Hi and nice to meet you all. A little about my poker history before i ask you guys to help me out!

A bunch of chess players i know invited me to play a couple of £5 single table tournaments some years aso. They were fun and i must have learned a lot - i was taught NL holdem 10 mins before the start of play, I recall getting a lot of amazing hands that night and managed to cash once. Just running good!

I didnt give the game another thought until 2 years when i began playing NL socially with some student friends. A guy who had been successful on partypoker and even claimed to have made in the region of 30k over the course of a year on the site with a £100 deposit before cashing out most of it to pay fees and musical instruments (!)

I gave Party a go, NLH again - playing low stakes cash games lost an initial £25 deposit over a couple of weeks playing micro stakes. I had enough points in my account to play a freeroll $3 sit n go which i won. After that win i was able to build the account to £65 playing sit n gos which i taught myself - playing very tight and only pushing with strong hands, even near the bubble. I withdrew £50, lost the reamining £15 and only played occasionally from then on.

I deposited and played occasionally every few weeks from then on. Party seemed pretty weak for cash games and won quite regularly at micro stakes by only raising large pairs and AK preflop - looser on the button. I was usually content depositing £25 and playing 0.15 -0.25 cashing out £60 after a few hours play, which i did mostly though i did lose a couple of deposits playing with only a couple of buyins that was obviously going to happen!). The biggest success, in a spell of unemployment I turned £25 into roughly £350 and even had a go at some one off 0.25 -0.50 and 0.5 -1 purely as an experiment, which was fun. I cashed out £180 to pay some bills and without doing too much differently lost the remaining money playing my usual cash games. Without the roll for it this time - which probably sealed my fate but i suspect tilt played a part in the end. I was playing more hands and getting called more.

After another break from poker - about 5 months I gave full tilt a go but lost an initial small deposit by playing underrolled I'd read more about NL cash and poker in general at that time and played a lot more hands in position. For fun I also had a bash at the heads up superturbos. I ran pretty good and made $150 at about the $5 buyin level. This must have been a madly hot run looking back on it - the rake is so high.

I also played for a while with a very low bankroll at the microstakes on stars. Progress was painfully slow often with less than $5 to show for hours in front of the monitor. Eventually i got bored and decided to play heads up cash for fun. I lost the small roll. I recall losing buyins when called 4/1 ahead which annoyed me at the time. I made several other small deposits on stars but was unsuccessful at taking shots at 0.15 -0.25 which confused me as i had been more successful in the past and didnt seem to be winning as much. Maybe i had been trying too hard and trying to put a little too much fancy play into some hands.

Had a bash at heads up on party again recently but lost a small deposit playing heads up - not played awfully im sure. The downfall in this case was playing flush draws aggressively, reraising the raiser on the flop - invariably being put all in and having to call. Cant be bad to do this generally speaking but perhaps just calling small bets and rasing if i hit may have been a better policy against weaker players. I'd like to find out how exactly how good i am at NL heads up cash but im reluctant to deposit the bankroll to play at the stakes offered.

So... What sort of challenge i should go for to improve my poker - and patience! As i said i'd like to improve at heads up cash but i havent found games at a low enough limit to play safely with a bankroll i'd feel comfortable depositing. Maybe you guys can provide some useful input and help with my game generally - grill me with questions!