Definitely been an up and down week, even tho we took a sizable loss in the Flamingo 2/5 game, I had bounced back and made nice progress with some online hours this week to keep the momentum going the right direction. The last 2 days, however, have been pretty brutal, and I have ran into some nasty variance coupled with probably playing too long of a session and sliding into my C game. After climbing all the way out of my hole created a few months back, I dropped back down into it again losing 2+ buy ins of 2/5 in the last couple sessions. Just a small blip on the radar, but hurts mentally nonetheless when it felt like it was time to finally get out of that breakeven stretch! Even tho I've had profitable months every month since the down month of October, it's still just one long breakeven stretch. Closing in on about 500 hours. Small sample in the drop of the bucket, but in terms of the fact that that makes up 1/3rd of a year for me, it feels bigger than it actually realistically is.

Went into a session tonite with some lingering tilt as a result I think, and really kicked and scratched and struggled to play A game poker for 3 straight hours. Without winning any sizable pots in the time frame, and playing a little too passively in some spots, I was fortunate enough to get out of the game before my mental and technical game slipped any further. I was able to minimize today's losses, quit the game and analyze a few spots I played sub optimally here and now, and will get some rest and take most of tomorrow (today) off to do some life stuff. Hopefully this can be used as a well timed break to reset the brain and be ready to get back to it recharged and focused on A game processes. Feels pretty good to journal these thoughts here now, as they have been lingering in my mind for the last 24 hours or so.

Day off, then back to close out the Jan-u-A-game-ary strong!

This is important. The regs are almost never playing back at us as much as we think they are, it's almost always the case that they just happen to get a few spots in a short period of time and it's creates this dynamic that feels like we're getting bested when in reality they most likely hit some good value hands and some good bluffing opportunities and we didn't run into any of their give up range for a while. Are they bluffing us sometimes? Sure, of course, any decent regs bluffs us sometimes, but only with the hands that make sense to do so with and probably similar to what we'd bluff them with - it's not like they are randomly shoveling money in with pure air against us to push us around (even though it's easy to feel that way if we aren't logical ha).

The longer the rough patches last, the tougher the daily mental struggles can be. Quality hours can easily get pushed aside for quantity of hours, and for no good reason really.

I think it's important to play shorter and more defined sessions when we know our mental state is weakened from such a stretch. Every poker player faces these breakeven stretches, and some of them can last for longer than we thought possible. There are several factors that can contribute to the length of the stretch, and one of them is self inflicted bad play. In game moments that come up, big spots in medium to big pots, can really determine breaking out of these swings or not. If we aren't mentally at the top of our game, we will easily make poor decisions that can lead to increased negative variance or even worse, increased losses due to unforced errors.

I have recently played some hands where I was not taking optimal lines and made a very poor river line decision that prob cost me more than it should have. Losing our vision and focus to properly bet fold a spot instead of bet calling or check calling can really take a chunk out of our winrate for that session.

Taking a moment to write this out has helped my self awareness of both the specific instance and big picture reminder of the importance of having clear focus and vision in the moment, not letting anything cloud our thinking.

Short unplanned session spent with one of my coaches today when sharing a hand history has me adding a few things to my pre session warm up routine as well as a new current learning focus.

Thanks Benjamin_Barker for as usual helping shed light when it was going dim! Unforced errors are no joke and will drive us nuts during post game analysis. Calculating pot size and having a very quick 20 second internal dialogue with each decision on each street can help circle back around to playing that fundamentally strong poker that we once practiced without having to think about it.

No one is immune to sliding into bad habits or old habits when they don't keep the focus and vision of what they are trying to accomplish clear every single day.

Still battling the day to day breakeven to losing stretch. Been doing well to play shorter planned sessions lately, and mixing in the hour here and there online (which is fortunately somewhat saving me from a deeper downswing by playing and running fairly well on there).

Current learning focus in live poker is turn and river bet sizing since I have made some mistakes in those areas of late.

Part of this stretch that is actually a little reassuring is that I am doing a pretty good job on the overall of c-betting and barreling turns with more frequency when board textures and ranges call for it. It just so happens that I'm running into strong hands of my opponents, running meh on runouts bricking my improved turn equity, or just straight negative variance of my opponent making his hand on the river.

These are the things that happen as part of standard results in standard play. I would much rather be losing pots this way than via mistakes. Of course I've had my share of those as well, but any good player knows the difference between when things just overall aren't going their way vs, yeah, I'm making huge mistakes and playing terribly on the whole.

Still gotta plug my leaks along the way, but, staying focused and primed and ready for my next heater where all my value spots get paid, "most of" my bluff spots get through, and I run better as needed!

