It was a rough couple of days worth of downswings which continued into Friday night. For Friday night's session I was at least able to get back to even. I didn't expect to play Friday, as my girlfriend and I went to North Carolina Friday for her nephew's birthday party on Saturday. I had my laptop with me though, and we had wifi in our hotel room. We got back to the room early enough that after she passed out, I was able to get a few hours in at the tables. After getting down 2 or 3 BIs, I managed to grind back to even and actually turn a small profit.

Saturday there was no poker. We had the birthday party, then began the drive home. We stopped in Myrtle Beach for dinner, so it was getting late by the time we got home. I felt too drained from the traveling and what not to be able to bring my A game to the tables, so I decided to wait until tomorrow to play.

Goals for this week:

Play a minimum of 5500 hands (played 4761 this past week)

Take a break if I lose 2.5 buy-ins within a 20 minute timeframe (to prevent going on tilt)

Spend a minimum of 2 hours studying/watching videos (I've been focused on playing and aside from doing hand analysis, checking for leaks, and analyzing my play, I haven't put any time into studying and improving my game)

Rough day...

Politics and Poker don't mix

I believe very firmly that politics should never be discussed at the poker table. To do so is in very poor taste in my opinion. At one of my tables tonight, a player decided to make his distaste for a particular politician known. He then mocked, in the most juvenile ways imaginable, everyone who supports said politician. It was very annoying, mostly because this distracting tirade lasted for half an hour.

He finally left the table, and literally everyone at the table expressed relief that he was gone. An hour goes by and another player comes along to the same table and starts talking politics! As it turns out, it's the same guy, and he soon picks up his ranting and mocking right where he left off...

Now I don't know why, but this put me on sudden and immediate LIFE TILT. I wanted to reach through the monitor and punch this guy straight in the mouth. I was so irritated! I knew I wouldn't be able to play objectively at that table any longer, so I immediately left the table. I was looking for another table when I realized it was 5 minutes from the end of my session, so I just went ahead and began wrapping up my session, finishing up on my other tables.

ANYWAY (skip to last paragraph if you just want poker results)

The girlfriend was off today, and we had a lot to do. We still had some things to unpack (well, more like put away), had to go grocery shopping, and we played some tennis early this afternoon. Neither of us are (or have ever been) tennis players, so when I say we played tennis, I mean we tried to volley a tennis ball with rackets the way you'd imagine a couple of 5th grade kids would do it, which is probably what we looked like. We were just out there for the exercise and some sun.

Also, there was a documentary series on CNN that started tonight called "The 80's". I've been seeing it advertised for a couple of weeks on CNN. It looked good, and I've been looking forward to seeing it. So we watched it tonight, and it turned out to be 2 hours long. It was a little different than I expected it to be, but it was fairly interesting. Tonight's episode was about television in the 80's. Next week's is about the AIDS crisis during the 80's...should be a worthwhile watch. I remember a lot of this stuff from my childhood, so it's kind of fascinating to me.

Anyway, I didn't get to play until late tonight, so I put in a short 2 hour session in order to cut down a little on the hours I'll need to play tomorrow and Saturday, and it was a good one - the first good one I've had in a few days. I was up almost 3 buy-ins when I stopped. It broke a string of 3 straight losing sessions (played 2 on Wednesday which was nearly a carbon copy of Tuesday, only even rougher), so it was particularly refreshing to book a winner. And it was a nice way to finish out the month. I'll upload a graph for the month of March tomorrow. I'm too tired to bother with it tonight.

Here's my graph for the month of March (includes some 4NL and a shot that I took at 10NL last week):





And here's my 5NL only graph for the month of March:

I finished the week with 7185 hands, crushing my goal. This week's goals are going to be the same as last weeks, except I'm upping my hands goal to 7500. I played all 7 days last week though. I'd like to have a day or two off, so I'm thinking about playing a couple of longer days this week to allow for that.

I went to a live game last night. I netted about 40 bucks. I was way up but ended up getting coolered a couple of times right near the end. Oh well. It was a good time.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and get a jump on this week by playing for a few hours.

