BTW, these hands aren't necessarily recent.

H1. is a terrible river call. It illustrates a systemic problem that I found I had reviewing hands with Snowie. My 3 opponents have at least triple the chances to have somebody make a set or two pairs, because there are three people drawing. Not only that, but this is true for everyone else, too, so shoving with a weak two pair is a recipe for disaster. As is calling with 2nd & 3rd pair here. Two pair is more like top pair in a HU spot... it probably wins if all the chips don't go in.

H2 Yeah, squeezing and iso raise sizes are both things I've realized need to be bigger since playing this hand - you are absolutely right. I got a lot of feedback on several such mistakes from my game tape 25NL session. I'd probably make this 6X now, to $1.80, or maybe $2.10 since there's an overcaller.

H3. I actually like trickling bets to get all in like this. I'm not folding. I want to make it as unjarring as possible for him to reach pot commitment. Although, as in H1, sets are approximately 3X more common with 3 opponents. At first, it seems a little paranoid and nitty to think that defensively, but it might make sense in a 4-way pot. Usually I'm trying to get all in with sets unless the board allows a flush, but maybe that's too trigger happy in 4-way pots.

H4. Terrible cbet, yeah. Good lesson to learn here... do NOT cbet 4-way like you would HU. My hand is dogshit on the flop. I think a small cbet is OK with top pair.

I found a good podcast on multiway flops from Bart at Crush Live Poker. It's hist Podcast 24: On the Flop Big Blind Multiway Play .

I've been finding myself listening to a lot of his stuff lately and think his commentary is really good. I may sign up for his site at some point, at least for a few months.

OK, since I identified the leak yesterday I've had 33 4-way+ pots and after having focussed on this (see my posts) my results are much better. Over those 33 hands, I'm +342 bb/100 although obviously this sample size is pretty small. This graph looks qualitatively different that the bleeding I saw, so I think at least my first pass attempt at first aid are successful. I'll monitor this going forward.

Poker reminds me a little of when I learned to play golf a few years ago. I learned as an adult while I worked as a tech contractor at Randolph AFB with a bunch of NCOs who were great people. I had prop bets that I could break 100 in my first year and then 90 in my second year. I won both bets, but just barely, and had to put in a lot of training with coaches and video and all that. They'd go do golf video of my swing, they'd find things to fix and show me in slow motion what I was doing wrong. It was things like "see that chicken wing shape - no good. it should look like this" they'd give me exercises and I'd work to make a change to my swing.

Each time we found and fixed a swing flaw, I could see the impact in my game. In a few cases it was instant. Other times it took a few times to get the change just right. Fixing the chicken wing took a full club off my ranges. So did keeping my right elbow tucked in and perpendicular longer on the downswing. Other changes just helped me be more consistent, like taking some of the looseness out of my wrist angle at the top of swing, and the constant work to have a good grip.

Anyway, I think leak finding in poker is a lot like working on swing mechanics in golf. I have a feeling this 4-way flop thing for me is the equivalent of a full club improvement in golf, at least in loose games. The live games I play in are always loose, so if I'm right, this could put some real money in my pocket. So I'm pretty excited.

Back to a topic from a few weeks ago about how to use your bankroll as an indicator to move up. It turns out that James Sweeney just made a video about this. He uses a rule called the "15/2" rule for microstakes. After hearing his thoughts, I like this a lot. Basically, you try the new level when you have 15 buy ins. You allocate 2 buys ins to playing at the new level. If you blow through the two buy-ins, your shot is over and you go back down.

This addresses a problem I had when I took my shot... I didn't allocate enough money to play at the new level and fill up, so I ended up playing a lot of my shot session short stacked. If I'd allocated two buy-ins, I would've be able to stay full.

Sweeny also says it's important to be aggressive about trying to move up in microstakes. Basically the rake is so large, it makes it hard to beat the game for enough to build your roll. He calls it a "rake trap". Interesting. I have two arguments to go with his.

First, because it's microstakes and I have a real job, I'm not putting my life income in jeapordy when I take a shot at 25NL for $400. Btw, I'll use a 16/2 rule still for 25NL because a round number of $400 is better than $375. I'll have $50 at risk the first time I try 25NL and if I lose all of it, I'll go back to 10NL and even if I lose my whole roll, I'll be sad and feel like a dufus, and I'll go to my normal job on Monday and work my normal hours and make my normal income and everything is fine. So because busto isn't as severe, it's fine to be more liberal with the BRM multipliers to get out of microstakes as fast as possible.

