Finished another session and I guess today just isn't my day. Good news I got in another 704 hands before I quit. The straw that broke the camels back was AA vs AK. Was able to get all the money in after the flop of 3sKdTs obv. K on turn. It's poker but I can't take anymore right now. At least me running poorly is working on one of the reasons for the challenge which is not to chase my losses. I'm a little annoyed that I'm starting the week out being stuck... I'd like to run back to back winning weeks... is what it is I guess.

Thinking of doing another session later but I have to admit I'm a little nervous if I have another losing session how I will react. LOL To test myself or not... that is the question. This could be the end of the challenge.

2:16 hours @ 4 tables for 704 hands played w/ -16.34 BB/100.

So I just finished my final session of the day. It was actually a winning session which is great but I noticed my PT4 total hands played say 509 for the session but my graph only shows 347. I have no idea where the remaining hands are. I've asked for help in the PT4 part of this forum. I hope someone can help me get these missing hand into my graph. Way to exhausted to try to figure it out right now... Start fresh tomorrow.

Anyways: 2:11 hours played @ 3 tables for 509 hands played w/ 13.46 BB/100. Finally a positive number today.

Couple thoughts here.

1. I guess I already touch on this one before but I started running numbers on this 1 million hand challenge. I guess when I started this I just picked a number that would be fun to reach. I put zero thought into how many 1 million hand really is. For someone who plays as little as me this is probably unattainable. I see some of the people on here who put in gobs of hands and even for them it would take awhile. I'm going to stick with it because I feel this challenge has help me keep my mind off the actual money being won or lost.
I do worry that I will lose interest at some point. I mean this thing is going to go for YEARS at the rate I'm playing. I also think just being able to write about this helps. I have zero poker friends so I have no one to talk to about these things and this just gives me a way to think out loud.

2. This weekend I've notice when picking tables with high PL/FL they quickly turn to low PL/FL. All weekend I'm lucky if we get 1 fish while everyone else seems to be nitty. Once in a while you get 2 at a table but once they bust out they leave. Games this weekend just haven't been good. I think I need to start working on leaving tables that turn into bad tables. I've notice I've been sticking it out hoping it gets better but it usually doesn't. Time to start moving around.

3. I'm hoping that I can actually beat .01/.02 level so I can move up when BR dictates. What I'm worried about is that I won't be able to mentally move up. As it is now I play mostly "short" games vs. full buy-in. If I can't play 4 tables at full buy in because I'm worried about having a bad session and losing big how am I ever going to be able to move up in stakes. I think I need to force myself to start playing less "short" tables. It's the only way I'm going to get out of my comfort level. You would think I'm talking a ton of money here. LOL I don't think it's the amount of money I'm worried about losing... it's about losing that money and not knowing if I'm a good enough player to get it back down the road. Just a lack of confidence in my game.

4. Something I need to look into is my post flop play. I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it but I know I must have a leak. The short of it is that I will raise... whether to steal blinds or from middle potion with non premium hands. I will get re-raise... so if I have something like 77 I will call. Flop comes... I miss... I'm out of position and they C-bet.. I fold. I'm sure this isn't an issue now but a good player is going to notice this down the road. As it is I feel I've been targeted for this (2) different times during this challenge. I just don't know how to play these hands in this situation when I miss a flop. Like I said I will look into this a little more later... not really in the mood right now to figure it out... lol

Ok I guess I'm done putting my thoughts on paper. Oh I got help and my PT4 is now fixed... so I got those missing hands on my graph now. PHEW!

1:09 hours @ 3 tables for 287 hands played w/ 7.84 BB/100.

Ran (2) more session for today. My last session I was up pretty big but ended up playing 1 hand badly against a villain that was running 60% VPIP. Pretty much playing anything and was betting all over the place preflop. Villain was a maniac and catching cards like crazy. Anyways had me covered when I had QQ vs AK. I targeted the guy but he happen to wake up with a decent hand.
Pre Flop I raise .06 and villain raises to .24. I call. Flop came TcKdJd. villain bet .52 I call. Turn is a Th. Villain shoves I call. River is 8s. By the turn I know I'm so why am I calling the shove? I guess I wanted to gamble here... Went on a slight tilt session for about ten hands before I was able to reel it in and get back to playing correctly.

