I had a slightly profitable Tuesday (up a dollar). Wednesday I added 5NL to my table selection criteria, and it went well, with a $10 profit.

Bankroll: $112.

Nothing terribly interesting happened, but my results at 2NL were bad and 5NL were good. I think I was too cally with the smaller buyin, not thinking in terms of bb. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Bankroll: $126

Work and life intruded to a large extent this month. I had mentioned earlier in the thread I would have a hard time guaranteeing more than 10 hours a week to play. This month:

• I played a total of 33 hours, according to HEM2.
• I played 14031 hands
• My overall bb/100 was 5.45, my EV bb/100 was 12.5
• My table profit was $30.41, my EV profit was $55.20
• I also won a FPP satellite and $10 stellar reward for a $21 bankroll boost

My goal was:

[X] by March 1, have a bankroll of $100 and be playing up to 5NL

I would have liked to have had more time for play and study. I think I've got some time I can use for the study; lunch at the library with a video or book should be better than nothing.

Other things that happened this month:

• I stopped tilting so much at the Euro tables. I got myself under control, and profited at e2NL, but not in my 106 hands at e5NL. That was just a bit of variance.
• I stopped playing Zoom. I thought it was helping me work on some things, but my winrate was never better than half of what I was getting on the tables. This month I lost at Zoom, and I found I could get nearly as many hands as I was getting with 1 Zoom + 3 tables by having 6 tables. Obviously I wasn't focussing on getting as many hands per hour as possible with Zoom. This month I was a loser at Zoom. Since I'm not playing Zoom, I'm not playing cash on my mobile.

Overall I'm happy with the month. I've been mixing 2NL and 5NL for a few days and it's going OK.

Bankroll: $139.46

Bring on March!

Another decent night - 600 hands, $16.82 in profit. Most of that was attributable to one hand, when someone decided to get all in with the K high flush on the turn as I made the A high flush. We started the hand with 250 bb effective stacks at 5NL. Good times.

Bankroll: $156

I did make a deposit (which I won't count in my total) to get the free $11 satellite ticket for the Sunday Million this weekend. I got clearance from my wife to play tournaments this Sunday, as she was sick when I was supposed to play the world record attempt last week. I may play some additional tournaments as well, but won't count the buyins either.

If I'm a net winner, I may add it to my bankroll or I may cash it out. I will note here whatever I do.

I wound up using the entire deposit (net) for tournaments plus a little bit extra. I redeposited an amount that was nearly the amount of the difference, but it still drained my bankroll by $3. I won't be making up the difference.

I also didn't do well at cash games today. I probably shouldn't have played as many tables as I did, as:

I'm still new at 5NL
I was playing between 4 and 6 tables of tournaments or satellites
I didn't get a lot of sleep last night

Down a little over $20 from playing cash today so far. That's better than it was a couple of hours ago. I may play a bit more tonight; 4-5 tables only.

Current bankroll: $136.21

I came very close to playing the Sunday Million. 3-handed in a satellite I was the chip leader, with almost half the chips in play. I got sucked out on and never recovered, finishing second in a winner-take-all.
That may have been the best tournament result of my life.

So far this month I've had 3 winning days and 3 losing days. Unfortunately, the losing days are winning. Overall, down $29.12 on the month so far. Still, I have momentum on my side after digging myself into a hole.

Bankroll: $114.28

Playing a careful mix of decent 2NL and 5NL tables, and switching tables when the table gets poor has worked pretty well at 4-6 tables (playing 5 most of the time).

I haven't been able to play a lot since my last post. Maybe 1500 hands total. Weekend guests kept me away Friday & Saturday. Sunday and Monday were pretty much breakeven with a $5 profit at SNGs.

Tuesday, I managed a $20 profit at cash (mostly €2NL), a small loss at SNGs, and I binked a 235 FP satellite for T$11. At a couple of my tables I had 2 opponents with a VPIP of 80+, and I was able to stay (relatively) disciplined and take advantage.