Second, as someone who is working actively on trying to get better, the faster I can get to stakes where they play somewhat solid poker, the sooner I'm building reusable skills for all levels above (eg: based on GTO) and the less I'm overfitting an exploitive strategy that beats one level and isn't useful elsewhere. All my posts of 4-way pots and such make be both excited that I'm finding leaks, but also scratching my head and asking why am I stuck in levels where 4-way pots are even a thing. This will help me with my live game, I'm sure, but it's also kind of a unique one-off problem.

I'm sort of just saying that one solution to my 4-way pots problem is to "move up to where they respect my raises" because there aren't many 4-way pots there. The original cliche stands for the danger of skipping a step in my poker development due to overconfidence. I do feel honor bound to actually beat the level where they are too stupid to fold. But I don't want to dwell on it too much, because it's too much of a snowflake. To make an analogy from math class... yes you need to know how to divide the long way before you do algebra. But that doesn't mean you need to dissect dividing 3 digit numbers by each other by hand for weeks on end. Make sure you can do it if push comes to shove and then start doing algebra, because that's useful all the way up.

Anyway, here's the splitsuit vid on the 15/2 method:

For a diversion yesterday I played some cheap turbo tournaments. Seven of them to be precise. I cashed in 3 of them, but in the lower half of the prizes. Made money on the day, but just a little. I think I ran bad in the critical moments. These tournaments go pretty fast, and I thought most of the opponents were pretty weak. There was another reg in most of them and he and I were usually in the chipleaders at some point. I haven't put any real time in at tournaments in years, so I am totally rusty on proper ranges for push/fold. I kind of estimated relative to my cash RFI ranges for pushing and did OK, surprisingly.

There was one interesting hand with 6 left (9 were paid) where I was 3rd stack and had AQs in the SB with 25bbs and the chip leader raised into me from the BTN. I ripped it in and he had AA which held. It seems too strong of hand to fold and calling OOP vs the chip leader is gross. Still, it might have been an ICM punt -- not sure. If anybody is reading this who knows what a good tool to put your tournament hand histories into to find mistakes, please let me know what you use.

Here's my results for February 2022:





I beat a mix of mostly 5NL and 10NL on ACL and Ignition for about 18.5 bb/100 with a little bit of run good on the all-ins, as EV adjusted is 9.2 bb/100 over a little above 6k hands playing with 34/27 stats. The beginning of the month finished out a brutal downswing that ended January on a sour doom-switchy feeling, that I've posted about already. This was probably the roughest downswing I've had since coming back into poker in Sept. It felt like I was cursed and like every river was chosen to hurt me. Of course, all of this is an illusion. But I am glad it's over. Ha.

Some things I need to work on:
- I deviate from my RFI range a little too much in LJ and HJ. Not sure why, but must tighten this up as I lose money when I do so.
- I want to work on my BB ranges facing an open
- I lost a little money calling bets and raises on the river. I always look at this as it use to be a huge leak.
- 4bet pots, as I've previously discussed
- I'm calling a few too many 3bets and losing money when I do

It's been a while since I posted here, so I think I need to catch things up and get my improvement focus back. I took a brief hiatus from my online play in April, but I'm back grinding 10NL blitz on ACR lately. I think the level of play in 10NL blitz is a little tougher than regular 10NL and I'm struggling a bit as a result. However, I need some tougher opponents so that they can expose some of my leaks, which I will hopefully find with some database analytics.

The ACR crowd definitely plays a lot differently than ignition. I can tell people make mistakes, but I think I'm making a lot of mistakes too, and I feel like they take advantage of mine, or perhaps they simply passively exploit my leaks by playing solid poker and letting me spew. It generally feels like 10NL blitz generally is pretty nitty. It's easier to bluff people, but harder to stack them. Few people overcall and many overfold. This means they bring stronger ranges to the river and showdown, and generally I think this means winning poker on ACR needs to be red line oriented poker (getting people to fold). This means adapting to people's betting patterns and putting the right pressure on them to fold in the right spots.

After about a year off, I'm getting back into poker. A buddy of mine and I are forming a study group and will leverage some training sites (probably the upswing lab). But before we jump in, he asked a great question to get us to set our direction properly: what makes a great poker player? I spent some time actually thinking about this, with the idea that whatever it is, everything we do to improve should be aimed at developing skills relevant to the answer. Anyway, without further ceremony, here's my answer:

What Makes a Great Poker Player?

