Just had one of the worst sessions I have ever have in terms of results. Dropped close to 5 today and it does not feel very good. It was a combination of run bad and cd. It must get tiring hearing people blame their variance on those factors. Although, if I play badly, I will admit it. Bricked all of my MTTs besides some min cashes. Couple spots that I did butcher in MTTs, but other spots just ran badly. In terms of HUSNGs, there is one reg in particular who runs like god himself vs me. It is honestly the sickest thing I have seen in a long time. Moving forward, I am going to refrain from writing in chat. Also, today was one of the first days in a while I complained a lot in Skype, definitely need to shut that down.

In a weird way, I am looking forward to FTP closing down. Feel as though I need a fresh start sometimes. I will lets my FTP graphs speak for themselves once I update overall challenge graphs.

Today FTP basically died. It is time for me to move on and I will be playing on Stars and possibly some other sites in the future. Completely uninstalled all of FTP from my computer. Not sure what I should do with my FTP data in PT4, but might do a challenge update with all of the graphs because the site as it was is no longer.

Moving forward, I purchased Sharkystrator again and will be grinding 15s for the rest of the month. I want to acclimatize myself to Stars again and feel completely comfortable before possibly battling cartels. Anyways, played a very brief sesh on Stars today and got in ~20 games or so. Definitely like the ability to hide bankroll and not know exactly how the grind is going unless I check my results.

Have the second soccer game of the season tonight, but I am still sidelined with a heel injury. I did some cardio after lifting yesterday and I'd say it is roughly 75-80% healed. I should be getting back on the pitch for practice and then next week's game, which is definitely a relief!

During the month of May, FTP merged with Stars and it essentially became Stars. At that point, I basically took the rest of the month off from poker. I dabbled and tested other sites, but apart from that, it was not much of a grind. I have mixed emotions concerning the merge, but I will get to that.

Overall, the month has been relatively positive. My soccer team is currently 1-1-1 in a tough division. I have been eating healthily and working out consistently. In terms of body weight, I am probably the lightest I have been in 2-3 years - whilst putting on muscle mass. Very satisfying to be able to achieve variance free results for once!

With that said, let's recap the short month of poker and I will address some thoughts/concerns I have going forward.



These are strictly volume fillers or games that I play to warm up when I decide to start a sesh.



Finally began to run well in these, yet that was short lived due to the merge which is very unfortunate.



Played these when I could, not much volume and mostly vs. regs. Lack of a sample size so cannot really say very much.



Just an overall graph combining 10s, 25s and 50s for the month. Naturally the graph looks weird since the 50s graph had an impact, but this is how it looks overall.



Meh. Flicked a few in for some variety/table count. I had been trying to win one of the FTP avatar tournaments so I could have a sexy avatar, but gave up once I found out about the Stars merge. Although, I did come close previously in this thread!




Unfortunately, I slacked off after the merge instead of really grinding Stars like I had planned and did not hit 10k profit on the challenge. I think that would have been a great way to get the Summer 16 grind started. As mentioned earlier, I definitely have mixed feelings concerning the merge as FTP was basically my first site and where I played the most poker. Now it has essentially been killed off and I will be grinding on Stars. With that said, I will most likely be doing a challenge recap and posting full graphs for the challenge so far to conclude and give closure to FTP. This will shed more light on this thread as a whole and previous comments/posts that I have made.

Moving forward, I plan to grind on Stars and other sites if they are good to supplement volume. I really want to work hard this Summer and put in a lot of solid volume since I will have loads of free time. I may be taking some Summer courses, but that is still undecided. Apart from that, I plan to continue eating healthily and lifting consistently as well as playing soccer multiple times per week. Eventually, I would like to embark on some more road trips and definitely take full advantage of some cheeky weekends!

Anyways, thanks for reading guys and cheers to Summer 16!

Elliott

Time to get on the summer grind brotha

hell ya, Summer 16 let's get it!

Grinded my first day of Summer (even though not officially Summer yet) and I got through the volume rather easily. Unfortunately, it was not all A+ volume and I had some leaks and what not. Definitely need to put in some work and focus harder. Not sure if a few weeks off made me a little rusty, but there is work to be done!

Going to hit the gym tonight then watch NHL playoffs!

Also got spotify premium for the Summer so I'm pretty pumped.

I have decided that it is finally time that I do an overall challenge update. This is due to the FTP merger as well as being roughly 10% to my ambitious goal. It will be good to practice transparency by updating with my overall results. One day I will be able to look back and be very glad that I decided to do this and remained accountable.




Also, decided to post my 10s graph which includes the games I played last Summer to show how variance evens out more over long term and provide more accurate sample for my skill set at this level. Most of these games I did not include in this challenge, but they did help my build my BR so they are very relevant.



Naturally, a lot of the whining and running badly claims can be seen from this challenge graph. It took a lot for me to focus mainly on the fact that my actual ROI is good enough and what I initially set as a goal for myself, even though EV was higher.



These are really just a lack of volume and sample size. Cannot really say much, but I was confident I could beat this stake for solid EV ROI, but we'll never know for sure now.

Finally told a family member about my thread/poker journey last night. Felt good to share this aspect of my life with someone close to me.

Too hungover to play today, but who knows, maybe I'll fire a sesh later on.

10% Of the goal pretty much done!

Said on Skype but may as well put it here as well, huge congrats. Very few people get on a solid path to their goals, and you've done just that.

GL crushing Stars!

thanks Jay, means a lot!

Very solid sesh today. I think I banged out roughly 75-80 games and I would honestly say I played my best for at least 95% of them. Really good feeling to feel in the zone and have absolute confidence in your decision making. Might play another sesh later, but for now going to go lift.

Probably going to watch NHL Playoffs tonight too, should be good!

Stars. AKA Judas.