Over the last week or 10 days or so, I've taken 2 brief shots at NL10, and they haven't gone well. I ran very badly during both of them. I took another shot today, going full steam this time - I 4 tabled it for 6 hours. And the run bad continue for the first 1,000 hands or so. I ran into to some nasty coolers. Here's a taste:



But I managed to fight back to even through some hero calls like this one where this guy's vpip was ~87, and I didn't put him on an Ace. When he donk bet the turn, I felt like he either hit a set of Jacks, or I had him crushed. With how wild he had been playing, I deduced that the latter was the far more likely scenario, and I was correct:



I finally ended up turning a decent profit for the session and a 10.39 BB/100 win rate (on the day) which I really needed to help offset the losses and negative win rates from first 2 shots I took that were full of run bad. My overall NL10 win rate is still very negative though, so I've still got some ground to make up.

Today has been horrible. 4.5 hours, 997 hands, and I've managed to lose nearly 25% of my bankroll today. The swings on Bovada are completely ridiculous. I continued with NL10 today, since I profited yesterday, but only did 2 tables today, as I had trouble finding more than that (along 2 NL5 tables). I eeked out a tiny profit in NL5 but got taken to the slaughterhouse in NL10.

I didn't do anything diffferently at NL10 than NL5, but I just keep getting coolered on those tables. It's awful. I ran KK into AA, QQ into KK had a VPIP 62 guy suckout a straight after I flopped TPTK with AK, and got rivered numerous other times. There were countless hands where I flopped either an open ended straight draw with a flush draw, or a pair and a flush draw, and completely bricked every turn and river. The stupid thing is I wasn't losing to solid/reg players. I was losing exclusively to calling stations who were VPIP 60-70+. Literally. I guess I'm going to be stuck at NL5 forever. Sometimes this feels like such a huge waste of time.

Here's today's graph:

I took Tuesday off. I played 8 or 9 days in a row prior to that and was really feeling worn down mentally as a result. I felt like I really needed a day away from the tables, so I took one. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have because I wasn't able to play long yesterday. I continued to run bad yesterday, and after losing several buy-ins in a couple of hours or so, I had to stop in order to prevent going on tilt. I'm going out of town Saturday for my niece's 8th birthday. I have just today and tomorrow to get more hands in this week, so it's now going to be virtually impossible for me to hit my hands goal for this week...

I spent the end of last week studying and watching videos instead of playing, in order to ensure my mindset was on the right track, and then I was out of town all day Saturday. I didn't get anywhere near my hands goal last week - I finished the week with around 4,000 hands, so not a bad week in terms of productivity, just not what I wanted it to be. I'm setting the hands goal to 7500 again for this week, and I have every intention of hitting it. I got a head start on this week by playing a couple of hours yesterday which went quite well. I won a few buy-ins, and from what I remember it was the best session I've had in probably a week and a half. Now I'm off to the tables.

I had a decent session today. I lost just a little, but I could have lost a lot more, as I ran bad most of the day. I think I played well despite the run bad, so that's the important thing.

Here's my graph for the day:



I ran QQ into KK, lost with AK to AQ twice, and the day was frequently characterized by hands like this:



Here's a hand where I should have gotten it in (and meant to) preflop but miss clicked and called instead of reraising:



After the miss click, would you have played this any differently? I'm thinking I should have raised the flop and hopefully get it in on the flop or turn.

This one stung:



I turned the straight, obviously, and I snap called on the river without even thinking, unfortunately. Even still, had I taken time to think, I don't think I would have put him on J9 and having gone runner runner for the boat. Do you do anything differently here?

The silver lining of the day is that I finished in the green today in NL10:

QQ I'd probably fold OTR. Too much beats us there. Too many completed draws, trips are there, any hand that's betting there has you beat. Just think of it this way, if you have AJo are you betting in that river?

Also when reviewing the hand, click options, and click mask players names. Just easier for other people to view it

Yeah, I definitely should've folded the river. It may have been easier to if the turn had played a little differently. When I bet the turn, he tanked hard...looked like he was going to fold and nearly timed out before he finally called. He snap shoved the river, which at the time felt bluff-ish, and I snap called. In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious that he had the flush lol.

