-3.6k @ 2/5/T was pretty meh. Played well in all the hands. Couldn't bet/fold in a spot to three value combos, oh well. Took two days off.. going to get back into things. I'm tentatively off on another trip to LA & Vegas later this week for 4-8 days, not sure how long yet. Should be good.
Boxing is going really well, running 3.5 miles each way and training for 3 hours each time. I'm improving very quickly and starting to feel much more comfortable with my jab and spacing. My body is changing shape quickly too.

Not much to post about, volume is low.

In LA for 1wk to 2 mths, not sure how long i'll stay. Will be in Vegas this weekend and probably the weekend after too.

Absolutely stunned, saw an angle shooter get punished by floor who hadn't witnessed it that ruled he had called off the chips in his hand with king high. Angle shooters get punished?? At Commerce?? I'd been misinformed.

Had 2500bb of swing last 5/5 plo session live. Sick sick game. My graph for the last four days is prettyyy spikey.

2 sessions of 10/20 & 10/20/40 -- the results?? +24, +19. A wins a win baby.

Sick winrate

Lol I know xazel. Truly killing the game.

Graph since coming to LA with online & live included:

It doesn't show the intrasession swing tho that'd be gross. Been stuck 5k+ twice. I was surprised at how good the 10/20/40 game was super late last night, although when three regs came and bought in for 20-25k each when the game was avg stack of 3.5k it was visibly uncomfortable for the recs. Wish those pros had a clue since 70% of that $ wasn't really even in play.

Off to potentially play 25/50 half and half before vegas. If this happens I'll be floored and giddy.

Truly is a swingy game. Had a few 25k swings in some juicy 5/10/25 games recently. Surely tests that mental game

Yes although recently I've arrived closer to a zen-like state where people think i'm perpetually stoned when I play but really i'm just dead inside.
Focusing more on online right now than live for the stake. Games aren't that great in either spot but 25/50 plo should run most days a week from now.

I got owned so hard today by a dude playing half his hands. Like a 48/37/3 game. His postflop play was incredible. I learned some things. Ran good tho. Feeling optimistic about this week

What's up brotha srry I been ghost....

Too touch on what's been said about the mental game. I watched the live stream of the 25k PLO that jeans won. The guy doesn't make mistakes. His discipline is phenomenal. I know it should b obv considering he's a top 5 PLO player in the world but to see it was another thing. Wore out le HU. He had le on the brink of elimination twice, le drew out. He stayed poise and wore that man down. Inspired me after watching.

Anyways that was on my mind. Good to see your doing well brotha

Not posting anything online for an undetermined amount of time.

Well I haven't had any more contact with it, so I assume everything's ok. I was being investigated by a PI so cleansed my online presence. Would be surprised if he knew of this blog but you never know.

In other news, I, against my better judgment, decided to change up my life and have been living with my backer for the last month. I put in 200 hours live and online. Funnily enough I hit 10k poker points on my account and earned about 8k points on another account. Now I'm going home for a bit before I pick up at school again at the end of the month. I'll still be playing online remotely on the stake for the remainder of the month. I had a pretty sick month tbh. Unless someone has lived an equivalent journey to what I went through, I don't know if they can properly understand how it feels. The level of competition, the different characters, the crazy stories, the swings... This was a side of poker I'd never experienced before. I played some 200/400 limit, 50/100 huplo, 50/100/200 plo, 25/50/100 50/50 pl/nl, and a bunch of 25/50 pl and 10/20 nl live, then mostly 5/10 and 10/20 plo online. Online went much better than live even though it's so much stupidly tougher it's not even funny. I ran so bad in the (hilariously big) shots we opted to take after I was +~40k. Although the brief short handed high stakes limit adventure went okay courtesy of the whale.

Here's the results so far:
Online & live results:

Total graph:

Online results only:


We shared a cute little apartment with a second inflatable bed. For grinding we put the middle table close to the wall with a large monitor setup:

I learned that I should live with a very tidy roommate or else it'll slowly start to annoy me. Also being on the same schedule is very important or else you'll start to drain each other by waking up at different times and having subpar quality of sleep.

All in all this trip taught me a lot of lessons. I grew a lot as a person. My pain tolerance for amount of swing that I can endure increased by two orders of magnitude. I was very proud of my mental game throughout this month as I didn't spew off at all, ever. Despite having the biggest losing sessions and days I'd ever had. And then woke up the next day and proceeded to still put in my X hours/day at stakes 1/10th the size playing my A game.

Warning, after rereading some people might be offended:

Anyway back to my month--
It was a very encouraging experience that I can weather significant swings if I play higher on my own $. Also it will sound crazy to say this but both the 50/100/200 and the 50/100 hu game didn't feel or play that 'big' in terms of big blinds in the middle. For the ring game, people played with smaller effective stacks and were much tighter than at lower stakes. The game felt more 'accurate' which was fine by me.

