Thanks man!


I still have a week left (minus a day or 2 since I will be out of town and unable to play the last 2 days of the month) and I have already surpassed January's volume. Very happy with that! As my original post points out, I know that if I can keep my focus on the volume and the work ethic goals I have set for myself, I won't need to focus on actual profits and win rates. The higher the volume, and the more work I am able to put in away from the tables, the better those numbers will be. February is a perfect example of that.

I haven't really played much (productive) live poker this month, as a result of last months lop sided volume, I wanted February to be all about making up for that. I say productive in parenthesis because I have played some low fixed limit pokerz for some promotions just to mix it up and not be a total computer robot all month long. The main point of grinding those types of games here locally is that they have very high jackpots and graveyard high hand promotions and such that help overcome the high rake so commonly attributed to low limit poker.

I am slowly starting to mix in some online MTTs in some of my cash grind sessions, mostly just to help keep me at the tables longer to get the volume up, but also in part to keep the tournament brain sharp and ready for the summer WSOP grind. I will be playing the $1million gtd that is going to run again on Winning Poker Network tomorrow as well, so looking forward to building a stack and making a run at something epic. If I can simply repeat my early and middle stage success from the first one that ended up getting canceled I will be in great shape. I had a decent stack after I ran a 10bb stack up to about 45bb stack just prior to the official cancellation, about 100 from the money. Obviously I was a little discouraged at that, but I am not going to get into all that here, as there were plenty of threads and discussion all over the internet on the topic. Stuff like that that is ultimately out of our control as a player, and it is just going to be toxic background noise that is only going to take us away from our focus if we dwell on such things. That being said, lets hope the network itself has some run good tomorrow, along with me!

Do you even grind cash bro?

Can't stress enough how important this is. Work hard and minimize mistakes and the money eventually comes where it's supposed to. Congrats on the turnaround, gl going forward!

Thanks Tyler, well said and couldn't agree more.

Few days left in the month and overall it's been a great month! Our volume has been solid and database and hand history review has also been strong.

I played an afternoon session today that I had some old "forcing it" habits pop up, for no good reason really other than I wanted to keep my winning streak on the month in tact, and we started out down on the session after having a set flopped on my overpair and we were not able to get away from it. It was a fairly aggressive player, and it happened immediately the hand after I attempted a river bluff bet, so I felt like I looked a bit tilty to my opponent and so calling it off in the turn felt ok.

After this string of events, I attempted two more bluffs, one of which was pretty unwarranted against a regfish that is just a bit too stationy to attempt to 3b then triple barrel bluff a broadway card filled board; but for some reason we felt we could rep the world, and get his medium strength hands to fold by the time the river had completed a flush on an already paired board. It almost worked, but the regfish had flopped broadway, and was having none of folding it (correctly so vs me in a 3b pot).

Because I was mixing my stakes between 50NL and 100NL based on available tables most of my big pots fortunately happened in the lower stakes, so our actual loss on the day was not as big overall as it could have been. That doesn't change the fact that I wasn't playing my best, and that my decision making was sub par.

The best part of my session was that I was able to catch on to my mental mistakes quickly and settle things down and close out the session after my 2 hour block was up without making any further mistakes. Even better is that during my cool down, and taking a moment to think it through and write it out here, I am able to fully grasp the overall leaks of my day, and know exactly what I need to do before I fire up my next session.

Worrying about cumulative results vs staying focused on the session at hand is something I haven't had many issues with for some time. It definitely was something that affected my play today, and I am now more aware than ever that this demon will make its attempt to show up in my mental game still, even after working to exercise it in the past. For that reason, I will always do my best to keep the funda'mentals' in tact during and after a nice upswing has or is taking place. This mental game skill is equally as important as my mind frame during those nasty downswings!

Quick update on the move... I'm actually in Vegas thru tomorrow to finalize our house search. We have one picked out and applied for the lease and are the only applicants so barring any setbacks we should be all but done with the search after today!

I won't be able to get another session in so will be closing out my month where I'm at which is a great recovery month after the January downswing! I will post some official results graphs in the next day or so when I'm back from Vegas, and do a formal February recap then as well.

Targeting March 14th as our new lease start date here in Vegas but prob won't officially move until a few days later. I'm expecting to take a bit of a volume hit to my online in March, but it is ok as I have road mapped out the year knowing which months I can make up lost volume in. I feel it is pretty important to be able to have the sort of planning flexibility built into the specific results goals so that I won't be overwhelmed when I have a slow volume month thinking I need to make it all up the very next month!

Grats on finding a place!

Recovery; profit! Giraffes included!

Closed out February just shy of our volume goal, no thanks to the last 2 days of the month spent away from home finalizing our house search. Even tho it was something we knew we would need to do, I didn't really account for it in my schedule in the last week, and losing those two really good grind days hurt a little, but it is not anything that I am allowing to take away from the incredible month I had.

