. In the anonymous context (the Bovada games are entirely anonymous), increasing your c/r range as the PFR can also have exploitative benefits as the population tends to overbluff here IP. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the execution down yet.

I have also been struggling to defend properly when facing 3B and 4B from IP players. Hopefully more on this in the next post.

On the brighter side, I was walking through a local park and saw some people playing chess and went over to see if any of them could actually play. One individual challenged me to a game and after we reached a position where I had achieved a crushing advantage, he proceeded to blunder horribly and lose. He then announced that we would wager $100 that if we were to play that exact position again he would undoubtedly beat my "sorry ass". Luckily for me, the position was a forced win in all variations and he was drawing totally dead. At least I'm still + ev in chess.

This week's "Tune for the Grind": Born Losers by Matthew Good

Welcome, and good luck! Keep us posted.

Interesting poker story. I am also reading Matthew Jandas book and it has opened my eyes to alot really enjoying it. GL sir I will be following.

"I find that my propensity to tilt increases dramatically when I am uncertain about the decisions I'm making."
I use to have the same problem. I fixed it by just realizing that tough spots, where I was uncertain about what to do, are the best learning opportunities.

"I had found that I had been struggling to play certain board textures OOP such as 764cc against tough villains and sought to add a lot more c/c and c/r to my range as the PFR."
Remember that sometimes boards are just better for your opponents range then they are for your range and c/f is fine. Do not get caught up in the trap of trying to win every pot or throwing a bunch of money at pots because you do not want to be "outplayed" by tough opponents.

Good luck in the future!

Thanks guys. Hopefully I'll be able to make some sort of contribution to this awesome community.

@ Raraulbl: Those are both excellent points you make and ones I will try to inscribe permanently in my brain.

"Moral indignation is jealously with a halo" - H.G. Wells

This quote struck me like a sledge hammer today after dealing with another day of getting brutalized at the tables. For the last 3 days there has been an extremely aggressive fish floating around to 400nl pool. He will somehow manage to run up a 500+bb stack and I will somehow manage to run good enough to get a seat to his direct left.

And that's the point where everything has been going cataclysmically wrong. It's been days of nut flush over second nut flush and 4 betting AK and joyfully getting the money in on 882r Kx and getting shown quads. It got to the point where getting dealt AA was even tilting since villain (63/32) skillfully managed to find folds before the action ever reached to me.

This is not a bad beat story. This is a story of what I learned from it. We all know fish have to have days like this. That is nothing new. I think everyone has had the experience of lecturing their monitor regarding the play of the aforementioned bottom dweller. Here too, there is nothing new to be found.

The question is why. We all know better than to berate a fish. So we keep our fingers to ourselves and instead eloquently (and emphatically) instruct our keyboards, mice, sleeping alley cats and WORST OF ALL our significant others about the merits of proper range construction and why we are so much better than the inbred Cretans we believe we are playing against. We, or at least I, do this to feel superior. Why do I need to feel superior?

Because I'm jealous. I'm jealous and insecure and that bad man over there just took all my moneys.

When I first moved up to 200nl, I broke even for my first 80k hands, which took about 3 months given that I am only allowed to 4 table and have exclusively non zoom games from which to choose. I also had no access to HM2 or any kind of software aids until recently ('Merica!). I was riddled with self doubt and was constantly questioning whether I was a winner. After some adjustments to my game and 50k more hands I can say that I am pretty confident I am winning now. I don't have that confidence regarding my game at 400nl yet.

It's true that I have only played 20k hands and it's probably difficult to show a profit over such a small sample while running 15 buy ins under EV, but that still doesn't change the red font to green font. That leads us back to moral indignation. I only need to yell and get pissed and tell everyone how good I am when I feel jealous. I only feel jealousy when I feel my status as a "winner" being called into question. I want everything to happen and I want it now, but in reality, winning will happen when it damn well pleases. All I can do is work my butt off in the mean time and realize that at some point in their careers, even the best players in the world couldn't beat a 400nl game.

The next time I lose a big pot to a fish, no matter how silly it may sound to my keyboard, mouse and any listening alley cats outside my building, I'm going to yell "DAMNIT, I'M REALLY JEALOUS YOU JUST WON THAT POT!" or "BY WINNING THAT HAND YOU JUST RAISED ALL SORTS OF DEEP SEATED ISSUES I HAVE ABOUT FAILURE AND NOT LIVING UP TO MY POTENTIAL!". If you are going to be loud and obnoxious, at least tell the truth.

