This is my first ever thread in PG&C.

I used to keep similar threads on a UK poker forum eatmystack in 2010/11/12/13 but as that site slowly died, I became less inclined to keep them updated.

I used to enjoy keeping a kind of blog and really benefited from writing them to help me collect and collate my thoughts.

First, a little bit about me.

I'm 40, have been playing poker for around eleven years and have been a winning player for the last seven years or so. I have had a lot of tilt issues in the early days and still suffer with tilt from time to time. Not crazy monkey tilt, just a lack of confidence that can affect the quality of my play until I somehow give myself a jump start.

I really struggled making the jump from $20nl to $50nl and now, I'm having a similar experience making the jump from $50 to $100nl. I play primarily on 888, playing a mix of Snap, 6max and Full Ring. I don't pigeon hole myself and before a recent spell grinding Snap hard, was a strong advocate of good game selection an table starting.

Because of my age and responsibilities (I am married an have 3 children) I do struggle to distance myself from the actual $$ amount when playing and winning well, or downswinging at $100nl. It's absolutely a mental game issue that I am yet to resolve and I have considered staking in the past to ease that a little but I'm well enough rolled not to have to do that and would prefer to solve the problem under my own steam.

So, the first part of my goal is to become an established $100nl regular on 888 by the early part of 2015 and then, try to push on to play $200nl by the end of 2015.

That is not a particularly lofty goal at first glance but to me, it's big enough because it's something I haven't managed to achieve in the last couple of years.

The second part of my challenge is less important and is just something I'd like to be doing in addition to my grind but definitely as a secondary thing.

Recently, I have worked with a dozen or so $2nl - $25nl players, most of which were either losing players, or just small winning players.

I haven't charged them a lot of money because I realise that sourcing help when you don't have much of a bankroll, or life roll is difficult. On top of that, I'm only really helping them fix fundamental leaks and explaining relatively simple concepts. On top of that, I've really enjoyed it.

However, I would eventually like to turn it into an extra income stream, so I'm hoping to pick up some ideas on how to develop that.

A little bit of background information about me. I am a support worker as part of a team supporting three gentlemen with Cerebral Palsy. I find the job incredibly rewarding and often challenging.

My goals in life are to just get through it as smoothly as possible. My children are getting to ages where I can consider slowing down relatively early in life, so I just want to make as much money as I can in the next 5-10 years so semi-retirement at 50 is something that I could realistically achieve.

I hope to update this thread at least once per week. If it's anything like my previous threads on eatmystack, I hope that it will be well received.

I would be interested in hearing from people who have struggled making a leap from upper micro stakes to ssnl and msnl. Mentally, it seems like a huge gap to bridge for me, so any advice would be gratefully received.

GL me and I'm looking forward to sharing the next part of my poker journey with a new group of people.

GL sir.

Ty sir!

Springsteen fan?

Apologies if not and I'm just showing my age

subbed, gl!

subbed mate gl (whollyflush)

Of course

GL old bean. I'm a 31 married father of two wondering if I can keep going with this hobby so inspiring to me at least to see someone in your shoes doing well.

Crush dat 50NL as the kids say.

In. Sounds like a interesting thread.

Graphs would be good. glgl

Reg,

I'm also in the UK. You are looking for ways to turn your coaching into a full time income stream then I have a small offer for you which you may be interested in.

I work as a full time web developer in Leeds. I would be willing to build you a fully mobile responsive website in exchange for some of your time.

Let me know what you think

Josh

GL

You can absolutely do well, IMO a lot of what holds people in our shoes back is the difficulty in desensitizing ourselves from the money because when we drop a relatively big number, it's hard not to feel bad about what you could have done with that money.

The times I feel worst about it is when I've had a particularly bad session of speed poker. I know those games don't particularly suit me but it's where the traffic is being driven, so I feel I 'need' to adapt to those games but when I come off the back of a brutal session where I may have dropped $300 in an hour or something, it actually affects my mood for a good while afterwards.