To start the month in a downswing mental frame of mind was a challenge in itself, but to do it knowing that it could very easily take more than 26 days to get out of that hole was an even bigger challenge. Accomplishing that and then some is very exciting and encouraging to me.

Without retyping every bullet point from my OP as far as goals go here in this post, I will sum it up in one quick sentence: We achieved 100% of all of our goals for the month, WITH ONE EXCEPTION: I planned on playing 100 hours this month online instead of my average goal of 80 to make up for some missing January volume. We only got to 88 of those 100 hours. We still put in more than 140 total hours of volume when you factor back in my live hours.

Here are my giraffes for both February as a stand alone achievement, and then our year-to-date to include the January downswing and to show the hike back up the mountain we did after the quick giant slalom ski course we raced down.

***Note: I am missing a 2 session window of hands from Bovada that I cannot retrieve from them after making some adjustments to my HM2 database late in the month that actually has our graphs missing about $300 more in profits that should be there***

***Second Note: No one cares about unproven profits, I know...






Cheers to a great month, and another cheers to a great month ahead... in poker and in life!! Countdown to Vegas is on!!

Nice month, cya when you move out to Vegas!

Great job last month, keep it up!

Yep, gettin' close!

TyTy!

Just finished up a pretty good volume day to kick off the month, and I had a few spots marked for review for later but for the most part very pleased with my play mentally and technically today.

That is generally a statement easily made on a day we run good. Well, fact is, I ran pretty terrible actually, and every time we lost a big pot, I was able to breath and focus and move right on to the next. The process of having to do this seemed never ending today though, and it finally started to accumulate a bit toward the end of a long session.

We made a really marginal hero fold with QQ in a squeezed pot against to fish on a Kxx flop, only to watch them go check check it down and see a pair of 9s won the hand. The very same two players once again called my next squeeze spot and this time I held the AA.

A flop of 963r had the fish in the sb running 60/20/0 donk lead out pot. I flat, the other player folds. The turn was 6, and player barrels. These spots generally just play themselves on Bovada, and it was again a pretty easy call or raise spot here. I only had about 2.2x his turn bet so I jammed it in. He used a lot of his time bank then stuck in the call and tabled the Q9o. With this pot, I will be 2/3 of the way back to even on my otherwise rough negative variance session, sweet!

River 9 brought a heavy feeling in my chest and I was just so overrun from the day that I decided rather than try to pick up the pieces and continue on to the next hand (as I had been doing for hours) that I needed to take a break and be done for the day.

Going over my spreadsheet after and realized I was down slightly more than I had even thought, and I ended the day down 4 buy ins. In the grand scheme of things that is nothing, but not exactly how I want to kick off a new month. On the flip side of that, if I can just plow through some great volume out of the gate and get past some of this negative variance, I stand to build off of a great February and turn March into another great month.

That is my goal, and after writing this out and logically thinking of how I played pretty well for so many hours over three different sessions today, I actually feel pretty good about how the month has started. As my mantra from day 1 has been here, sticking to the processes and goals day in and day out is what really matters. The win rates and profitability follow right alongside.

It's not every day I will lose 4 buy ins and feel this good about it, but I can comfortably assess my decision making and mental focus overall as a very solid A for the day.

Back to it tomorrow!

As promised, I was back at it today...

...and we made a nice comeback day from yesterday and recovered most of the 4 buy ins we lost! Bit early in the month to be skiing and hiking big mountain graph lines, but hey, gotta enjoy the journey or else what is the point?

Took a few brutal pots on the chin early today, and things were not looking that great, but with some perseverance and a copycat attitude from yesterdays grind, I stayed focused and determined to play my best. I made a few marginally over aggressive plays late in my session, which I will review later (4bet shoving AQss in a squeeze/flat spot vs two regs), and I struggled to hit the fold button several times against a whale that continued to bet 2xPOT with the goods, and with air. I think he won the battle overall, but only because after he limp/called and then X/called 2 streets with 49o on a 9Q752 when I gave up on the river and showed TJ for J high, he decided to run with his winnings. The hit n run is pretty prevalent in the fish community, but if that is what helps keeping them around, then I'll do my part and help keep them around longer! (And I definitely do my part!! )

Closed out the weekend strong with a solid volume of hands and felt pretty good about something that I've been working on a bit since the start of the journey; improving my C game.

As some of my sessions grow a bit long time wise (even tho I will play less tables) during some days where I am mixing in a few MTTs both to stay sharp in my tournament game, and to try to capitalize on the good value still found for me in many of the better guaranteed prize pools, I have found that I get mentally fatigued more so than if I was just playing my usual cash tables for the usual 2-3 hour blocks.