So at this point I was stuck and I stayed around long enough to chip away at this guy as well as double myself up when he shoved into me with a pr and I had the flush. He made my job easy... That feeling was so great. It felt good to target someone and just be patient. It paid of. So I was able to end the night up.

Anyways for the last session: 1:39 hours @ 4 tables for 463 hands played w/ 30.56 BB/100.

Tonight was just plain crazy. I think I broke the EV line on my graph. I was up, I was down, I was up, I was down, so on and so on. At one point I found myself getting pissed at how the tables were playing. They were just out of control. I also couldn't get anyone off of anything. C-bets didn't mean sh*t to these people. I feel I'm getting better at the game because I could tell I wasn't playing my best and the anger was building. I actually hit the sit out button and walked away for about 5 min. When I came back my anger was gone and I was able to play. I know people do this all the time but for me this is huge. I didn't let my anger/annoyance get to me. This challenge/blog is really helping me.

So to add to how crazy the tables were being I had the following beats:
AA vs 66 all in catches a set.
KK vs 22 all in catches a set.
AKo vs AQo (not all in) but catches trips.
75o vs 44 (I got to see a free flop) flop comes 545 my only saving grace is villain only had like .30.

When this was happening it felt like SET nation was raining down on me. I walk away shortly after these hands.

To finish off the crazy night I was able to get it all in with my ROYAL FLUSH and 4 OF A KIND...for a total of .81. What a waste of great hands. What I get for playing "short" tables. I did actually add 1 or 2 non-short to the session.

I'm really starting to enjoy cash games. I used to mainly play SNG's and Tourneys but now that I'm starting to understand this game it's pretty fun at times. I was able to play the guy I talked about yesterday. I targeted him again today and was paid off. It's these kind of things that seem to make it fun. I'm adding more notes on people as I'm starting to feel more comfortable making better reads on people. Digging the notes... I like being able to get a quick update on players. Without the notes most of the players are just blurs and not really recognizable. Also good to know who the better players are as well.

Ok I'm really just rambling at this point. Heading to bed.

2:20 hours @ 3 tables for 583 hands played w/ 29.50 BB/100.

So I was able to run (2) sessions today. One while I was waiting for my daughter @ jujitsu and the other one I just finished. Had a bit of run good today and I'm happy to take it. Not all my hands held up but a decent amount of them did. I know I said it yesterday but the game is fun when you are able to target certain players. I absolutely crushed one of them tonight and it felt great. Villains stack was over $6.00 at a "short" table. Basically was catching cards left and right to get that far ahead. I was able to net almost $4.00 profit from this guy during my session. Sadly someone cleaned him out for the rest of his moneys and he left. I guess his run good ran out. I called it a night shortly after he busted.

Don't want to comment too much on how the game seems to be clicking for me because I could just be running better than I normally do. But I do feel like I'm starting to understand things better. The more I play the more things I've read or watched are finally coming to me. I have a long way to go but I don't feel like I'm the worst player at the table anymore. I like that feeling and want to keep improving. Going to keep my rambling short as I'm tired and need to get my @ss to bed.

2 more things. LOL At this rate I will have my highest qty of hands played for a week since starting this challenge. Also I think I'm going to take my 1 month stats and post them in the stats thread to see what glaring issues I might have. I should have close to 20k hand which should be a decent idea of how I'm playing at this moment and what needs to be tweaked. OK now I'm done. For real... no seriously I'm done... staring now! Right now.

Session 1: 1:54 hours @ 4 tables for 518 hands played w/ 32.63 BB/100
Session 2: 1:27 hours @ 3 tables for 330 hands played w/ 107.27 BB/100

