SKIP TO 2ND PARAGRAPH FOR POKER GOALS
Hello there everyone my name is Anthony and I am an aspiring Poker grinder! Crazy right I’m blogging on two plus two and I want to be a poker player. A little about myself, I am a Marine Corps Infantry Vet and have for the last year been attending school with my G.I Bill which has provided me with money to live off. Im 26 years old and Ive been a student of the game since 2011 six years now! I’ve taken several breaks here and there since I started playing but still try to keep it fresh in my mind with either reading or watching good players stream on twitch. I’ve been our of the military for 2 years and the first year was quite interesting and sad all at the same time. Right after I got out of the military I begin renting a room in my brothers house of which he rents several rooms in located in Utah. I was attending college and playing some live poker on the weekends as well as online on school days. I grew a small $200 dollar roll playing live into $800. Yes I was playing 200nl live with a $200 roll. At the time I wasn’t worried about going bust I was just playing for fun and hoping for the best. Well I turned that into $800 and as any normal teenage would decide I was going to go to Vegas to Play in my first $500 tournament! I’d never previously played in any tournament over $100 with ****ty structure/small stakes online tournaments. I got to Vegas the day prior and decided to sit some 200nl before I retired to my hotel room for the night. I quickly lost $220 and was left $580. I knew I needed to save $500 for the tourney and didn’t’ have enough to buy in at 200nl any longer. But wouldn’t you know it there happened to be a satellite into the tournament I was planning on playing for $80 so I thought what the hell why not I got nothing else to do. It payed out 10 spots and I ended up winning a ticket and coming in 1st in the satty! Now I can go back to playing some 200nl! Well long story short I lost the rest of my money and the tourney ticket was all I had left. It was the planet Hollywood phamous series main event paying out 100k for first. It was a two day event, also a first for me playing in an event that was going to last two days! Very long story short I made I through day 1 and found myself at the final table a billion hours later, or so it would seem. Somehow I managed to chop it 4 ways as chip leader for 57K! Id never had more than 2k in my bank account before this! Shortly after that I finished my semester of college and decided to move to cali because one I like cali and two there are lots of poker rooms! I played a lot of live 200nl my first month down there and managed to profit 3.5k. I took that profit and plowed right through it that summer at the world series of poker. Sucks to have lost 3.5k but I will never forget that experience man was it awesome seeing all the poker players I’d always watched on TV and looked up to! A couple more months into Cali and for personal reasons I fell into a very dark depression and didn’t play any poker for moths. I was renting an apartment for $1500 a month which obvi was stupid Cali is expensive. I also began to dabble in the stock market which was a rollercoaster and eventually my downfall. I had 35k invested not all at once but in increments in a stock called Sun Edison. Well as some of you may know this big solar company somehow went bankrupt and I lost everything Note that the depression came not from the money but personal problems elsewhere. Eventually I couldn’t afford to live in cali and so I moved back to Utah and started going back to school. Over the course of a few semesters I changed my major 3 times and though I’ve kept a 3.7 GPA I have not found something that would stick. I went from biology major to business and then to computer science. With the G.I Bill you have to declare a major and take classes towards that major in order to get your housing allowance and considering I don’t want to study computer science and didn’t want to waste the G.I Bill(you get 36 months) ive decided to take a semester off to figure out what I want to do. That takes us to now. Ive got a couple months bills worth of money saved up and I want to give online poker a real shot. I can only afford to put on $400 and cant imagine playing anything less than 25nl.
SKIP TO HERE IF YOU JUST WANT TO HEAR THE POKER GOALS AND PLANS
I wanted to set a goal that seemed perfectly reasonable and not to crazy. I figured out if I played 1k hands a day 7 days a week and could beat 25nl at a rate of 5bb/100 on average it would take me 48 days until I could move up to 50nl.($1000 bankroll) If I could then beat that for the same win rate I would have enough for rent ($350) at the end of the two month of which i had money for bills saved and still be able to continue playing 50nl. Which at 1k hands a day for 5bb/100 win rate would amount to $750 a month. I only need $550 for rent, food, gas, and miscellaneous. I could keep $200 in the roll for going up stakes later! This could really work but I know its going to be hard and I’m guessing with 4 tables of 25nl it should take me about 4-5 hrs a day to maintain 1k hands a day. Somedays I may feel like grinding more and somedays less but as long as I hit 7k hands a week I should be able to accomplish my goal and build build build until all my wildest dreams come true! Lol So that’s the plan gents and I’m using this forumn to help me one stay motivated and two stay accountable. If it doesn't work out after 2 months I'll have to begrudging go out and get a poopy normal person job. I’ll be keeping a journal of my grind and how things are going in poker as well as fun things outside of poker if that even happens. My life is pretty boring though so don’t count on it! Thanks for being here and lets get rich!

