Played a few hundred hand session at $100 today and lost two stacks. 75% of it was due to my #1 leak.

Sometimes I feel extremely embarrassed to ever say I played this game for a living and aspire to do it again. I make plays that I don't even see fish make against me. The hand that made me quit tonight:

C/O opens for $3.50, button calls, I squeeze in sb to $13.50 w/Ac2c, c/o folds, button calls

Flop is AT9r (pot is $20.50 after rake)
I bet $11, call

Turn is Tc giving me a fd (pot is $41.40 after rake)
I check, button shoves for $78, I say to myself "I should fold"...I click the call button and he has JTo. Ridiculously enough, I'd have folded 100% of the time if I didn't have a draw there but I HAS A FLUSH DRAW!!!!!

These types of poor decisions just happen way too often. I should be able to click the fold button. It was especially depressing because I had just quit my first session and remarked to my wife how shitty I felt from the pain medicine today (when I was standing, I felt like I was going to just pass out) and I started this session around 5 minutes later despite not feeling well because I was going to 1-table on my tablet instead of 2-table at desktop. I started out up $55 and ended up losing around that after ~10 hands of playing.

Had another hand in my first session where a board ran out 2hQxTh7x8x and c/c'ed a 30bb river bet after I'd bet flop/turn w/QJ in what started as a 4-way pot when I opened MP. Extremely poor play there as well though much better than the above hand which is just pathetic.

Not a good direction in my first step towards a five figure bankroll.

Another somewhat bad day. Played awful at $100. Made some money back at $50nl.

With 3-betting I'm never sure what hands to do this with OOP. Bare in mind this is for Bovada Zone so I'm 3-betting A LOT of hands. I flip flop back and forth on the types of hands I 3-bet with.

My range vs. a button raise when I'm the sb is something like this which is 20% of hands:
TT+,A2s+,K2s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,65s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo

But there are times that I have my range look like this which is 23% of hands:
TT+,A2s+,K8s+,Q8s+,J7s+,T6s+,96s+,85s+,74s+,63s+,52s+,42s+,32s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo

In the latter, I'm tossing out some Kxs and including awful trash such as 52s. In the past few days after some thinking and experimenting, I think the first range is much better and hands like 23s, 52s, 74s, etc are garbage compared to Kxs.

So basically I struggle to think of what's going to play better. Big cards are going to flop tp more often, but they're going to be dominated more often. Another good thing to big cards is having a blocker. Is it better to have a hand like 74s that's playable or a hand like A4o that has a blocker but is super-dominated? Low cards are going to be deceiving, they'll flop things that I can barrel, and since they're not dominated as often, I often have 5 outs compared to 3 outs vs a range. A downside as well is that 2p with a hand like 56s is that it'll get counterfeited a non-negligible amount of the time.

Posted a hand at 2p2 today as well where I bet A5s IP after raising pre on T52hh and somebody said that it's a "100% check back". I've always thought this but then I hear Sauce say that 66 on boards like 45T is a bet to protect and Phil also mentions protection a lot. This is another internal battle I'm having with myself as well but when world class players are mentioning protection w/these hands, I'm going to assume that it's the correct play.

I got very frustrated with my cash game play recently so I took a couple of days off and just tried to stop thinking about it because I constantly beat myself up for dumb plays.

I also took a dip into SNG's. It's funny because I never really played SNG's before Black Friday but out of boredom, I played quite a few a couple of months ago. I played a bunch of HU nonturbos, some Triple or Nothings, and some Double or Nothings. I had really good results in them, which shocked me tbh. Not too shocked with the HU results as WCG coached me in HU for 3-4 months in 2012, so I feel I have a good grasp of those. I don't really enjoy playing HU cash too much so I quit that (too much hnr'ing).

So, I played some $21 DoN's. I realized that in basic spots I wasn't sure what to do so I moved down to the $10.50's. I posted a really simple hand on 2p2 and the few responses I got on that really changed my mindset towards how to play the beginning stages. Basically, don't push tiny edges, reduce variance in the beginning, and wait until people make bigger mistakes at bigger blind levels. Despite playing being unsure in a few spots in the $21's, I played 5 of them and profited $15. Then I played a bunch of $10.50's and ended up closing the day winning 11 in a row and then losing my last one when SNG Wizard spit out the wrong information once and I input the wrong information in another spot.