This is normal and to be expected of course, but I am starting to feel very comfortable in the games I am playing that even if I'm not my sharpest, I'm still making +EV decisions most of the time, and I'm still making money against the weaker opponents even when not on my A game. I have really improved my river spot hero calls/hero folds leaks by utilizing the 4 question bluff catch I mentioned earlier in the thread. This, in turn, creates fewer uncomfortable losing river showdowns that can work against my mental game by triggering a negative response while playing. This is important in general, but it is even more important if I am not playing my A game.

I have done well to balance out my busy month and still get in the planned volume amidst the never ending checklist that hovers over me as I prepare for the move out of state.

I've made some life balance decisions lately to spend some more than the normal time in social and family settings/get togethers because of the move, and I am not at all unhappy with those choices. I know I can really push myself and hit some bigger volume numbers if I wanted, but as I unfold how I want my present and future to look like, and where my priorities lie, I know that having a solid foundation of family and friends is very important to me. Underestimating the value of a support system is a common occurrence for many in life. I think it's even more valuable to the lifestyle of a poker player.

The day in/day out grind can take its toll on you, mentally and physically. Having personal outlets is important as with any career choice we make, but when we are in such a volatile and swingy career like the one poker offers (much like other commission based jobs, stock broker type jobs), having a healthy support system is critical toward achieving and maintaining long term success.

Feels like a bit of a ramble now as I try to place some of my thoughts and feelings after today's session specifically and toward the overall month and journey in general, but I know there is enough sense and importance to the point(s) that I am attempting to make. In the words of Zeppelin, "Ramble On"!

Almost 1/3 of the way through the month already, how time flies!

We are at 40% of my March projected volume goal of 80 hours online. I am also at 50% of my coaching/swear session goal for the month, as well as 50% of my HH analysis goal. I have added a few more threads from 2+2 to my current subscriptions to dive deeper into the "Las Vegas lifestyle" also, which I think is going to really help me get off to a fast start to the life and grind of a Vegas professional! I am still working on reading "Mental Game of Poker" for the second time, slowly but surely Jared, I'm getting there!

The profit is steadily climbing again this month as well, picking right up where February left off so that feels great. Pretty soon my year-to-date numbers will actually look like something respectable if I can stick to the processes and keep working on my C-game!

Not sure what my live hours will look like for March, but there is definitely I chance I get settled right in to some live cash grinding the last 10 days of the month, but I am not planning on hitting my 32 hour normal monthly projection just yet. I will see how things go with the move and getting settled in first then go from there. With a big summer of live play ahead, I won't have any problems crushing my live hourly goals, and in fact I will be revisiting those numbers again in a month or so to project out the summer and beyond with more realistic numbers. (All the while the online goal will remain 1000 hours for the year)!

Today's sessions were pretty incredible. I found many "special" targets, aka bombers and 80% vpip hand players at all my tables. You know if you can just avoid the big coolers and negative variance big pots, it's going to be a good day; and that it was.

Although, I did run KK into AA for 160bbs effective stacks (sigh), and I was forced to bet/fold AA 2x and had to fold a set also today, but by making good folds and well timed squeze plays and 3bets and ISO raises against my targets, I was able to pull off a pretty big winning day overall.

Without being too attached to the sessions, good or bad, it still is nice when things seem to balance out and then end up in your favor when you know the work and effort put into every day played, along with every day you studied instead of played!

Since a big part of finding success in this journey relies heavily on being able to write and achieve goals that are life and poker balanced, I regularly discuss and work on all aspects of what life balance means in general, and to me specifically.

Especially with a major life change happening this month/year for me, I find it extremely helpful to be mindful of that balance. Along with that, knowing that my decisions also must be reflective of the fact that it is not just me, and that I am in a relationship.

This is something I posted in another thread earlier today that I feel is important enough that I'd like it to be a part of this clowns' thread, this clowns' journey:

Realizing the importance of life balance is pretty key to both the short term and long term success in poker.

Short term, if you are not happy with how things are going in your life, every session is a mental struggle. That, in turn, makes having winning sessions that much harder. This will trickle down into the long term of your career. There is a reason you can look around at some of the older lollivepros and just see the unhappiness oozing out of their pores. Many eventually will make poor bankroll decisions, stop trying to improve their game and just in general stop putting any effort into life balance and accept the mediocrity that their life and poker game has become. There certainly is a lot more to the difficulty being out of balance will bring to your short term and long term success, but this should highlight the key aspect.

The motto; Eat. Sleep. Work. Has been around forever. It is also the same words that when people live by them exclusively, they are missing out on everything great the world has to offer around them. Family, friends, special interests and hobbies to stay grounded, seeing the world (or at least more of the surrounding areas in the city/state/province we live in), and many other things are there for us to enjoy.

While it is important to spend A LOT of time working on our game, networking, analyzing our past decisions to spot leaks/mistakes so that we can improve on our game for the future, along with the actual time we spend playing, if we allow this to become all that we are, we are doomed.

