whats your hourly since starting this challenge/thread?

Thanks, System--definitely came at a good time!


Honestly, I have no idea. I've made a little over $4k since starting the challenge, but I don't know how much of that has come from hu sngs. I'm decently + in mtts but down in cash games. I've probably played online an average of 15-20 hours/week.

I've been putting off making this post for awhile due to shame about bad results. In short, I did not play well over the last few weeks and mostly played in permatilt mode. How I lost my $ is a haze, but I recall dropping ~$1000 playing multiple games against players who I should have declined after a couple of lost games, including $330 while tilted on the $110s against former CR instructor faarcyde (who I'd previously been 3-0 against), not a good spot for someone on tilt. I also recall saying some really nasty things in chat to people, which hurts me as much as losing the $. After the humiliation of losing a lot of $ and being a bad sport, I took a week off to clear my head, and because work was busy as hell.

A week later, I still didn't feel great, but I was ready to return. For a change of pace, I decided to give 6 max super turbos a try. The first night went really well and I made a quick $200 in an hour and a half at the $20s after seeing people making all kinds of mistakes, including generally bad headsup play. I thought 6 max would continue to be like printing money and I'd be back to where I was in no time. Ofc, I was dead wrong. The next day, I went something like 7-for-40 in 60-40+ situations, and in the midst of it started playing really badly, and lost $400. Same story the next day, where both the tilt and the obscene runbad continued, and I lost another $400.

The damage of the last few weeks? My BR is down to ~$3k, $2.7k below my pinnacle of just a month ago. <cue Radiohead's 15 Steps> The last five weeks or so have been extremely disappointing, especially since around the beginning of the year I was making a lot of progress and ready to move up to $110s as my regular limits. For awhile, I was quite seriously considering just quitting, or at least withdrawing everything in excess of my last deposit of last February of $200, as both a punishment to myself and because my confidence had been damaged and I found myself wondering if I ever could beat online play at a good clip. All of the chat from people calling me out for having **** stats despite having played a million hu sngs had been accumulating and nagging at me, and I found myself wondering if they were right, if maybe I was some kind of a breakeven grinder who'd just been fortunate to go on several heaters and who had gotten a lot of profits from mtts and not hu sngs. It's hard to argue that this is not the case, now that I've played something like 10k hu sngs and have barely anything to show for it.

I don't know what's going to happen, but as of right now I'm committed to sticking with it and improving my game until I reach higher stakes. That may require coaching. It may require watching vids. Just today, I watched my first hu sng video (on CR, from primo), and it was a good experience--I felt validated that primo took a lot of lines I would have taken, and moves he made I felt were mistakes ended up being mistakes. I also saw a couple of interesting reactions to certain board textures primo took that I had never considered and made a lot of sense. I realized there's plenty I can learn from these videos, and it's very unlikely they'll be bad for me in the aggregate.

What a comeback will certainly require, though, is handling tilt much better, and those issues go beyond poker. My life is sort a trainwreck right now (basically, I've been working all the time, playing poker when not working and playing badly, neglecting friends and other things necessary for healthy everyday living) and I am committed to getting it back on track. I've never hated my job more and I resist the urge to quit every day, even though I'm knee deep in debt and desperately need the baller $ to get my principal balance down.

Get your popcorn ready, because I want to begin a hell of a comeback story

gl

Great read Kara,,,
I have just read your whole thread and am mightily impressed.....sorry about the recent and surely, temporary downturn.

In my opinion, you are not tilting as much as you may think you are, I read it as you are simply impatient and wish to reach your $ goals NOW.....But then again, who am I to judge.