So far in the $10.50's I've won in 22/29 for a profit of $136 and a ROI of 46.9%. I run good but people are awful. My favorite hand so far:

I limp AhJh otb after two limpers in the second hand of the tourney.

5-ways to a Js 9s 5h flop
checked to me and I bet pot of 100

BB calls and turn is 2c
check, I bet 260 into 300 and he ships for 1120 more

It seems like only J2 beats me as most pairs lead flop, stronger hands c/r this flop, middle pairs probably fold.

I call and he has 83o for the no equity bluff.

From what I've seen in the $21's (I've railed a few as well), they're just about as soft as the $10.50's. I think that I could sustain 15%+ ROI in the $10.50's. I've calculated that I can get 8.9 tournaments per hour (this may be slightly high because of my run hot so far keeping me in tourney's longer). That would be $14.02/hr. If I dropped to 10% ROI at $21's, that would be $18.69/hr. If eventually I moved up to the $52.50's and sustained 8% ROI and played only 6 tournaments per hour it would be $25.20/hr. At $100nl Zone, if I had a 7bb/100 wr, I'd be making $26.25/hr so I think SNG's are comparable to (if not much better) what I could make at 100nl because I don't think I'd be a 7bb winner, probably more like 3.5-5 if I could average my B- game. So I think I'm just going to go forward with SNG's as my main game.

I'm going to play 200 $10.50's and then move up to the $21's as I think I'm wasting money playing that low once I get a bit of experience.

Goals:
Play 200 $10.50's by the end of the 7th.
Take a 15 buy-in shot at $21's. If I lose, build it back at $10.50's and do it again.
Play 1k or 50k hands of SNG's in August, whichever = more tournaments
Start playing some MTT's in mid-August.
Make MTT's my main game when I hit $5k

Bankroll today after losing a bunch at $100nl and some life expenses:
$3738.05

Frustratingly, I need to take some of that for a Dr Appt to get an injection of steroids in my neck to help my pain so I need to get to grinding.

good luck

Thanks Zyzz.

In standard .iso fashion, I set a goal of 200 SNGs by end of 8/7 and have only played 4 because of real life stuff and procrastination. I've always done this and disappointed myself. If I had work ethic, I'd have easily gotten SNE on Stars every year until BF. I always said that if I had a chance to do it over, I'd put in mad volume. I need to stick to that.

In my procrastination I found a 6k post thread on DoN's and have read 500 posts of it so far. I'd say in reading the hands, I make the right decision in my head 95+% which is encouraging and more encouraging is 85+% I find to be extremely easy decisions. I also think that these are the best option for me since I'm rarely on my A-game, since they are robotic and there's no reason for me to deviate from the strategy I employ.

I've also decided that playing $10.50's is retarded. Given that it's 6-handed and half cash, there really can't be that much variance in these. So the four that I've played have been two $10.50's and two $21's and cashed in one $10 and both $20's. My goal for month is still 1k SNGs and I intend on getting there. Since my kid is back in school now, I will hopefully drop my excuse to not play and pick up the volume while she's in school. There is absolutely no reason for me to not be able to do 1k SNGs.

Well, the 7th is over. I played ~50 tourneys. I probably lost around $50ish.

Friday was hard. I played 8 $21's and ended up just losing rake in my first session (-$8). Then I played 8 more and lost 6 of those. Then I figured for life reasons that I didn't have enough time to play some but wanted to make some money so I dropped $56 in around 15 hands at $50nl. Then I played 6 $10.50's and lost a dollar. Then I decided that SNGs suck and I'm awful at them and the hourly I mentioned earlier is wishful thinking so I went and played some $25 to get some confidence back...started well going up $35 and then ended up losing $50 for the session.

Not really sure what to do now. Roll is $3400 and I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick to SNGs, play $10.50's for a while and then move up since I made some mistakes (albeit not huge). I've been playing around with SNG Wizard and trying to get better. This despite having played like 3M+ cash hands.

I've been playing SNGs ever since my last post. I felt that due to my tilting issue, it was a better idea. I also think I was being too hard on myself and putting way too much pressure on myself.

