Been thinking about making a thread for a while now and hope nobody minds this. In this I plan to update a lot and post a bunch of strat so if you like talking strategy, this will be for you.

Some background on me: Started playing poker after watching Moneymaker win WSOP and said, like many others, "I can do that". I was at a shitty job so I went for it and after a failed try at being a pro for 8 months in 2004 and then quit my job again in January 2005 and did it until Black Friday while making a bunch of money but spending too much of it. I got in a car accident while job hunting in 2012 after blowing through my bankroll, I got a settlement from that last year and put only $1k on Merge. From there I've grown my roll to $4100. I've not put in my volume so I'm pretty happy with that. So, my goal right now is to get my roll to $10k...and then get to $100k.

Right now I'm playing almost strictly cash games and playing $100nl Bovada Zone and when I'm not playing my A-B game, I'm playing $25 since $50 rarely runs. I'm probably not going to get a ton of volume in as my kid is still on summer vacation for another two weeks. When she goes back, I'm sure my volume will increase greatly. I'm going to try to do 50k hands of $100nl/month. So far I'm up 9 stacks in 2300 hands and somehow I don't think that's sustainable but I'd be shocked if I wasn't a 5bb/100 winner in this game

Ultimately, my goal is to become a MTT pro while playing cash on the side. But at the moment, I'm not playing them at all.

A few weeks ago I bought an essential package here and then thought that I'd get more out of elite so I took what was 4% of my roll then and bought that. I've watched a bunch of videos since then and really felt like I've learned a ton and my game has improved a ton. The #1 change that I've made to my game is from watching Sauce and overbetting a lot of hands with probably 90%+ being bluffs because value bets don't seem to get payed this way. I also think I was opening too many buttons (too many 53s/74s type hands, although probably not awful, it's probably not good either). Oddly, I never thought of poker as a strategy game before I heard Sauce talking about it that way and I think thinking of it like this made me SO much better at the anonymous tables as I just have to have a good strategy and stick to it.

Another huge thing from the elite videos that I've learned is to fight for pots. None of the pros I listened to said this but I realized after playing a few thousand hands after watching that I was fighting for almost every single pot. A turning point for me was a specific Galfond spot where he called a 3-bet with KJ otb and I said in my mind "ok this is a call or a fold" and he says something like "I could call but maybe raising is a bit better" and I realized I was thinking about poker the wrong way for so long and nutpeddling for so long (I was a pro full ring player after all) when folding wasn't even in his mind with K-high with two overs and a bdsd.

Going forward there are some (many?) leaks that I hope to fix going forward:

1. Playing my A-game more often. From that car accident, I'm on oxycodone 24/7 so I'm not actually on my A-game that much so before each session I assess how cloudy my mind is and if I'm too cloudy, I play $25nl. How will I do this? I'm not sure.

2. Today in a 10 minute $50nl session, I think I recognized my biggest in-game leak which is being too tricky/not valuebetting enough. Example, I bet KQs vs button after opening MP on a Kc 9c 4x flop and then checked a 9x turn to which he checked and then checked a Kx river to which he checked back. This is just awful and I feel in general I try to c/r too much otr and if I always vb that I'd make much more.

3. Calling too lightly on flops/rivers. No example but I'm sure many who are reading are guilty of this. I do try to assess the pot odds I'm getting and ask myself if I'm good x% of the time.

4. Not a leak but something I'm trying to "figure out". What hands to 3-bet with in the blinds. I'll get into this in my next post.

Another thing I'm working on that I don't consider a leak is to bluff raise more flops. Especially 1/2 pot or < 1/2 pot bets because it has to work so much less. When the pot is $10 and somebody bets $5, it's easy to raise to $14 with any kind of equity because it probably works the 48.3% it needs to to be profitable.

Why do I not play MTTs if I aspire to play them later on? Good question! With the pills I'm on I find it hard to focus for many hours at a time and I punt off too many tournaments. Also, on Bovada, MTTs are frustrating because there are people who will stall from the very first hand of the tournament. I'd say that > 50% of tournaments have somebody stalling from the beginning, whether it's on purpose or not. Eventually I'll start playing them on Bovada and ACR. Why do I want to play MTTs? I think they'll be a better hourly if I can get good at $20's+ because playing 2 tables of $100nl for a long time doesn't seem lucrative.

Seeing as how this is super long already, I'm going to save some hands and real strategy for tomorrow.