Look forward to your future posts...Good luck fella / fellaess

Thanks, Stealy and Springy--I appreciate the good wishes and faith in my ability to bounce back. Don't want to let readers of the thread down--I feel like, without this thread, I would have tilted all my $ off a long time ago. This helps keep me accountable to myself and (ideally) honest about my results. It's a long road to tiltlessness, I think, not sure just much of it I've traveled...I'll get there eventually, tho

Springy, you could be right--I'm really anxious to leave my job, so I am putting a lot of pressure on myself for immediate results. Ironically, I know that's not a +EV mindset but it's really difficult to break away from it.

Kara -


From what I've read, you seem like a good dude with a good mind for the game. When things are going bad for me, I remind myself that people like Durrrr and Gus and all those guys go on million-dollar downswings, and they're real good players.

If I were you, I would first try to straighten the other things in your life out a little bit. That stuff can really affect your psyche, even if you're not consciously thinking about it. Get back in touch with your friends, hang out and have some good talks. Take care of whatever else too. If it takes a couple of weeks, so be it.

And when you have all that straightened out, come back to poker. I think you'll find your mind will be much clearer.

Just my advice, but either way I think that you have what it takes. You're just in a tough spot and if you can make it through this, you'll be fine. GL man.

I'm trying not to complain too much about bad luck on this thread, but this is the second night in a row I've been 2 outed or less in a pivotal hand halfway through in a the $ in a tournament I've invested a lot of time in and primed to go very deep (last night it was getting it in on a blank flop with AA against KK, K on river)--just so frustrating, especially given I'm basically never folding after taking this line:

Full Tilt Poker $2,500 Rush Guarantee No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t250/t500 Blinds + t50 - 9 players - View hand 1170494
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BTN: t119099 M = 99.25
SB: t63277 M = 52.73
BB: t23040 M = 19.20
UTG: t17696 M = 14.75
Hero (UTG+1): t15820 M = 13.18
UTG+2: t12834 M = 10.70
MP1: t42653 M = 35.54
MP2: t58412 M = 48.68
CO: t47553 M = 39.63

Pre Flop: (t1200) Hero is UTG+1 with 3 3
1 fold, Hero raises to t1200, 4 folds, BTN calls t1200, 1 fold, BB calls t700

Flop: (t4300) 3 K 9 (3 players)
BB bets t500, Hero raises to t3500, BTN folds, BB raises to t21790 all in, Hero calls t11070 all in

Turn: (t33440) A (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: (t33440) 6 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: t33440
BB shows K 2 (a flush, Ace high)
Hero shows 3 3 (three of a kind, Threes)
BB wins t33440




Thankfully this is a multi-entry and my other entry is still alive with a healthy stack--gogogogo me

busted my second entry in the tournament shortly thereafter, but went 7-1 at the 55s shortly right after that :-), felt very focused tonight and on top of my game, the only not so good opponent I faced was the one I lost to, who had played ~10 hu sngs ever; did run well ofc, winning a couple of big flips

W.D., that's a great reminder--seeing that other people have suffered the same experience I have always helps because it lets me take bad luck less personally. You play enough hands of poker, it's inevitable you'll suffer some really bad downswings. Tommy Angelo came up with the concept of reciprocality: you have to play hands better than your opponents would play them to ultimately make a profit. Same principle applies to handling tilt, and right now I feel like I handle it worse than most players.

Your advice is solid and flows very logically from my thread but I'm going to keep playing. You might be right, but I have a hunch my poker comeback and life comeback can help reinforce each other so that I'm better off shooting for both right now. Pokerwise it's less important I become better skillwise and more important I handle the non raw skill elements better. I listened to most of The Eight Fold Path series, and, didn't find the content too helpful (though I did enjoy listening to it), but I think the mere act of listening to it helped prove to myself I am serious about fighting tilt, which is the first big step towards overcoming it.

