After a resent failed challenge and yet another tilt session which lead to a (2) month self imposed ban. I'm back, well rested and ready to try yet again to get better at this stupid game.

I will be treating this thread as a blog so most of what I put on here is really for me. I read an article recently that said to help keep focused you should put it out there for others to see. With that said here it is:

Game: .01/.02NL 6 Max.
Start date: 2/15/19
Starting BR: $45
Challenge 1 million hands or bust. I'm a recreational player so I'm not setting any goals as far as how many hands a night/week/month. I'm going to play when I feel like it and post results from there. Will post 1st week results next.

So here is my 1st weeks chart. Not going to lie I really have no understanding of what ALL-In Adj is and I don't understand $ Won w/o SD as this number is in the negative. At some point I will look into both of these and try to figure out what they mean/are. I'm basically putting it on here so I have a record for when I do understand these things or for anyone who actually looks at this and wants to comment on anything glaring.

I have (2) main goals at this moment. #1: Don't obsess on how much money was won or lost after ea. session. In the past this is what ends up putting my mindset into panic mode... gotta get that money I just lost back... which then turns into rushing things, playing stakes I shouldn't play or even worse going to the casino and putting X amount on Red or Black to get that money back NOW. Granted this takes many months of playing to happen but this is how I ALWAYS loose my BR... I have yet to lose a BR by actually practicing BRM and just playing poorly and losing it all at that level. (Just to be clear since 2005 I've lost about $500+/-) Don't want people thinking I'm a complete f*cktard. So goal 1 is don't think of the sessions as money won or lost. Week 1 went well as I only checked it while making sure what I had was the same as what the chart and RB said I should have. I found that focusing more on how many hands I played that session kept my mind off the money.

#2: Worked on trying to keep my ($) losses to a min. during a given hand. I did this by working on my understanding of pot control... believing villain when they say they have the nuts and overall just tightening up my opening range. These are areas in the past that I've struggled so I wanted to focus on this aspect for now. At the end of ea. session I would review the top losing hands to see how I played them and to see if I could have played it differently. I actually enjoyed this part of it as it shows some hands were play correctly and there was nothing you could do while other hands showed I made this mistake or that mistake and hopefully I can improve from it.

Something I noticed this week was that I found myself playing better when I had 3-4 tables going vs. 2-3 tables. I found that when I have less tables going I would get bored folding hand after hand and would then play a hand I shouldn't because I was getting tired of waiting for the better hands. I originally thought 3 tables was my max. But after running 4 tables I found it was plenty of action while still being able to make good decisions. So at this point I will be playing 3-4 tables at a time. I also felt it was easier to shake off a bad beat when playing 4 tables as you don't have time to stew because there are still 3 other tables that need your attention. Playing 1-2 tables is just too slow. Ok enough on that.

Week 1:
Hands Played: 5,431
RB: $1.41
Money Won: $12.68
Current BR: $59.09

GL

What site you playing on?

TY I'm sure the challenge will go for about 2-3 weeks and abruptly die like most challenge threads. LOL I'm def. no exception.

I'm sure you already see a leak in my game so please don't search me out... LOL I play on BCP. From NY so not sure how many other sites I can play or which ones might be better. I have a Carbon account as well but their limits start higher than I'm willing to BR for now. They don't have .01/.02 cash games. At least they didn't use to.

So I just did my longest cash session to date and I'm not sure how people grind these things all day long. I'm exhausted and my legs feel like they lost blood flow. Have basketball tonight so I'll probably get back on later tonight after basketball for an hour or so to get some more hands in. This session was really weird... it felt like there were a LOT of recreational player. Some of the hands and things I saw were great entertainment.

So looking at my hand history on the top 5 ($) hands l lost... only one of them was a good play by me and I just got sucked out on. Of the other 4 hands 1 was played extremely horrible and I can't believe how I played it... looking at it I don't know what I was thinking. The other 3 hands were hands I shouldn't have even been involved in... so I think I found something to keep a watch for on my next session.

So I played 3:04 hours on 4 tables with 874 hands played and 8.12 BB/100. Calking up a winning session. Should have stuck it out for an even 1k hands.