Thought I would get on and write down a few things that are on my mind. I've touched on this once or twice already but I'm going to start making most of my tables "full buy-in" tables and start weeding out the "short buy-in" tables. Originally my thought was that by playing these tables I limit my $ losses to a min. This was great at first but then I started to think how am I ever going to be able to move up in levels "mentally" if I'm worrying about losing a $2.00 buy-in. If $2.00 makes me nervous then what will $5.00 be like? I do see they have "short buy-ins" at the higher levels so I guess I don't have to stress too much about it but I'd like to work on this now at the lower level. As I mentioned before it isn't the $ amount I'm worried about losing. $2.00 is nothing in the grand scheme of thing for me but what I worry about is... am I good enough to win that money back if I lose x amount of buy-in in a session. If I lose x amount of buy-ins am I going to revert back to my old self and start feeling like I need to get that money back NOW! So far I've done very well when I'm not winning. The beats aren't effecting me as bad as they have and I've been working on walking away when I know it's time to walk away. The challenge has kept me focused and centered in that aspect. But I regress. My point is I need to be able to mentally deal with decent size losing sessions and I don't feel I'm dealing with that when I'm playing short. So I will start focusing on this... TBH I already started this the past 2 days but I will continue.

This brings me to my next thought which is... I have no BRM plan for moving up levels. TBH I never thought I would actually get to a point where I could move up so I never put any thought into it. I guess I need to do some research and see how many buy-ins I should have before moving up. I also need to know when to move back down. Again my personality is that I will probably want way more buy-ins than most just to ease my stress of losing. I really sound like a f*cking head case. LOL I'm kind of thinking when I get close to moving up to the next level that maybe I play 2-3 tables at my current level and 1 table at the next level up. Or should I just be moving up to the next level on all tables? Like I said I never thought this was going to be an option until I checked my BR. I keep track of it once a week on here but I NEVER look at it on the poker site. I know that if I start obsessing on it and checking it all the time that it's going to trigger me. So today I looked only because I was thinking at what point should I move up and I was shocked to see that I've almost double my original starting BR for this challenge. Granted it's taken me almost a month to reach it but the point is I've almost doubled it and never expected that. So I guess I need to put a plan together for that possibility that I can move up to the next level soon.

I really think I need to work on the $2.00 buy in mental issue before thinking about the $5.00 buy-in. I wonder at what point you can start feeling a little confident in your ability? I'm so apprehensive right now because my sample size is so small and I could just be running good right now. But I also don't remember ever putting this much effort into it and seeing improvement/growth and having things start to click. Who knows, this game really is a mind f*ck. LOl

I guess that is all for now...

Just finished a session and thought I would update but first I thought of something else about BRM. I don't have a stop loss in place so I think I will do 4 buy-ins. If at ANY point in the session I'm down 4 buy-ins I will stop playing. I feel I didn't put a lot of thought into this challenge. LOL Played nothing but full buy-in tables and had no problems when I was down almost 2 buy-ins at about the 1/4 way mark of the session. I just kept playing and didn't worry about it. But it did make me realize I need the stop loss in place.

So I had my first table trash talking tonight since I started the challenge. Villain was playing like an @ss and catching cards. Was running VPIP of 52. I lose (2) all-ins against this guy where he catches the river both times. Hand 1 I was 70% on Turn and Hand 2 I was 86% on Turn. Well after the 2nd beat he proceeds to call me a sh*t player. lol I basically told him that's funny coming from the guy who had to suck out on the river both times to win. I'm not sure why he targeted me at first as I didn't say anything. It was out of the blue but later that session he stacked off someone and basically belittled them as well. So the guys is just an a-hole in general. I've tagged the a-hole so I can target him later down the road. Good news is I was able to double up when we went all in Preflop AA vs QQ and they held. Again he started talking sh*t but whatever... I just asked him to stick around. Bad news is... even with the double up he still netted me for 96 cents. So I guess he won this battle.

So we did 2:08 hours @ 3 tables for 525 hands played w/ 29.81 BB/100.

Pretty uneventful night. I was -EV from hand 1 thru 360 and managed to turn it around from there. Won a couple big hands to put me up about 2 buy-ins but I gave some of that back by the end of the session. I was the guy who couldn't let 2 pr. go a couple times tonight. It truly can be an awful hand to have. So I donated to a few people tonight with my 2 pr. Good Karma IMO.

Not much really to talk about tonight. Everything felt good but the action was very calm and not very exciting. I did add another stat to my HUD. Attempt to Steal. I feel I'm being targeted by the regs. and wanted to see what they were running. My fold to steal was almost 83 tonight so clearly I didn't focus on protecting my blinds tonight. LOL

Anyways, 1:45 hour @ 4 tables for 550 hands played w/ 19.45 BB/100.