Yesterday, the day started out well, and then the last hour and a half or so, it turned into a disaster. I ran a set into a bigger set, and then I had a fish at one table who was shoving every other hand preflop. I called him once with AK, and his KQs outran me. Then I called him with with 99 and lost to his Q9o when a queen hit the turn. The very next hand I had KK. We got it in again, and his QTs outran me. I lost 3 stacks to the fish in minutes. Luckily I was near my planned end for the session because I had to just stop after that to avoid going on tilt.




As for today...

Why can't I beat 5nl anymore?

So despite this...



...the second day in a row that I've lost due to set over set. I had a good day today. I won a buy in and a half at 10nl. I lost half a buy in at 5nl though. Granted, pretty much all coolers today came at 5nl, but I don't understand why I can't win at 5nl and 10nl at the same time. It hasn't happened even once yet which seems very odd to me.

Oh well, I'm just glad to finally have a day where I played 1k+ hands and had a winning day. It's been a while...

I meant to post this last night. I was curious about this hand. I'm wondering if I could've/should've raised the river for value here. Thoughts?

Today was a really volatile day. I saw a lot of crazy hands. Had aces cracked twice (all in pre flop both times too), had another guy river a gut shot on me after I got him all in on the turn, and he had to hit the gut shot to win...and I got rivered several other times today. Those are just hand that stick out in my mind.

Luckily, I had my share of things go my way too, and I managed to put together a solid day. I ran really bad in 5nl and only managed to eek out a $0.63 profit for the day, but I won over 2 buy ins at 10nl. The nice thing is, even with 5nl being such a small profit today, I finally won at both stakes on the same day. I guess all I had to do was ask!

Here's my graph for the day. You can see how volatile the day was:




Here's an update on my overall graph. A couple of things to note here are that I'm over 50k hands now (all stakes combined), and that it looks like I may finally climbing out of the downswing that I've been in for the last several thousand hands.

Just a brief update - I had a good 10 hour session and a winning day on Friday. I finished out the week with 8804 hands, and my goal for this week is to top 9k hands.

Ran horribly, horribly bad today. Lost almost 5 buy ins, and 100% to guys who were 40+ vpip. Completely ridiculous.

I'm canceling my goals for this week. After what a disaster yesterday was, I've decided that I need to take a step back and regroup. For at least a month now it seems like I've been taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back, and I'm tired of it. So I'm going to be looking for leaks and studying more this week in an effort to figure out what's going on.

So, in accordance with what I said in my last post, I didn't play much this week. Instead, I focused on studying the game and trying to regroup. When I have played this week, I have continued to run bad (more set over set and boat over boat hands just killing me) and continued to lose. My bankroll is its lowest point in 2 months, and I'm rather discouraged. Sure, I haven't played perfectly, but I've done a lot of analyzing my hands from recent sessions. Overall, I have played well, and mistakes have been minimal. There are just so many hands where I've lost a buy-in by getting aces cracked by kings, AK, and AQ, as well as set over set, boat over boat, and flush over flush.

It'd be one thing if I were playing poorly and losing. I'd deserve it. It's just frustrating to play correctly and still lose as much as I have lose this much (both in terms of frequency and in currency). It just feels like there's nothing more that I can do. Anyway, we'll see what happens this upcoming week.

Any updates?

I couldn't take Bovada's nonsense. The swings on there are so ridiculous, and only being allowed to 4 table (Bovada doesn't allow more than that), you can't move through the downswings quickly enough. It became too frustrating, so I've been taking a break from it to work on some other projects.

So it's been a year, and I got a solid job offer in Las Vegas. I took the job and moved here a few weeks ago. It's a 9-5, so it's giving me plenty of time to grind the tables. Obviously I'm tracking my live sessions, so I'm going to try to do some periodic updates here in case anyone is interested. I'm not sure whether I'll do them in this thread or start a new thread. Suggestions?

Just keep it in this thread