I've been playing in some rather fun live sessions lately in regards to the players at the tables not being miserable at life. Recreational players, gamblers taking a break from the pits to play some pokahz, vacationers getting some drinks, and the like. Oddly enough, I am running about as bad as possible in said games over the last several hundred hours, and I still show up positive and ready to play my best each successive day.

Keeping sessions shorter, game selecting hard (which lately has meant a lot less of the deep 2/5 games as they haven't been that great on the whole), following my warm up and pre game routines, staying focused on my current learning focuses, as well as some good honest hand history evaluations (both self analysis and via coaches and peers), is what is keeping me on my game throughout this stretch.

It has also helped that I have hit a pretty good patch of run good in my online games lately to sort of keep the results ship afloat. Unfortunately the stakes I play online (just up to 200NL) make it difficult to battle the losses of up to 2/5 live. For this reason, The breakeven run continues, as we hit the half way point of February.

The important thing I am taking away from all this is that my focus is in the right place, and it is primed and ready for when the games explode into some of the best we will have all year as March is quickly approaching. By doing all the behind the scene correct things today, I am keeping my mental and technical game sharp and ready for when things turn back in my favor tomorrow. If tomorrow we are dealt a little more negative variance, or make some sort of mistake, then we will learn from it and bounce back, and be ready for the day after that.

Confidence levels remain high, even amidst mediocre results of late.

Currently at 70% of my February hours volume goal. Currently we are actually slightly up profitwise for February as well, despite still not officially out of this longish breakeven run. With a vacation looming on the horizon (taking a cruise in the Caribbean with the mrs next week), I am going to do all I can to stay in this focused mindset the rest of the week, then allow my brain to check out of poker for the week and just soak up some sun and relax and recharge, and be ready to come back hard, and take on all challenges head first and with confidence.

Vacation time!

Flying to Ft Lauderdale today. Cruising tomorrow to US Virgin Islands and Dominican Republic! Definitely need the mental break, and looking forward to some down time away from the tables in general.

I hit 85% of my volume goal and I will have 3 nights left in the month when I return home so should get there or pretty close anyway.

Still running fairly bad in live games, and put in a decent chunk of live hours this past week, to once again just have a break even/slightly losing week. The cycle of wash, rinse, don't win, repeat is still a bit frustrating, and I have to put in an above average effort to play A game poker, even in shorter sessions. None the less, the grind marches on. Not quite how I had hoped to start the year (especially considering I was able to have a $4k month last January to kick off the year, and wasn't even playing much 2/5), but as I mentioned before, we are heading into a pretty amazing time to live grind in Vegas.

I will be ready!

Just finished up my last session for February... we hit 86/90 hours in the short month with a full 8 days off for vacation so pretty happy with that.

Interesting breakdown of hours was getting just shy of 20 online and 66 live hours. Even though we played 3x as many hours live, I was only able to see probably 2,500 hands or so whereas my online hours I was probably able to see roughly double that (maybe more? One site I play on I can't track hands played in the traditional sense like most online sites do) in just a fraction of the time.

This helps to remind me that some such breakeven stretch of live poker lasting a few months and several hundred "hours" overall is really almost inconsequential in that the sample size is so tiny. The actual amount of hands played is so small that it could literally last 6 months of 100+ hours of month of play, and I still may not play 10,000 hands. I can hit 25,000 hands in a single month of full time hours. That should help shed even more light on the fact that 10,000 hand sample sizes are literally nothing.

Of course, all that said, edges are much bigger in live play since our opponents are less technically and mentally sound than your average online players, and stack sizes and raise sizes are generally much bigger live, so it is possible to have greater win rates and results overall in such conditions. It's the latter part of this assessment that can easily lead to frustration when the live results aren't up to expectations.

Nonetheless, as I close out February slightly down, and still battling the slow start to the year, my mind is recharged and refreshed and ready to take on a sizable workload for the next month.

Bring on the Madness. Bring on Spring Breakers. Bring on NASCAR enthusiasts. Bring on green beer and leprechaun worshipping. Bring on March in Vegas!

Slightly off pace to hit my goal of 140 hours of volume so far for the month, but it's ok because I assumed I would be putting in longer sessions as the month rolls on and we are in full basketball madness mode. As long as I don't get too sidetracked with friends visiting, I will play a ton of hours especially on the weekends down the stretch.

Had a solid online coaching session and worked a little bit on some general hand history line check thought processes vs some online villain types. I definitely had a few hands that I deviated from a default strategy that probably didn't call for it, but I also played some hands very well against some tough opponents and was able to generate some solid dialogue as to the 'why's and why not's' in a few spots that for sure should help keep me on point for future hands played in similar spots.

