I might as well jump on here and create another "goal" type post.

Anyway, I've never made Iron Man before, at any level. But I really want to try it. Since FTP is giving a bonus for the half-year mark, it provided a little bit more incentive. I will only get the bonus for the one month but that's something. I figure I'm going to shoot for Gold because I really want to focus on my 10NL 6-max game and when playing 2-3 tables of Rush at that level, I can get to 100 points in about 1.5-2.5 hours a day. It's a lot of play for me but it's not unreasonable. If, for some reason, I fail to make Gold... I am also going to be in a good spot to pick up Silver or Bronze without too much extra effort.

I need about 1,250 hands (give or take a couple hundred) to make my 100 FTP a day. That's hard normally but easily done when getting 600+ hands an hour.

This is also going to help me get 30-40k hands of Rush 6-max in so I can get a better idea of my real win-rate. Right now, I've only got 17k hands and that seems like much too small a sample to be confident playing rush 6-max.

So far, I'm 4:4 on the days in. And I'm running decently. For the month (5,858 hands) I am running 7.9ptBB/100 (running good) and for all 17k hands of the game, I am running about 5ptBB/100. That's not including RB either... which can contribute a fair amount at that level. My secondary goal, is to finish the month with a ptBB/100 over 5... but anything positive will be nice and the main objective is Iron Man.

Pretty sick morning... down 4bi getting the 100 points. I just need to remind myself that there will be winning days and losing days. It's funny, I have two days where I run 5bi+ each day... then one where I drop 4bi... and I react mentally much more to the loss.

Well, another day, another dollar. I just need to keep playing and let it even itself out.

good luck man keep it up!

If you watch 2M2MM, Ansky (or was it Brian Roberts?) once said something along the line "the bad that you feel when you lose is a lot worse than the good that you feel when you win." It was in the Poker Boot Camp episode when the team decided to take time off to provide some coaching for a bunch of players. What he said makes a lot of sense to me, so you just have to learn to deal with it.

Thanks for the encouragement. I know that downswings are only temporary... but I hate them just as much every single time they happen. And I really think Rush has more variance than normal 6-max tables. So I am swinging all over the place. But as long as I am trending upwards, the swings are just part of the game.

It might not be rush though. In the past, I would play 2k-8k hands in a month (purely recreational play with 1-3 tables for a couple hours after work). Now I am putting in more volume than that in under a week and beating my slow months in under two days. With that many hands, I am going to see a lot more bad beats (as well as give a lot more) each week than I would see before.

And some of it's not pure bad beats either... I've run really bad with top or middle set against combo draws. Four times I've had a set against someone who shoved the flop with an open-ended straight and a flush draw. I lost 3 of the 4. Those aren't really bad beats since they are pretty close (58-42 according to PokerStove for one of the hands I just pulled). Still, that's a little more than a buy-in right there...

Anyway... volume, volume, volume... and I'll wait for a real sample size before I start getting too upset about stuff like that.

Thanks again for the kind words.

Good luck with the volume

I'm going for iron man for the first time this month at 50NL FR Rush. It's only about 45 minutes of play per day, but in the past I usually put in a lot of volume for like 15 days a month and then quit altogether for the remainder of it.

5/5 so far ^^

Anyway, goals like these are pretty good for the mindset, you just grind it out for the sake of getting FTPs and you don't pay attention to how much you win/lose.. Really good method to keep you from putting in hours of bad play trying to chase your losses or those times where you quit while you're ahead because you don't want to risk your winnings.

Grind on the mind imo !

(Too bad they don't have any higher levels than iron man, 500 FTPs a day would be a much better goal for me )

Well, 6 for 6 now. The last two days have been pretty blah. I made a whopping $2.56 today (not counting RB) but at least I got the 100 FTP. Last night I played some 25NL and made $40ish so that made yesterday essentially a break even day too.