I've been playing mostly $21's. I was playing $10.50's one day and played 12 of them, then decided that it was a waste as I was playing really well and I could crush the $21's. I've played 112 $10.50's and made $155 which I'd say is good especially considering that I wasn't all that sure what to do in a lot of spots until the tail end.

As of now, I've played 59 $21's and made $41 which is decent since it isn't losing. I believe I've been running awful in them too. Been losing tons of hands where I'm a 69%-%81% favorite. In these I've lost AA to KK twice and run KK into AA once (and lost, naturally). I still feel that I can be a huge winner at this stake as I'm running bad, making some small mistakes, and still being able to break even. Most importantly, despite taking all kinds of ridiculous beats, I don't find myself tilting at all because it frustrates me more to make a mistake than get sucked out on.

Tonight, I didn't feel up to playing so I figured I'd try out some triple-or-nothing tournaments. I played 4 $8.75's. It was the absolute worst poker experience of my life. Everybody just stalled until the blinds were super fucking high. I think it's an awful strategy unless you have a big stack in which case it makes at least a bit of sense. Despite this awfulness, I won all 4 for a nice little $61 profit with one of them coming back from 570 chips at 250/500 blinds with 7 people left. Wish that run good would have happened at the $21's.

Overall, I'm on a $100 upswing and hope to keep it going.

SNGs played in August: 163
New SNG goal: 750
Bankroll: $3491.73

Been grinding a ton the past few days. It's been beyond frustrating and I'm so done with SNGs now. Maybe I'm not good enough to beat them as hard as I want and if I can't I know I can at least make more at cash even with some bad play sprinkled in here and there.

My stats for Double-or-Nothing SNGs:
$10.50's: 140 played, $150 cashed out
$21's: 133 played $87 cashed out

Tonight, I bought two tournament tickets ($3.30 and $5.50) with my points for torturing myself with SNGs. I ended up getting 2nd in the $3.30 for $121 which was pretty good but I was (and still am) very steamed about it. I was HU and had this guy all in 4 different times when I was ahead and each time he just survived. KK < AJ, AT chops A4, 78o gets ai on a A74T turn against KQ, and 63 < 45 on 639. I feel like I should be happier but I'm just pissed off about not getting first and losing a 9:1 cl. I've only played like 6-7 turbo tourneys in my life and I've gotten 2nd in two of them now.

So now I'm 75% back from my little $400 downswing. Been grinding some cash and winning as well. Had $98 on ACR and started grinding a bit there at $5nl to get used to software and when my Merge check clears I'm going to grind on both sites. So, back on the grind I go...

Bankroll $3695.26

Barely been playing. Just rage quit a $25nl session.

Raised T8s in c/o after utg limper to $1.25, button and utg call
i barrel off on a 535J5 board against button for no reason and got snapped by fucking A3o that button flatted. I been playing $100nl to $25nl and winning at $100 (through bad plays) and losing lower. I just want to fucking give up and I can't. Yet, I feel like the biggest fucking loser playing poker every fucking session.

I'm under so much pressure to make quite a bit of money before the end of January. I can't get a "real job" because of my neck injury and disability takes an average of 2.5 years to go through.

There was a time when I could follow my instincts and fold all the time instead of raising or calling. I feel like I have so much knowledge and I just can't match my actions to show what I know. So many times, I say, "this is a fold", only to call or raise while making plays that the worst fish wouldn't even make. Somehow I need to change.

To $5nl I go.

Couldn't even beat $5nl. Lost AA to KK AGAIN. My last 4 times with AA vs KK, I've lost. That's probably somewhat unlucky. Had a hand where I opened to $8 deep w/QQ utg for $.15, guy who covers me otb 3-bets to $1.10. At $100, I'd fold this even when playing bad but people are erratic at $5nl. He shoves $7 on the flop and I call, he unsurprisingly has Kings. I'd like to think I fold both times at $100nl.

Speaking of $100nl. I played some $100nl full ring because full ring has always been my best game and because I'm fucking retarded. So naturally I play bad. UTG limps, an MP limps, I pot otb w/AJo, UTG shoves for $21 more so I call like a retard expecting him to show me a better hand but I don't fold because I'm awful at poker.