Solid Fundamentals

• Understands the source of advantage: position, selection, agreession, skill
• Thinks fluently in ranges, EV, outs, combo counting, pot odds, implied and reverse implied odds, equity and realization
• Understands concepts of GTO/equilibrium play vs exploitive play
• Has Preflop Ranges & Sizing Baseline: RFI, facing 2bet, facing 3bet, facing 4bet, squeeze/overcalls, facing limpers
• Understands and applies balance, range shapes (capped, polarized, marged, mixed)
• Understands and applies bluffing/draw concepts: semi-bluffs and combo draws, blockers, unblockers, minimum defense frequence
• Understands aggressive plays: reasons to bet/raise, 3bet, 4bet, squeeze, check-raise, probe bet, overbet
• Identifies board textures, and can assess range and nut advantage, connectedness, flushiness
• Good Flop Play. Can construct good ranges and sizings, based on texture and opponent ranges for:
  - SRP, IP: cbet, checkback, vs donk, vs c/r
  - SRP, OOP: donk, c/f, c/c, c/r
  - 3BP, IP: cbet, checkback, vs donk, vs c/r
  - 3BP, OOP: donk, c/f, c/c, c/r
  - 4BP, IP: cbet, checkback, vs donk, vs c/r
  - 4BP, OOP: donk, c/f, c/c, c/r
  - 5BP+ hands
  - multiway pots
• Good Turn & River Play
  - hand reading, boards, textures
  - barrelling (value to bluff bet ranges & balance)
  - value betting, sizing, reasons to bet, stack-to-pot ratio, commitment
  - bluffing, betting draws, counting outs, blockers, unblockers
  - lead vs check range construction
  - call vs raise range construction
  - checking strategy: induce bluffs, realize equity, control potsize, check-fold trash, check-raise, protecting the checking range
  - responding to raises: blocking & bet-fold, call vs raise
  - bluff range construction

Adjustments

• Tells & Deception: live tells, timing tells, bet sizing tells, false tells, self-assessment
• Observes opponent tendencies preflop & postflop: tight vs loose, aggro vs passive, overbluff vs underbluff, positionally unaware
• Considers population tendencies based on stake and site
• Observes opponent betting line frequency deviations from equilibrium
• Maximizes value extraction by tailoring bet sizing to opponent tendencies
• Can factor player personas into decision making: TAG, weak-tight, loose passive, LAG, maniac
• Has exploitive adjustment (if I see X, I do Y) catalog
• Can make "hard" plays when warranted: tough laydowns, hero calls, overbets, high equity bluffs, traps, etc...
• Can assess opponent skill through observation. Attack weak players, fend off strong players
• Self awareness of table image and who it affects

Psychological Strength

• Seeks an iron mind to play and improve without fear or delusion.
• Isn't results oriented. Keeps play solid despite outcomes.
• Accepts variance. Handles upswings and downswings with humility and poise.
• Forms competitive advantage by avoiding tilt and euphoria, while exploiting it in others
• Never satisfied. Never sure. Searches studiously and ruthlessly for leaks, weaknesses, misconceptions, mindset problems
• Accepts bankroll management for sustainable risk, accepting variance for small EV gains. Moves up or down systematically.
• Selects game, table and seat based on rationality, not emotion, arrogance, stubbornness, or fear.
• Does drills and self-assessment until unconscious master is achieved.

Growth Mindset

• Reviews play via hand histories systematically
• Tries to have systematic, articulable, repeatable thought process for decision making
• Uses database analysis & filters to search for improvement opportunities
• Can apply range analysis through multiple streets during hand analysis deep dives
• Uses tools: flopzilla, range/EV calculators, solvers, databases, HUDs, etc...
• Discusses hands, strategy, improvement with others
• Seeks out new ideas, expert opinions, interesting discussions, and feedback in the poker community

I watched an interesting video from the gtowiz guy about 10 concepts to know in poker. He lists these as:

1. Mechanics of Game Theory
2. Thresholds
3. Ranges over Hands
4. Maximize EV over winning pots
5. Stop overvaluing big card starting hands
6. Most EV comes from nutted hands
7. Master Preflop
8. Most empirical heuristics are lies
9. Variance is gigantic
10. Stop overplaying medium strength hands

Here's the video. Highly recommended:



The thresholds section really seems like a common sense way to look at simplifying range construction, because we really only need to have good estimates for the "boundary hands", meaning the best hand we fold, the weakest hand we raise, etc... .