My current learning focus continues to be "pot size and bet size accordingly on every street acknowledgement" and I've added in another detail to it to also say something along the lines of "when betting (either for thin value or for max value against strong ranges), ask yourself what exact sort of range are you targeting to get calls from and then size accordingly."

These things sound elementary (and are critical to our win rate success) and probably are second nature for many skilled and experienced players, but as I have found in this journey, it is very easy to overlook these key things in game and just bet bet bet, and size it too small or too big because we aren't truly thinking about these specific things. We can easily become lazy, complacent with our thoughts, and sort of just auto pilot our way through a hand.

Self awareness of these sorts of details will help train our brain to routinely do them in the future without having to put too much thought into it. We can get them to become part of our unconscious competence where it actually will become that second nature to us, and we don't make a mistake that costs us a lot in terms of getting max value or utilizing max fold equity in a semi bluff and bluff spot. Our win rate will love us immensely for avoiding such mistakes!

Live games around the strip have really picked up, and I have table and game selected really well this week to be having a huge week. Currently out of the hole I was in and the break even hours seem to be behind me, for now. I can't get too caught up in this overall measure of recent results and allow it to cloud my vision of the ultimate goal of simply playing strong fundamental poker strategy day in and day out.

All that said, it sure feels good to be rolling in black numbers again.

"Damn it feels good to be a gangster."

March on!!!!

Leak buster: Acting too fast

This is a common problem for fast thinkers and especially when you are used to the speed of online poker and adjusting to the live scene. Thankfully I have plenty of long time live play experience to help offset these tendencies, but it doesn't make me immune to falling into the "acting too fast" trap.

Playing in a 4 handed early morning game where I have solid reads on my opponents and am very awake and alert brought on this leak I sometimes have. I am quick to know my ranges and how I want to go about post flop strategy against all of them. This shouldn't be a green light moment to turn off the speed check. Taking your time to make each decision is still very important regardless of how seemingly simple the game and each spot seems to be. It's funny how this can be a leak in a time where most of the live poker tournament scene is screaming bloody murder over the opposite, taking too long for each decision. In any event, take your time for every decision, even 10 seconds is enough time to be certain we don't miss an important detail of the situation at hand.

Marching on in this clowns' journey.

Overall hours are good for March, almost at my 140 hours goal with still 5 days to go. Profit for the month is decent, but could be/should be much better. I have had some tough days in the last week where I played some really big pots in 200BB 2/5 games that did not go so well. I have logged a lot of hours in the deeper 1/3 games in town and also in the one off 2/5 games around town that I have been able to help get started. Most notably there was a 2/5 at Mirage as well as the 1/3 72o action game at Mirage and also got a 2/5 game going at Bally's for several hours that was an amazing game as well.

Very happy with my work ethic this month so far, and I expect to just keep this momentum going in the right direction, and get my hourly win rate and profit numbers for the year back in line with expectations. I need to continue to push past any mental struggles when it comes to my game selection. I am green lighted to be shot taking 5/T now, yet I still haven't played in a single game for several months. Part of this is mental, for sure. Part of it is also that the games just haven't been that good overall either, and I don't want to force it just to "shot take". I have always had a strong sense of self awareness and patience when it comes to knowing when I am up to a tougher challenge, and I am fairly good at not forcing things too quickly and keeping my ego in check. I don't need to play 5/Ten just to assuage any personal "I've finally made it" poker ego feelings. I only need to, want to play higher when the times are optimal to do so as far as game conditions, mental state, and with a little more deeper stacked 2/5 comfort and experience under my belt. I don't know if my break even and up and down battles for the last several months comes into play with my mental state in regards to any of this or not, but it certainly has to be at least a small contributing factor and confidence tester as well.

Fitness and meditation goals are still in place, and I have even joined the LVL weight loss challenge thread over in the sub forum of Las Vegas Lifestyle. I am hoping that added accountability will be good for me to move forward toward the never ending objective for living a healthier lifestyle.

...and the day to day journey Marches on...

Ended March on a solid strong close out. We hit 160 hours of volume, and climbed all the way out of the breaking even trenches and showed a nice Profit for the month overall.

Need to step up the deep 1/3 and 2/5 volume especially and really start making my move to be scouting and even sitting in some 5/T soon. Would like to have some sessions under my belt prior to the summer WSOP action, but will be very game and line up dependent. Of late, most of the 5/T that's been running has looked pretty meh, and even the 2/5 games have been just mediocre on the whole. I probably need to suck it up and put in some more hours in some of those games regardless tho, so I can challenge myself a little more, and push the envelope for higher stakes improvements.