Holy f*cking brutal session...Top 4 losing hand that went all in at some point:
QQ vs AA Didn't respect his pre flop 4 bet and then didn't respect his all in when the board went J3K rainbow and I called his shove... played this hand badly.
Other hands: KK vs TT was 92% Flop and 95% Turn, KK vs TT was 95% Flop & 95% Turn.
I was in the hole the entire night but did not panic... did not tilt... I just kept playing and my hands started to hold... I was almost at EV when my final beat came KK vs AT was 80% at Flop when he caught a T and 14% at Turn when he caught the Ace.... So needless to say I learned a major leak tonight... don't play KK. I will say the last beat was the hardest as I did so well to get back pretty much everything I had lost during the session. I played out all the tables until I was BB and called it a night. I'm tired... I took some beatings and i feel it's best to end it now...

One thing I wanted to add was that I'm mostly playing short tables not full buy-ins tables. At most I will only play 2 out of 4 tables for the full buy ins. I wanna keep the potential for any losses down until my BR gets bigger... hopefully.

Anyways I played another 2:02 hours on 4 tables with 601 hands played with -18.14 BB/100. So I played almost 1500 hands total today... not bad. That's all for now.

Well I didn't have the best of sessions. I'm upset with myself due to the fact that I managing to play EV for about 765 hands only to let my emotions effect my play for the last 20 hands and finish -EV. I probably should have ended sooner but I made the mistake of setting my stop time for 11pm. Once I was card dead from hands 640 on and I could just feel it wasn't going to be my night I should have just said I was done. But I kept grinding trying to make it to 11. Needless to say I didn't make it to 11. LOL Only good news is I recognized I was on tilt for the last 20 hands and needed to end the session.
That was one of the areas I said I needed to work on and tonight allowed me to do just that. Bad news is I had a losing session... good news is I didn't go and blow my BR because I was down $3.00 LOL

Baby steps! Graph isn't shaping up too well for this week.

Played 2:33 hours @ 4 tables for 785 hands played with a -18.60 BB/100.

So I was able to review last nights hands and it's funny how I would have sworn at the moment I ended my session that I got sucked out on or played tilted which effected my decisions. But after my review of the last 5 hands that put me over the top I was ahead on 2 of those hand and lost on the river. The other 3 hands I actually played very well and limited the amount of money lost. I guess my tilt blinded my reality which is interesting to see now. What I thought was awful at the time actually wasn't that bad.

So I know I'm doing this mostly for my own satisfaction but I'm thinking of asking this question in the forum else where... I once heard someone say to treat cash games like you are treading water. Just tread water and keep your head above water until the big hand hits. I felt this was pretty good advice but I'm wondering what others would say. It's kind of how I've been trying to treat this challenge... keep my head above water and wait for the big one. I guess this means you will likely run many hands and be at EV for a good amount of time?? Hmmm I guess I'll just ask this in the forum later tonight to see if anyone has any thoughts on this.

In my experience, on ACR/BCP, whatever other skins there are. Playing tight and overfolding is very profitable, especially on the river vs most of the players at these stakes. I started playing 25nl, moved up to 25nl/50nl, got smashed, didn't move down fast enough so I ended up back at 2nl around 2 weeks ago. But playing rather tight, reading the Grinder's manual, and grinding a ton I am back at 25nl for now.

What you will notice is most of the "regs" that play everyday are very unbalanced towards value bets. Even at 25nl there are still very few people running 3 street bluffs, and some of them will call down very light. So essentially you just have to play boring poker, and be able to beat them by playing solid, and making some tight folds. Taking notes is very important, especially when you see showdowns vs the regs, if they are never bluffing, or hardly bluffing missed flushdraws, your QJ on Jxxxx runout is probably never good. & when you get raised on the turn, or the river by a "reg" you're most likely beat with 95% of your hands.

Is there any reason for the 1 million hands goal, or just something you want to achieve?

I'm glad you said this because this is what I've notice. I've notice playing this way the past 2 weeks my VPIP/PFR have dropped. They were almost at nit levels. LOL I'd look them up but I was messing with my Poker Tracker trying to get missing tournament into my stats last night and I f*cked something up and now have zero stats for all tournaments and cash games. I have not idea what I did. Not knowing what I was doing I shouldn't have messed with the f*cking files...I even had a computer geek friend of mine look at it with not luck. So it looks like I will have to start from zero staring tonight because I want a million hands tracked and graphed. Kiss about 9k hands goodbye!!! Anyways I've also starting making notes like you said. I'm seeing some REALLY bad play and making notes on it.

