Hey everyone, I figured I'd make a thread to keep me focused on my goals and grinding up the stakes .

Ok so a bit of background. I started playing poker online in July when I turned 18, (played lots of home games and read a bit of strategy previously). I decided to play zoom as I found that the pace of it keeps me aware and not tempted try spewy moves out of impatience.

I set myself a goal to be +$1k by the end of the summer and I have arrived at that goal today ! I did it by playing 89k hands at NL5 and 168k at N10 FR zoom. I'm don't claim to be crushing, got a 2bb/100 win rate so lots of it was done through bonuses. Currently have 6.5k VPP's.

I am now a NL10 FR zoom reg and have gold star status. I am starting university on Saturday and am not sure of how much volume I can keep churning out due to that. I aim to maintain goldstar and keep grinding through till the end of the year. I will update this thread weekly with my results and look through a few troubling hands :'). I don't mind if anyone ever reads this it'll keep me focused and provide a place to draw perspective through the bad runs etc .

Goals till in end of 2014:

~Maintain Goldstar status
~Make another $1k
~15k total VPP's
~Move up to and beat NL25
~Keep working on my game
~Post here weekly

Thanks for reading, gl at the tables

This is the graph of my summer play

No one??? Gl man

Ok so I have barely played this week as it has been such a busy time for me. I'm in my Freshers week at uni, so been out every night and meeting loads of new people, so I've not had a lot of free time. I only really played the few days before I left so didn't get much in tbh. Anyway just loving the uni life right now .

Anyway here's this weeks graph, I'm not expecting to get too many hands in next week either as Freshers week continues. Hopefully I can get back to grinding once we're all settled in .



good luck at the tables

Ok so I have just finished my first week of uni . It's still freshers week so everything was pretty crazy, was out every single night this week and also had to go to lectures :'). It was great though really enjoying it here. However the concentration had moved away from poker, but oh well there's always next week to make it up.

So as for the poker, I played ~10k hands and ran pretty awfully . I'm glad I'm keeping a handle on my emotions while playing and this is where I definitely think I'm seeing some improvement .

So here's the graph for this week:



And the graph for everything so far:



I'm all settled in now and next week won't be as hectic! Also I need to play ~38k hands by the end of the month. Therefore I will be looking to put down some decent volume in the coming days

Good luck at University OP hope all goes well and keep up the grinding

Thanks man, just going through a bit of a rough patch on the tables, will keep positive though

Ugh not doing so great atm. Do you mark these down as coolers or what? You know how you always start to doubt your plays when the going gets tough :/

So we're back round to that time of the week again. Finally put down some decent volume this week, mainly because we're all settling down now lectures have begun, and also because of the hands I needed for Gold star .

Still running really terribly, didn't really think it could get this bad for this long, but variance has no memory and all that :'). It's not really going well for this challenge so far but I am aware that it's mainly been down to bad luck and the variance will sort itself out soon (I hope)!

I have been 4 tabling NL10 with 2 tables of NL5 added in. I feel that I can confidently play the extra two tables with no change to my game so I figured I may as well .

The weeks graph



Overall Graph:



I'm 11 buy ins below ev but that's not really what I mean by running badly, it's the coolers they're just being so brutal . Oh well as long as I don't let it affect my game it's all good !

Oh and I also min cashed the Weekly silver freeroll for $6 ! Didn't realise that it was so +ev playing the freerolls and feel like an idiot for not doing it before .

Need to play ~8.5k hands to maintain Gold star by the end of Tuesday, game on .

It's been another terrible week at the tables unfortunately. I just can't believe how badly I'm running, I know it sounds like total bull**** but I honestly didn't even think it could ever get this bad . Literally only made some slight improvements to my game since summer (such as stealing more and the occasional light 3bet) both of which have been profitable for me.

I'm not even tilting as well, it's just really frustrating how when I pull up the tables it's almost like I'm numb to losing now because I don't even think I had a winning session this week .... The worst thing is I feel like I'm playing the best poker I have ever played :')!The amount of coolers have become comical, I hate that this is all undoing my summer work but I will persist and keep playing solidly.

