Hey 2+2! I've been reading this forum for a while now but haven't posted yet and figured this was a good place to start. I know there are a bunch of these threads already, but this one will be different. The main reason is that I am actually going to make this happen, hopefully in just a few months. I currently have $17.90 in my Lock account and have no intention of depositing. I won my first $1 last night and quickly ran it up at the cash tables. I'm going to grind the DON's for a while and see how they go. I really don't want to play them for too long, but they seem like a pretty good way to build up a roll. I'm really not sure of what I want to play yet, but I should have some time to figure it out. (If anyone has grinded the micro stakes on Merge and has suggestions, I'm all ears).

A little about myself: I just turned 19 and am from the US, and aside from playing a little bit on Stars and Fulltilt on my dad's account while in high school, I haven't experienced much online poker pre-Black Friday. I actually deposited $100 on Lock a while ago, ran it up, then tilted off like $500 in a night and haven't played since. I really struggle with tilt, so I'm hoping this thread helps me stay motivated. I would love to do a prop bet that I can do this, but I'm not sure I want to give myself a time limit so getting action won't be too easy. I'm off of school for three months, so I would love to have finished this by then. Well I'm off to grind, I'll try to update this thread as often as possible.

Currrent BR: $17.90

I'm at the final table of the $2.20 turbo KO. Sitting 6/9 with only four bb.

And that lasted long haha. 7th for $6.37 plus four bounties. Not horrible at all for me at this point. I've played a few DON's but didn't realize how rarely they go off. In fact almost none of the SNG's go off quickly. I'm going to have to find something else, probably mixing in a variety of the $1.10 SNG's and DON's.

Current BR: $31.13

Well today has gone horribly for me. I'm still around $26.00, but I've ran really bad. I'm either getting it in ahead and losing or getting coolered. I haven't put in a ton of volume though, mainly due to the lack of possibility on Lock as of now. I'll quit complaining and try to finish out tonight's session strong. I'm mainly playing the $2.16 DON's right now and that will probably be my main game for a while. It's the smallest they offer that actually runs (there is a $1.50 but it hardly ever goes off). I'd like to start mixing in some HU SNG's but after losing three straight to idiots (two of which were two outers) I realized the variance is just too high for my bankroll right now.

I'm going to set some goals for myself for the month of June:
1. Get bankroll to $200 (currently at $26)
2. Play only DON's until I get to $80 at least (might switch over to 4NL or HU sngs)
3. Study DON strategy (there's a really good thread on here I've heard?)
4. Get HUD working and start analyzing my play in HEM (I've almost never studied poker before...obviously I'm only holding myself back and limiting my possibilities)
5. Get 700 points and $18 bonus for Battle of the Ronin (I don't know if I'll be able to get there fast enough for the bonus, but 700 points for the month needs to happen). This would be 625 $2.16 DON's.

Goals 2-5 are the most important. I put money as a goal which is more of where I would like to be at the end of the month, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. I just want to improve my game, a big part of that being the mental side. Good luck at the tables everyone! Feel free to make suggestions about anything.

I finished my session pretty strong, winning 4 out of my last 5 games. I'm glad I hung in there today...my old self probably would have headed for the 50NL HU tables for rolls haha. I also got in 30 games, which isn't horrible considering they take at least five minutes to load each. I'll be back at it tomorrow night, hopefully getting off to a nice start for the month. Good luck everybody!

Current BR: $33.25

I only played 8 games tonight, but the good thing is I won 7 of them. I worked a full day today and was busy with other stuff so I wasn't expecting to get in much volume. I also read a pretty good DON strategy thread in the STT forum. It really made me change my approach to the game and I think will help with my ROI big time. I still haven't figured out how to get HEM to work with the new Lock, but as long as I'm winning I don't really care. I have another busy day tomorrow so hopefully I don't fall too far behind pace for 625 games.

Current BR: $44.07

I played one session earlier and it went pretty well. I don't know how many games but it wasn't many, maybe 10 or so. The DON's are soft but they take forever to load up. I think I finally made up my mind as to what games I will play when I get to $80... hyper turbo HU SNG's. I guess that's kind of cliche for this forum but I enjoy HU and these are the simplest to learn quickly and be able to beat, at least at the micro level. I really, really want to just start grinding them now but I said I would grind DON's until I get to $80 and if I start messing around now I'll for sure do it later, a trait I don't want to have when moving up in stakes. I'm going to try and reach $80 tonight so that I can start playing HT's tomorrow. It'll be a long grind though and I may have to just give up hope and finish it tomorrow.