No April Fools here, gotta get out there and crush!

Great work logging 160 hrs! GL moving up and hunting for the best games.

Thanks bud!

April is going to be a repeat of higher volume as I prepare for a pretty low volume month of May. I will be traveling most of the month, and minimal poker will be included in those travels.

Going to share a little bit of what I have planned for a nice recharge break just prior to WSOP starting. This is something I like to do every year to be able to be fully rested (hopefully) and recharged and focused to take on a heavy workload of MTTs and cash games during WSOP. This also fits nicely into the "Work Hard, Play Hard" lifestyle that I like to employ as well.

Here is a quick look at my itinerary for May: heading to Seattle for the 1st time ever to go see U2 Joshua Tree Tour 2017. This show that took place back in 1987 was my first concert ever, so felt like this would be a fun and fitting full circle show to attend! Mumford & Sons opens also, which is a nice added bonus. From there I will be back in Vegas for 2 quick days before turning around and heading cross country to Boston. Spending a night downtown before jetting over the Atlantic to enjoy my first ever trip to Europe! Will be landing in Geneva, Switzerland and then getting picked up by family and heading to Chamonix, France where my gf's step sis lives with her family. The French Alps! We will be back and forth from there and northern Italy where we have an airBnb reserved in wine country for several nights as well. We will then take a few days to enjoy some other parts of France. Paris, Monte Carlo, or wherever we decide on the fly! When we wrap up our 12 day tour of Europe, we fly back to Boston where we will spend a few more days with more family, including a day at Fenway Park to enjoy a Red Sox game, before finally returning home to Vegas just in time for WSOP.

Before I mentally check out for this trip, I need to spring into action and continue to sharpen my mental and technical game as I complete another big volume month. April's goal is 160 hours, so I'm going to need to be very focused. I actually have 2 weekends in April that I have plans that will take me away from poker as well, so I really have my work cut out for me. Another Work Hard month in the books is just what we need to keep this year of moving up on track!

Leakbuster: Card dead stretches can test the will to avoid playing sub par hands/spots

If you play enough poker, and especially if you are playing a pretty snug preflop game (LAGs also not excluded from this haha), there comes a time, or many times in fact where we are simply not getting dealt hands worth playing for long periods of time. Generally what can happen as a result is we see a "sort of" playable hand in a spot that is terrible to be playing it (like utg raise and we are utg1 with KJo, as an example)but because we have literally been folding for hours, we get excited at the picture cards and decide it's a good idea to get involved. This is just one small example of many that can come up on any given session. Avoiding playing this hand/spot takes mental game toughness. When we are playing C game poker (or worse), we don't fold these spots. Muck and move on, we aren't here to simply play a hand. We are here for an overall big picture purpose...

A-Game April on!!!

Summer warm up day: playing Venetian $250 $250K GTD... let's get some!

I did my part to help Mr. Boski (aka 2+2r iCuRaRook) #BagnTag... gl to the YouTuber who collected my remaining wagering discs in today's event!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Working on some WSOP/ side event schedule and planning and hope to have some action available in the marketplace here on 2+2 soon. Stay tuned. Anyone up front interested in being on the radar for when I post action available for the summer feel free to shoot me a PM here or hit me up on Twitter @RockstarRossi13 .

Hours are great but results have not been so far this month. After my great start, it's been a straight down hill slide last two weeks, so really have to dig my heels in and stay mentally focused on playing A game poker, game selecting well, and stop this skid now! Currently down a couple 2/5 buy ins for the month.

I've probably forced myself to play more deeper 2/5 volume the past few months and sort of "forgotten" or pushed aside the value of just great game selection in general. It hasn't helped much that my biggest games have been ones where we have been getting smacked with some negative variance lately. I'm in that stretch where we continue to run into top of ranges, which includes a lot of flopped and turned sets against us as well as our big combo draws and semi bluffs aren't getting through and our opponents are getting there in opposite fashion when the tides are reversed. And these scenarios all seem to be happening when we are 150+bbs deep in 2/5. Journaling here helps me to be honest with my personal game evaluation too and I can most certainly say I have made some bad folds and bad calls lately as well. Fortunately I spend the time to analyze those spots afterwards to see my error and continue with a growth mindset to build from those mistakes. I now have over 2000 hour live cash game sample to look back on from my time in Vegas, and I have seen some ups and downs in that stretch. Thing is, it still is not that impressive of an amount of hands played. Live poker pace is so slow, and certainly can be difficult to overcome some bad stretches in a short amount of time. Fortunately, I haven't dug too big of holes along the way, and I always pull through each and every month to at least keep things trending positive. Break even and downswing stretches are attributed to all sorts of things both in and out of our control, as we know. I'm really focused hard on controlling what I can on my end, and kick things up results wise here early on in 2017 as it has been an otherwise slow start.