Cashed out a bit to deposit on ACR because I just want to play 10 tables of $50nl and hope to make at least $10/hr. If I can't then I lose money quicker and can be done with the only thing that has potential to keep me from being homeless. Woohoo.

It looks to me as if you have the same problem I've had for a long time. You expect too much too soon. Your expectations aren't met, so you try barking up a different tree for a while, until the cold hard truth hits you again.

Poker is tough, it is not as easy as it was in 2007, but it is still beatable. But most of all, it requires patience and discipline. Pick whichever type of poker you enjoy the most and find most interesting and then stick with it. Even if the hourly might be less, you will find it easy to put in the time and effort to learn and grind.

A classic piece of advice, is that people think they understand variance, but in reality they dont. Even a flawless destroyer with perfect work-ethics who is a 6bb/100 winner will have a winrate between -2bb to +12bb/100 winrate over 2 million hands. Standard deviation and variance my friend. (These numbers are based on the popular DC series "Tolerance").

Keep your head up, prepare yourself mentally, pick a battleground and do your best. Good luck!

Thanks Nemquin.

Like I said, I cashed out a bit to multitable ACR. Played some $5nl there today because I got $100 on there and I had like 6/8 tables where there were 5 regs with me. Ridiculous. I was thinking that even with playing bad sometimes that I could easily grab 3bb/100 for $10/hr (@$50) averaging 8 tables but maybe that's not true anymore. I had a 5bb/100 wr over 2.5M hands at $200nl fr from 09-11 and that was with tons of tilting and tons of bad plays when I went for SN and inevitably failed. We'll see, but I think it's my best shot. Start at $50 and move up to $100 soon after if I can play decently.

Posted this on 2p2 yesterday:

"In a fun twist of events, I got kicked while I was down. Feeling **ty about poker/life. Was in the hospital for many hours today because I was having trouble breathing and found myself waking up not breathing twice. Hopefully this can be fixed but for now I have to sit upright when I sleep to avoid choking myself to death. Fun stuff. I'm just taking the rest of the month off and perhaps I'll watch some videos to get me in the right frame of mind again before playing in September."

Have appointment with throat/stomach specialist on Monday to see what's up. Hopefully nothing too serious because this appt will already take some of my roll. Luckily I just got insurance in early July because I also go to my pain specialist once/month.

My bank is retarded. I deposited $1700 on 8/3. Check from Merge sent to collections. Inquired about it yesterday and they said that it was processed but it wasn't showing up in my account for some reason. Hopefully this can be cleared up on Monday and I can start grinding ACR on the first of the month.

Haven't been playing due to my health issues. Wednesday I went under to have a camera go down my throat to my stomach to see what was wrong with me. Turns out that I had a narrowing of my esophagus that had no underlying reason. They widened it and I'm mostly better. Slept all day yesterday because I was still messed up from anesthesia and today I've just been lazy.

But I did make a deal with my wife that if I didn't play 50k hands this month, I'd have to buy her a dress. Fuck if I'm going to buy her a dress because I missed my goal. Truth is, when I hit my goal, I'll buy it for her anyways...but I will not fail.

Last month I played ~14k hands and that is the most amount of hands I've played in a single month since BF so, yeah.

Haven't updated in a while but I've been playing a bit this month after barely playing the first week. Yesterday, I had my best day since I got staked by Doug back in 2012. I made $400.

I've been playing $28+$2 Triple-Ups. I had been playing the $10.50 double-or-nothings but I saw that I was barely making anything so I said "fuck this! I have a $3500 bankroll so I'm going to go play $30 games and make some money". I also played some $39 regular 6-max SNGs. So, I've padded my roll up to $4400 right now and that's in spite of having to shell out a bunch of cash for medical issues/food.