Current BR: $54.81

GL OP. It takes hard work and determination to grind back micros after tilting off a good portion or all of your roll.

Best of luck to you.

Hey,Wat website do u play on?Im from the US too

Thanks. I've actually never played anything other than micros, other than when I tilted off my roll, so that won't be a problem. Before I just played for fun, I was just a lot better than most of the donks so I made money. I actually started this thread with $0 in my account and am actually going to take the game seriously to make this happen. $1000 doesn't mean much to me, it's just the grind and mental challenge that I'm interested in. I know I can make a lot of money playing poker one day. I'm smart enough and have the desire, but I've never stuck to a plan and used brm. I'm going to change that now and turn zero dollars into $1000, motivated to turn that into even more.

Well I put in a lot of volume (as far as Lock goes) the last couple hours. I pretty much played in every $2.16 and $3.50 DON that ran. I was running well then hit a cold streak near the end. I was getting tired and made a couple dumb plays but overall I'm happy with how I played. I didn't quite reach my goal of $80 but I'm close and will definitely be able to reach it tomorrow, if not go for $100.
I may just keep grinding the DON's for now. At some point I want to change over to HU SNG's, but for now I don't want to walk away from a game that I'm beating pretty easily. From what I saw they were running up to $26.50, and if I mix buy-ins I can definitely get decent volume in. I'm sure my ROI will be higher at DON's than HU SNG's, not to mention I can play a bunch of tables, get points for Battle of the Ronin, and generate some rakeback. I really do need to figure out how to get HEM working though because there are quite a few regs and although they may not be good, I need to know how they play to maximize my win rate. If anyone knows how, please let me know.

Current BR: $73.25

Wasn't really taking about significance of money but more about determination and time invested in recovering $500 hard earned money lost in a night. I've been there a few times. Hope all goes well.

Gl sir sub'd

HEM is usually pretty easy to get setup, just make Sure your client is configured to save the HH's and setup HEM to import from that folder.

If you having problems just PM or skype me and ill help you..

I was busy today so I didn't get much time to play. Got in a few games though and did ok. I tried a couple hyper turbo HU SNG's and realized that I was asking myself, "What do I do here"? way too often to play these right now. I ran horribly as far as card distribution goes and getting coolered, but I definitely need to study these more before playing them. If anyone is willing to give some strategy advice I'd greatly appreciate it. I got HEM to "work", but it messes up all my results. It either says the game didn't finish or it doesn't get the result right so that's kind of annoying. The good news is I reached my goal of $80 and am in good shape to reach my monthly goals. I'm not sure about my volume goals but there's plenty of time to make that happen. I'll be super busy this week with work and for sure won't be putting in many games until Thursday night, so I will probably just update this thread when I've put in a decent amount of games and maybe try to get a graph posted. Good luck!

Current BR: $80.19

I knew I said I wouldn't have much time for poker, and I guess I wasn't lying. However, I tripled my roll and therefore thought I would write a quick post. Anyways, decided to go for it and play some HU cash. I've been killing the DON's so badly I decided to reward myself with a little fun. Worst case I could just grind back what I lost anyway. I was only going to take one $20 shot, but obviously I ran super hot and hopefully won't have to go back to the super micros for the rest of this challenge. The cash games were so soft that I am going to focus on them for now. I'm not horrible at them to begin with (at least to beat 10NL) and there are plenty of resources out there to help me improve my game. I've actually accomplished almost all of my goals for June already, so I am going to make new ones.

Old goals:

[X] Get bankroll to $200
[X] Play only DON's until I get to $80
[X] Study DON strategy
[X] Get HUD working and start analyzing my play in HEM -Note: I got HEM to work for SNG's but for some reason won't work for cash games. It tracks my play but no HUD pops up
[ ] Get 700 points and $18 bonus for Battle of the Ronin (currently around 90 points...I didn't get a bonus when I got to 70 so I'm assuming any bonus within reach for me is already taken)

New goals:
1. Play 40,000 hands of 10NL
2. Get bankroll to $400
3. Spend 10 hours studying
4. No more than four 6-max or eight full ring tables at a time
5. Find people to talk strategy with (I'm always up for this, however, I really only want to talk with winning players to make sure I improve as a result of talking)

I'll probably play as many FR tables as I can and play 6 max when the FR games are full. I am not positive of this at this point...I'll try to figure out what I think is softer and go from there. I plan on taking a shot at 25NL at $500 and grind that until the challenge is over.

Current BR: $224.86