OK, so not technically a wedding. But the mother of my son (due June 1st!) and I plan to marry in Las Vegas and play some poker together as a bit of a honeymoon. So here's the plan... pay for plane tickets and hotel with poker. I have a good, steady job so I don't need to BR the whole trip. Just thought it would be a fun goal that I should be able to hit by the time we can shift our focus from the baby for a week.

I've been playing poker for a year (sadly, i know) and was pretty up and down when I first started. $10 to $50 and back down to bust... I probably deposited a total of $100 while I was "learning" how to play and reading as much as I possibly could. Eventually found my shtick as a 27/45 SNG player where I took $20 and turned it to $217 in about two weeks. Win in a 90 a 45 and regular cashes in my regular 27s were making me get too confident. Sadly this coincided with me reading Gus Hansen's "All Hands Revealed" which had me trying all sorts of crazy plays and while playing well, almost ALWAYS BUSTING at some point on a stupid play in a pivotal spot. I went on a two week cooler and found myself at $59!!!

Was tilting really hard in general even though $150 shouldn't make that much of a difference, just the fact that my BR wasn't growing was affecting my whole attitude. Plus I already promised myself that I would not deposit another dime for poker and I had to stop being a jackass before bust. Finally got back to basics, re-read Theory of Poker and picked up Colin Moshman's SNG Strategy and almost instantly went back to playing my style of TAG poker. Did all my re-reading (and burning Hansen's book ... jk) last weekend and have played maybe 4-7 SNGs a day.

I'm back to over $140, just playing $3 27s on Stars ... pretty upset with my day so far as I had almost 3x the second biggest stack on two final tables today and ended up with two 5ths... I had KKs cracked by A6 QQ by a set of 33s and a whole rash of bad beats, Ace high flush to boat. I spewed a lot of chips trying to continue my relentless style and called pushes in the wrong spots. Definitely not my style. I walked away after that, which I was proud of since still UP but not gonna let myself play while being pissed of. Looking back, and assessing my final table play, I really needed to just change gears after losing some big pots and let the small stacks go at it while I pick a spot here and there to cruise to at least a Top 3 finish.

Anyway, I like this forum idea and plan to update somewhat regularly... I read a lot around here but don't have a whole lot to add.

BTW - as far as my BRM, I really can't play any lower than $3 SNGs... from a donk frustration standpoint. i think i can withstand the variance as long as i dont think im hansen!

lol at trying to learn anything poker related from Gus Hansen.

Also, your gf is 8 months pregnant and you're taking her to Vegas? You do know it's hot down there, right?

I just thought the perspective of reading his thought process from hand to hand would be valuable. Between the cost of the book and the losses thereafter, it was about a -$180 investment!! LOL

We live in Atlanta so it's hot down here too, but we're planning to do it in the fall after the baby has had some time to be at home. You know a new mother is going to have separation issues at first so it's going to take some time before I'll even be able to get her away from the baby.

I think I have time to put $1000 or so together. Really, we're going to go anyway, but I'd love to be able to point at poker at say "look babe, all this time i 'waste' playing actually serves some purpose".

At what point do you guys think I should move up to $5 27 mans? I'm thinking maybe $350 would be comfortable point for the job. I feel like I'm playing very consistent and dominating most games until the very end. I need to work on my 3-5 handed situations... feel I have a bit of a leak here with my hand selections.

$350 would be a healthy starting point for $5 27 man tourneys in my opinion. How many tourneys do you play at a time typically?

BAEVentures

Usually just one at a time. Not necessarily because I've struggled with more but just that I feel I might be a bit under-rolled to withstand variance. I've been contemplating playing more but it's one of those 'blind' situations, I really don't know how it would go and would hate a -$40+ loss finding out the hard way.

BRM in general is something I'm really focused at learning and becoming more disciplined with. Just because I have the money (bank account) doesn't mean I can be an idiot... trying to do this the right way and 2+2 has been a tremendous help.

That is an excellent call. BRM is the hardest thing to learn as an online or live player. Keeping in mind that you're only playing one tourney at a time, I think you could even drop your minimum bank roll requirement to 35-50x your buy in.

awww grats on the child your expecting (or your partner is lol)

nice to see you doing well and taking brm seriously, if I was you I would look at some kind of drop down rule as well as thinking about moving up, e.g. if you move up and lose a certain number of buy ins, at some point it would be sensible to move down so you can regenerate - I'd give this some thought if you're thinking of moving up to 5's.

Gl sounds like you have a great plan

i think what you're doing is awesome...learning good BRM before you lose boat loads of money is also a good touch. Not everyone learns that early! GL and hopefully you can reach your milestone

My advice is to try 2 tables asap, it won't be much different than 1 table and if you're a winning player it will essentially double your $/hour.

Make sure you post regularly with HH's and graphs.

Definately add a second or even third table.

I usually play 3-6 tables and for the most part I have time to take notes(usually mental ones) and think about every play I make.