I really want to jump up to the $52.50 D-o-N's because the $30's don't fill very fast and there's only an average of 4 minutes between the $50's so if I could play those and had 5% ROI, I could make $17-$20/hr depending on time of day for how fast they pop off. I am a nit though. It took a ton of heart for me to play the 35 $30 tourneys I've played so far. Losing 10 $50's and being down $525 is so much different to me than losing 10 $30's and being down $300 despite the fact I'd still be rolled for both if I did lose a bunch. We shall see.

edit: Played 3 $52.50's an hour or so after I wrote this. Won 2 and lost 1 to profit $42.50. Scary stuff but i want to make some real money to get up to the 5 figures. I'd easily play these $50's if I never cashed out but I probably cashout ~300-500/mo..

I've been playing the $52.50's today and I hope that it makes me play more. Playing what I'd consider high stakes is a lot more exciting which helps me put in some extra work I'd otherwise not do. I have a chance to win hundreds per day whereas at the $10's and $20's I only had the chance for like 1-200 dollars. I had a spot today where I lost like 5 in a row and was in 4 so I was down ~$500 but I'm going to make it. I'm not sure if these are more profitable than the $30's though because the $30's are triple-ups. $52's fill up quicker though so if it's close, that probably gives the edge to the $52's.

I've played 19 so far. I'm 11-8 for a profit of $102.50 to put my roll over $4500 for the first time since 2011.

I'm looking for good DoN content and perhaps getting coaching from a good SNG player but I can't find either. There's a part of me that likes figuring things out for myself but I know if I had somebody to bounce ideas off of, I'd be better for it.

Standard stuff here:

I played a few more of the $50's and gave those up because I just don't think they're as profitable as the triple-ups because 1) the competition is better, 2) the roi will be much smaller because it's a DoN and the ToN is going to equal close to the same or better profit per hour, and 3) since it'll be close to the same profit there's no need to have easy $500 swings when I'll rarely have that at the $30's. Lost $27 total at the $50's. However, there's no room to move up after the $30's because the $55's don't run but the $66's do but they're normal speed tourneys and playing an hour and a half at higher stakes compared to playing half the time at a lower stake tourney seems like less $$$ per hour.

Today was an ok day. I made like $400 but I'm pretty upset about it. I made 2 final tables today. One was a 4/131 $11 6-max tournament. The second was a 8/561 $27.50 tournament. Both were frustrating because I made moves at the end that took me out of contention for winning. I was 1/12 in the $27.50 and donked off ~1/3 of my stack. I feel like I need to defend my blinds in MTTs. The two hands I played that cost me money were QJo and K8s to a just over minr from a cutoff. Clearly I should be calling them deepstacked but I just level myself and make stupid plays. I did the same in a $22 that I got 12th in a few days ago as well w/9Ts. I was so close to a top 3 finish where the top 3 all got over $1k but instead I donked out and got $285. I don't play many MTTs either (Probably like 15 this month) as I focus on SNGs so it's frustrating to not play good when I get superdeep in them.

I also bought ICMizer to get expert at SNGs.

Bankroll hit $5k with this latest pwnage: $5,009. Halfway to $10k :D

Since the two final table day, I've been bouncing back and forth between up $100 and down a few hundo though I haven't play much having gone camping w/wife and kid for a few days. It was weird not playing for a few days and I often found myself thinking about hands I played because I got that passion in me once again.

Played a bunch of tourneys yesterday. I was hyped watching Jason Somerville's stream and wanted to play a bunch of tourneys on the WCOOP main event day. I went 0/11 and lost $200 playing between $4.40's and $33's. Ran really awful. Tilted a little bit. Wasn't my day.

A week or so ago, I decided that I'd give myself a $500 bankroll for PLO and run it up. Starting at $25 and moving up when I hit $750. < 1k hands in and I'm past $750. Not too confident in my preflop play. However, I'm confident that (at 25 at least) I'm way better postflop than the typical player. I value position a lot more in PLO so that may lead to folding to too many raises preflop especially when they're 5x raises.

I've been thinking about giving myself a $500 bankroll for MTTs as well and running that up as well. However, I think that'd be ridiculously tedious and just ridiculous in itself when I'm playing 4 $30 SNGs and a $5.50 MTT. I'd rather just focus more on the SNGs than put any energy into a $1-$5 MTT.

Had to spend a bit of money so my roll has dipped to ~$4750. I'd be at around $7k right now since I started this thread but life stuff gets in the way.

