Just relax, and take a break from playing. If you are serious about your goal then you have to give it your 100%. Keep the hands and study them. If you can afford an hour or 2 of coaching, do that, and review, review, review. TBH, if you bough an hour or 2 of coaching out of your roll, and dropped down stakes, you would probably have a much higher shot of obtaining your goal. It's hard to learn how to plug leaks if you have trouble identifying what they are. You can always grind the money back from lower stakes and you will have new knowledge to build on. That's the route I would take

Maybe I should try a couple of hours of coaching... Do you know of any good coaches and roughly how much it'd cost?

Well some poker sites are dodgy (like Lock and Cake) but there are plenty of safe ones. Full Tilt is owned by Stars now so it's safe, as far as I know.

About coaching, you come across as a solid player but mentally you're not coping with some suckouts/coolers which have happened in a small space of time. Coaching will just eat into your bankroll and you probably won't gain much from it. But that's just my personal opinion, try it out if you want. Some of those coaches charge ridiculously high rates (then again, you'll probably get heavily discounted cos you're a girl lol).

I think you're right about it just eating into my bankroll... I'll just move down to NL10 after my exams are over and see how I do.. Once (if) I'm back at NL25, then I'll try looking into a little coaching..

I think even 1 hour of coaching would be pretty beneficial to you. You'll find out what you're doing right and what your biggest problem areas are. Especially if you have tilt issues. It's one think to think you're doing something correctly, but another thing to KNOW you're doing something correctly, and that can be a great confidence booster. If an hour of coaching was 100 bucks and you only had 100 bucks in your roll, I'd still say get the coaching because you can use the information you find out to analyze your previous hands and improve, while you wait to make a new deposit. I think that will always have a higher rate of success in regards to moving up and making money then just trying to grind it out without knowing where you stand. Just my opinion though

You're getting some seriously good poker players in your thread, Sarah. Well done! If I where you I'd follow up on eg Awice' interest in your thread with as much Q&A you can get out of him. + other great minds itt. A small thing like that can pull your game far ahead of todays status (and it's free!). Not everyone get the chance to get their 2c on stuff

Now win moneys and increase boob size naow!!

I am really grateful for all the people giving me advice in the thread And no poker for me at the moment.. I need a break and have to study for exams.. I'll be playing again after the 21st when my exams are over.

Ok so I figured if this goal is going to go anywhere then I need a plan in place..

My bankroll is currently at $349.49 after the horrible last couple of sessions.

I may have found a coach depending on his results and how I feel about it after talking to him a little. He's playing similar stakes to myself and sent a link in the pm with a graph, but the link is broken, so I'll have to wait until I speak to him. He's only charging $25/h, so after speaking to him, if I think it'll be beneficial I'll probably take an hour of coaching then grind NL10 a bit.

I'm going to move back up to NL25 a little sooner than I would have otherwise. I'm planning to move back up at $400, depending on how I feel at the time, and move back down if I drop below $350 again. If I don't feel like I've gotten back my confidence when I hit $400 then I'll stay at NL10 a little longer.

If everything is going well with the coach, I'll probably try get like at least an hour a week once I'm back to NL25, as 1 buyin would be affordable and hopefully keep me on track and stop me making mistakes!

I've also signed up for the free trial on DeucesCracked and if I'm finding it helpful, I may get a subscription, but that'll probably need to wait until NL25 too.

I'm also planning to do a lot of hand analysis on Hold'em Manager and may post some hands here to get opinions on (If people don't mind!), and I'll be trying to customise my HUD further to get better reads on opponents.

So, I've just done a short session on NL10 Zoom (Supposed to be studying for my exams but I'm an addict! lol), and it's gone ok... I'm up about $12 over 1.2k hands, so it's about 10 bb/100 which I'm happy with.

I've been trying a more LAG style, raising a lot in late position and a few more 3bets than I'd usually do and it seems to be working ok and taking down a lot of pots preflop, so I might stick with this for a while and see how it works out over the longer term.

Thread is sufficiently hilarious. I hope you succeed, if only to feel the collective "Awwwwwwwwwwww." when you've reaped the benefits and not one picture is provided.

