Hello All,

I'm certainly not a regular around these forums and far more of a lurker than anything. However, that's about to change. For too long i've gone about my game with a work ethic that wasn't good enough.

My immediate aims are to beat 5NL - OK, not exactly the most exciting challenge you've seen on 2+2 over the years, but I believe i'm easily good enough to make it to the levels of 25NL with some discipline and support from this thread.

About Me

I'm a 21 year old economics graduate from Canterbury, UK. I'm currently training (part-time) to become a teacher of English as a foreign language. This is taking up a good chunk of my time, but also allows me a lot of spare time for poker.

I've been playing poker for around 18 months and learnt from my brother who is a professional living in Aix-En-Provence in France grinding €2/4 tables at the local partouche casino.

His success is my motivation.

Having crushed 2NL for $400 over 250k hands at about 9bb/100 (yeah, I really did have too much hands on my time at uni) I think that I can handle moving up to 5NL.

I will play solely on 6max tables and will buy in for 100 big blinds at all my tables.

I will start this project with $100 - 20 buyins. For all further levels, I will require 25 buyins to play:

e.g $250 will mean I can qualify to play 10NL
$625 will mean I can qualify to play 25NL

My targets are:

By the end of 2011 (Deadline Dec 31st):

[] Be in profit!
[] Post as many HH's as I can
[] Post at least 10 times on 2+2 (some might see this as arbitrary but talking about poker as much as I can will be sure to help

January Targets (Deadline Jan 31st):

[] Complete 50k hands
[] Reach $250 and start to play 10NL
[] Reach 100 posts on 2+2

Goals for Q1 2011 (Deadline Mar 31st):

[] Play 150k hands
[] Reach halfway point to 25NL ($312.5)
[] Not play ANY other form of poker - absolutely no MTT's / PLO
[] Reach 300 posts on 2+2


Starting Roll: $100

Just one further thing to add, I will be dropping down to 2NL to grind back up if i drop below $75 at any point - although I really hope that won't be necessary!

First session didn't actually go too well, despite ending up with a (very) small profit

423 hands, +$1.33

Nevertheless, I still ended up. Usually, I will post the most interesting hand histories but most of the swings in this session were just coolers or hands that played themselves so nothing really to post in terms of analysis.

BANKROLL: $101.33

Another good challenge! Good luck to you and your brother.

Played 1k hands today and feel very happy about how I played. Lost 2 buyins in supercoolers where villains redrew on me but brought back the session to almost even which is extremely satisfying.

I have posted a few hands in the uNL forum for analysis but here are the hands where I lost a buyin (these happened within about 2 minutes of each other on separate tables):









By far the most satisfying element of this session was my tilt control. These weren't exactly the sickest hands in the world, but I was still happy with my mental fortitude in the circumstances.

I quit with my bankroll down very slightly - but I am more than happy with my session.

Bankroll: $99.35

January 3rd Update

Well, Christmas and the New Year have passed and I have managed to spend a lot of time playing and studying.

Overall, it has been a very mixed bag in terms of how things have gone. Before I go into any more detail, I will quickly update on how my December 2011 goals went:

By the end of 2011 (Deadline Dec 31st):

[FAILED] Be in profit!
[COMPLETED] Post as many HH's as I can
[COMPLETED] Post at least 10 times on 2+2 (some might see this as arbitrary but talking about poker as much as I can will be sure to help

So, as you can see - I completed all my challenges except for showing a profit! I'm pleased to say that i'm now back in profit, but i'll come to that shortly.

Without wishing to justify my failure to complete one of my December 2011 targets, I think that it is fair to say that I ran horribly over the xmas period. Over 10k hands I ran 10buyins under EV according to my tracker. Not good.

However, onwards and upwards - and the new year certainly brought an upwards swing.

Over my total hands played so far (graphs to come) I am marginally up. $8.44 to be precise. I have also decided that any FPP's that I receive will be used on Sunday Storm satellites (235FPP) and then played as hyper turbo SNG's.

With all this taken into account, my bankroll has swollen significantly to:

Bankroll: $161.97

So, i'm progessing kind of nicely. Although I still haven't made much of an impression at the 5NL tables.

One final note as well is that I have decided to amend one of my original targets in my OP.

Goals for Q1 2011 (Deadline Mar 31st):

[]Reach 25NL ($625)

Subd. Will follow closely. Have a very similar challenge myself! Gl, and keep up the work! If you ever want to share thoughts/ideas/opinions then drop me a message.

January 4th Update

Super good day today. Took over 6.5 buy-ins.

Feeling very good about my game. I'm confident I can easily beat 5NL and i'm now well on my way to doing so. As you can see from the graphs etc below - my December was pretty horrid. I know that running -EV is part of the game, but I really got a bad dose of it!

Anyway, here are my overall graphs and my daily performances so far.







So. My overall 5NL winnings are over $40 which is nice. Coupled with my FPP's that I used for Sunday Storm T$ which subsequently went into Hyper-Turbo SNG's, my current bankroll is:

BANKROLL: $194.62

Very happy with my status so far, and looking forward to taking shots at 10nl soon.

Good looking graph! Keep up the grind. Looking forward to seeing you at the 6 max Nl10 tables.

subscribed! awesome, btw if you ever want to talk poker via skype f.e im always available, just pm me your skype im currently playin NL4, shottin NL10 next time in a week(if things go as planned).

gl!

Start of session and this happened:









Puke!

Taking a small break because aside from this hand I got cold 4bet a few times when i had JJ/TT. Bit of an annoying start but many more hands to come today!

Sick. Lol. Surprised you didnt make it more pre with 3 limpers and being OOP?