What tracking app is that you guys are using?

Poker Journal.

Okay thanks

Just learned to play a few months back. Read a few books, lurked twoplustwo and played about 100 hours on Full Flush. Stepped into the casino a few times just to mess around and get comfortable with live dynamics.

Started tracking my play on the 10th of this month.

So far I guess I'm a fish on a heater.


$1/$2 NL. Rake $5+$1. $300 cap. I've been buying in for $200. Essentially I lent myself $200 to play from my real life money, and have paid that back to myself.

10 sessions totaling 49:34
Total profit: $1679 for $33.87 per hour
9/10 sessions I booked a win, though a couple were barely 10bbs
Current Bankroll: $2224 which includes $545 in promotions won that were not figured into my profit or hourly but just "deposited".


Hopefully I can continue to run hot until I reach a 20 BI bankroll, and I will have successfully "turned one Buy In into a bankroll".



This is probably not the appropriate place to ask this, but I'll ask anyway. I seem to always start off sessions down a bit. Like have to rebuy for $100-$200 within the first hour of play, but kind of get into a groove and cash out in the positive.

It's not because I'm chasing losses, I have a set amount of time I will play on any day and play until that time regardless of profit/loss. Any idea as to why I may be spewing early in my sessions and then coming back? Probably just coincidence over such a small sample, but was hoping someone could offer insight.

Because you take more notice when $200 turns into $70... but not when $650 turns to $520

I find that the easiest time to spew is when you first start a session and don't know the table dynamics nor how the players play (nor how they are playing at the time). Some reasonable plays at other tables may be pure spew at the current table. I tend to play a LAG style but think it's generally best to tighten up at the beginning of a session until I get a feel for the table dynamics.

I've had the same experience and thought about this too. Ultimately I think it is pretty standard at typical loose passive 1/2 tables where you don't have much fold equity and mostly win from valuebetting.

It can take a while before you win a decent sized pot. You could call a few raises with pocket pairs or suited connectors in position and miss completely a majority of the time.

You could raise with a broadway hand, miss 70% of the time, cbet bluff, get called, and give up.

It's hard to make a hand, so when you're at a table with little fold equity, you're going to lose a bit before you start extracting value from your made hands.

I think at a nitty, weak tight table you're less likely to be stuck in the beginning of the session because pots will be getting heads up and people will be folding so much more.

contemplating moving up to 5/10.... gunna post my graphs once I figure out how to get poker journal off my phone and onto 2p2

btw does anyone know if poker journal data saves if I were to get a new phone?

Hey all, just registered here because I think that I've been getting really good at 1/2 live and i just want to ask the community for their perspective to make sure I'm not kidding myself or just getting really lucky. been playing very average for 6 years until the last few weeks i feel like I've really been improving significantly.

I buy in for 100 every time and sometimes i lose my initial buy in and have to re-by in the same day. i played an average of 5 hours per day; These are my most recent results after taking break for a year.

total of 9 days:


begin:100 bank

day 1 +100
day 2 +100
day 3 +128
day 4 -120
day 5 +120
day 6 +114
day 7 +160
day 8 +270
day 9 +75

end: 1,047 bank.

what do you think is going on with me? I've never had positive variance for more than 2 days before in my life. is this normal ? am i about to lose a lot?

Welcome to the forum, JackRoyal. I moved your post to the appropriate thread. Not to rain on your parade, but 45 hours doesn't mean a lot statistically.

That said, you are likely getting good enough that you should be buying in full, so that you can use all of the plays that only work at 100BBs effective. Read all the stickies, look around, post some hands, and some replies to others' hands, and you'll continue to improve. You'll still hit some negative variance from time to time, though.

Create screen shots of graph and stats on iphone. Upload photos to imgur and post them here.

You need to manually backup data. Click more tab. Then Backup & Restore > Backup Data. You will then e-mail the file to yourself. When you get a new phone open the e-mail and click the attachment and it will import data into Poker Journal.

thank you for moving this to the right place, now i know.
I'll take a look through this sticky since it seems i am in the correct spot now.

i have been waiting for my tax return so i can have a decent bank roll, so i guess i won't really be playing until about a month from now. i should be able to buy in for about 200 safely even though the limit is 300.

JackRoyal, did you change something dramatically about your game in the past 9 days? If not, then there is no reason to think anything has changed. Fact is I've seen terrible players go on year long heaters before to the point that they thought they were semi pros.

45 hours is really nothing. For some players 45 hours is called a weekend session.

i had a pretty massive life changing event with my personal business in the last year. the same year i did not play live poker at all. when i started playing again with these 9 days i believe i started to think a lot about the mistakes i made on the previous hands and days that made me lose money. the next day i wouldn't make the same mistake and i would lose less, i started learning to bluff good players and not bad players, think i started folding AQ to decent preflop raises and so forth.

i always been a losing player before this. always.

It sounds like you are learning to play better. That doesn't mean you are a winning player. You could lose your next 6 buyins, but that doesn't mean you are a losing player or even that you played particularly bad.