So I know i just posted this thread but i actually started this grind 2 days ago and have two journal entries i need to add for 1/19 and 1/20 so i'll just add them in this one post and be back tomorrow night for the next! Here we go:

1/19/2017
Today went really well I doubled the amount of hands I needed to play so instead of just 1k I played 2k! Im pretty happy about that. I played a morning session of 1k hands and ended +14.50. The session had its ups and downs starting off down $48 but then nevertheless we climbed back! Later on that night I felt like playing again which is nice because that will allow me to not play on another day if something comes up or I’m just not in the mood to grind. The second session went much smoother and being at night was much softer. I had people getting it in pre flop with 10ks for stacks! I ended the session about just over $100 and felt very re assured about my ability to crush the 25nl streets.
1/20/2017
I cannot believe that I am so weak! Second day into grinding and I’m already almost tilting off my entire roll! I was playing and had a couple bad beats and let it get the best of me. I then started raising hands that I knew I shouldn’t and calling off in spots I knew were definitely -EV. This led to the all to familiar **** it I don’t even want to have money on here anymore and sit 3/6 with the remaining $400(after I’d lost the $100 I had made the day prior). I hadn’t even technically lost money from my original deposit but I was in full steam mode. I don’t know how I am going to fix this issue I have. I always struggle with this same thing from the beginning of time with online poker. Sure I tilt in live poker to but not as much and not as bad as online. I can’t begin to explain just how annoyed I am with myself for giving in to the tilt. I acted so mentally weak and am so embarrassed but want to be %100 real with you guys on everything that happens. None the less I luckily did well at 600nl and after sitting with $400 for about two hours left with $1243. I thought it foolish to just use that and jump to 50nl. Whats to say I won’t do the same thing and not be so lucky the second time around and walk away with nothing! If this grind doesn’t work I’ll have to go out and get a real job and God knows I don’t want that! So I decided to withdraw $843 and leave the $400 that I rightfully should have as a bankroll and start over. The $800 will be a big blessing to me and not only help with rent (which I already had 2months set aside) but now I will be able to pay off the looming credit card debt that I was going to put off and pay the minimum on. I know what you’re thinking, you have credit card debt and your playing online poker? Well the answer to that is yes lol I’ts only about $700 which if this grind didn’t work I would just have to get a job and pay off slowly. That being said I am really happy I will no longer have to worry about that debt. Now if I fail I will simply just have to go get a job and pay normal bills as they come. Going forward I will be playing 1hr and then have forced 5 min breaks until the 1k hands are played. I think 5min break can make a world of difference especially if you’re feeling like you may be experiencing tilt. I also think that I’m going to try and wait until later in the day to start my grind as the tables seem to be softer when people are coming home from work. Go figure. With the exception of the weekends. I may even throw in some tournaments on the side. I won’t be going after $4 for the buyins in order to keep a strict 100 buy in minimum. As the bankroll grows so will potential tourney buy in amounts. Please if you guys have an tips on how to manage tilt so i can keep disasters like this from happening again please let me know! Until next time wish me luck!
Stake:25nl
Bankroll:$400
Todays Profit:$0
Overall Profit:$0 (Not gonna count the rage $800)

BTW guys i forgot to mention I sometimes stream my poker sessions on Twitch at twitch.tv/TzurrR. Come on by and say hello. Cheers!

