I've been playing midstakes for the last while but I had a big downswing recently which has affected my confidence and motivation, so I'm going to use this thread to keep track of my results as I drop down to smaller stakes.

My plan is to play no higher than 1/2 for at least a month, and probably longer. I'm actually going to play a session or two at .50/1 at first just to get the ball rolling. I'll be posting goals and results in this thread.

Overall goals - these are from now until September 1, when I will review them.

- Every session is only for 1 hour 15 minutes from when I start playing. This is basically an hour long session with 15 minutes to get some tables going. I find that unless I'm playing my A++ game my attention starts to flag after an hour or so, and since this all about rebuilding my confidence in my game I want to stick to short sessions for at least one month.

- Game selection is important. Again when I'm playing great I don't need to focus on this as much, but after a bad run the most important thing is to give myself the best chance to get a good run together, so I need to be careful not to stay at tables when the conditions aren't great. There should be lots of good games at SSNL anyway so its just a question of being disciplined about keeping track of which tables are good.

- Every session is reviewed. All hands where I contribute more than 10bbs to the pot are reviewed after the session.

- Every day that I play poker, I want to get some exercise and meditate. I've developed good habits in this regard over the last while but its important to keep them up.

If I stick to those goals I'm confident my results will be good, so I don't want to overcomplicate things with lots of other goals. However I'll obviously be focusing on different aspects of my game as a results of the hands I'll be reviewing.

For today, I want to start off slow, so the plan is to play 2 sessions of .50/1, maybe a third if the first two go well. I'll post an update when I finish playing for the day.

DAY 1.

Good start, I stuck to .50/1 to start off slow, and I only played two sessions. Most days I'll be aiming for three but for now the most important thing is gradually getting back into the right mindset. I was tempted to play a third session but I didn't feel like I was quite focused enough so I gave it a miss.

I reviewed every hand and found one or two things to pay more attention to today, but in general the hands were played well.

So today, I'll be going for 3 sessions, probably a mix of .50/1 and 1/2. I'd like to get a few slow, tight sessions under my belt, not playing too many tables, and of course quitting after 1.15 to take a break and review my hands.

DAY 2.

My good start has continued. I'm very happy with my play so far, I've been noticing a few of the smaller spots to pick up pots that you sometimes miss out on when you're not playing at your very best, and I've been disciplined about when I play, reviewing sessions, getting exercise, and meditating. Running well obviously helps too. These games are very beatable though, I think it'll do me a lot of good to spend a month playing softer games and building up my confidence.

Here are the hands from the first 4 days. I'm off to a good start, I've been sticking to my goals of reviewing every session, keeping the session lengths short, exercising and mediating before playing.

Unfortunately I've been busy with other stuff lately so I haven't got much volume in, but I'd prefer to play low volume but play well than play when I'm not fully focused. I've a busy weekend coming up so I'll probably only get a day or two in over the next while but I should be in a good position to make the most of it anyway. Today I'm aiming for 2 good sessions, with a third as a possibility if I'm happy with my play.

Can't login to imageshack for some reason so no graph. Pretty disappointing day, down 4 buyins. I started off with a great session, felt like I was really on top of things and playing focused, disciplined poker. The second session was pretty bad though, I got off to a bad start and never fully recovered, always felt like I was reacting to the action rather than anticipating it which is usually a bad sign. Then I reviewed my hands and played again, this time my play was better but I ran terribly. I'm going to be busy the next few days so I won't be playing much, looking forward to getting a decent amount of volume in in these games though, they seem good overall.

I really like your overall approach. Not enough people value the importance of reviewing sessions. I'm pretty much playing 100% of my volume at £100nl on skypoker these days so I can't really do any hand reviews but I do meditate to get into a clear mindset before sessions.

Update?