Tunes for the grind: "Hey, Jealousy" - The Gin Blossoms

Well, i can try suggest you two little things to remove this jealousy part of your emotions, any negative emotions are very bad when you are playing poker, so it would be very beneficial for you to try to find better perspective of ongoing realities that do not trigger alike emotions ,but positive ones .
Ill try with second suggestion, and that is that any time you lose hand that you played perfectly, and top of the pre flop range in all-in to spew and spaz is the moment when you actually need to be very happy. Why? LOL - Because if you plan to be a poker player there will be zillion of hands that you will play, and what you do want to happen is that your aces kings Ak;s are called by worse range overall, and as long as you have bad players making huge mistakes, it is a reason to be happy - games are GOOD :-) and that is good for your future :-)

Suggestion no1 is that you try to find confidence, If you were confident that your play is super good and laggy player is a fish, you couldn't care less, because that is most desirable situation for you to be in.
What seems to me, and i might be wrong, is that you aren't 100 % confident that your game is so good , which is quiet normal, and even the best of poker players keep doubting themselves, but with that must come acceptance that all your play maybe not always the best and maybe some better ways to play the same thing, and you should look forward into looking to improve your game and correct the mistakes which for sure you are making, Confidence must reflect your overall plan to improve for the better, not confidence that you didn't make a mistake. We all make them , accept it.

I would also suggest, not obligatory, to try not underestimate player seating with 500 bb jus because he is laggy. Respecting your opponents may also change your overall feeling of jealousy.
At the time when you sit at table, being confident that your game is good, and mistake you make are rare and only will help you improve, and that your actual losing hands that are plus EV are what will make you profit in endless future, and that that particular hand you lost with good pre flop range and good post flop plays actually is the reason why some worse players would stay worse because they won't improve ( hence you profit ) is the day when you see ur aces lose and smile :-)
Hope this rant was of some help to you :)

Such is the life of a reg fish on a heater... The last month has been quite a wild ride and taught me more about variance than the entire rest of my career. I have successfully moved up to 400nl and currently have a decent winrate of 9bb/100 (over only 50k hands) and have also started taking some shots at soft 600nl tables. Here are some of the things I have learned:

1. There are many ways to run good/bad in poker and your short term results in NLH are almost entirely affected by your performance with premiums. Over my first 25k hands at 400nl I was losing about 2bb/100 despite not running too far under expectation. After recalling that roughly half your winrate comes from AA alone I started filtering only to realize that I was winning less than half as much with my premiums compared to 200nl. On top of that I was losing money all in preflop with AA. Pretty difficult to win under those conditions. Figuring this out gave me renewed sense of confidence that I probably wasn't a loser at 400nl.

2. Two months ago, after making a huge river bluff my thought process would look something like "Don't call, don't call! God you're such a @#$%&* fish!". This led me to both prematurely write off strong players as fish and kept me from learning from their showdowns. After some soul searching and numerous doses of Sauce videos, I can proudly say my thought process now looks more like "I expect him to call with hands X,Y, and Z, but if he ends up calling with hand Q then I can adjust and exploit him by shoving more thinly for value here and pairing back my bluffs". That'll do pig, that'll do.

3. I've been looking for opportunities to increase my use of overbets on flops and turns as well as rivers. Here was a recent spot where I chose to overbet the turn: I min open A8s on the btn and get called by a somewhat tightish reg in the BB. The flop comes J22r giving me a BDFD and I cbet and get called. On the Ax turn I decided to overbet about 2x pot with the intention of shipping the river. This is an interesting spot as I am effectively freerolling against his very capped range and can even play a thin value hand like this extremely aggressively. He ended up folding as we would expect him to do often. In retrospect I think the turn overbet may in fact create too much fold equity in this spot against an unknown so in the future I may push the overbet to the river in this spot.

While I'm quite pleased with my new found bankroll and recent results, there is always a voice in the back of my head telling me (with a Canadian accent) "it's just Bovada, you couldn't beat 25nl on Stars". Maybe some day in the future I'll be able to convince myself that isn't true, silence the voice or at least distract it with some Tim Horton's. Until then, grind on!

Tunes for the Grind: "Take You On A Cruise" - Interpol

P.S. Thank you to anyone who has taken time to chime in with their thoughts so far. Every one of your comments has been tremendously helpful.

Hey reSTacks - just found this thread - quite an impressive story so far and I wish you luck. Any chance for an update?

Thanks man, I appreciate your saying so. I recently had to take a little time off as my girlfriend and I broke up over Christmas. That, compounded with looking for a new apartment, has made playing poker well somewhat difficult. So it goes. After taking a few days off I've been slowly easing my way back in by playing two, two hour sessions a day as opposed to my typical one 4 hour session. This has really helped my stave off tilt at the cost of only a little EV (especially on anonymous tables, playing one long session is preferable due to accumulating reads and depth).

