Hello, thanks for checking out my poker diary.

I'm a 25-year-old guy living in an average city in America. I play live poker semi-full time. I'm also a year away from finishing up my Bachelor's degree in business. But I don't want to go into business. I want to play poker instead.

In this thread I will try to re-cap sessions and share my ambitions with you. My current bankroll is $7,000. I use that money for poker and for living. My expenses are minimal right now ($400 rent + gas/food), and I'm sticking with $1/2nl for the time being. I'd like to have $10,000, and a little extra, plus the addition of a few items I'd like to purchase, before transitioning into a $2/5nl player.

I hope to have $100,000 by the end of 2015.

See ya around .

GL dude, I'm in a similar situation, except I just graduated university. $7K is a decent start. You have a part-time job or just living off of financial aid?

First of all, good luck with the challenge!

Personally I would prefer to keep my personal and my poker bankroll kept separate. You could take 2.000 for living and 5.000 for poker. If you mix them you can easily start getting a weird relationship to money, while if you keep them separate losing doesn't feel as bad and you won't be as careless with money as you might get after having a big win.

Busto?

Went busto in a sense. Lost my love of the game for a moment. Been playing as a serious hobby/lolprofession for ten years, and a brutal b/e stretch plus feeling like my time could be better spent away from the casino tables led me to taking a few months off from continuous play.

I'm qualified for about 5% of job postings on craigslist, and I don't get to introduce myself for any of the ones I applied for. Went like 0-7, so I decided to start grinding 1/2 on the weekends again.

I was pretty stupid to play afternoon sessions this year. Nights and weekends bring out the weirdos and deeper stacked players.

So far I've played three sessions. 9hrs, +410ish. Got a working life roll of 2.7k with minimal expenses. Once I hit 10k roll I can either A) travel somewhere cool maybe grind abroad; B) move up 2/5; C) get my own place to live.

My poker goals for the interim are to strive for longer sessions while maintaining a balance of optimal quits, play 3-4 nights per week and don't get into dumb situations attempting to play perfect poker..just play my own game.

I'm considering booking wins after x amount of hours, taking the hour break, and reloading for $200. I know the math says this only hurts my ev (I could take a meal break instead), but I think it might help me put in more hours.

New rule effective immediately:

If more than one applies, I'm tilting and have to leave next hand no question..

-memory fade
-getting badly outplayed in a hand
-more than 6 hours into the sesh
-playing -ev hands in -ev ways

If I play through the two problem stop sign and lose a significant amount, i'll take a week off on the spot.

Do you have any stats? How many hours have you logged? What's your win rate?

GL

Kid with a dream !!!!!

Thanks.



I've been using Poker Journal for the past couple years or so. I'm up since black Friday. Hours and winrate mean very little to me (the past is immaterial!) due to my game changing and a basic grasp of statistics. The more successful PG&C threads touch on this subject. I'll be keeping an honest record of my results in this thread though.

Thanks for stopping by!

I don't know where I'm going, but I know just where I've been. - Whitesnake

note: I dislike sympathy, and appreciate but need few words of encouragement.

Month to date: 26 hours, -$31.

I was geeked for tonight's session. I had a Friday night dinner lined up from 8p-11p, and I altered my sleep schedule to wake up at 6p, with the intention of playing poker all night after the meal and a glass or two of Knob Creek.

Session lasted 00:46, lost my $200 and didn't wan't to press my short roll and reload due to the game being half short and mostly nitty. Which I didn't mind when I sat down! There was one wild player to my direct right, and I anticipated a night of fold-fold-fold.

I'm dealt QQ in the SB. CO open limps, BTN (wild player) bets $12. I bet $40, BTN calls. Flop 567, mostly gin. I tank for literally 5 seconds and my opponent says, "It's on you," and I softly reply, "I know the rules." which gets a chuckle from the drunk to my direct left. I bet $60, he calls. Turn 7 and I bet $135 all-in, he calls after a moment. River 4. Guess what he had!



No biggie.

I come from the land of American online poker pre BF so there's literally nothing surprising or tough to swallow regarding this game. I've had some annoying breaks in "life" the last few years and feel indifferent about a lot of things. I've had a few illnesses that have been debilitating to an extent but have also forced myself to toughen up and become a pretty strong dude. I've had more bad relationships with women than good, struggled with other inter-personal affairs along with keeping a job for more than a few months at a time.

But more visceral, is the poker god that seems to hate me the past few months. I've consistently collided with sets and stupid stuff like the hand I shared and it hasn't yet been reciprocated yada dada dada. When I experience mental game fishery of my own I get stomped and when I don't I've struggled anyways, which has been a theme off the tables too. Do good, meh things happening. Do bad, total devastation.

But I've also been working hard on myself doing the introspective dance and all. I realized I was a pretty toxic (I'm overly hard on myself ) fellow and needed to learn how to be kinder and make friends. Most of my friends are people I've known since childhood, several being thieves and lowlife cheats. They aren't dangerous people, and I'm light-years ahead of them in terms of smarts, so their delinquencies and stuff are perfectly predictable and sad yet amusing.

A few months ago I asked myself, "what do people like?". The answer is openness and honesty, so I went way out of my comfort zone to experiment on this revelation and to attempt to outsmart my brain and teach it a new way to be. I did this in convenience stores and supermarkets mostly. At checkout, instead of saying "good, superficial charm, and you?" when cashiers asked me how it was going, I started to share details of what I'd been doing that very day and what was going on in my life. I made no effort to tell interesting stories, or relate what I was saying to the present moment. I just talked. And not shockingly, the workers were receptive and shared their own feelings back with me.

And suddenly I was connecting with strangers and happily verbally communicating with people in real life.


So I've been building off that and mingling with as many people as I can. Hoping to acquire information, build friendships, find a job(?), but mostly maintain my happiness. I no longer feel like an alien.

And I have some gifts too, but they're mostly difficult to put into words, and hardly monetize-able without becoming a sleazy person, which I don't think I am. I gotta find something substantial and sustainable in this life. A good woman, a career, a family, love, all that stuff! And I will, because I'm a hard-headed person with a soft spirit, and if I always seem to know what people are thinking (away from the felt ), I gotta be able to make some good with that.

I've applied to 7 or 8 jobs in the past couple weeks and I'm gonna keep at it, despite being qualified for almost nothing. Gonna keep talking to people, putting myself out there, and taking advantage of every opportunity. There's no luck in this world, everything is perfectly predictable, and those who use good judgement while seeking chances will always come out ahead.

Here I go again.