As far as the million hands go I want to focus on how many hands I play instead of how much money I've won or lost. Kind of why I'm using BB/100 vs. $$$. It's just a mental thing. Also I wanna see if I can actually play that many hands without busting.

So I'll be back at it tonight with a blank slate unfortunate... the worst part is all the stats on all the players are gone... ugh...

Thanks for commenting as it was nice to see something other than my own ranting. LOL

Just did a quick session... Going to grab something to eat... grab the computer...head up to bed and put on a horror movie while I put in another session. Tried something a little different. Didn't play any of the "short" tables just to see if the play was any different. Didn't really notice much different with the exception that more people seem to actually come to the table with the full buy-in where the "short" tables always have a bunch of players come with .40 and not the full. 1.00 buy in.

So I played 1:28 hour at 4 tables for 400 hands with 39.37/BB running 16/10.

Figured I'd add my VPIP/PFR as well so I can see where I'm at. I wanna make sure I'm running somewhat consistent ea. session.

So with some help I was able to get my stats back so I don't have to give up 9k hands like I thought.

Going to change my running stats to simplify this a little. I'm not going to keep track of my RB as it's just a pain in the @ss too keep track of and ultimately who cares. On top of the fact I cleared out my excel sheet when I thought I had to start over... so no more RB and BR will be strictly poker money without RB. I didn't get as much volume this week as last week but part of that has to do with the fact that last week was 8 days worth of stats while this week was 7. From now on I'll try to keep the weekly stats for every Sat which will keep me on a 7 day total.

Anyways I wanna play a little poker so her we are:

Week 2: (2/23-3/1)
Hands Played: 4,076 (Total: 9488)
Money Won/Lost: $-9.37
Current BR: $49.72

You might want to hide your stats, vpip/pfr/3bet from people, especially because you're showing your name. But, you should probably look to widen your ranges a bit more. 18-24 vpip, or a little higher when you get more comfortable. And a smaller gap in-between your vpip and pfr. Since you have a hud, and maybe a decent sample on some players try researching into 3betting "lighter" vs people who over fold. But, make sure you do some sort of research and don't start just blasting off

Thank you for your input. I kind of put them on there so I could get advice like this but maybe I'm doing more harm than good by letting everyone see how I'm playing? Not sure how many people are on here reading my crap and playing on my site at this level but I think I might take them off.

My VPIP was higher before starting this challenge... I've changed my ranges so that they are a bit tighter... reason for this is I want to limit my loses so the BR sticks around for the entire 1 million hands. LOL I'm still trying to work on my pot control and keeping hands I lose to a min. $ amount. I agree with you that it should be higher but will wait till I have a little bigger BR. I also know my gap should be closer together but I find myself playing hands from later position that aren't necessarily good hands to re-raise from... If there are several people already in the pot I basically call with low pairs, low suited connectors or A9 suited type hands... looking to catch a set, straight or a flush... usually these type of hands are 1 and done... if I don't catch anything on the flop I'm usually done... So I'm not sure if I should keep doing this, fold these hands or if I should be actually raising with these type of hands... I know what I need to do if I want the gap to be closer than they are but I'm really not sure how to be playing these type of hands pre flop/and flop. It's clearly a part of my game I need to work on. I usually play these hands as trap type hands against several callers. Again thanks for your input... I appreciate it.

Just logged in a quick session which put me over 10k hands. Was sitting outside soaking up some well needed sun (living in the Northeast) and was thinking I've finished 10% of the challenge, sweet!!! Then realized I can't do math... I'm only 1% of the way there. Maybe 1 million hands was a bit much. LOL At some point I'm going to need to put some serious sessions in if I wanna end this thing in the next 5 years... I was clearly delusional and ridiculous with this number of hands I chose for the challenge. But I'll keep going even if it took me 1/2 a month to reach 1%. LOL

So I work for myself from home and finished a job so before starting the next one I thought I would play a quick session. I don't want this challenge getting in the way of where I actually make my money. But I thought I'd set the timer for a 15 min. session just for sh*ts and giggles. Nice little break from work and what's 15 min. Anyways it went 20 min. because I played all my tables until the BB came back around... only make sense.

I normally play at a different time than this obv. but I have played around this time previously... it seems people playing at this hour love to buy in for .40 at the short tables... I still see it at night but not nearly as often... wonder why that is? Anyways...

20 min. at 3 tables for a total of 70 hands played with 38.57/BB100.

70 out a million... I'm crushing these sessions LOL but it was a nice break. Now back to work.