Hello Everyone! How we doing today?! Back at it with a reflection journal on the day and of course on my grind session. First of all I'd like to give Ignition Casino a shout out because yesterday when i withdrew that $800 at around 6pm it was in my bitcoin wallet by midnight! That is literally insane and my fellow U.S Grinders can appreciate why I'm so pleased with that. In the past its taken weeks and even months at times! Nothing else particularly special happened today. I only got 5 hours sleep last night and couldn't go back to sleep but thats nothing a little caffeine couldn't fix. Am I the only one who legitimately feels happier after they get their caffeine fix? I don't just mean more energetic but i actually feel happier about life in general and just accomplishing my goals. It's like before i drink caffeine and take my shower life is dark and i just want to go back to sleep. But after I'm like God damn ready to take over the world!

Anyhow lets get on to what we're really here to talk about and thats today's grind sesh! Today's grind sesh went rather spectacularly. It had its ups and downs as does any grind sesh, starting the day with a quick KK<AA AIP. As well as another tuff spot with AK on a K high board against a MEGA aggro opponent who rivered a flush. But none the less we persevered and bounced back with some really great bluff spots and a sexy ass thin river over bet getting the opponent to call down with second pair. WRECKED. In the future i'm going to learn how to get hand history on here so i can post these hands but i haven't toyed with that just yet, still new to this! When all was said and down and the fog of war disbanded we came out victorious with a nearly 6 buy in day of $140 and cool 1010 hands played!

I implemented my 5 min break every hour and though i think in the future i'll move that to every 1.5 hours I believe it helped me a lot to just freshen up mid session. I'll grab a snack, a drink, try to find better tables maybe and get ready for the next stretch. The way I look at days like these is not that i profited $140 because that isn't locked in i look at it as cushion for my goal of beating the game for 5bb/100. This 55bb/100 day is going to counter balance those days when i get the bad end of variance. Feels good to have a cushion That's all for tonight's journal and boy does it feel good to book a win. See you in the next one Gents!

Stake: 25nl
Bankroll: $540
Today's Results: $140
Hands Played: 3855
Win Rate: 13.5bb/100

Hi,

Good luck man. Seems like you are off to a good start.

I am at a similar point and trying to make a go of it. Also have some issues regarding my mental game and BRM.
However I know I can get on top of them. Stay disciplined and run well.

Thanks Jip! Mental game in poker is by far the biggest struggle. Learning the game and enjoying the grind is easy but keeping a cool head when you've played well all day and made a small profit only to lose it in one bad beat is incredibly difficult.

I just gotta try harder to keep a big picture mindset. Hope all goes well in your grind man keep me posted and lets do this together!

Thanks for stopping by and saying hello

What paragraphs?

Sorry. Someone brought this to my attention a couple days after i wrote it and i can't figure out how to edit old posts from previous days. Still new at this. If you look towards the bottom you'll see more CAPS that point out the poker goals. Again im terribly sorry im just a newby a this! Trying to put more spaces between every few sentences in the future. Not sure why this forum doesn't allow you to TAB. Thanks for stoppin on by though

Woke up this Morning here in beautiful Bluffdale Utah to this winter wonderland! I don't have any plans to drive anywhere so thats not an issue.

It's the perfect whether to sit back in you're comfy home and enjoy your warm Sunday Grind! I'll be on later for the Journal. Cheers Everyone!

Utah?

Haha ya. Why the sad face though? I've lived in several places in the last two years. I was in DC, then Cali, then Utah, then back to Cali, then Texas, and now back to Utah

Whoa hold up i just realized who you are i was watching you stream 100nl on Ignition the other day haha Got a Legend in the chat! Glad you're here i follow you Although if you come watch me play don't expect too much lol

Yo yo yo whats good errrrbody! I hope everyone's Sunday went well and that variance was on your side! Imma go ahead and get straight into it. This Journal is for my grind earlier today even though technically its 3am on the 23rd my grind was late on the 22nd.

I saved a couple hands from tonight's grind, one that I am proud of and one where i was in a spot and wasn't sure about. I plan on figuring out how to post HH by the end of next week for sure and hopefully in the next couple days. Also will be posting first 5k hands graph within the nexdt two days depending when i hit that.

The grind was mostly smooth tonight i think I only fell neg one time early on in the sesh just from bleeding. Had a couple spots where we called down in what i think were +EV spots and just got unlucky but mostly good things happening.

Pulled of a triple barrel bluff in a pretty awesome spot that worked out as well as pretty cool max value river overbet. I feel dumb talking about these hands and not posting them but again soon to come! It all went well and we were closing in on 900/1000 hands when we got the bad beat of the night.