Some time in mid January I plan on taking more lessons with Baluga Whale which always seems to jump start my learning process and has been well worth the investment so far. For a quasi update, I recommend watching Daniel Dvoress's latest valuebluffing video as I was the one who sent in the hand (sick brag lol). That spot is one I've put a lot of thought into recently, however I was still totally blown away by the depth and quality of his analysis and have since rewatched the video a couple times to fully digest what he had to say.

I plan to give a full update with graphs and some of the things Baluga and I work on around the end of the month after I get moved into my new place. Hopefully I will be back to taking shots at 600nl as well. Thanks for the interest!

Thanks for the post. This is really an impressive story.

An update has been long overdue. The state of upheaval that has ensconced itself around my life seems to have finally subsided. I have officially moved into my new apartment and am enjoying living life alone currently. Since my last report, I have officially moved up to 600nl and am currently taking single table shots at 1000nl. While I have been both playing and running well at 600nl, my shots at 1000nl have had all the resounding success of a BBQ & fur coat convention outside PETA's headquarters; there has been a lot of red paint (or red pixelated numbers in the case of my Hold'em Manager).

I was also fortunate enough to freeroll and then go deep in Bovada's 100k guaranteed (not shown in my graph) and eventually ended up taking 3rd for about 13k after cold 4B bluff jamming A9o like the super sicko and/or massive donkey I am. I posted the hand in the High Stakes Tournament thread a couple weeks ago so you may be able to dig it up if you are interested in the specifics. Despite being primarily a cash player, Baluga Whale has really helped reshape the way I think about and play tournaments. My philosophy was to play like a mental patient during the cash game phase of the tournament in order to run up a big stack and generally take every opportunity to "go for it". Add about 73 grams of run good to the prescription and presto, you got yerself a final table.

Funny story regarding the tournament. As I had just moved into my new place the day prior, I was without internet and thus was forced to play at a local coffee shop. While traditionally this coffee shop stays open relatively late, due to extreme blizzard conditions on that day, they decided to close early. This was conveniently on the bubble of the final two tables. After frantically removing over a foot of snow from my car, I successfully managed to powerslide my way across the frozen tundra in near white out conditions and successfully arrived at a seedy 24 hourr coffee shop where I finished the tournament in the company of two sleeping bums and a man yelling obscenities at his Facebook account.

As I alluded to earlier, I recently decided to take my 3rd set of 5 lessons with Baluga Whale. Before our second lesson, he sent me the "Adjustment Quiz From Hell" which was comprised of 6 hands and questions regarding what information we could glean from the particular actions in each hand and the appropriate counter adjustments. While game theory is extremely important as an overall foundation, I still believe that the ability to correctly interpret the information villain gives you and make the appropriate exploitative adjustments is the key to beating midstakes.

I will be sure to keep everyone updated regarding my progress into the tumultuous waters of 1000nl. Hopefully next time I will also be able to include humorous anecdotes regarding the variance of trying to meet women and the +ev-ness of singletude. Graphs for the latter will sadly not be included.

The last few months of my life have been somewhat dramatic. After splitting up with my girlfriend and moving to a new apartment, I and the distinct pleasure of enduring both my largest downswing to date and surgery on my face for what was then presumed to be skin cancer. Fortunately, I run above EV in life and dodged the cancer bullet. After getting out of life melt down mode and getting my ego in check I was able to move down from 1000nl to 400nl and finally spot playing my F- game. Couple this with some theoretical work and I've successfully established myself at 1000nl and have been taking shots at soft 2000nl. Despite being a primarily 6 max player, I think Kevin Rabichow's HU videos have totally altered the way I think about the game, so thank you!

The life of a full time professional player can be an isolating existence however. As someone who is a quintessential example of the INTJ personality type, I don't experience loneliness to the same extent as most do (I assume) and am generally comfortable going days or even weeks without saying more than a couple words to anyone. Down the road I do look forward to cultivating some poker friends eventually as I have taken this journey more or less alone and it would be nice to bounce ideas off of other highly motivated people and have band of support that many successful players do. For now, my primary goal is to get to 10-20 so I can eventually win the bet I made with a couple non poker friends regarding who will become a millionaire first.

I should add to any aspiring grinders who play on Bovada, right now there really is an "income cap" at 142.8k a year on this site. They will only allow you to withdraw one 3k check a week (minus fees) so while you may very well be making twice this amount if you are winning at 10-20, over half of that money will remain locked on there until the next year. This (first world) problem has led me to start thinking about other poker playing avenues so that I can reduce my Bovada volume. This was definitely not meant to be a brag or to sound condescending to anyone struggling to climb the ladder, I just thought I would put it out there since, I only recently became aware that this would be an issue.