Played 2 sessions today. I was going over some of my stats since I started the challenge and noticed my Fold to Steal was pretty high. I asked for some advice and I was able to work on this a bit. I've also realized I've become a nit while doing this challenge. I think I'm more concerned on not blowing my BR so I've tighten up so much that it's changed my game a little. So while working on the Fold to Steal thing I've also gone back to my range that I was using before the challenge. With all this said I was able to get my Fold to Steal down to 74% for the 2 session from 84% (since challenge started) and bump my VPIP a few points as well. I still need to work on getting my gap between VPIP and PFR closer. I'm just above 6 points between the 2 and I know I need to get them a little closer. Anyways I'm trying to work on my game a little while putting in sessions.

I have a lot going on this week so I don't think I will reach the volume I've done the past 2 weeks. I'll try to get there but not sure I will be able to do it. Have a home inspection to go to Thur, heading out to the MAAC basketball tourney on Friday so not really sure when I'm going to have time for the rest of this week.

Anyways for both sessions combined: 2:46 hours on 3-4 tables for 705 hands played w/ a 25.60 BB/100.

Just had a weird session, wasn't very long and not many hands. I kind of was in a bad mood the entire time as well. Probably wasn't a good idea to play. I was also having a hard time focusing on 3 tables so I went down to 2. I'm not really sure what my deal was... I'm thinking my mindset just wasn't right and I shouldn't have played. Didn't help that I was up against a villain who pretty much out played me on every turn. I'm pretty sure he was targeting me which pissed me off even more. LOL I actually should have left the table a lot sooner than I did as everyone at the table seemed to have nit like stats and there were no obvious fish playing a ton of hands... you know what they say... when you don't know who the fish is... it's probably you. So I guess that is why this guy was targeting me. Anyways I did leave after I told myself to GTFO this table... why are you staying at this table? Was I trying to prove I was better than the guy who was targeting me? That wasn't going so well because villain was kicking my @ss. I did manage to get some money back from him/her before I left...

Anyways I left and managed to win a few hands after that so my confidence wasn't completely crushed.

I wanna play more tonight but I'm exhausted and really should take the night off and get some rest. We will see maybe after dinner I will feel better.

So 1:19 hour at 2-3 tables for 250 hands played w/ -20.20 BB/100. meh!

Well I listened to my own advice and skipped poker last night. I was cranky as sh*t and tired as hell so I just went to bed. Feel much better now. Have a home inspection on a house I'm hoping to purchase. So depending on how this goes I will either play when I get home because things went well or I won't play because it went to sh*t. It's a 200 year old farm house and all-tho it looks fine I'm not an expert. So hopefully the bones of this house are solid and there are no issues. Let's hope for the best.

House inspection went ok. Still waiting on the septic report hopefully that comes back ok. Came home from the inspection and decided to take the day off from work as I need a break. Decided to play some poker instead. Not really sure what my deal is but I'm just not feeling it. I want to play but I feel like I'm playing nervous and I don't get it. It's not like I've moved up in stakes and I've actually only been playing the "short" tables because of this feeling. I still can't seem to focus on 4 tables like I was so I only played 3. I just think I'm mentally tired right now. (Septic came back ok so next step in the house purchase can begin).

On a side note I'm wondering when other people decide to stop a session. Sometimes you have no option but to just stop because you have to do something or be somewhere. Do people set time limits, hand limits or stop when they are up a certain amount? I feel like I always play a little longer than I should and end up giving back some of the gains... IDK I might look this up and see what others do. Basically I stopped today when a guy just sat down and on the 3rd hand 4 bet me... I had QQ and didn't know what to do as I had no reads and no stats on this guy... I'm never folding here but if I called his 4 bet I basically had a post size bet left behind... so I just jammed because I didn't want to make a bad play after the flop. LOL so lets make a bad play pre. LOL anyways he had KK. The board almost rain out a straight which I was praying for so we could chop but missed on the river. So that was my one big losing hand for the session. Played another 40 hands of break even poker and left but the damage was already done.

Anywho: 1:26 hours @ 3 tables for 389 hands played w/ a 5.53 BB/100.... crushing it!

Finished up another session. My focus seemed to be back and I wasn't playing nervous so who the hell knows what my problem is. I did look up when a good time to stop playing was and there really wasn't much surprise to what people said.

