Variance is hard to deal with if your looking or thinking about it every session.
Imagine you went through your graph of 20k hands and put a smiley/unemotional/sad face to correspond with whether you had an up swing/break even/down swing that session. Even a 10bb/100 winner would be in constant emotional flux doing that, he would think he was great every smiley face session, and terrible every sad faced session. Its why most people only put the work in to their game when losing money.

If you want to work on your mind set (which i suggest for your sanity, you do) buy Jared's book mental game of poker. Its gold dust.

Thanks for the post. I just read back the last through posts and I come across as mental

I have had Jared's book for a while so will definitely read it again. There are some very useful hints and techniques for dealing with tilt issues. I have now turned off the EV line as it doesn't really matter where I am as long as I play well. It also does not account for 2 important things:

The range of hands against what you are playing (ie, you could call and all in with QQ when villains range is JJ-AA and AKs, which would show positive EV for this hand, but not overall against the villains range)

It also doesn't take into account Pots that are built up when you are a massive favourite and then get outdrawn on the river when the remainder of the money goes in.

I have got over the EV thing now I have had a chance to go through the hand history. I think 4 tabling is too much at the minute so I have dropped back down to 2 tables.

My bank roll is $379 as I just got my $50 stellar bonus today and not far from $25 bonus, so just gonna keep grinding. There are couple of funny hands I will post later. One where villain goes all in for a $2.50 pot where the board read 4,8,4,4. I had aces and he had TJo

I also hit a royal flush when all in on a hand after the flop which was nice

Target - $700 (Total)
Amount from Target - $321
EV - Who gives a *****

I decided I needed a break from thinking about poker 24/7 so went to the pub with a mate after work and had 3-4 much needed beers. Reminisced about loving WWE as children/young adults and generally just talking bollocks as you do when down the pub.

My work are also holding a MTT as a social event with £20 BI paid for by the company My record in these is 2 x 1st place finishes and 2 x 3rd place in 4 tournaments held so far. There is only one player who is half decent and the reset are all tight/passive players. There will probably be around 20 players so a win in that would be nice as that would pretty much buy my PC for me.

Horrible day at the tables

It was one of those days where you hit the nuts on the flop or turn only for villain to hit the nuts on the river. Had KK v AA twice which is always nice. It was a day where I would lose to a flush on the river even though I am pot betting every time and when I hit a flush it was either bettered by the nut flush or rivered FH.

I have not looked at my balance today but I would think I am at least 8 BI down today.

My wife is away this weeking so I am going to try and get through 15k hands this weekend and will post a bank roll update on Sunday Evening.

The good news is that I did not tilt once and also did not particularly care that I kept losing as I made the right decision in the majority of spots. I made one mistake when I had AK and the flop and turn read out A448 and I thought I was ahead but lost a BI to 88.

Made some very good all in calls against 30-50bb stack sizes but got unlucky on a few.

Overall I am sure when I review the session there were mistakes but considering how horribly I ran the old me would have probably lost double what I lost today as I had to make some tough lay downs.

Dropped down to $5 Zoom

Not because my bankroll got decimated but my win rate is over double what it is in $10 zoom. Sample sizes are only 30k hands of each, but I feel more comfortable there at the minute so that might be because I am not comfortable playing $10 Zoom with only 30 buy ins

I managed to log 18k hands over the weekend and banked a profit of $110 and after putting in my losing session on Friday my total bank roll is $397

Amount from target - $303

I have given up posting graphs as I play a lot on pokerstars mobile and find it too much hassle to keep manually importing hand histories.

There was some horrible play at $5 zoom at the weekend. Seems like a great time to play. I had 3 people try to bluff me all in when I had made strong hands.

Lessons Learnt

- Playing at this level has made me realise I call too many rivers. Most my pay offs have come from hitting sets/straights/2 pair when my opponent has hit top pair top kicker and cannot lay it down.

Although sometimes you might be winning I have gone through my last 30k hands logged on Poker Tracker and on these hands where I have top pair top kicker or a weak 2 pair I have been behing 78% of the time to a turn raise and therefore I am definitely going to start folding these hands if I have no stats on villian. Yes I will miss some winning hands but get away from more losing hands which will be plus EV.

I will need to adjust if I go up the stakes so I am not easily exploitable on the flop.

I have now gone permanently back to FR Zoom. It is more boring but much easier to grind and nits just never put down big pairs regardless of flop texture. I ahve made some good profit last night by playing suited connectors and small pairs and only continuing when I hit the goods.

Last nights session was very good and ended up $30 in profit.

Amount from Target - $273

The goal is starting to get moving and I am finding improvements to make every day which is very encouraging.

back to the downswing!