Things I've been working on pokerwise: While I don't want to go into an incredible amount of detail, one of the things that has led to significant improvements in my game has been identifying areas where the Bovada population significantly under or overbluffs. From there I've tried my best to determine what an equilibrium actually looks like in those spots and adjust my calling and folding tendencies appropriately to match the magnitude of their mistake. Against thinking players who consciously or instinctively know to overfold these typical underbluffing lines, I have made an effort to add more bluffs to more closely approximate balance. As I've become more aware of these spots, I've begun to notice how poorly even seemingly good regs play in these spots. I'm looking forward to a few months from now when I can say the same thing about my current game.

sick read reStacks your a boss!

It's been a long time since I've had any desire to post in a public forum, but I thought sharing some of my struggles might benefit the community and might also help me in the process.

Since my last update I started playing 2kNL full time and did well at the stake for about 250k hands and then started moving over to PLO. Then the floor dropped out in both life and in poker. In the span of 6 months my best friend from college passed away a couple weeks after getting out of prison and right before we were about to see each other for the first time since his incarceration. Both of my grandfathers passed away, I went into the deepest depression I had ever experienced which contributed to the girl of my dreams leaving. I was also cheated out of around 100k in both NL and PLO on Ignition (never play 3 handed!).

At this point I decided I was finished with poker. For the last 10 years of my life, I have evaluated my value as a person exclusively based on results in chess or poker. Losing days left me in crippling physical pain due to back problems and winning days felt empty and lonely. I lost my willingness to study and found myself spending time staring at plummeting graphs, repeating to myself that I was a complete failure in poker and in life. I started doing some work with my best friend at his tech start up and have enjoyed the collaborative approach to problem solving that is available in a business venture like this.

I started teaching a little poker as a fun side project as well and noticed that teaching had rekindled some of my love for the game. Around the time of my downswing, I had figured out that Pio solver could be used to solve PLO spots so I felt like I had a lot to offer students. Since the work for my friend wasn't taking up as much time as I had thought, I figured I would give poker another shot. I ended up taking most of my money off the American sites, but left 9k on Ignition and now have set the challenge of running it up from there. I am unwilling to put any more online for fear of the Trump/Adelson agenda, so I'm going to treat this as my full bankroll. I'm playing exclusively PLO. I've also started seeing a local psychologist to help me address my negative spiraling thought patterns, my depression regarding the break up and my frustration with poker.

It's still a challenge for me to play well. When I do reach a flow state, I can play either game at an extremely high level. Once the 3rd or 4th beat hits, my winrate likely drops by 10bb/100. Along with the therapy, last night I realized that it was important for me to learn a noncompetitive hobby so I could focus on the joy of process without having to compare myself with others. I've decided to learn to cook so I can prepare myself healthy meals on top of the creative expression of making something from nothing. I will keep everyone updated!

GL with your adventures man! Don't let swings get you down!

My 200PLO results after coming back to poker. Despite the results not appearing to be very favorable, I'm actually somewhat happy with my play so far (aside from misreading the board twice in big pots :( but that's expected with rust). I think the biggest epiphany I've had as a former NL player is just how profoundly the equities of specific combos change in a multiway context and that hands that are behind a single range can even become a favorite against two ranges. Mulitway leading has been sorely missing from my PLO game until recently and I'm looking forward to introducing even more of it especially in these limp happy games.

In life, finding opportunities to be grateful has become one of my main areas of focus. Gratitude is just the skill of recognizing and emphasizing the positive variance in life. Two days ago my childhood dog Leo passed away and I am struck with just how fortunate I was to have him in my life for 16 years. He was my constant companion at a time in my life when I felt most isolated. He was constantly ornery and instigating trouble and was even intelligent enough to play practical jokes. He taught me how to express compassion and how to relate to the world in non verbal ways that brought me out of my exclusively intellectual mode of operation. For that I am eternally grateful.

The best poker book I've ever read is a book on golf. The title is "Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect" and is written by a sports psychologist who has worked with some of the best golfers of the 80s and 90s.

My biggest takeaway so far: "Without an ultimate goal mind, it is impossible to succeed". For the longest time, I've had two dreams for my poker winnings.