Another one that smacked me hard is that most EV comes from nutted hands. I need to be better about thinking about the nut advantage based on the board texture. I think I spend too much time thinking about who is more likely to have hit pairs. This point goes with #4, because a mistake evaluating pairs may affect more hands, but a mistake evaluating who hits the nuts more will affect more dollars, even if it comes up less. In other words, mistakes affecting small pots, even when they add up don't add up enough to matter more than the big hands. This agrees with my experience, even though I've never thought of it explicitly.

#8 is also interesting. I've had this idea of always starting at small stakes and bankrolling my way up by beating each stake. While this may still be a good approach, it seems we really want to find one playing style that can beat all stakes, rather than a bunch of population specific counter-measures. This doesn't mean we can't play exploitively, but the point is to based this on what you see individual players do, rather than making contextual assumptions. I struggle with this all the time as I try to reconcile how to play live $1/$2 vs say 10NL 6-max on ACR. I'd like to have one framework that guides me in both contexts.

I've spent a lot of work on preflop play (#7) and feel like I've only scratched the surface. I think the key is to really understand your ranges vs your opponents ranges in the different spots, so that you have done things like practiced assessing range and nut advantage in common spots like BTN vs BB on different flop textures and the like. A big area here I don't see discussed enough is how to play exploitively. Everything isn't standard GTO range vs standard GTO range and top notch preflop in my view does accommodate things like "BB doesn't defend enough, so I'm going to raise first in wider from BTN and CO" and so on.

I've decided (with help from a study partner) to reconstruct my game from a clean slate. This includes thinking hard about how to study poker the most effectively. Towards this end, we agreed to study the video series From the Ground Up, by Peter Clarke on runitonce.com and to work through SplitSuit's Poker Workbook: Math & Preflop. I'm going to be very methodical with how I do this, and try to apply some lessons from How To Study Poker, by Sky Matsuhashi.

I'd be very interested to know what poker content people are getting the most out of. It can be books, youtubers, streamers, coaching site video series, or maybe you are just grinding with tools analysis like gtowizard or whatever. Let me know what specificaly has made a difference in your game.

I'll be posting on my study progress. I wish I got more responses to my thread here. It feels like people all gravitate to the threads where people bash the degens. I don't like those threads as much as the ones where people are just working hard to improve, but I seem to be the exception here. That's probably good for my EV, long term, ha.

Anyway, I will highlight concepts, drills, exercises, or content that I found particularly helpful. Currently, I'm beating 10NL, but I'll be there for a bit building my bankroll until I have enough take shots at 25NL. I'm going to use SplitSuit's "15/2" rule, for moving up and down, as I describe in a post earlier in this thread.

I've also been playing live, here in Texas, and have been on a good run at 1/2 of late. I've built my bankroll up from $1500 up to about $7500 since the start of 2023. I think some of the concepts I've talked about in this thread for playing multiway pots and attacking limpers with isolation raises have proven their value. At minimum, this has gotten me excited to play poker again, and to study to get better.

grind trainer - literally no other way you need to succeed

grind trainer? Is this a tool? I'm not familiar with it.

get a gto app with a trainer and grind the **** out of it

Ah, like the trainer in gtowizard. I had access to it last year and did find it pretty useful. But you are saying this is the primary way you study. Interesting. I'm big on GTO as the foundation of my play, but I also think exploitative play is useful, especially live, where people's mistakes are gigantic and they (mostly) don't have any clue to adjust if you start exploiting them.

I watched this interesting video from the Mobius Poker (Patrick Howard) youtube channel about comparing 200NL zoom on stars to 2kNL on Ignition. He brings up some very interesting ideas on how to assess the player pools in different game that have opened my mind to how to approach game selection analytically. These are both stakes way to high for me at present, but the real point he's illustrating by example is that it should be possible to analytically compare two games to see which is tougher.



He uses four measures to objectively compare different games: reg to fish ratio, rake, reg skill, and stakes. Rake and stakes are generally easy to know. Rake is simple: the more rake the bigger your skill edge must be to accommodate. Raw stakes matter too, because the mental game is just harder when losing means more in real world terms. The other two, ref-to-fish ration and reg skill, seem worth more discussion.