I've been watching JCarver since the WCOOP began and something that I've been doing the past couple weeks is something I haven't done in a long long time. I've been having fun playing poker. PLO is swingy and I hate swings but PLO is fun and I want to have fun while making money. I definitely still consider SNGs my main game and have fun with those too but it'd be nice to get to a point where I could make as much per hour at PLO as I make at SNGs. I'd almost certainly play like 75/25 in favor of PLO.

I made surpassed August and made September my biggest month since Black Friday.

I haven't been playing much PLO after a couple of bad $50 sessions. I've made a bit back at $25 but it's hard to play there when my hourly will never be close to what I make in SNGs. I do acknowledge, though, that any game I'm plus ev in and don't play while not playing SNGs is me just losing money which is why I've played some $25plo.

I've been going up and down in SNGs. It's been frustratingly fun. I lost something like 15 buy-ins and didn't even really notice which is nice because my old nittyself would've said "why don't you move down?". But, I trucked on and dragged myself out of it.

There was a point where I lost ~$250 on Saturday and quit for the day. That day, I put in more volume than I ever had with 33 SNGs. Triple-ups last a long time, so I'm pretty happy about that. I was determined to play forever and it be the start of playing tons this month. Then yesterday happened. I randomly joined SNGs that weren't triple-ups ($11, $26, $13) and ended up getting 3rd in the $11 when I had over half the chips with 5 left. I then lost a triple-up and only had one left and said "no mas". Unregged for the ones I was regged for. Then I said WWJCD, which of course is short for "What would JCarver do". He would say persevere and show tenacity so I regged for 2 more triple-ups and a regular $39 SNG. I shipped the $39 SNG and won 6 straight triple-ups.

Here are my first 150 triple-ups:

So 20% ROI while I'm learning. Not bad. I think I can probably attain somewhere between 15 and 25% ROI. I've certainly made some mistakes that have cost me entire tournaments.

As I've posted about before, the $30's are the pinnacle of triple-ups that run so I need something more to aspire to because I don't want to just be content at the $30's. I think once I get $8-$10k I'm going to explore into $200 regular turbos that seem to run while regularly playing the $39's that I play once in a while now. Once I hit $10k, I'm going to play MTTs as my main game for a month with SNGs on the side.

As for now, I (sadly) have to make a big purchase and buy a laptop along with Holdem Indicator and Stack and Tile because all this playing is proving too much for my neck. I sit and I can't stomach playing anymore. My PC days may be over with.

After that day I didn't play until today. I've just been too sore. But today I toughed it out.

I went 7/16 in $30 Triple-or-nothings for a $106 profit. I felt pretty rusty after 4 days off. I feel like I should've cashed in 2 or 3 more. I definitely made a few bad plays and was stumped a few times when it was my turn. In one I had ~45% of chips in play with 5 left and in theory I should've easily cashed but somehow I busted.

I played a few tournaments. A couple $11's that failed. I got 33rd in a $3.30 out of 468. Then I got 18th in a $15.50 bounty out of ~140 which was frustrating as all fuck. I got in as 5th place against the 7th place guy w/KK against his Jacks and couldn't hold. Would've easily been enough to be final table material. Before that one I got 11th in a $6.60 rebuy out of 139 people on ACR.

Played some $1/$2 7 Card Stud and made a few bucks. Played around 250 hands at Zoom $10nl and made $38. Played some $9 Triple-or-nothings when I felt too tired to play the $30's. Played tons of hands today which makes me pretty happy.

All of that finally got me out of my $750 downswing that started 20 days ago. So I'm up $100 the past 3 weeks!!!

I felt so motivated for MTTs today. I watched a couple of James Obst videos and he's an incredible video maker. He's quite a good motivational speaker and of course, he's quite good at poker strategy as well. I rarely do anything resembling studying because SNGs are so mechanical (probably study around 1-2 hrs/week). I'm going to try to put in 2 hours per day of study of MTTs and one day where I study 1-2 hours of SNGs. This is in stark contrast to my cash playing games before BF where I probably studied 75%+ of the time.

Well that was a short lived out of downswing. I immediately lost $530 yesterday. Sadly, only $250ish was at SNGs. I need to just stick with what I'm good at, which is SNGs.