Bankroll: $149

It's an auspicious day: Today I am up on the month at the cash games.

6009 hands, up $2.08. Whoooooooo!

Bankroll: $161.19

And I'm down again.

I don't think I was playing terribly, but e5NL is probably a bit too much for my bankroll at the moment.

I think the solution to the euro tables is to leave them out of my easy seat filters, but leave them in my table filters. That way, if I see a good e2NL table I can add it in without finding myself at a e5NL table I'm barely rolled for.

Current bankroll: $121

March wound up being pretty bad. Down $70, and I barely played for the last half of the month due to time constraints.

I'm back playing more again. Let's go!

Bankroll: $106.03

I didn't play last night. Captain America needed my $14.

Up $18 for the week. Once I was rolled for e5NL I added those tables back in, but they weren't good for me. Biggest pots there were my flopped set vs villains flush draw, and my nut flush vs villain's straight flush on river. Eliminate those two hands and I'm up over $30. Either way, my bb/100 is good and my EV bb/100 is better.

Bankroll: $135.27

I'm trying to be extra careful now. I've only got 17 days to hit my goal of $200 at the end of the month.

I'm not being careful anymore. It'd be nice to hit $200 this month, but I've been thinking about my approach here, and I'm not sure I hae been taking the right one.

In the past few years I've played thousands of hours, and find myself at 5NL trying to dig myself back up to 10NL and beyond. I've seen a couple of sources this month that suggested a good approach might just be find my worst leak, fix it, then move on to the next one. That certainly sounds a lot more like the sort of approach that "The First 20 Hours" advocates: working out a series of steps that will get you to basic competence fairly quickly.

To this end, I ran my last 6000 hands through Leak Finder, one of the applications you can run with Hold'em Manager 2. Leak #1:

Continuing from the small blind vs a steal with too wide a range

Apparently I've been continuing with too large a range. I would agree that 35% was probably too wide. I've worked out what I think a reasonable range might be, given they recommend a range somewhere between 15% and 22%.

I also want to work on keeping my hand ranges preflop reasonable. When I start autopiloting, I get very loose. Sometimes I'm opening wider than the fish I'm trying to "trap."

To get as many hands as possible, I've started playing Zoom this week. I can play it on my phone, I can play it at home, but the important thing is to get my auto-pilot game to be tighter and especially tighten up in the small blind. This sacrifices short term EV, but I'm hoping it pays of with some real development in my game long-term.

One thing I was doing was buying in with only 70bb on my mobile device playing Zoom. If I doubled up, I'd buy in to a new session and close the old one. This afternoon I ran afoul of the new ratholing prevention system. I'm impressed. If everyone else was able to do it, it would be -EV for me not to. It's definitely better for the game when people leaving repeatedly are required to come back fully stacked. Good going, PokerStars.

My Zoom results have been pretty poor, but that's pretty much as expected. I'm trying to retune my game, and using Zoom to get as many hands as possible in a short period to do that.

I may switch back to doing 6 tables of regular. However, something happened to me today that has me rethinking my plan.

A few days ago I got an email from one of the iPoker sites telling me I had a bonus waiting if I'd just come back and play. Friday, I had watched a video where the action took place on the iPoker speed tables, and they looked pretty good. As a result, I decided to deposit and get some bonus.

Over the last 24 hours I've lost $35 at the iPoker Speed tables. That's really not great, over 1000 hands. However, this evening I noticed they had 10NL HU tables. I've enjoyed playing HUSNGs, and HU whenever I'm starting a table, so I thought I'd give them a go.

The first table I sat at, I played the guy 21 hands and stacked him. He didn't have reload turned on. He left and so did I. I spent a few minutes looking around, and noticed the euro tables (the previous one was in pounds). I sat down at one, and started playing a different opponent. He was better, but I managed to get his stack. Repeatedly. He was a tough opponent, but the fact that he wasn't auto-reloading meant that once he lost a pot or two, he was shortstacked, which makes the game easier to play. A couple of times after reloading he doubled or tripled up, but I always got it back. Overall, I wound up with a loss of $35 at Speed poker, but a gain of $54 at HU cash at iPoker. I also cleared 7euros of bonus.