Ay yai yai. Worked most of the day to get most of my stuff done so I could play some poker. Just about noon I get 4 tables up and I'm waiting for the BB to start playing. Very first hand I played and by played I mean poorly. Ended up losing $0.41. No big deal right? Well just as I fold the hand my daughter tells me she needs me to drop her off somewhere... Ok let me close this all down... Awesome 1 hand session!!! BB/100 = -2,050.00.... WHAT! LMAO (I don't understand why I'm a losing player).

Ok get back home fire up 2 tables. Get exactly 2 hands played and the owner of the house stops by to take care of the yard flooding. Seriously! So I was down $0.04 on this session. Not sure what that made the BB/100 because I did get to play 109 hands while he worked on the issue... only to have him want to show me how much water was released from the yard. So we had to end that session.

So we sit down again at 2 REALLY bad tables... OMG the play at this hour was gross... I think I play with professional at my normal playing time compared to these clowns. Anyways I'm only able to play 61 hands as I now have to leave to hang out with a buddy of mine. Lord help me! So sadly I don't think I'm going to surpass my all time hands played in a week. I only have the rest of this day to do it and I'm about 400 hands short. LOL

I will do the weekly update tomorrow but today I did get in 3 sessions

1:11 hours @ 2-3 tables for 173 hands played w/ 38.44 BB/100. Way better than the -2,050 from earlier.

Well the 1st half of the week started out slow and not so hot but the 2nd half of the week picked up and went a bit better.

I still don't have a game plan for moving up or down. I've seen a bunch of examples and I believe my BR is at a level where I could take shots at 5NL but I also don't think I have nearly enough hands to prove I can beat 2NL. So part of me feels I should just stay at 2NL for now and get more hands in to make sure I'm not just running hot and can actually beat this level. I know some will say this is a good idea but then there are others that say why waste your time at 2NL. For now I'll be sticking at this level.

The challenge has been going exactly a month and I honestly thought I would have more hands than this. LOL I guess it is what it is and I did state in the beginning that I was going to play when I wanted to play and not set # hands per week. I can't wait to be posting my thoughts in 2024 when I'm wrapping this challenge up... that is if I don't go busto.

Think I will post my monthly stats in the other thread at some point but TBH I just don't have it in me right now to do it and ask for some feed back on it. I sure some of the stats are awful and I'm just not mentally ready to work on any of it. LOL Not that I'm losing interest I'm just mentally tired "in-real-life" right now that I just need to veg. I guess that is all for now. I think I'm going to fire up some tables and see how the weekend play is.

Oh 1 thing I will be working on this week is to continue to put notes on players. I keep them pretty general at first just to give me an idea if they are decent or bad. Then I adjust the notes as I learn more about them. But I really need way more general notes to help with table selections. Ok done for now.

Week 4: (3/9-3/15)
Hands Played: 5,101 (Total: 17,943)
Money Won/Lost: $+22.61
Current BR: $83.15

Someone save me! All I wanted to do was get some hand in yesterday and every time I was able to play I had to stop with the exception of my last session. Problem with the last session was that my wife decided she wanted to talk the entire time. Normally she doesn't know I'm in the same room. lol OMG 2 hours of non stop talk. Hard to 4 table and still try to pay attention to a conversation so she doesn't get pissed. LOL Oh well I guess there is always today... I just can't seem to get a good long session lately.

Heading out in a bit to meet the owner of the house we are looking to buy. Should be interesting as this house if full of "stuff" like antique stuff but also sh*t stuff. My realtor thinks they might be feeling us out to see if we would be ok with them leaving everything so they don't have to spend the next month trying to clean the house and 2 barns out. This would be a major home run if that is the case so not really sure if that is what he wants to meet about or if he just wants to give us first dibs on anything in the house. Find out in an hour...

Ok well just wanted to complain about yesterdays session... at least it wasn't me b*tching about bad beats.

3 session: 4:15 hours @ 3-4 tables for 982 hands played w/ 11.76 BB/100.