Lost a bunch of MTTs. Lost more in cash games. Lost $130something in $30 triple-ups. Lost $21 in $14 triple-ups. Found some high stakes SNGs I wanted to play, so I jumped in those. There was actually a $60 triple-up that was about to run so I jumped in that and lost. Then I saw a 9-person $55 turbo so I jumped in that. In the $55 it was down to 4-handed and UTG jammed for 2800 w/100/200 blinds w/T8s...I had KK in sb and couldn't hold. I don't regret the higher stakes games because I'm +ev in them, just ul in both (lost AK to JJ 5-handed in the $60)

I don't think I've felt worse about poker as I do right now. I was so happy at the end of Saturday and then Sunday happened and now I have to climb out of $500+ again and down a bunch because of life expenses. Last night after I had lost all that money, I felt motivated to play more. Today after waking up, I just want to give up.

Bankroll: $2747.05 that I actually have. I loaned my wife $500 and I have $900 stuck on Merge atm that's been waiting 3.5 months to be processed out of there. Fuck Merge. Although I'm confident I'll get the money, waiting for 4 months + having another month where it clears is stressful and ridiculous.

I also need to have a bankroll of $7700 on 2/1/16 because of moving expenses and have another $1800 in expenses until then. So I need to make $6752.50 in 112 days. No fucking pressure. Even with my swings, I'm still making $4 per $30 triple-up. I could easily play 50/day and even if my wr dropped to $1 per triple-up, I'd make it by 2/1. I'm still working on my SNG game and still have some big leaks so I expect my wr to be around $4+/SNG.

Well, I had my shit day. I dusted that off and played not long after my post above. I played lower ($14's) just to get some confidence back. Made $50 or so over 24 tournaments. I was happy with that and would've played more but Bovada went down for 5 or so hours..

Yesterday, I had my best grinding day, ever. In 12 years of playing poker now, I've never had a day where I've just done intense grinding for 8 hours. I've played MTTs for 8 hours before but those aren't intense for the first few hours. I just registered SNG after SNG for 8 hours. I stayed at the $14's. No real reason for that, just felt more comfortable at the time. I played 48 SNGs. I made ~$225. I think out of those, I made two clear mistakes which I think is improvement.

I had said that I don't study much but after my shit day, I studied, a lot. I posted a hand on 2p2. I got one reply to my post. That reply propelled me study on ICMizer and those two things combined pointed out a glaring leak I have...I'm not aggressive enough when there are antes in play. It's kind of funny to because when I played the $52.50 D-o-N's, I realized that the play was different and when people got chips they got more aggressive and they just accumulated chips. I think I now realize how to do that. People at the $14's and even the $30's don't play that aggressive. People play like pussies that are scared to lose. So if I can be fearless, I'll be crushing the $30's again in no time.

Been a long time since updating. I haven't played much due to my aforementioned health issues. Money didn't clear until today so I can go grab a laptop. At this point, I'm just waiting until Black Friday to get it.

I did play a couple hundred $30 SNGs and broke even. Over my last 600 SNGs I've broken even. I realized that and then theorized that I'd been doing well at PLO because my roll has been getting bigger. I didn't have a PLO tracker and I got it earlier today. These are my results so far:

http://i.imgur.com/FsHTdds.jpg

I guess that's what happens when you watch just about every Galfond PLO video since the beginning of BFP. I'm running way over ev but I'd have been happy with just running at ev.

So needless to say, I'm sticking with PLO. I've made so many mistakes in these hands so I think I can do even better. I think my preflop game is kind of shit but PLO is a postflop game. I think I'm way too tight in some spots and too loose in some spots. I could easily be looser preflop because I think my edge postflop is significant at these microstakes games.

I do have a big obstacle to overcome. I'm scared to lose so it's hard for me to actually go play. Once I get to the tables though, I play fearlessly. I watch lots of inspirational videos on YT to try to get over this. Lately I've been on a kick of watching tons of Floyd Mayweather vids. Something that really resonated with me was to be obsessed with what I'm focusing on so I'm constantly watching videos, reviewing hands, reading a book I got (Mastering Pot-Limit Omaha: The Modern Aggressive Approach. Very good book. Have read it 3 times already), and finally, playing.