Unfortunately, he doesn't really define reg-to-fish ratio, other than to say it's factoring in number of hands, since regs obviously get in more volume. He doesn't say what hud stats to look at to define someone as a reg or fish. I think he uses hand-to-note, so I'm wondering if this tool has a built in definition. If anybody with this tool could say if it does or doesn't, I'd appreciate it.

For reg skill, he does say to look at aggression stats, presumably meaning AF. He says this is a good heuristic, even though going nuts on the AF scale is a losing strategy. He explains that while maniacs lose money, most play pools are actually passive relative to GTO, and that he presumes that as games get tougher, the regs tend to be more aggressive as they diminish the differences in post flop aggression in their play relative to GTO.

I'd love to turn both reg-to-fish ratio and reg skill level into numbers I can actually calculate in my hud (currently PT4), so that I can evaluate my game and table selection. I've been working on my willingness to leave bad tables more quickly, and I also think having these measures will help me evaluate if I'm doing a good job of picking the games and sites that are most profitable.

Since I started playing again, I've managed to get in 5k hands, all at 10NL. Here's my graph:



I'm up 18.2 BB/100, although that includes some rungood, as my all-in EV adjusted winrate is 9.2 BB/100. Obviously it's a small sample, but this is consistent with my results at this stake from before my break, where I had more hands, so I believe it. My current plan is to run my bankroll up to $400 and take some 2 buy in shots at 25NL, moving down if I fail.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to look for leaks and improvement opportunities in my game. I found one big leak which is that I'm losing money when I call 3bets. Over this sample, this represents about a 4 BB/100 leak. It's really huge.

Here's my action plan:
- Confirm my 2bet ranges. Most of my RFI ranges are solid. Blind vs blind may need some work.
- Shore up my facing 3bet ranges. Call less by folding a little more and/or 4betting a little more.
- Be more positionally aware of how 3bet ranges should vary based on both my position and the 3better's.
- Improve my exploitive game facing 3bets. Use hud stats and HH reads more. 4bet wider against 3bet monkeys. Fold more against tight guys
- Polarize my 4bet ranges against players who overfold to 4bets or are balanced.
- Merge my 4bet range against players who overcall 4bets. Improve figuring out who these people are.
- Work on postflop play in 3bet bots. Use better range reading.
- Use more aggressive plays like flop check-raises, scare card bluffs, where appropriate.

Another thing I want to work on is being more aggressive. I tried some things in the last 1k hands and you can see its impact in the red line. I want to work on lots of ways to make people fold. This includes improving my 3betting, squeezing, and 4betting games pre-flop, but also post-flop work like improving bet sizing including adding over-betting and check-raising better. I also want to work on exploitive play, by identifying people whose checking ranges are too weak and pounding them. Should be fun.

Great short video on redline health that really gets me thinking:

Challenge question to the readers about the redline/blueline topic:

At a ring table with all solvers, or all bots playing the same strategy, the graph of each player will show redline losses and a higher blue line, probably that gains, that sum to a green line losing the rake. In a rakeless game, all players would have losing red and winning blue, summing to zero. Why? Why isn't the red line a zero sum game?

Here's the answer.

Any time someone wins without showdown, the winner books a red line win equal to the sum of all of the red line losses from anyone else who put money in the pot. The equivalent is not true for wins at showdown. Any time three or more players have money in the pot (including the blinds) and someone fold but the hand reaches showdown, the winner gets a blue line win, but anyone who folded along the way gets a red line loss. So in this way, the red line wins are zero sum, but red line losses can only grow. The total red line losses represent the total accrual of "dead money" that reaches showdown. So for example, if the BTN raises, SB folds, and BB calls, then the SB's half blind will be lost as red and won as blue if the hand reaches showdown.

If everyone plays the same strategy and this strategy allows for folding once three people have money in (as any reasonable strategy does) then in a rake free game, since the green line is zero sum, this means the red line must fall and the blue line must ascend.

Note that in heads up play, three people can't be in the pot, so there is never dead money to accrue. So in HU, if the players play the same strategy, both red and blue line expect to zero out.

I'm doing some database work to work on my responses preflop play. Specifically, I made an action plan below in my 4/24 post. I'm losing money when I call 3bets.