So it's been about a week without feeling any tilt/anger issues. At one table I had a player directly to my left who kept re-raising me while opposite me was someone who basically called everything and kept catching. I was trying to target the 2nd player but the guy to my left kept f*cking that up. Then I couldn't out flop the 2nd player who had about 4 buy-ins in front of her. I found that her catching and me not catching and getting beat up by the guy to my left I started getting more and more angry. Lost 2 out of 3 all-in hands (in a row) and decided to take a break. I can't get over how increasingly angry I was getting with every hand the 2nd player was winning. Regardless I'm glad that my game is progressing with me having the ability to walk away. I'm clearly in the hole for the start of the week but I'm not broke from tilt and I feel pretty good that I will be able to get that money back at some point this week.

Been playing this game for years and only recently have I realized that once I fold my hand it's over. Not exactly sure how the RNG works for this site but regardless it doesn't matter what I have vs what the board ends up being. I use to sit there and get mad that if I had stayed in I would have had the winning hand. Not realizing had I stayed in the hand would have played out differently. So now that I realize this I don't even look at what I had once I fold. This is helping with yet another area that would p*ss me off.

Overall this game feels so much more different to me than it did 1 month ago. Can't wait to keep improving/understanding the game to see what the game is like a month or two from now.

Ok enough rambling... going to head back to the tables to see if I can't get some of that money back

0:56 hours @ 3 tables for 234 hands played w/ -75.43 BB/100.

Just finished my 3rd and final session for the day. Let's just say Sunday was not a good day for me. Too tired to figure out the stats between 2nd and 3rd session but basically I was down 1 buy-in for the 2nd session and up 1/2 a buy-in for the 3rd. Was down 1 1/2 buy-ins for the 1st session I posted so it was a losing day.

Basically I just tried to play the best I could and get as many hands as possible. The game just wasn't clicking today. I'll be back at it tomorrow. Done for the day!

Got a total of 899 hands for the day.

Ran a quick 45 min. lunch break session and managed to finally hit 20k hands played for the challenge. Man we are rolling now. Volume like this doesn't happen everyday. Not really too much to say other than this week is very streaky. Graph looks like one of the programs you select on the exercise bike where you are doing mountain training. UP and DOWN, UP and DOWN. I wonder if you burn more calories playing poker this way.

Anyways, it's the wife's b-day so not sure how many more hands if any I will be able to get in today. We shall see.

0:47 hours @ 4 tables for 210 hands played w/ 87.38 BB/100

Just finished my 3rd session of the day. This session was a bit brutal. It felt like every time I was able to get back to EV I would take a hit and have to start all over. All day I was complaining that I wasn't able to hit a set to save my life. Well I finally got my set and I'm going to value town with it. Man I'm so happy I'm going to get paid. Villain keeps calling my bet on every street and then.... River comes a 4 and I'm like sweet!!! that is a great card for me I now have a boat with the 2nd 4 on the board. Get it all in Full House vs 4 of a kind... yeah... time to start grinding back to EV, AGAIN. This session I had 3 different hands that improved my hand on the River only to actually improve the villians hand even better. Villain had the 4 of a kind, had a better flush and had a better str8. The straight hand was a bit poorly played as I realized as I called his re-raise that he could have the J for the higher str8. I kind of got blinded that I had a straight and didn't think it thru... Still losing this hand but maybe I don't lose as much if I was thinking a bit clearer.

Anyways I busted my @ss to finish +EV for the 3rd session. Even after all the beats I was able to keep pushing forward. Wish some of those hand had went the other way so I could have made some actual profit but I'm actually pretty happy I was able to get back above EV after what I went thru.

Got decent volume in today... at least for my standards.

2nd session: 1:55 hours @ 4 tables for 564 hands played w/ 20.48 BB/100.
3rd session : 1:46 hours @ 4 tables for 543 hands played w/ 2.85 BB/100.

Just want to put some of my thoughts on "paper". I've been watching a few videos on moving up strategies. The last video I just watch was probably one of the best videos I've seen to date. Guy touched on a bunch of different things and confirmed some of what I've thought about certain things. One thing he brought up was to have a game plan when playing but if a table dictates that you change/adjust your play to the table. I've kind of notice during sessions that a table can go thru different game play as people come and go. One min. it might be super easy to steal blind but 20 min. later it's just a free for all and no one folds. I find at times when a table gets really "un-standard" that I will change my play a little to maximize my potential winnings. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will say to stay the line and not change but I just feel "at least at the smallest of micros that it make since to adjust your play to maximize your winnings." I'm sure I could be wrong but hearing this guy say it and me thinking it... I'm ok with tweaking my game as needed when the table dictates.

