Welcome to my latest adventure in my poker life and grind. I have been on 2+2 for 5+ years now, and have already had quite a journey up to this point. As I am looking to achieve greater things from my efforts in the poker world, I felt this was a good time and place to ‘get busy livin’ and reaching higher than ever before, and accomplish more than I ever thought possible when I first started this amazing journey.

I have been primarily a mid stakes MTT player for most of the last 6 years or so, and late last year, I decided to return to my roots as a cash game player. When I first started playing poker it was live cash games in Scottsdale, Az. I soon found tournaments, and followed that passion for many years. I actually have a pretty decent sample of a background in live games, but I made the move to online after a few years, and became a full time online MTT grinder.

Fast forward to black friday, and another few years of US facing sites MTT grinding, I made the decision to transition back into cash games as my primary poker variant. That is what brings me here today.

What I hope to accomplish with this thread is to add some more accountability to my efforts and to share a very short list of results goals to the poker public to help with that for 2015. I don’t really want this to be too much about poker strategy and HH posts, but more about sharing the challenges of the transition back into cash games and then to share the results I am able to achieve through following the process goals I have in place.

What stakes/Where will I be playing:

[ ] I will be grinding most of my volume at 6 max 100NL online on Bovada, with some Carbon games mixed in to start out in January. I have some goals in place to move up to 200NL by summer 2015, with a longer term yearly goal in place to move up to 400NL.

[ ] I will also be grinding live 2-3 Spread Limit (NL hybrid for Arizona) to start out in January. I have some longer term goals for my live cash game play, but I am not going to be focusing on them for now. As my year evolves, I will come back to this more.

I will not have any bankroll guideline goals to post for now, as I am starting out this journey 100% backed. I have my reasoning for why I have chosen to play backed for this journey in 2015, and as my poker game and my life in general evolves, I can and will revisit if I would change that for any reason.

Volume goals:

[ ] I will play an average of 25K hands per month, or approx. 20 hours a week.

[ ] I will play 8 hours a week on average of live cash, or approx. 32 hours a month.

Mental game and work ethic goals:

[ ] Spend 2 sessions per month working with coaches and network of players in our stable on average.

[ ] Spend 2 hours per week working individually on HH analysis of previous days/weeks sessions. (Also can include watching training vids or 1 on 1 coaching sessions).

[ ] Stay current in reading all subb'd PG&C threads, along with staying current in keeping good weekly/monthly updates in this thread.

To put these goals into perspective, I just completed almost 75K hands playing 25NL - 100NL the last 4 months. After starting out down after the first25k hands, we have been able to achieve a combined winrate of 6.23bb/100 over the last 50K hands. I attribute my small sample but positive trends to the help of my coaches in my stable, along with my already solid foundation of key poker fundamentals coupled with my personal work ethic to challenge myself to improve everyday.

I am not going to assign any win rate or profit goals to this thread for now, as I don't want to blur my focus on those numbers and put added unnecessary stress into my mental game. I am very confident that by following my volume and work ethic goals that I will be able to achieve a high level of success. As my journey continues on this year and beyond, I can circle back to this thought process, and see where I am at and decide if I would like to add in some specific goals for them.

For all of the goals I have posted, as life goals evolve and different challenges are met and new ones are introduced, I can and will revisit them throughout the year to see what, if any, changes to them need to be made.

Thank you for following along in my journey this year. Any and all thoughts and insights are appreciated.

Good luck Mike, 2015 is going to be a huge year for you.

-Shane

Gl bud

Good luck!!

Since everyone likes giraffes, I'll kick off the thread with my 4th quarter 2014 and December stand alone results:

Subbed and GL!

Subbed, GL Mike!

nice job turning the corner on your cash game play in 2014!

keep putting in the effort in 2015 and you'll keep seeing improvement

gl

corporate clown is a good screenname imo

gl subbed!

the year of mike!

In, gl!

and +1, corporate clown would make a good sn

Played a small session online to kick off my January, and it started off very well finding some good tables right away. Usually I will only play a few orbits at a table on Bovada before I know if I have the right fish I want to target at the table or not. Sometimes it only takes the first hand to realize who my target(s) might be.

I have really improved in a short amount of time (small sample of months/hands) in being able to set up baseline assumptions for my "anonymous" opponents. This aspect of identifying not only who the fish are, but what type of fish they are has definitely helped my win rate slowly improve. This exact thought, or idea, is my "current learning focus".

I take something that I have identified as a potential leak, or weak part of my game (also as identified by the insight from my coaches when they review HHs and databases with me) and I generate a one sentence "current learning focus" and I will physically write it down on a post it note, and it clings to the bottom of my monitor so my peripheral vision will help remind me of the thought until it is second nature.

This is something that has helped me train my unconscious competence so that as I gain more experience through volume and find myself perhaps in similar spots, or against specific villain types, I can work through the 'troubled' spot much faster and more optimally. Once I feel I have improved the leak considerably, then I will move on to a new focus. The concept really came from reading The Mental Game of Poker.

Sidebar: thank you Jared Tendler, who is an incredible mind and great coach on the subject. I had the opportunity to work with him thanks to my backers and coaches setting up an invaluable session with him.

I have seen this mentioned in countless PG&C threads now, but I'll also jump on the bandwagon that improving our mental game is where we will without a doubt be able to improve our win rates and over all poker game.

I always thought I was really good at not playing on emotion, but as I am transitioning back into cash, specifically playing 100BB poker, I have seen the incredible urgency that staying focused through each hand has, and that keeping a balanced and controlled mental game is what very well may determine if it will cost me a full buy in, or earn(save) me a full buy in.

I went even more specific than that... (Secret sn not-so-secret)

Thanks for all the support and vote of confidence guys!

Thanks bud! u2!

Thanks guys!

Good Luck Mike! Hope I am not one of your live victims at TSR this year

Subbed gl

subbed, gl. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders. Looking forward to following your progress.

GL. Wear your magic disco shirt and you'll do great!

How do you track your bovada results?

Ha, thanks Sal! I'm sure I'll table select enough to stay out of your way as well

Thanks for the follow guys!