WHEEEE, ran godlike to start the evening, then ran badly/got coolered for an hour, then returned to godmode; end result: $9.8k+, meaning that, with rakeback coming in tomorrow, MY ONLINE ROLL WILL BE AT $10K+! First challenge complete, sort of (two months late, but I'll take it).

graph for last 150 games (probably the largest sample I'll be able to have the shark icon):

Congrats

+1 on getting HEM, even if you don't need a HUD then it's good for tracking results.

just watched the livb interview on pokerstatic.com (awesome interview if you haven't watched it yet) and he said he only recently started using a HUD but has immediately seen the impact of it.

just something to consider

Thanks for the congrats--next goal, as announced a few months ago, is $25k for 2011

Haha, you guys are really pushing for HEM + HUD--let you know what I end up doing, but as of right now no plans to purchase anything. Could change when I move up to $230s (which I guess could be as soon as this month) and need some more ammo against tough regs

it just makes sense given the stakes your playing. your probably have a free CR membership due to TFPT (if you don't, look into it!) and then you can get HEM through them for $50... half a buyin for a full blown HUD and the ability to track progress / isolate spots to review and improve. just seems like a no brainer.

Oh, wow, totally didn't know about the CR promotion, thanks for letting me know--it was probably already a no brainer, but that should tip the scales in favor of purchasing it

pm me if u need help setting it up or anything

****, just learned the news--this is truly awful both in terms of the amount of $ I've potentially lost and what it could mean for my development as a poker player-- I just hope we're able to recover our $, GL online poker players

Given that I'll be receiving my FTP $ in the next couple of weeks, I thought I'd give this thread a happier ending (over three years later), even though it was always rather poetic that it died on 4-15-11, the American poker world's day of infamy. On a related note, how bizarre is it that I reached both my $10k goal and black card status literally on the eve of black Friday?? It's all kind of spooky.

While rereading the thread today, it really struck me how far I've come as a poker player since the thread's creation. Reading the thread was admittedly a bit of a painful experience at times, as I saw lots and lots of complaining about perceived bad luck that now strikes me as, well, pretty fishy (as do some of the lines I took in posted HHs!). It's also stunning to me how much of a tilt monkey I used to be, though it was neat to see towards the end of the thread how much progress I had made in overcoming my tilt issues. I ultimately enjoyed reliving my evolution as a poker player from a player with good instincts but crippling leaks to a stronger, more mature player.

It's tough for me to not wonder what could have been if I could go back in time to the days of this thread and play with my current mindset and skills. It's disappointing to contemplate the possibilities, to think that black Friday deprived me of the opportunity to realize my ceiling as an online poker player right when I was starting to make rapid progress. But, I suppose, in life you accept what you're dealt and make the most of it. What else can you really do? I don't know what would have happened if black Friday never occurred, but at least I do know that today I am happy with my life and I am happy with my poker game and the income it provides me.

So, three years later, I am now a professional poker player. Post-thread, I worked at my job for another two years before finally calling it quits. By that time, I had paid off over 2/3 of my student loans and had relieved myself heavily of the crushing student debt load referenced at the beginning of the thread. Despite my job being prestigious , lucrative, socially respectable, etc., I saw no future for myself in it (even the partners who made it to the promised land seemed unhappy despite being rich), knew I was miserable every single day, and after trying and failing for two years to find a better job I decided enough was enough. I quit with the intention of eventually opening a solo law practice, but not before seeing what I could do as a poker player with the new ability to play as many hours as I wanted, free of the stress and mental fatigue caused by my job.

Fortunately, things have gone extremely well in the year I've played full-time. Almost immediately after I quit, my mental game improved dramatically. No longer were the sessions where I found myself stuck deep with only another hour to play before I'd have to go home and get some sleep to work the next day, a situation I frequently found myself in which always caused me to force action in spots that I shouldn't. Gone was the stress accumulated by a job that often made my life an unpredictable mess and bled into my poker mental game no matter how hard I tried to separate it from my life issues. Having already improved my tilt issues a lot during the timeframe involved in this thread, I went from someone with an average mental game to someone with a strong mental game. I attribute this to my newfound freedom and stress relief, as well as making mindset adjustments after having lost the comfort of receiving a big check every two weeks.

After this thread died, a juicy local PLO game caused me to get very interested in PLO. For a good two year period, I played much more PLO than NL, and I crushed the game (which was easy to do, as it was incredibly soft; sadly, that game eventually died). I continue to play a lot of PLO. I also just started playing mixed games and have improved to the point of winning 2 BB/hr; they've been a lot of fun and I can't wait to continue to get better at them.

In NL, I've maintained a +$60/hr winrate playing 2-5 and 5-10 at my local casino over my last 1200 hours of play and am probably the biggest winner of any reg over that period. My PLO winrate is not quite that strong but comparable. I put in a lot of volume and continue to love the game of poker. I also continue to love the process of watching myself grow as a player. While I feel like my game is quite strong right now, I am also aware there is still plenty of room for improvement and I want to keep focusing on pursuing that improvement.

I don't make as much $ as I did while at the firm, but I make enough to live comfortably and to pay off my loans at a rate where I hope they're completely gone in two years' time. It's difficult to exaggerate how much happier I am as a person now that I own my life again and spend most of my life doing things that I enjoy.

All that being said, I recognize that there are some longterm issues with poker as a profession, and I aspire to ultimately be a semipro while doing something else on the side. Post-WSOP this year, I plan on transitioning into whatever's next beyond just poker.

In closing, I just wanted to say to aspiring poker players to never give up if you truly love the game and are above letting it affect your life in an adverse manner (very difficult for many people, I think, important to be honest with yourself). When I started this thread, I was a breakeven to slightly winning player with a slew of leaks, some of which I didn't even know I had, and I focused more of my attention on running bad than I did on my own bad decision-making. By the end of the thread, I had improved a lot and had transformed into a decently winning player, had plugged some of the leaks, and was aware of leaks I'd previously been unaware of with enthusiasm for improving my game. Today, three years from the time I closed this thread to now, I have made the transition from someone who maintained a high winrate in live cash to someone who has been crushing the games and has done so over a robust sample, and in multiple variants of poker. More importantly, in my daily life I'm a lot more comfortable in my own skin, and I enjoy my life a lot more. I will continue improving as a person and a player. I may not be the next Livb, but I'm satisfied enough.