It shouldn't but it does because maybe deep down inside, I know I'm not being true to myself as I only ever feel really comfortable playing full ring poker. I think it might be a guilt issue. I feel guilty because I'm playing a game that doesn't suit me, so when I lose big at it, it makes me feel like a gambler, not a poker player.

I played on a stake for a while getting an 80/20 split and it allowed me to feel less shackled because it didn't seem like my money and felt more like a job. I think it was a mistake to end the arrangement and it's definitely something I would consider again in the future because in hindsight I feel it helped with some of my mindset issues.

The above could of course be complete nonsense but it makes sense to me as I type it out and I like to use these types of posts to organise my thoughts, so I'm leaving it in

I have some graphs but they're only from the last 12 months or so. I purged my database a while back to try and speed up HEM2 because it's a piece of crap that runs too slow and makes my laptop overheat but it didn't improve the situation much and I almost instantly regretted it.

I got this first graph of my old laptop. It's from around Sept 2011 until December 2013 http://gyazo.com/78f0565dca52db13ffca7c42a441cb09

This second graph is from when I got my new laptop (christmas present to myself ) in December 2013 http://gyazo.com/d48e2be47259badd3b6f457715e979d6 The large spike at the start of the graph is a heater I had when I took a shot at $200nl but I had to withdraw a large chunk of my roll for various reasons (school skiing trip for my daughter, car problems, pay for a first wedding anniversary holiday) and then after that, I had a horrible break even spell at $100nl which further depleted my roll as I need to withdraw regularly to supplement my income and before I knew it, I was back at $50nl wondering where it all went wrong

I'd be interested, very interested but I have zero skills in marketing, knowing how to get a site noticed etc. However, I would still like to chat with you because having a site of my own appeals to my vanity

Hello there sir. Not sure I've ever told you this but you were one of my earliest inspirations back in around 07/08 I think. I still remember the video you made in which you were 4tabling on microgaming and thinking 'wow, I want to do that one day' My hero

Reg,

What is the best way to chat with eachother?

Im not sure I can private message just yet

Let me know so we can have a chat asap.

With regards to marketing I have an idea how it all works and I have people around me who would be able to help with that sort of thing

Josh

Not sure if you can receive PM's but I'll PM you my Skype details and if you get them, add me.

Not going to lie though, it's a bit odd to have someone contact me from a brand new account, so I'm more than a bit skeptical with the situation.

Yeah sure,

Just wait till we have a chat before you make your judgement

Ill wait for your PM then get in touch with you this evening after work

Josh

Can't send PM's right now.

I'm not going to put any of my details in the thread and not sure you should either.

I also don't want the thread to get derailed and fall foul of any rules, so PM me when your post count allows you too. I'm not going anywhere

Fair enough,

Ill have to get a few more posts in then!

Josh

P.S

If you want to see some of my work and tell I am legit. www.joshbenson.co.uk

The last couple of days I've been playing on Unibet due to the problems 888 have been having with their server.

I only intended it to be a stop gap until 888 got their act together but I've actually quite enjoyed it and found the games at €25nl to be really soft.

I've just been playing €25nl because I only made a small deposit and as mentioned above, had no intention of making a permanent switch but now I'm not so sure.

Traffic seems decent enough at peak hours and playing €50nl seems like a sweet way to increase my hourly rate whilst minimizing the mental game side effects that come with moving up.

I have withdrawn my roll from 888 for now and because their cashouts are slow, I have 2 days to continuing evaluating Unibet.

I see some pro's and con's.

Pro's

• Seems soft
• Get a deposit bonus to clear
• Semi Anonymous, which will dissuade some regs
• The site seems to be fish friendly
• A change is as good as a holiday

Con's

• No HUD support
• No tracking results, so need to rely on a simple spreadsheet for hourly etc
• Traffic seems to dry up after €50nl
• Easy to slip into a comfort zone if I earn €15ph at €50nl and might affect my motivation to play higher
• Outside of peak hours, traffic seems poor.

In the very short term, I think the site could be good for me. In the medium-long term, it might not be depending on if/how fast the site grows and if it does grow so the player pool at €100nl is deeper, how will the make-up of the player pool look?

