Hey guys, long time reader and first time poster of the Poker Goals and Challenge forum. I first started reading Matt Moore's thread way back and have really enjoyed reading quite a few of the threads posted on here. I certainly won't be playing anywhere near as high stakes as most of you guys but I hope to at least be entertaining. I've mostly decided to make this thread for myself as a way to keep myself accountable for reasons that will become obvious later (probably) and maybe some of you will enjoy reading it as well.

About Me

I live just outside of Vancouver, BC where our hockey team sucks and doesn't know how to rebuild properly so we're all forced to channel our rage into degenerate gambling. I started playing poker right around the time of the Moneymaker boom. Watching Joe Hachem win the year after is probably the first time I can really remember being interested in watching guys throw a bunch of cards and chips around a table

I have some extra free time right now as I am waiting for my new job to start. Making money at this is not really of any significance but would obviously be nice to have a little extra in the vacation fund. It would also go a long way to justifying to my wife why I didn't do anything around the house when I was home all day. Ultimately I'm more interested in winning then the money which tends to get me into trouble.

Tournaments

Despite what the title says I am actually a decent MTT player (at least at low stakes). I started to lose interest in them after I got married as they required such a time investment that I didn't really have. I started to get back into in lately as my passion for poker came back when I started wasting time in bed playing Spin & Go's while the wife was asleep. After crushing them for the most part I played in the Big 8.80 on Pokerstars one morning (and afternoon) and took second for around $4,500

That brings me to the next part

Cash Games

I am BAD at cash games. Embarrassing bad. As in, you should search for my screen name on Stars and sit at every table I'm playing and wait for me to pay you off. I've always been bad at them and I've never been quite sure why I can't find a way to translate my tournament game to cash.

Anyway, I have played about 16,000 hands at .25NL since mid February and I'm down about $285. I'll post the graph one day but just try and picture it with a bunch of steep downward lines. Despite my terrible results I still feel like I can beat these games with a few adjustments. Probably wishful thinking but I'm kinda confident, which is probably a good thing for my opponents.

That being said, with a decent size bankroll to play with right now I'd like to take on the challenge of trying to become at least a slightly profitable cash game player while still playing tournaments.

Goals

So here is what I'd like to accomplish in the short term and how I think I can vastly improve my game

- Stop tilting. This is probably the biggest thing i need to fix. If I lose a big hand where I think I got screwed on the river or whatever, I become a massive fish trying to find a big winner. Improving my mindset is going to go along way.

- Stop calling weak hands on the river. I find myself trying to make hero calls to often on big bets. My ego doesn't allow me to get bluffed so I call hands I really shouldn't when guys obviously have made hands far to often. There are plenty of other holes in my game but I'll start there.

- Get gold VIP. I've never played enough to get Gold status so I'd like to get that for March

- at least break even for the rest of the month at cash.

I'll posting my results as I go for anyone who is interested. I'll even post s few hands from time to time for you guys. Mocking is caring of course.

lol you sound like I used to be. Ie. Really bad habits from developing your game in SNG and MTT during the money maker era. Just doesn't translate. In SNG you can (or at least could back then) get away with aggression regardless of equity, not so in cash. IMO cash is so much more complex from a fundamentals perspective.

GL- it's a god damn struggle.

You already know what not to do - Don't tilt and don't try to make hero calls on river. This will save you alot of money at NL25

My personal experiance in making money at NL25 is to be patient, wait for premium hands, play them aggressively, and watch out for draw heavy board - here you might wanna slow down depending on the action. If you have stats on villian then exploit them. But basicly stick to a kind of ABC poker with a little aggression and you'll be fine.

Looking forward to hear about your progress