Tonight was filled with a bunch of nits which annoyed me at first but then I decided to kick up my aggression a bit and started working on stealing more blinds. My Att. To Steal was actually 3 points higher than normal so I was def. stealing more than I usually do. Big losing hand of the night was my AA all in preflop against QQ. Caught the Q on the flop. To help with me getting angry when I lose a hand like this I've recently stop watching the board play out. Once I see what I'm up against I go to the other tables and pay attention to those hands. I'm finding I don't get as upset this way. I basically just wait to see if the chips come my way or go the other way. I know this is a mental thing but if it helps me stay even keel then it's what I will continue to do.

One other thing I'm starting to do is put notes on as many people as I feel comfortable doing them on. I'm thinking this might help when I'm looking for tables to play on. If I have notes on them I can see if its a good table or not. Otherwise I have to actually get on the table and be in 1 hand before the stats pop up. Then I have to decide if I want to stay or not.

Anyways 2nd session: 1:43 hours @ 3 tables for 385 hands played w/ 31.95 BB/100

gl looks good thread

Thank you sir! Glad to see someone reading along. Love the name btw... LOL

Looking at week 3 I'm happy with all results except how many hands I played. Every week my total hands decrease so I hope this trend doesn't continue. I did have a lot going on this week so that is def. part of it. I don't feel I've lost any ambition towards the challenge so I'm not worried it is that. I do know I struggled a little this week mentally and I played less tables almost all week. So again that has something to do with it as well. Anyways we will see what week 4 brings. All my good stats went up a little this week and the Folds to Steal went down. So I did focus on these things this week so I'm glad to see there was a little difference. For this week I'm just going to keep working on what I worked on this week. If something pops up during the week that is glaring I will look into that and see what I can do to fix it. One thing at a time for now tho.

Anyways here are the stats for the week.

Week 3: (3/2-3/8)
Hands Played: 3,354 (Total: 12,842)
Money Won/Lost: $+10.82
Current BR: $60.54

Holy f*ck. Just ended a session and I need to f*cking vent. Should have know it was going to be a f*ck fest and I was the lead star. I don't want to turn this into a bad beat thread where I show all my HH of bad beats so I'll just talk thru them. TBH some of these aren't actually bad beats but possibly bad play by me... it's just the timing of them. And TBH I am tilted by the last hand.

2 hours earlier: Me: "So lets put some golf on for back ground noise and play some poker... I'm ready!!!" I feel good and I'm excited to play.

VERY 1st hand QQ... sweet! CO raises to .05 folds to me and I make it .15 CO calls. Flop 654 rainbow I c-bet .24 CO shoves .71 all-in I call. CO flips over 44. Not a bad beat... possibly played this hand wrong but the point is I'm already in the hole the very first hand and my sole is crushed... Actually I was able to shake it off and laugh about it but it was the start of a great session.

So I manage to grind my way back to even I get it all in with my AKs vs AA won't bore you with the details but I don't suck out and I'm back in the hole. Again I need to look at my HH to see how badly I butchered this hand... again not a bad beat but I just spent the entire session getting back to even to going back into the hole. UGH

So we continue to grind and get back to even for a second time this session and I kid you not I was just about to end the session because I needed a break and at this point I was happy with a break EV session. But no... I get KK before I'm able to get away...

CO raises to .06 I'm BTN so I 3bet to .18 and BB calls for .16 and CO folds. Flop comes 4h3h3s BB bets .02 I raise .34 because his bet is ******ed and I see this all the time with these idiots... I guess when the tard shoves all in for 1.03 I'm supposed to fold? I call and he f*king flips over 23s Am I missing something here?? Is flatting a 3-bet with 23s in BB good play here... is this person an advance player messing around in the micros??? IDK I see this crap with the .02 bet on the flop and turn ALL the time at this level... it's obv. bad play and usually indicates they missed and hope you fold or call because you missed as well. Just p*sses me off that I got caught in the trap the one time the villain catches the flop. IDK... maybe today I was just trying to get the money in too quickly... I need to review my hands... Needless to say I stop playing right after this hand because I was clearly on tilt at this point... Just suck that I had to finish the session like this. GRRR Good news is I stopped playing... I didn't feel I needed to get my money back RIGHT AWAY which has been my biggest leak my entire poker career. So as of week 4 I'm growing up and I'm playing like a big boy. lol

So we played 1:42 hours @ 3 tables for 402 hands played w/ -19.78 BB/100.