So for the graphs :')



-ve gradient blue line for the last 11k hands



Still way below ev just for the lols . Posted 1 week loss in 15 in the summer, this time round had 3/4 weeks all big losses too .

Oh well grind on !

Couldn't play for the last 3 days of the week as I was visiting my girlfriend, and earlier in the week had quite a lot of work/going ut to do so there's been many distractions this week! Oh well I' actually winning while not as committed (of course). Without further a do here's the puny graph for this week :')

I'm back after another week of hardly playing. I think I overestimated grossly on the amount of time I could commit to playing online here and have so much work/social activities going on. However I will still persist with the weekly updates to keep me focused on being a decent player .

I went to the casino for the first time ever this week. I was pretty astounded at the standard to be honest! I played in 2 £20 buy in tournaments and cashed for £70 and £170 in each. Obviously this won't always happen but these tournaments seem +++ev so I'll be expecting decent results overall. Haven't checked out cash yet, surely it's a bit tougher .

Ok so to start the week off the zoom HUD stopped working on pokertracker. I'm not exactly good with computers so I didn't manage to fix it (despite redownloading and trying to stop my virus scanner blocking it). This meant that I decided to multi table regular 10NL games. I found the standard to be significantly worse than in zoom and if I play enough tables I can get in a similar volume . My results for the week don't really reflect what I've just said but I was getting it in set vs set lots (top vs 2nd) and other annoying things that I just accept is part of the game :').

I also won the £20 entry tournament in the casino for £380 this week! So that was a very welcome addition to the profits, makes me feel a bit better about the current variance online . I feel like the casino game is so beatable just playing like a nit and holding up when you're all in aq vs a5 lol. I will be going most weeks I think as I enjoy the additional aspect of live play . I understand that 5th, 3rd, 1st is not sustainable though !

gl

I've been doing a lot of reading and analysis of my stats this week in order to discover the reason why my graph is continuously nosediving :').... From my investigations I have discovered that I need to steal more from the button and cut off, open up more on the button and tighten up in the sb and bb. Also I should try and exploit fish a lot more than trying to out level regs (don't try this often).

Overall the things I needed to adjust were significant but it was obvious they weren't going to make 4bb/100 difference. So then I decided to use other methods to see the reason.

I know what I'm about to say sounds incredibly fishy and non-reliable but I will persist anyway because I know I am removing any bias from my search.

Ok so basically I had a count of of coolers in my database (yep here we go degen making excuses ). I found that I had lost 70 buyins to coolers and only made 38 buy ins from coolers in my favour, therefore I had a net result of -32 buyins from coolers (and this was just considering the all in adjusted equity). So if you're reading this I know you'll be sat there thinking "this is total biased emotional bull****" so I removed that aspect from my investigation.

I said that a cooler was only classified by: set over set on no 3 to a straight or flush boards and if it was by the river not bottom 2 sets. So I think we can agree that's a legit cooler at NL10 100bb stacks (when they were boats the same reasoning was applied). The second class was of course the AA vs KK AI pre or on the flop in a 3 bet pot. Or AA and KK losing in 4bet pots (to hands like 64o yep thats legit). Nut flush vs 2nd nut flush, nut straight vs second nut straight (both hole cards play) only on non paired boards. Top 2 pair in a 3bet pot vs a set. Then of course things like straight flush over house, quads over house, those super sick types :P.

I deemed non of these situations at all foldable without a really good reason. As I applied the criteria in the same way to my wins and losses from coolers it makes the test fair .

Therefore I was pretty happy to discover I was running 32 buyins below "cooler EV" and there wasn't a huge gigantic leak in my play despite a number of small ones I'm trying to fix. On top of this im still like 13 buyins under all in ev. Baring all this in mind I don't feel as disheartened in my play and will just try and ride out the variance.

I've added in pink lines of my net won with rakeback as well as to keep myself more positive about running into the ground . My blue line is break even in the downswings which is just ****ed considering I'm on the nittier side of things :/

Here is my sexy graph of the summer seeing as I discovered how to put rakeback in. I know I have adjusted the figures appropriately to satisfy my deal.



Just let me run normal poker gods, just one time ?