I really can't complain. I'm not running super hot but I'm already getting over $30 in RB this month and I'm up about $92. That mean's I'm up over $120 for the month already...

Ok, 7 for 7.

I have played 10,281 hands of 10nl 6-max Rush this month with a profit so far of $67.37... and a pitiful win-rate of 3.3ptBB/100... well, at least it's positive. I also played 391 hands of 25NL and made $40.35... making my first week's profit $107.72. That's pretty decent... for me at least.

Throw in RB, which should be a little over $38... and I have made a pretty decent profit this week compared to previous months where I barely played at all and made a profit commensurate with that.

There is a little stress on the home-front though. The GF is not too pleased with me and she's trying to blame poker. But I think it's mostly because she's been out of town for a month (helping her parents in a different state) and being apart is making everything else seem way out of whack. I mean... we talk on the phone 4-5 hours a day and I play less than 2... but apparently poker is the problem... oh well. I have a feeling that things will be much better when she gets back here on Saturday.

A winrate of 3.3ptbb/100 (6.6bb/100) is nothing pitiful IMO. Keep playing and if you can at the very least maintain it over 100k hands, that's a decent amount of money.

Well, for the whole of my 6-max 10nl Rush experiment (21,535 hands), I am running 3.36ptBB/100 (6.72bb/100). I am very swingy... so I don't think that's enough hands to be confident about the win-rate yet. But it seems to keep approaching that value.

Yeah, after 100k hands... that would be a fairly decent profit. But if I hit 40-50k hands with that win-rate, I will have 40+ buy-ins for 25nl... and will probably move up at that point and work on maintaining a similar win-rate at that game. I already have much more than I need to be playing 10nl at the moment but I'd rather have too much bankroll than too little when playing 6-max especially against aggressive people like you find in rush.

Good luck with you journey Sir!

keep winning and show her your graph, maybe that'll calm things down.

Ok... 10 days down and 15 left to go. I've played 16,251 hands so far this month (I sometimes play a little past the 100 FTP so it's a little less than that each day to hit the goal). And I have been winning at a rate of 3.8ptBB/100. That's pretty good, I guess. I still would like to bring it up.

Since 5/23/10 (when I started to focus on 10nl 6-max Rush), I have put in 27,505 hands and have a 3.7ptBB/100 winrate. When I figure in rakeback, it's a little over 5.4ptBB/100. That's not the best rate in the world and I'm never going to be rich playing these limits but it's better than the alternative.

I will say that it is a totally different game when you're seeing over 1k hands a day. The way the whole game plays becomes a lot more transparent. I've made some really slim calls in spots on the river just because the other person's play didn't make sense compared to how hands normally go down -- based on the board texture and action. In almost every single case, the villain has turned out to be bluffing.

Well done so far, keep it up!

Well, 16 out of 16 down. That means I am bronze for sure. The last 4 days, I have had an absolutely brutal downswing. I'm still in the black and today was a lot better that the four before it. But it did wipe out most of my profits.

Oh well, 4 more days for Silver and 9 more for Gold. I've refocused after the downswing and am mentally set to play out the rest of the month.

Well, I'm 19 for 20. One more day for Silver and 6 more for Gold. I took a day off there to get my head back together.

The last week and a half has been horrific for me. I'm having one of the most horrible downswings I've ever experienced. It's to the tune of 24 buy ins at the moment. I know I'll make it back. And I try to remind myself that when someone calls every street with bottom pair and then hits two pair on the river to beat me... I want to keep playing with them. lol

I actually took the day off in the middle of the downswing and got my composure back. Then I had a couple days where I made some back but lost about half those gains in the last two days. But I am going to keep a positive attitude and not worry too much about it. I still have well over 80 buy-ins for the level and I am turning a profit for the month. So life isn't all bad.

It's a good thing I have RB and was on a good solid upswing before this. It means I am still well in the black for the month but at this point it is virtually all from the RB. My play itself has broke even over the time period.