Just keep working to improve your game and you will get to where you want to go, but don't count you're eggs before they've hatched.

alright good advice, i'll give an update in a few months.

about to take my 5/10 shot.... maybe I shouldn't be making this public but I don't see the harm since I'll be done with grinding in the Fall

Here goes...

this is all 2/5



that break even stretch in the middle was brutal.... and happened after i took a couple months off to study for/take the LSAT and after I took it, I was on life tilt/was rusty etc so I broke even for like 3 months after... fkn brutal, second graph shows a better picture although it's ugly



man that graph is ugly lol, but I actually went 3 months without playing a single hand



^ that's the summary... hourly blows I know, but I know I'm better than it shows because I got over my life tilt and have been playing my A game...I was playing like pure **** the 3 months after I came back to poker ...and also I stopped burning money w/ my daily massages and calculated that it was costing me $4 /hour or so lol

whatever enough with the excuses... it's 5/10 time

Gl gl

I'm new to poker. I have been playing a live 1/2 NL game since mid January. Prior to that I just played in an extremely soft small house game once a month and probably had about 15,000 hands in online play (Bovada) at various micro stakes. I did well online but didn't take it too seriously, and would just self-destruct when I got bored.

I have always enjoyed reading game strategy books even if not playing the games. I have read a ton of chess books, sports betting, and card game strategy, even without playing much. At this point I have a very solid grasp of the fundamentals of strategy games in general.

Since starting at this 1/2 NL game in mid January I am on one insane heater. The first time I went I bought in 100bb figuring I would just lose and learn my lesson and never play again. But I won and now after roughly 60 hours I am ahead by about $1800. I have taken down quite a few lucky pots that I should have lost, but have also made some plays that imo were very good. My biggest loss was one session where I lost 3 BI's for around $650. In fact, that was my only losing session, and one of the BI's was lost with my QQ against A9o preflop. My biggest win was one epic session where I won $1100. I know this is the tiniest of sample sizes, but I can't imagine not winning at this game long term.

I play in a major city at a game that oftentimes has at least one whale or a few fish at the table. Lots of big egos. A typical opening bet is 6-7.5bb, which leads to some pretty big pots. There is usually one or two LAGs who want to see lots of flops and will call down to the river on a flush draw or with any piece of the flop. Its insanely easy to read most of these guys. Last night one guy inexplicably called me all in on the river with nothing but a Q and a gutshot straight draw against a paired board, basically donating $300 to me.

I started by withdrawing $600 from my own savings, which I have already paid back. I am attempting to grind up to $4000 for 20 BI's. In the meantime, I am playing a 50-75bb short stack strategy with a max of 3 BI's per session in an attempt to minimize risk of ruin. My strategy essentially consists of sitting and waiting for 77+, 9Ts+, KJs+, KQo+, and ATs+, with some variability depending on position and opponents, hoping for a pre-flop raiser and either shoving or raising 3-4x. If they fold I take down some chips, if they call I win most of the time, otherwise I just re-buy and repeat. Once I'm deep, I loosen up a bit and try to limp lots of suited connectors and one-gappers in position, but I keep the tight image from short stacking and can usually take down some major pots on semi-bluffs whether or not I hit my draw.

I'm definitely not a great post-flop player. I have made some terrible calls, and am trying to get better at making the optimal bet sizes when I am ahead. I also have a terrible poker face and am probably pretty easy to read a lot of the time. One of the toughest things for me right now is I get scared that I'll get sucked out when I'm ahead, probably because my bankroll is so small, and I'll try to push players out of the pot who are on draws, rather than maximizing the amount I can get out of them when they miss 80% of the time.

I saw a lot of you trashing short stack strategy earlier in this thread so I'll try to keep you all posted on my progress. Now please humble me so I don't go busto with a big ego next time I play.

What I do think is interesting in jackroyals post is how small his std deviation is: 101.

An example of my $1/2 data set for february:
{416.00,658.00,56.00,-470.00,195.00,25.00,400.00,24.00,-625.00,75.00,572.00,-400.00,832.00,300.00,510.00,68.00,-400.00,413.00,-400.00} = $423.

It's interesting to me that JR's has such a small std deviation. He must be playing an extremely, extremely, nitty/passive game.

How much will an increase/decrease of 1$ in a 10% rake affect winrate assuming all other variables remain constant?

What is your hourly std deviation? JR's 9 sessions sample size is way too little to draw conclusions imo.

I would guesstimate it would have a $2/hr affect on our winrate. Sorta assuming we ship 2 pots an hour due to our fair share at a 10 handed table playing 30 hands an hour being 3 pots an hour but we're probably playing tighter than everyone else / more apt to fold the winning hand in small pots than others.

GinthebathroombehindlockeddoorsguesstimatingG

I have kind of a silly question. On the very first page of this thread there is a link to another thread about 20 buyins to play a certain level. My question is does that mean 20 BI's if you bought in for the max? Around where I live there are 1-2 games that have a max buying of $200, $300, or $400. So say my BR is $4k I should only play the 1-2 with a max buyin of $200?

I think they are assumng 100BBs Taj