Just found your PG&C GL man.

Also didn't realize you were from montreal i think you posted in my PG&C a few days ago asking about playground poker vs. casino de montreal.

Dude we should totally meet up @ playground one of these days if you want :?

Anyways sick thread

I don't really play much live poker but I'm glad you answered my question because it reaffirmed my thoughts. I'm kind of surprised that rake is so high at Montreal Casino and Playground compared to other poker rooms.

I've actually been lurking your thread for a while because I find it interesting since I'm inexperienced at live poker. Anyways, I'm sure if I get into the live game, we'll cross paths and link up man. Keep putting in work!

From what i hear/know of Quebec and Ontario provinces are pretty tough places to grind live poker out.

---

Aw .

It really depends what your goals are live vs. online. But i think you should supplement poker with both because not only will you improve greatly (online) but your overall bankroll will improve greatly/you will win more money (live).

It's sort of tough in deciding and it depends on the person and what they want to achieve within a year...

Might be forced to grind out live poker if Quebec doomswitches online poker...

Definitely want to build a live bankroll though!

Just posting this to remind myself of a few things. Using some games I played yesterday as an example. Obviously I do not feel this sentiment because of yesterday's games alone because the sample size is absolutely irrelevant. It is more so how I have felt about the month in regards to PokerStars.

When things are not going your way and you want to quit, you have two options.


The first option is that you can quit and give up and let adversity swallow you whole.




The second option is that you can continue to believe in yourself and push through the adversity.




Obviously this would be more relevant over a large sample of games but I think that building the correct mindset is super important.

The month itself is going well if I look at the bigger picture, but there are moments of frustration.

Today was an interesting day for me.

Firstly, just came off of a three day bender which involved a lot of alcohol, sunshine, and lack of sleep. On top of that, my air conditioning was malfunctioning all week so had to endure some relatively bad humidity. Funnily enough, I mentioned this to my uncle who turned around and said that it was 51 degrees in Baghdad...Must be hell on Earth.

Anyways, air conditioning got sorted today and I put in a sesh where I can say I lost a hand with a straight flush haha. We were aipf board ran out KJ10Q9 all clubs and villain had Ac for the royal. Aside from that, this site I was playing on was glitched and basically I got blinded out in a game due to the game not opening when someone sat me. I even tried to manually sit and it would not let me - extremely frustrating. Makes me wonder if this has happened before and it went unnoticed.

On a positive note, I received an email from a professor of mine informing me that he had reviewed some of my work and adjusted my grade. Was thrilled at this and honestly felt better than winning an MTT.

Skipped the gym today due to feeling under the weather, but back on the grind this week and I'm looking forward to it!

Normally, I say how the month flew by, but this might have been the quickest month this year. It honestly feels as though the month began and then all of a sudden I woke up and the month was over. Anyways, a lot happened in June and I will do my best to recap it.

Most notably, my friends came back home for the Summer and we hung out a fair bit (especially on the weekends). There was a fair amount of boozing and partying and as a result, my health and fitness suffered. Today, I played a sesh and was tilted so I just put my runners on and got out of the house for a head clearing run. Honestly it felt good to get back to it. Also, my soccer team is not doing as well as I had hoped, but we will continue to improve and roll with the punches. Although, we need to practice more, that's for sure.

Something very important is that I finally opened up about my poker journey (including this thread) to the people closest to me. Prior to telling my sibling and friends, there had been only one other person who had seen or known about this thread. Honestly, I am still unsure as to how opening up has or will affect me, but I guess it is to be determined. In a strange way, it did feel like I was getting something off of my chest though.

On the poker front, I have been playing on multiple sites and will even be adding more sites into my arsenal. It was a pretty straightforward month as I played HUSNGs exclusively. Did not even fire one MTT. Was not tempted whatsoever, possibly because I really covet the option to just snap quit my sesh and go do something else in this Summer weather. Now, onto the results.



I am essentially treating these as I used to treat 10$ Hypers and will use them to help build my bankroll and add supplementary volume and stay sharp with a good table count. I don't even mind that some weak regs sit me often as I have a decent edge on them and they make clear mistakes.



Decided to play these for more volume and also to see how I would do against the field. At first, a lot of regs played me, but now most of them have backed off. Unfortunately, I ran like complete dog ****.



Ideally, these would be my main source of action, but the volume just is not there so far. I battled a number of regs and some of them still sit me due to lack of action. Not really concerned about these so far, but definitely fortunate to have ran well.




With that said, pretty happy that I finally broke the 10k mark on the challenge so officially past 10% of the challenge. There was no update for MTTs as I did not play any and I did not know how to combine all my HUSNGs into one graph as I play on multiple sites. If anyone knows how to combine player aliases into one graph, please let me know!

Might not play tomorrow as it is Canada Day and I want to enjoy the festivities. Apart from that, the plan is to get back on the grind - poker and health. I will also continue to enjoy the Summer and take full advantage when I can. As always, thanks for reading everyone!

Elliott

What site do you play?

nice dedication !

thanks!

wow, super useful, thank you very much for showing me this man


__________



after combining my aliases in my database, my monthly overall graph looks like this

Told myself that I could take the day off yesterday and go out with friends for Canada day. That didn't happen. Next thing I know, I didn't feel like going out due to bad weather and played 130 games haha. Getting better at putting in good volume. Looking forward to Germany/Italy today though!

Today I noticed a discrepancy in my cashier compared to my PT4 results. I then decided to request hand histories/tournament summaries by emailing support and then manually inputting them into PT4. To my surprise, the discrepancy was more than I originally thought. At first I just thought it was 2 BIs, but it ended up being 6 BIs in total - including some from last update. Fortunately, in total, it was 6 BI that I won that were marked as losses. Pretty interesting and will have to adjust this when I do my next monthly update.