Hello Run it Once!

A few months ago I signed up for an essential membership here to learn some PLO basics, and now I have upgraded to an elite membership. I am constantly impressed by the high production quality of the videos here, the fresh topics, and the top notch forum content. I have primarily built up a roll this year playing MTTs on the US facing sites and have been a member over at Tournament Poker Edge all year, but now that I have a bankroll to work with I have been branching out more recently into NLHE cash and learning PLO cash.

Before starting to take my gamely seriously last year sometime, I was a recreational player who played to win and constantly wanted to improve, but never really put in any time away from the table. I played micro-small stakes cash NLHE for severeal years pre-BF and a bit post-BF and probably logged well over 2 million hands in that time. Last year I started with a $200 deposit on Bovada, ran it up to 8k in MTTs, then blew it all in High Stakes cash games. After that I took several months off from poker, and started grinding again February this year with another $200 deposit.

Fast forward to now- I have invested time and money into training site memberships, poker analysis software (PT4,PPT Odds Oracle, HRC, equity calculator, etc.) and professional MTT coaching. I have logged about 16 hours of coaching sessions with MTT pros and have improved my game a ton, and have about 30k profit on my main site (Bovada). I have lost a bit in live events, spent some on life expenses, etc., and I currently have a bankroll of ~22k.

My life is very busy currently, I work 50 hours a week at a job that pays well but frankly I have grown to hate it. I work at a very small engineering firm and the environment is like a startup. I have lots of responsibilities and there is no structure in my organization, huge lack of management- it makes for a very stressful and tense environment. On top of my work week I generally grind 20-30 hours a week and try to find as much time as I can to study (which is never enough). With all of this work time it is hard to stay balanced and maintain a regular social life, to eat well and exercise, etc. I feel like I am being severely limited by my responsibility to my "real job". I plan to go pro in 2015, and will give my notice at work as soon as I have a 30k roll + some savings.

My MTT ROI on the year on Bovada is about 51% over 1400 or so games. I beat 200NL (though I don't have a large enough hand sample in PT4 to prove this), and I have been playing some 100 PLO with good results so far (again, very small sample). I have run various MTT variance/equity calcs to determine what I could expect to make in a year and on a per-month basis, and I'm ready to take the dive. I live in Maine where there is only one card room, so live isn't much of an option (although a juicy 2/5 game does run once per week, and I will probably become a regular in it eventually).

Non-poker goals and life improvements I want to make during this process include the following: work on balance, be more strict about taking 2 days completely off from poker per week. Eat better, more green plants (been doing well in this department, happy with my progress). Work out regularly 3-4 days per week (been doing terribly at this, more like 3-4 days per month currently). Read more books!

My goals for this journal are to track my progress, hold myself accountable, post interesting hands, meet fellow grinders, maybe find a group of people to discuss strategy with. If all goes to plan I will be playing full time by June 2015 and may see some of you at WSOP, thanks for reading!

This journal will also be cross-posted at TPE.

Cliffs:
-I'm going pro in 2015
-I have worked a ton on my MTT game this year and am doing well on US sites
-Want to work on Game Theory, constructing default ranges, and NLHE and PLO cash games
-I live in the US, and on top of that live nowhere near a decent casino
-Looking for fellow US regs to study with- MTT or mid stakes cash grinders
-Love RIO!!!!