I have to wonder how good HU cash can be at these limits. Obviously sitting down with a fish and playing him until he runs out of money is going to be profitable in most cases, but in 397 hands I paid $28 in rake at 10NL HU.

I think I'm going to wrap up this thread. It doesn't seem to be serving any purpose. Hands I find interesting will get posted in the appropriate thread, and this one is dull and dry enough that it's not going to attract any interest.

I may in the future start another, but not necessarily.

good luck
subbed

I'm not sure how to go with this. I've already effectively quit this thread, but the burden of having a subscriber pushes me to continue.

I am super-excited about poker at the moment. I know I've been in this state of mind before, but ever since I decided to get better at HU so I could start tables I've really enjoyed it. The downside was that I couldn't necessarily play HUSNGs due to children (at peak playing hours I'm responsible for the crying ones). Walking away from a SNG where you're heads up is pretty much a guarantee of a loss.

Three things have changed:

1) The kids are sleeping way better than they have in the past
2) I found a site where there appears to be some playable HU cash tables at hours I play at times
3) I still love playing HU SNGs. A lot.

The downside to playing HU cash is the rake. Since Saturday night I've played 625 hands of HU (LOL samplesize), won $82.70 ($48.60 EV adjusted) and paid $49.97 in rake. These hands are all at 5NL or 10NL. I can see why many suggest using HUSNG to build up a bankroll before moving to 50NL or 100NL at Pokerstars.

On the HUSNG side, I've netted $22.61 from $129 in buyins, mostly at the $3.50 level. A total of 34 games. I prefer the regular speed tables, as they will play more closely to cash and everyone recommends that regs play turbo and hyperturbo. Those are the guys I don't want to play against, so I'll stay away from their playground.

I worry that my ring game game (what?) has so many bad habits ingrained from mindless play that I might not be profitable any time soon. I also recognize now what they talk about when they say in HU, you get the fish to yourself. In 6max and full ring, I'd often find myself making unprofitable plays to try and isolate the fish. Now I don't need to.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I deposited $100 at iPoker to take advantage of some bonus. I also lost a ton in my Zoom/Speed learning exercise.

Current Bankroll: $242.99

I'm not going to withdraw to make the challenge pure or anything. Who cares about that, really. I would like to move up as quickly as possible to stop losing so much money to rake. That would easily be a Supernova amount of rake at Pokerstars, but at 10NL for a couple of hours a day. At least with the $3.50s the rake for the regular speed is only 6% (which could really be better, too, but it's a bargain in comparison).

Time to start reading all the material I've accumulated on HU.

Nope, not going to be a Heads up player. My I lost a few buyins in HU cash, so I'm still showing a profit (of about $20) but the rake I've paid is now over $100 in 1300 hands. That is actually completely insane. 7.5 cents per hand in rake is not beatable at 10NL. With the bonus Everest gave me, I've got another $30 or so on the profit side, but it just doesn't seem right. I also had trouble finding games at the times I'm able to play, and I would often just get 10-20 hands with a villain before they quit me.

The kid situation isn't nearly as settled as it seemed last week, so despite a reasonable record (slight loss but definitely feeling better about my game) I don't think HUSNGs are a viable option for me. I can't afford to sit out for a few minutes. The last few nights all of them were up periodically, requiring attention, and I can't have my wife handling them all the time. She has things to do, too.

Looks like I'm back at 6max cash for awhile. The break was fun, and I feel like I was able to improve my game somewhat, with the increased focus required in HU play.

Let's see how this goes.

I wound up not being able to be much of a player at all.

I've started a new thread for my HUSNG progress: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...usngs-1464472/