Nothing new to report on the microstakes coaching front. I'm currently not actively doing anything to find work in the area and just hoping that word of mouth from the people I've helped brings in the odd piece of work. I might focus more on that in the new year as adding a reliable 3rd income stream to my life is a goal I really want to achieve.

That's all for now, apart from to ask if anyone hears of any tools that allow hands from Unibet to be converted post session so they can be imported into tracking software, I'd like to hear about it

That's not a con, that's a pro!

A major aim of the site is to keep new players alive for longer. One of the ways we do that is to put everyone on a level playing field, hence no HUDs, no trackers, no seating scripts, no table selection.

I hope that these things don't exist. It'd be hard to make them because we don't have hand histories per se. We're looking at including some form of monthly summary (perhaps where you currently see flops seen today in the profile), so that'll help. Also, I'm fine to send you that data if you PM me at the end of the month.

Reg,

I'm in a similar life position as you. I'm in the US so we won't be playing each other!

GL with it all. I have a thread too that I'd welcome your thoughts on.

I'm inclined to agree. I'm not bothered about a HUD but I would like to be able to track my results and analyse my play more than I'll be able to.

Thanks, I'd appreciate that. Your work on this site is impressive and I'm almost certainly not going to return to 888 in the near future.

TY.

I had a quick read of your thread and liked what I saw. I also saw the positional stats that you posted and had some thoughts on them that I'd be happy to share with you at some point.

We could buddy up via Skype if you want to send me your details?

PM sent

End of day 3 on Unibet and I'm still having fun.

Crushing it helps of course and I've certainly been doing that.

I've been running well in terms of getting paid off by weak hands and also running well in terms of not being put to the test very often with marginal hands.

Games play nicely. There isn't much aggression either pre, or post flop from what I've seen so far.

I've only managed to put 7 hours in over 3 days because I've been busy at work, I normally try to put in around 3 hours per day at least and more when I'm not working but because the site is reasonably small right now, traffic seems to die off around this time, so I can't grind into the night like I've been used to doing on 888.

I've also somehow got 8x €1 mtt tickets, which I'll likely never use. I think it's possible to ask the site to change them to different denomination tickets, so if it is, I might save them up and try to get into a large buyin tournament once in a while and hope to bink something nice.

In the last couple of days, I have had a couple of promising inquiries from players interested in working with me. Hopefully one or both will come to fruition because I enjoy the work and the extra money is always an added bonus.

Here's my graph from unibet, just because I like it

http://gyazo.com/19b510f43679311478032089f3514615

A friend made me the spreadsheet because I'm useless but he has made it in £ rather than €. My hourly over the mammoth 7 hours played is €48.29. Sustainable? Not a chance of course but I'll take it whilst it lasts

End of month report time.

October has been good. Results have been decent, the players I worked with have all shown good progress and I've settled well in my new job.

Plans for November are just more of the same. I already have 3 new players lined up, would like a couple more but that's far from the be all end all. It offers a nice cushion against variance but my primary focus is on becoming over-rolled so when I move up, I don't have to worry about immediately having to move down again should it not go well straight away.

In the past, I have had a tendency to move up too quickly. This has been because I've always been a relatively low volume player and in a hurry to move up.

By playing Snap on 888 and mixing in some good reg tables too, volume will be less of a problem so I'm feeling confident that I can build a 50 buyin roll for $100nl whilst meeting my living costs in the next 2-4 months depending on how good I run.

That is where I'm hoping the coaching will kick in. If I can make $500 per month from that for the next few months, it will reduce the need for me to withdraw as much from my roll so it can grow more quickly.

Here's October's graphs.

888
http://gyazo.com/411e6c835c5673e1a83a6ccd15a1261a

Unibet
http://gyazo.com/a01c1cca0ed8f7634948aa06ac332cb8

I tried to make them an image in the post but it didn't work, so if anyone can tell me how to make it work, that would be nice

GL !!!

subbed!

I'm in the same position as you, father of 2 with 2 children, starting from zero.