How many PMs have you gotten offering you poker advice solely because you have a vagina?

lol @ paying 25$/h to somebody who plays NL25 and who knows with what results, he will teach you bad habits

Umm like none... I've had a few pm's from coaches since posting in a thread, but they're a bit pricey.. One wanted me to play on black chip poker using his affiliate code and i'd get 1 hour per $1,000 of rake (or $85 per session if i paid) which I don't think would be any good because it'd take me so long to rake that amount... In the 35k NL25 hands I've played, I've only raked $400.. Oh and he couldn't give me any references for other people he's coached.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure... Maybe I should just find some friends playing similar stakes to do like hand reviews with.. But I only know 1 person playing similar stakes cash games to me..

Also, talking of hand reviews... How do you fold QQ preflop? It seems to be a bit of a leak of mine... Do you just 4bet then fold to a jam? Often I'll 4bet it and then when they jam I'm like "I'm getting such good odds.. Maybe it's AK"

generally dont fold it without extensive and I mean extensive history

btw, for forums strategy advice Deucescracked > all imo
(I must say that I havent lurked much RIO though)

http://www.deucescracked.com/videos/6811-Episode-One

I feel kind of scummy plugging DC again, but I honestly don't know of any competing site that has a series similar to this, and I feel pretty confident that paying for a one month sub and spending 4 hours watching this series will likely be far more beneficial to your game long-term than any (reasonably comparable) amount of strategy teaching, whether from a coach or training site or whatever.

Despite my horrendous douchebaggery earlier (of which i'm still highly embarrassed) i will offer some advice and say that you really shouldn't spend any significant part of your bankroll on a coach who can't both prove that he is good and at least have references from some reputable posters on here. There are a lot of scummy coaches around in the shadows.

If you don't have a subscription to a training site then that is probably a good start and a site like deuces cracked where you could pay for a month and download a lot of content is probably a decent option.

Would also consider some of the help you've been offered in the thread, and if you don't want to accept coaching from them then you should strongly consider at least posting a couple of hands (where you felt lost) each day in your thread and reading the responses. The help would be free and judging by some of the posters, likely very worthwhile... and is probably one of the most effective ways to learn. either way gl.

edit, also consider what site you want to play on, Stars may have the lowest rake at micros of the online poker rooms (am not certain) but when you consider the minimal rakeback you receive from playing there it may be good to consider another site such as ipoker where you're effective rake (rake minus rakeback) may be lower. just saying.

Thought I'd join the party and say good luck.

I also second the advice that instead of paying for 1hr of coaching that you take that money and get a 1-month subscription to a poker training site in which you can watch 100s of hours worth of training videos...

In any event, I'm subscribed and will be following your exploits.

Good luck

I just finished watching the first video in that series, and it's really surprising just how much variance there can be... I always thought, you may get some variance over like a few tens of thousand hands, but such a large amount of variance with even the 100k/1 million hand samples he talks about are really surprising.

Usually when I'm playing I'll notice a hand I'm not quite sure about, but then by the time the session is over and I've done a few thousand hands it can be really difficult to find if I even remember the hand :/



Also, yesterday's session didn't go great. I finished the NL10 session with a profit of $12.72 over 2,903 hands, but at least it makes a change from seeing red all over my reports!

I also played a couple of donkaments. I played a $1.10 (capped at 1,000 players) MTT and finished 8th for $20 and played the $8.80 Women's tournament which I didn't cash in, but still up about $11 for yesterday from MTT's

My bankroll is currently at $382.21, and I'm planning to go back to NL25 once I pass $400, so hopefully variance will be on my side today!

No need to get a coach, I can coach for free. A chance to get a girl get his boobs done gives me satisfaction enough.

So I decided to skip the NL10 and just go back to NL25, since I feel like I've got my confidence back now, even though I was still around $18 short of what I was planning to move back up at.

I've been trying to play a more LAG style, but I can definitely see I've tightened up compared to how I was playing on NL10, but still not playing quite as nitty as I was before.

I only did a short session for now. I had a bit of a bad beat at the start. I got it in on the turn on an AA73 board with AJ vs KK and he hit his K on the river. It's put me at about $40 under EV for the session, but I'm up $34.37 so I can't complain (And I need remember not to stress about this stuff because it's just variance.. And 95% of the time he wouldn't hit his 1 out there)..

Going to play a bit more later today after watching the second video in that DC series about variance, and hopefully the session will go well

Bankroll is now at: $416.58



lol

I'm just wondering if anyone could give me some advice on this hand from my last session.. Do you think the river should have been a fold?

played fine imo

I hope you aren't trying get boobs because of some guy or guys as that is no reason to do it. And I'm a guy saying this.

w/o any reads on villain prob cant fold