Just a silly spot really. New player sits down at the table and is instantly typing in the chat being arrogant and annoying. I'm on the button with AA and UTG limps. Fold to new player who 4x in the cut of and i pot. UTG folds and cut off flats.

Pot is $9.50. The flop comes J34 rainbow and new player checks. I bet $6 leaving new player with less than a pot size bet behind, my intention of course to shove turn.

He calls and the turn is a meaningless 7, or so i think. Of course JJ is in his range but im still getting value from QQ KK AJ KJ QJ. If he has JJ im just going broke here and though it would hurt i was fine with that.

I ship the turn and he snaps, instantly JJ runs through my mind but then im blown away when opponent flips over 73off! What the fffuuuukkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Player proceeds to lose it all to the players around me in the next 20 min. Though I did make it all back from several hands in the last 100 hands it still hurt.

That being said I am very proud to say i didn't let it get to me. I continued on playing the same as i would had it not happened. Of course i called slighty wider against that one opponent but my decision making wasn't altered in the slightest!

When all was said and done we ended the night with a profit of $108 and 1010 hands played. Another great session in the books! If only i didn't go tilt mode that second session my 25nl graph would look sick! My red line is completely crushed from it haha but oh well

Having this blog to re motivate me every night as well as streaming on twitch.tv/TzurrR and hanging with a couple viewers has helped me immensely. As well as taking 5 min break every 1.5hrs. We got this guys! I also joined a discord with poker enthusiasts to go over hands with Side note ive been focusing much more on table selection and leaving when i feel i can find better elsewhere. Something i never really did in the past but i feel and have been told is very important. So im very pleased with that.

Well that's it for 2night. Thanks for everyone coming in here who left comments even if it was to say there are no paragraphs in my first two entries haha. They have a rule where after so many hours you can't edit your posts Have a great night and see you tomorrow! Cheers!

Stake: 25nl
Bankroll: $648
Today's Results: +$108
Hands Played: 4865
Win Rate: 19.5bb/100

Well done.

Keep it up man. Finding someone who is trying to to the same as me is great hopefully we can keep each other on the right course.

Yeah man for sure! Come on by to my twitch stream and hang out and we'll grind together. we even got a lil discord with a couple other poker peeps if your interested just ask me in the chat and i'll link you

Hey guys i seen in some other peoples Vlogs that they are posting what their setup looks like and ive noticed people seem to like that. So here is what I'm working with!

I'm playing halo ATM and that is why you see the controller and what not haha.



Also thought i would just go ahead and post my first 5k hands graph now even though its 152 hands short of it because after tonight's grind i will have passed it and it'll be closer to 5k now than later.

I think i'll go ahead and post a graph every 5k hands just so you guys can see where I'm at. I'll also post monthly results at the ends of the month! As well as i'll be posting fun hands from the sessions in the nightly journals very soon! So without further a due here is my graph for my first 5k(ish) hands!

I bet I'm better than you at halo

haha I'd prob take that bet

Will definitely drop into twitch and check out your streams.
I feel a halo match brewing as well although I'm not very good any more. Haha

sub'd

haha sounds good man! You can even check out past broadcasts to assess my halo skill and determine a tactical approach! LOL

Thanks man!

Ok so i'm going to do my journal for last nights grind. I was super tired and passed out with my computer on haha I don't plan to do a journal for every single grind per say but i want to do as many as i can find time for!

Oh quick note before i start into my journal. I was watching a video linked to me by a friend talking about the different rake on the different sites and then putting those number into BB/100. Well as some of you may have known already, but shocked the hell out of me, bovada takes 12.3bb/100 at the 25nl stake!

OUCH That means if you're breaking even at 0bb/100 you're actually crushing your opponents for 12.3bb/100. Also means that my goal of beating the 25nl pool for 5bb/100 is actually me trying to beat it at 17.3bb/100. This is a little disheartening but it has been done before and therefore we shall press on and persevere! Also as the stakes increase the rake decreases significantly, mostly starting at 100nl. Here is the URL to the video if anyone is interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbwMZhR1jDM

The grind last night was one of those grinds that tests who you really are as a man. Makes you dig wwaayy down deep and think you might just not be mentally strong enough. You start to question whether the stress is really worth it and if you'd rather just go work a min wage day time job.