Along with the social and family aspects of life balance, there are the other somewhat seemingly mundane items we also must keep up with; budgeting, eating healthy, car/house/apartment upkeep, etc. Keeping up with all of these things is also part of the life balance that we must maintain in order to continue to achieve the levels of success we have set our sights on.

I won't even dive into the topic of relationships, and how being in one will tip the scales even more and make it that much more work for us to maintain the all important balance of everything required.

For me it's good to write it out and be able to read and reflect on how it relates to where I am at today in terms of what level of life balance I am at currently, and how do I wish to improve upon it tomorrow. Sometimes that is in formal goal form, or sometimes it is in a thread like this one, or one that I follow along with that encourages discussion with like minded and same goal-oriented people.

I have started another thread over in another forum, "Las Vegas Lifestyle" that might start shaping into more of the life side of things whereas this thread is more about the poker side of things. I'm not sure, I may just merge them both into this one, but that is still TBD. That thread can be found here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...r-lvl-1515528/

As things continue to progress well in my cash game grind, I have gotten close to the 150,000 hand mark and am now starting to mix in some 200NL on Bovada, along with some 100NL on Carbon.

I know I will realistically have a little bit of work to do to stay strong in my mental game as I will have bigger swings dollar wise, even tho they are still the same swings in terms of big blinds. It is just a small mental hurdle to jump over, but I am going into the challenge fully aware and ready to do my best to stay strong in my mental focus to not make technical mistakes for mental reasons. Another "easier said than done" situation in the life of the grind, but I have come pretty far in a relatively short amount of time (and hand sample) so there is no turning back and there is no time for fear.

Keeping my ego in check, and allowing the humble aspect of my thought processes, along with the desire to continue to grow, I will play every session with confidence and focus.

Let's do this!

How would you compare the game quality between bovada and carbon. And gl moving on up!

High five is right!! Since starting the new stakes, have turned in back to back record breaking winning sessions!

The first one only broke my original daily record thanks to a set under set pot QQ vs KK, but I binked the 1 putter Q, so that is of course in perspective. It should be noted tho, that it is just a standard part of doing business in the poker world; I've had my share of being set over set'd plenty in this journey, so it was only a matter of time it swung to the miracle bink! Definitely no winners tilt after this session tho, as overall I felt I played well and even without that pot, we would have had a nice results winning day with a solid mental performance all around.

Today's session was something of an incredibly nice run good pot mixed in with cooler run good: UTG opens 3x, UTG1 3b to 2.5x the OR. CO cold 4b 3.5x the 3b. I am sitting with 130bbs effective in the SB with AA. We tank rip it in. UTG1 calls it off, CO calls it off, we cover both slightly. I am up against KK and KK. Clean run outs are clean!!

I also found 2 bombers today who were just blasting off 100bb stacks left and right and I was able to take advantage of them both. My last combo of cooler run good mixed in with an aggro overplaying fish found myself opening the CO with AA, and the BB 3b 3.25x my open. We obliged and promptly 4b to 25bbs. He snap shipped 170bbs effective, and has QQ: and another clean run out keeps us on track for that biggest session to date!!

If I was to take out those two pots (which we know in reality we don't get too focused on the results in those scenarios in terms of how we are playing overall since we can just as easily have the hands not go our way) we still would have posted a nice amount of volume and a winning session at the 200NL level!

This is a great way to start things off, but keeping an emotional 'even-keeled' reaction to the day will be important as I continue my month in pursuit of just playing my best A game as much as possible and letting my confidence in the processes take charge of my decision making while staying focused and driven to not make mental or technical mistakes along the way!

The two sites don't even come close to comparing to be honest. It is apples to oranges. Carbon has plenty of soft spots along with regfish that make plenty of mistakes that can be exploited. However, it is few and far between when compared to the styles and blatant gifts and stack spews that happen day in and day out on by far the softest network known to the poker playing public. Of course it takes some adjusting, and you will need to mentally be 'ready for anything' when you find yourself in some awkward spots, but if you can keep a strong mental approach to the big picture of what you are up against, it won't take long to realize the honey pot known as Bovada.

Sounds like things are going well for you sir! Keep crushing!

Shhhhhhh

I should rephrase my above post a little I think...

The two sites are quite different, but for us Ameridonks they both make for decent options. Poker in general goes through its ups and downs in terms of difficulty. In the last year or so there has been an influx of both good and bad players to the sites, per the usual poker economy. It varies from day to day, but for the most part, the options are decent but not great for the totality that is American online poker these days.

Bankroll risks and other inherent site risks that come with the current climate of American online poker territory make the options less desirable as well, but when you have limited options, you just have to decide what is best for you, to play or not to play.

Thanks man!! Workin' hard today to play hard tomorrow... Cheers!!