Anyways, I really appreciate the advice and the good wishes--this thread has been very encouraging to me

BR tomorrow will be between $3.2k and $3.3k after rakeback

Just pulled up my stats for the last 7 days and have been doing even better than I thought, forgot about a few games I won during my 6 max hell--I know it's "cool sample size bro" but pretty reassuring to see once I got out of permatilt mode I started crushing again

do you realize if you fixed your tilt you would make a ton of money? I dont see why that's not the MAIN thing you're focusing on and not just strategy. That's your leak. Go through you hand history and take away your tilt sessions and figure what your BR would be. That alone should be enough motivation to simply close your computer when you feel it coming. Or better yet, use the self ban option for 12 hours immediately and then you have no choice but to step away and cool off. 12 hours off could save you hundreds of dollars each time. Just a thought.

Spent the whole day at work itching to play, feeling so focused and determined right now--thankfully, showed in my results tonight, as I went 3-2 against my first opponent then 6-0 against the next, made ~$320; for some reason Top Shark seems to have missed most of the games even though sharkscope caught them (note to self: Top Shark currently missing ~$250 of profit); since I always post about bad luck streaks, I'll post that I'm running awfully well right now

Last 7 games record is now 30-13, wish Top Shark got the games b/c I think my roi is probably over 40% for that span

Very glad I watched the primo video--even tho it was just 50 min., just watching I picked up on a couple of aspects to his game, nothing seemingly big and nothing he called attention to, but things I'd never considered--have incorporated those things into my game, and they've worked great

BR $3.6k btw

Played a little this afternoon and continued playing well, went 5-2, ran average/slightly above average

BR $3.75kish

7-0 tonight in a late night session, continue to be really happy with how I'm playing right now, BR up to $4k

Figures, get sat by the ultimate fishreg (down $30k) for an unlimited amount of games, and run massively under ev

$3.85k

Put in a lot of games tonight and ran fine in allins, but for whatever reason didn't find as much success as I've been during other recent sessions, felt like I was playing my B+ game--best indicator is usually how "on" I am in my reads of my opponents, and my radar was a little off tonight

Nevertheless won a small amount to move up to $4.03k

Since Top Shark seems to be missing a lot of my recent games, I decided to go ahead and purchase sharkscope for better reliability--here's a screenshot of my information for the last 7 days filtered for hu sngs:




Sweet, just noticed you can include rakeback, which gives me $1355/17% roi

And the pattern from which I'm trying to break free (NLHE hu sngs all-time, rakeback included):

Haven't played at all the last couple of days, preemptively excluded myself each day b/c I was really tired and cranky--hopefully that's some kind of an indicator that I'm handling tilt better.

Played just a few games tonight after hanging out with friends, won about $130, felt like I played well but was fortunate to have not so good opponents (for future self-reference: one thing I'm glad I did was start at the 33s just to get the hang of it since I took a couple of days off and it's late at night)

ROI for my last 100 games is 19%, 20% with rakeback

BR: $4.15kish

Maybe my best hero call ever, my radar was screaming that I was good:

Full Tilt Poker $55 + $2.50 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t25/t50 Blinds - 2 players - View hand 1185975
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BB: t2125 42.50 BBs
Hero (BTN/SB): t875 17.50 BBs

Pre Flop: (t75) Hero is BTN/SB with 6 Q
Hero calls t25, BB checks

Flop: (t100) 7 8 K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t50, BB raises to t100, Hero calls t50

Turn: (t300) A (2 players)
BB bets t150, Hero calls t150

River: (t600) K (2 players)
BB bets t600, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls t575 all in

Meh, night started off great to shoot up to $4.4k rather quickly, but proceeded to run bad and gradually drop to $4.2k, still made $50 on the day and made a lot of FTPs tho--also did a pretty good job not tilting despite getting 2 or 3 outed several times

$4.2k, with r.b. should have close to $4.3k tomorrow--played a bunch of shootouts and won a couple and lost three or four so not sure how my normal results will look, from now on will probably just post graphs for 2-4 entrants to cover all forms of headsup

Also am way closer to Black Card than I would have guessed: 449 average?!?! Shocking because I've had at least 8 days over the last 3 weeks where I haven't played at all