1. My parents have wanted to start a home flipping business for years and I wanted to give them the captial to get started.
2. Since highschool, one of my closest friends and I have been pushing each other to accomplish things. He pushed me to become a chess master and I pushed him to start a business. The number one reason I got into poker was to make a substantial investment in his business

In August of 2016, I accomplished both my goals and exceeded my own expectations. I then lost my way and haven't found it since. For me just playing poker is not enough. Without a larger, more altruistic force behind it, endless orbits at the tables feel like a downward spiral. I hope I can find a goal or dream in poker, but if not, I'm sure I will soon feel the pull to something new and exciting. Good luck to all the grinders out there whose dream can still be found in poker. Your fight has value and meaning and I hope you find the success you seek.

What I'm grateful for today:
My ex and I have been spending time together lately and it seems like we may have found a way to come back together. While we never lost the love that connected us, we each were dealing with internal struggles that prevented us from being present in each other's lives. Now that those struggles are being resolved, we've found room for each other again. I'm so grateful for her openmindedness and willingness to take care of herself first. I'm also very grateful that with the free time poker gives, I was able to invest a tremendous amount of time in the last couple months in dealing with my depression and negative thought patterns. Most of all, I'm grateful for what the future holds.

this needs more love....

I've spent the last 6 months trying to change my life. I believe I may have succeeded.

At the beginning of 2017 I was at the lowest point in my life. I had spent the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 enduring the death of one of my closest friends, the deaths of both of my grandfathers, 6 months of losing in online poker (some of that the result of being cheated on Ignition), the worst depressive episode of my life, and my girlfriend leaving. It's hard for me to fathom feeling more broken. I had totally forgotten what it felt like to have a single winning day online and spent every hand getting almost violently angry at the turn of every card. I had become both physically and mentally ill in the literal sense.

I believed for a long time that I had emotional problems with regards to poker, but of course the real truth is that I had preexisting emotional problems that were exacerbated by poker. I liked them too. I enjoyed in some perverse way the malaise that washes over you as a physiological depressive episode sets in. I enjoyed hurling a mouse at high velocity at the floor and seeing entropy take hold. I enjoyed protecting my ego and creating rationalizations for why I was good enough rather than seeking to always grow and improve. Part of me loved all of these things or at least didn't hate them enough to try to change.

Emotional rock bottom is a desolate place. It conjures up Dali-esque dreamscapes where truth and distortion stand and stare at each other from opposing sides of a pane of glass, believing it to be a mirror. This was the last chance I would get to see what's really there, to actually come face to face with myself and actually make the changes necessary to confront my demons. Fortunately I took it.

I had always tried to make small interventions on my own behalf before. I would try working with a poker mind coach for a while, I would try journaling , working out, meditating. All of these things individually only scraped off a small percentage of the outer shell of the problem and were soon abandoned for being ineffectual.

This time, I wanted to change. So I did everything. I stopped playing poker entirely, I started coaching to experience the joy of working with people who wanted to learn. I found a psychologist near by who took my insurance, spent 15 minutes of our first session helping him understand how poker worked and then let him do the rest. I started rock climbing, doing yoga, playing pool and developing my friend and family relationships. I wrote a book. I did all of these things because I knew one would not be enough.

I learned from working with my psychologist and through intense personal reflection that I have three major problems:

1. Depression
2. Transitioning from a growth mindset into a fixed mindset
3. The tendency to personalize external events

Here's how I resolved them:
1. I can feel a depressive episode coming on now. It feels like drowsiness without being sleepy. I know that it can be caused by spiraling negative thoughts or it can begin the spiral. I now can recognize this feeling and acknowledge it very quickly. Simply telling myself what is happening removes most of the darkness
2. Read Mindset by Carol Dwick, just do it. Every time you ask yourself "am I good enough?" or "Can I even win?" instead of saying "it doesn't matter if I am good enough today, I will keep studying and tomorrow I will be better", you have demonstrated a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is the belief that qualities like talent or intelligence are fixed and if you don't measure up to a task, you never will. A growth mindset is the opposite. Guess which one leads to more success?
3. Every time I start to personalize an external event, I call myself on it. "I missed another goddamn shot in pool...I'm personalizing an external event". Things happen, things don't happen to you. The river card doesn't know you exist. Rush hour traffic does not have a nefarious plot against you. I knew that my reaction to external events has been inappropriate since I was a child, but until I encountered the exact phrase "personalizing external events" on the "Science of Success" Podcast (a short early episode), I couldn't name it and not naming it allowed it to always filter back in. Now I'm on top of that shit. Old lady at the ATM in front of me taking way too long? Yes this is happening, no it's not happening to me.

Implementing all of these changes at once changed my life. I look forward to playing poker again just as soon as I finish my book.

BTW the book will be coming out soon and should be the most advanced book on PLO strategy ever written. It will be expensive and somewhat narrowly focused, but it will completely change the game and will pay back those who purchase it many times over I believe.