April needs a strong finish these last few days, and see if we can't tilt the scale back in our favor Profit wise to close out the month. Approaching 160 hours for the month as we speak, but as I move forward, it will be important to be careful how much I prioritize quantity vs quality. It's so easy to let one negatively impact the other.

The best way to overcome negative variance is to increase volume, but we don't want to let volume be the reason our mistakes outdo the efforts and impact our results negatively either. Balance. Need to stay balanced and keep the mental and physical brain fresh and sharp for every one of those hours worked.

So the real tricky question is, how exactly do we do more (workload) without doing less (quality of work) in the process?

Since day 1 of this documented journey, I've mentioned how it's a full serving of mind, body, and soul that must be intertwined into our every moment. Every day must start with, execute during, and end with a sharp and intense focus on the goals at hand.

Staying well rested, and having a fresh and clear mind will start the tone. Meditating in any way we personally see fit to reach the best mental toughness game shape we possibly can reach. Physical fitness to keep the body able to work longer days without tiring or wearing down too fast. All these bullet points have been mentioned over and over.

So now as the journey continues, it's a matter of execution. Some people are better than others at this. The ones who get the best at executing consistently are going to be the most effective and successful long term.

Sometimes we crush it, even over a long period of time; and sometimes we fail and start to let things slip, and we don't do enough to help ourselves out. Developing and maintaining these successful life strategies are even more important than developing and maintaining our technical poker strategies. If we are executing these winning life habits on a high level, the benefits will trickle down into the business (poker) side of things. Success breeds more success.

As my journey goes deeper and gets closer to another busy summer schedule, it is critical that I strengthen my efforts, and build up my resolve to pursue and execute these healthy habits at the highest possible levels I can achieve.

Work harder today. Play harder tomorrow.

Hey RR, I really appreciate all of the quality insights and informed thoughts that you continue to put out there. Reading your thread really helps me to keep all of the aspects of what goes into producing an all-around quality game of poker in focus. It is really helpful for me to see the point of view of a player like yourself, especially regarding aspects that I might have otherwise overlooked.

Thanks man, glad to hear. I've started reaching a point in the journey now where I'm not sure going forward what sorts of things I want to be journaling here so it's nice to hear that my random thoughts aren't just verbal spew!

Decided to post some action for some summer MTTs! Thanks for taking a look:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...rocks-1666374/

Leakbuster: overcoming the fear of (big) loss

The fear of loss is a real mental game hurdle that can continually show up in our psyche if we become weakened over the course of a long rough stretch of poker.

To compound this fear, we can start to attach the dollar amounts to it, which can hamper us from playing bigger stakes and/or shot taking good games when the time would normally call for it due to fear of big loss.

Lately I have encountered quite a lot of negative variance, and bad runouts, which have also been compounded by some suboptimal line mistakes of my own doing. In turn, it has been session after session of kicking and scratching my way to try to make a profit of late. Some of those sessions, however, it has mentally become more about not losing (too much) instead of just making good decisions and accepting the outcome without mental consequence. This is definitely a leak in my mental game of late.

Knowing that I am properly rolled for the games I am playing (especially as a backed player in my exact situation where I am not relying on poker to cover life expenses), this should be an almost non existent issue, right? Wrong! The human brain of a competitive athlete, gamer, or other similar profession (say, poker player, for instance) isn't wired for us to be able to just automatically deal with losing in any easy way. No one likes to lose!

The fact of the matter is, however, that with poker, we should know and expect that we are only going to win about 60-65% of our sessions on average over the longer period of time. This might be hard for many to understand and realize and accept. But it shouldn't be. It has been said long ago that in order to learn how to win, we must first learn how to lose. What does that even mean?

It means exactly what it sounds like it means. Don't let the outcomes (results) of our good decision making processes outweigh the value of those valuable and proven successful processes. Don't let losing (no matter how much it might be occurring in any given random stretch) deter our focus on our long term goals. And finally, don't let any of our processes and goals become blurred or forgotten as a result of becoming too attached to the dollar amount at stake.

As long as we are playing within our means (bankroll management), the amounts we are winning or losing should have little to no affect on our decisions of which games to play, and when.

Perfect time to take a break from the game, as I enjoy some life balance for most of the rest of May away from the tables! The World Series of Poker is only weeks away, so now is the time to work through some mental game leaks and focus on my winning processes. Meditation and recharging the brain to achieve this streamlined focus is now the needed action.

enjoy the break. here's to finding your inner peace