Nothing was going my way last night. I made some bluffs in what i thought were good spots that didn't work out. I ran a buyin and a half under EV. I had the usual coolers with trips against boats blada blada blada we all know.

I also got wrecked in a couple big key spots. Called down a river in a questionable place. I saved this hand as well as a couple other to post later when i get more used to how it all works. opponent made some weird sizings and whether he did it intentionally or not it worked out and he made me question my manliness. lol

BBUUUTTTTTTTT what I am VERY proud to say is that through all of this i did not tilt. I PROMISE! It didn't effect my decisions, i didn't start opening more hands and spewing like a donkey i stuck to my guns. Im not saying i pulled back i still ended down just under 3 buyins at -$72 but it had nothing to do with tilt.

So when the night was over and i woke up this morning i felt surprising good about it all. Almost as if I'd had a good profitable night. I don't play perfectly by any means, in fact im quite sure that i'm quite bad. BUT i am working on my game, I do see improvement, and i am enjoying myself. I know if i can keep progressing, keep a good mental state, and stay using good BRM I have nothing to worry about!

Thanks everyone for stopping by as promised i will be getting hand histories in here by the end of the week! Thanks again all who have dropped in it goes along way just knowing I'm not alone in this grind! CHEERS and have a wonderful Tuesday( had to stop and think about what day it was, haha). See you in tonight's journal!

Stake: 25nl
Bankroll: $576
Today's Results: -$72
Hands Played: 5870
Win Rate: 11.5bb/100

Video is 3 years old. They recently increased rake by about 10%.

Small sample @ 25nlz and the rake I got was 12.2bb/100

50nlz = 11.8bb/100

100nl reg = 9.3bb/100

100nlz = 7.7bb/100 (because people play tighter fewer hands go post)

Keep in mind I play reasonably loose.

-Journal 1/24/2017

Hello ladies and gents! Hope everyone is doing well and the grind is treating you deliciously! As promised before we have a little hand history! Im going to post a hand that i'm hoping to get some feedback on.

I'll do that after i talk about the grind. First off tonight thankfully was MUCH smoother than last night! Sure there were some ups and downs but last night i could not do anything right and i always seemed to have the second best hand.

Tonight however we got to be the ones cooling them! Got a lot of good spots as well as didn't put ourselves into too many tuff spots. Ended the session with a sexy 1025 hands played and a profit of $99.35!

Very relieved to have a good sesh because even though it was just one night, last night left me questioning myself. Poker is hard like that always making you think you're not good enough and that you should just take what you have left and run!

So on to the hand history. Here is bluff hand that didn't work out.



The raise UTG+1 i think is standard. Then we get a small 3-bet from a CO player playing 42 33. Not only does he seem like a weaker opponent(even weaker than I, maybe...) but he offers me a good price to call.

So i flat. I decide to check call the flop. I have 2 overs a gut shot and a back door flush draw. I check the turn and he checks back. I don't think he is checking back his strong hands (overpairs, sets, A10) here because the board is extremely wet.

Then we see the Ad on the river. I decide this is a good spot to pot size bluff. I block the nut flush( think he would have bet a flush draw on the turn) I don't think he has any sets or a straight because he checked the wet turn.

A good question to ask here is do i get AK to fold? I also checked the turn and didn't check raise the flop so i shouldn't have too many sets or flopped straights. But i feel like i rep Diamonds pretty hard here and also have the nut flush blocker to go with it.

So then to make things even more weird he not only decides to call but to ship it in. What is he shipping in here? It can't be anything but a smaller flush right? But i block and could certainly have the nut flush. Wouldn't a smaller flush just want to call here when i bet pot?

Please if anyone has any input on what they think about this hand let me know. Should i have just folded to the 3-bet pre oop? Do you think AK calls down there? Was it unnecessary and/or to fancy for 25nl? Should i just give up all together on the A river? Lemme know!

So that's all for tonight guys. C ya manana!

Stake: 25nl
Bankroll: $667.79
Today's Results: +$99.35
Hands Played: 6885
Win Rate: 15.22/100