My online play even though it was for smaller $ amounts felt much larger than the live play. I believe this is reflected in the $/hour std deviation difference between my online and live play, despite the limited sample sizes. My live $/hr std dev was $1400/hr and my online play was $4150/hr. The difference in mental game required and sheer strength of will needed to not get jilted by the swing of online hsplo is massive. I was regularly having 15k swing intra-session that isn't reflected in my graphs. It really ****s with you after a while but now I'm pretty numb. In my last two days alone I lost two 10k flips at 10/20. These spots seem to come up regularly as stacks quickly get deep. The variance is stupid high. Perhaps I could combat this by recycling when I get deeper, returning to the table 5 minutes later with 100bb as the game is very unlikely to break and there is a lot of churn-- people enter and exit the games frequently.

I've got another three weeks or so of play before I return to my own $, and I want to put in around 100 more hours. I don't have any $ goals but it would be pretty swell to win 2500 big blinds. How hard can it be? Just 25 buyins. What's the catch lol? If I do, post profit-split I'd have a solid roll for 600pl and would be catapulted along my journey to where I want to be with poker when I graduate. Worst case, if I lose all my profit back and don't recover, I still will have enough $ for 200pl regularly & 400pl shots as combined with my existing bankroll, part of my backing deal included a guaranteed $20/hr if I end up less than $20*hrs played.

It's been a hell of a trip. I had a 58k upswing in five days with the biggest big blind being $10 online and $20 live, and then lost $55k in the next two days. That's some sick **** man. I'm really proud of my play and am looking forward to playing my A game in my last month.

Thoughts welcome, will start to update more regularly now as long as I don't hear from any friends about the PI.

653 days till graduation.

Any idea why a PI was looking into you?

Bovada was down so played live on my own $, made 2.7k. Still plugging away online, although I've got a bunch of errands tomorrow and resume boxing training Mon-Sat tomorrow.

Been dealing with a lot of swing recently, came back from a -7k start to finish +7k on the session. August is off to a good start for sure, although not putting in more than 3 hours a day. Hopefully Bovada figures their **** out and fixes their servers. If I put in another 80 hours this month at 5/10-10/20, I'll be really happy with the volume.

Played live on stake $ and basically broke even, it cleared up some outstanding $.

Since my BB target, I am presently at:
+781BB/+2500BB goal.

Not bad! 26 days left till I leave for school.

Got it in with AAQJcchh vs KdKTd9d and Qd7d8d9 for a 9.1k pot. Kings made quads GG.

+950BB/+2500BB goal.

Played a super frustrating 10/20 session but did okay in smaller games in 5 short sessions.

+863BB/+2500BB goal.

Huh actually made a snap decision and ended the stake because it was too much stress and I can play big enough on my own without having to long-distance answer to someone else. Really happy about how it went, won a little over 11k more since I got home.
So I failed that BB goal but it was really just to help me to put in hours.
I'm going to abide by this brm for the future for 6max play:
30bi 200; 40bi 400; 50bi 600; 60bi 1k; 75bi 2k. It's aggressive but I'm willing to move up and drop down accordingly, plus I don't foresee myself having to move down to 200pl practically ever as I'm just shy of adding in 600pl. It's been a good summer, I've put about 1/3 of my profits from this summer towards college which I'm proud of. I'l be updating more now after sessions as I'm doing my own thing.

So put in 5 sessions at 200&400 with one table of 600, up around 2k. At another +1-2k and I'm adding in more 600 tables. 2/4 seems really reg heavy compared to higher and lower limits so want to move through it asap.

Given all goes well for the rest of the month I'll put some thought in to firm volume & progress goals for when I'm back at school and next summer/year for by the time I graduate. Rough idea is 3/6 comfortably by Halloween and approaching 5/10 by Christmas and build from there-- 30k isn't that hard to win by the end of the year given where I'm at right now. I won't get ahead of myself about 10/20, but I would be very, very happy with a 5/10 hourly for my last year in school.
If my hourly is $45 from now till the end of the year (low balling?) I'd have to put in 140 hours a month/35 hours a week. If it's $75, that's 400 hours or 83/month & 21/week. Some food for thought.

This is definitely one of the more interesting quests I've seen posted. I wish you nothing but the best- I'd love to see a state of the union with how you think your progress has been to this point and what your adjustments are going forward.

Thanks for the kind words. I'll consider it. Right now I'm just putting my head down for some consistent volume (not tons of hours but a few a day). I've made plenty of adjustments that I'll talk about sometime. GL


Been playing well, streaming some of my play. I find it makes me play longer sessions which is a good thing. Hard to tilt over games so small (lol) so not even an iota of tilt recently. Moving in to 3/6 over the next few days now as long as I don't downswing.

Turns out streaming is good for my volume, I played just under 3 hrs last stream without sweating it. Usually do sub 1 hr. I also delete vods so education is a nonissue. Up 4.1k over first 8 sessions at 200-600. Over 50bi for 600 so aiming to mainly play that now but it doesn't run much. Most action is at 400-/1k+.

Will most likely do a graph at the end of the month.