My first task was to see how well I am complying with my planned RFI ranges. I can't have a good facing 3bet game without a good 2bet RFI game. My RFI ranges are approximately GTO ranges, btw. I can deviate from those in two ways: folding hands I should play and opening with hands that aren't in the range. I do look at the players who follow me to make exploitive adjustments sometimes. By far the most common of these is widening my RFI range a little to steal from nits in the blinds. In theory, facing people 3bet too much I might also make some adjustments to tighten and maybe lower my sizing, but this doesn't seem to happen that much on my tables.

I built some filters with my RFI ranges into PT4 to show, by position hands I folded that I should've opened, and hands I should fold that I did open.
Here's the problem areas where I sometimes made mistakes:
- UTG bad fold J9s, bad opens: KTo, 55-22, 98s, 87s, K7s, K6s
- HJ bad folds: K7s 87s, bad opens: A9o K5s, Q7s
- CO bad folds: A8o, K3s, Q7s, JTo, bad opens: A7o, K2s, J9o, 76s
- BTN bad folds: Q9o J9o J4s T8o 98o, bad opens: A3o K7o Q8o J8o 74s
Overall, though I think I was pretty good about playing the ranges I decided to, but when I make mistakes i tend to make them in the loose direction, so I need some slight tightening.

Next, it's time to look at how I'm responding when facing 3bets. This is much more complicated than RFI ranges, because GTO ranges vary by both players positions and ideally, we'd start forming some exploitative play against people who deviate from GTO a lot. In particular, passive players who rarely 3bet are doing so with much tighter ranges, and we can exploit this by folding more of our range. I have to start somewhere, so I tried to identify spots where I made calls with hands that can't call anybody's 3bet.

Always fold to 3bets:
- UTG: AJo KQo A9-6s A2s K8s QTs J9s
- HJ: ATo KJo QJo A9-6s A2s K7s Q9s J9s T8s
- CO: ATo KJo QJo A6s A2s K8s K4s K3s Q9-6s J8-7s T8-T7s 97s 86s
- BTN: A9-4o KT-8o QJ-9o JT-8o T9-8o 98o K4-2s Q8-2s J7-J4s T7-6s 96s 85s 75s 64s

To help me find the hands where I'm calling with hands that can't call anybody's 3bet, I turned these fold ranges for each position into filters in PT4 and combined with my "2bet and called 3bet" filter. This produced 4 filters for each position UTG, HJ, CO, BTN. I made a combined filter that took the button's always fold to 3bet range and applied it to any position. I call these "terrible 3bet calls".

Out of 6600 hands I have now, my terrible 3bet calls filter produced a net loss of $18 with an average loss of 12bb per hand (-1200 bb/100) so this has absolutely isolated on a very easily fixed leak. I just need to learn the hands that can never call any 3bet (the btn range above) and fold. Of course, this is a very crude fix as it isn't trying to be positionally aware, but it will stem the bleeding. I'll work on refinement later.

I combined everything to make this diagram of how to respond when facing a 3bet:

My live 1/2 bankroll passed $10k last night after I was in for $400 and out for $901 in three hours. I really think the key things that have given me this success are the deep dive I did into multiway pots in my first post from 2/20/2022 in this thread. Also, once my bankroll hit about $4k I just felt a little more comfortable because I could weather a little more variance. Many live players can sense scared money and will make your life a living hell if that's you. They seem to enjoy this more than actually winning, lol.

I've worked a bit to try to become mentally stronger so that things like being card dead for a couple hours don't bother me as much anymore. I've had a couple sessions where I had nothing for hours, but kept my discipline and then in the last 30 minutes I finally got some opportunities. There is nothing better than leaving up $200 with cards where most people at the table would have been railed. I'm starting to love it when I've been card dead for a while, finally get a big hand, but then correctly fold it. While it's flashier to rake big pots, in the long run, given that we all will get about an equal number of big second best hands, dodging bullets with good folds is what means we leave with more than the other guys.

What happened?

Thanks for asking.

Life happened. I changed jobs for a great opportunity and applied my free time to the job to get ahead there and establish myself. Plus, I decided to make a strategic play in crypto in December, so my poker roll became my crypto roll. Both were good bets, but I have to hold the crypto until 12/2024 to convert short term to long term capital gains.

Now I'm getting the poker bug again. I inherited some money from my uncle (tip of the hat to him) and am about to be debt free, so I think I'm going to refund my roll and hit the tables. Before I do that, I'll probably rethink everything about my poker game and how I study it. I want to up the aggression in my game and develop my ranging, reading, and exploitive play.