Moved up to $10 again after getting my confidence back at $5. Had a horrible time with some mega coolers. I have played Tag style and just been crushed by river fish. I have played my last session which starts at the bottom of the graph in a Lag style and this is definitely working better it is just learning more about situations I can exploit and knowing when to give hands up



Some hands from last 2 sessions:

$10 6 Max

MP: $9.31
Hero (CO): $11.12
BTN: $13.65
SB: $11.41
BB: $10.60
UTG: $22.08

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero has A A

fold, MP raises to $0.30, Hero raises to $1.00, fold, fold, fold, MP calls $0.70

Flop: ($2.15, 2 players) 4 2 7
MP bets $3.80, Hero raises to $10.12 and is all-in, MP calls $4.51 and is all-in

Turn: ($18.77, 2 players) J

River: ($18.77, 2 players) K

MP shows K 2 (Two Pair, Kings and Twos) (Pre 14%, Flop 22%, Turn 11%)
Hero shows A A (One Pair, Aces) (Pre 86%, Flop 78%, Turn 89%)
MP wins $17.93

for some reason my hand history keeps getting cut to just the first hand. Nothing interesting just the usual coolers and beats. They were few hands that puzzled me but I will note in my next session of tricky spots and post here for opinions.

Back into positive (Just)

Zoom downswing is becoming a bit soul crushing now so I have mixed in some $3.50 18 man games too as they are still pretty soft. There are lots of regs who play them, but most of them have no idea how to play when it gets down to the final 5-6 people. I made a bit of profit in about 100 games 7% ROI, combined with a couple of wins at $5 zoom has put me back into profit

Bank Roll - $309

Amount to Target - $389

It is a bit depressing that I am further away than I was after my first 1000 hands but if I can continue to play well I am sure the run will turn itself around

I have set a deadline of 01/07/2014 to have completed this challenge as I don't want it to go on forever .

If I keep studying and keeping up the volume I am confident I will reach the target by then.

I continued playing SNG today and also played a fair few hyper heads up games as this used to be my favoured game. Ran pretty well in the $7 games despite having 7 games in a row where a big ace was beaten by ace rag.

If the tournament summaries import ok I will add them to Poker Tracker and post a graph of all SNG/MTT and a separate one for heads up.

I have still not given up on zoom I just needed a break from it.

Amount to Target - $348
Bank Roll - $352

I made notes whilst playing the hypers and the average standard of the people I played was pretty terribile. I noted on my last 35 games that when the money went in I had the best hand 27 games out of 35.

I played the same guy about 10 times and he basically called any all in if he min raised pre flop but his range was about top 40% of hands. I just pushed any time I had a top 30% hand. I dont think I ever got it in bad but still only walked away from the battle 1 BI up due to my friend variance. Always going to happen when you are reraising all in light.

GL!

Hyper Heads up Results so far (Very Small Sample)

Slow revival

finished another session of hypers and did well again. I reset my sharkscope to when I started them so I can post results here.



bank roll - $413
$287 to go

Day 2 of hypers is in the bag and I have now 336 games and have an ROI of 8.5%. Definitely running hot and hands are holding up for the majority so I am sure this will drop, but the competition at this level is really soft. The majority of fish seem to know roughly when to push, but rarely call all ins when they should. In a lot of games I was down to 100-150 chips and I rarely got called when I pushed all in

Graph below



bank roll - $470
$230 to go to hit the target and complete the challenge

Well and Truly fed up!

I have played 800 tourneys now and after a great start I have again experienced the most ridiculous beats and variance. I am not a believer that online poker is rigged as it seems stupid that it would be, but when you can predict the river card almost every hand it gets annoying.

My bankroll is now $260 after the most ridiculous 2 downswings. According to my PT graph I should be about even today but am 14000 chips below EV and considering you only have 500 a game is pretty sick. Will post the graph later but an example of the typical rubbish I have had to put up with is losing when 99.2% Fave. I can't find the hand for some reason but Raised pot with AK suited brings A,K,3 flop. Both players all in and turn and river bring 6 6 for opponent to win with A6.

I will keep going but am seriously losing faith as no matter what I do no hand is good enough

Read back my message from yesterday. Sounded whiney. Maybe beer got the better of me. I have reviewed the tourneys and tilted in 2 of them but the rest were fine.

I played late into the night yesterday and am feeling the effects this morning.

Hands are starting to even out though and hopefully I can get some upward momentum

Bank Roll - $388
$312 left til target

Roll on Run Good!!

Current heads up graph with massive ROi of 1.8% LOL

Running under EV though and still have improvements to make so hopefully this will increase

Above is in £ for some reason so $ profit is $132

I am going to close this thread as the content now has nothing to do with the title. I am going to concentrate on HHUSNG for now so am going to start a new thread. It will be a continuation of sorts but with a new title.