I think I might have a leak playing low to mid pocket pairs when I'm not first to act. I have changed a little on this as I'm realizing this might be a leak but basically I play EVERY pocket pr. unless it's a massive 3-bet or shove. My thought process is that trips often get paid pretty well and are one of the easiest hands to trap with. Every once in awhile tho I guess you get nailed by 4 of a kind... LOL (yesterday). Anyways I find that I will play them and if I miss the flop or the flop is just not good I will fold to the C-bet. I'm really not sure how to use my PT4 to see exactly how this is working out for me. I plan on reading/watching videos on how to fix this leak. I will also see if I can't figure out something on PT4 as well. I haven't looked into it yet but it's on my list. I've been spending most of my time trying to figure out a game plan for moving up or down in stakes. Which leads me to my last thought.

Knowing my personality/mindset I think I'm going to use the follow strategy:

1. I won't attempt to move up until I have 40 buy-ins. I reserve the right to stay where I'm at even if I can move up. Such is the case right now. I have over 40 buy-ins for 2NL but I really want to have more hands played. 20k hands is a very small sample and just because I'm beating 2NL right now doesn't mean I'm actually able to beat it. I know variance is out there somewhere. With all this said my current plan is to continue to play at 2NL but I plan on mixing in 1 table of 5NL at some point. I'm guessing I will give this a shot at some point this week but we will see.

2. When I decide to move up I do not plan on moving up all at once. Like I said I will start out with 1 table of 5NL and 2 or 3 at 2NL. Once I get comfortable and my BR says I can continue at 5NL I will add another table and continue like this until all tables are 5NL. I will do the same if I'm lucky enough to make it to 10NL. I just need to feel comfortable with the transition. Again this strategy could change as well if my confidence in the game increases. Not sure that will ever happen as I never want to step over the confidence line into cocky and end up getting my @ss knocked down. I'm like this with my work. I know I'm very good at what I do but I never want to be cocky about it because it only takes one time for something to go wrong and b*tch slap you back down to earth. So I'm cautiously confident when I talk about my work.

3. As far as moving back down in levels I'm still not sure. I really feel that if I move up like I suggested above this won't really be a problem as I will always make sure I have 40 buy-ins at the lower level before attempting 1 table higher. So I guess if I get below 40 buy-ins I can't play the next level. Kind of makes sense to me.

I really wish I had a poker mentor who I could talk to with all these things. I can only imagine being able to talk poker with a better player would greatly increase some aspects of my game and my mental thought process. I could probably hit one of my buddies up on FB but he really hasn't played online since Black Friday and I'm not sure how up-to-date he would be. Something to consider tho. Anyways I guess I've rambled on enough. Got my work done for the day so I might play a few hands.

Ran 3 sessions today. 2 winning and 1 losing... bad news is the losing session was greater than the winning so I'm down for the day. From what I can remember I played 2 hands poorly. One I made a hero call on a river shove with my QQ. That one hurt... I think that was my main problem all day... not believing people. Might have to tighten back up a little. Even my graph is ugly... lots of sharp ups and downs. Not many smooth inclines or declines... looked more like a cliffs or mountain ranges.

Anyways I'm pretty tired so no rambling tonight. I hope I made decent rakeback tonight as it's my only saving grace.

3 sessions: 6:33 hours @ 3 tables for 1450 hands played w/ -7.69 BB/100.

Just started up a session of 3 tables and thought I would get on and put this on "paper" to get myself right. Yesterday I said I wasn't believing people and lost a decent amount of $$ because of it. I said I was going to tighten up a little to get this under control. So what do I do on my very first hand? I lose a full buy-in by calling down every street with a pr. of J's... guy flips over AA. I called a 3-bet w/ AJs and didn't respect the bet on every street. Caught the J on the flop... probably shouldn't even have entered the hand or should fold flop if no flush or flush draw. So... tighten up your game idiot and stop being a calling station. Let's see if I can get that buy-in back. OK that is all...

Clearly I'm getting better as tonight was the exact type of night that the old me would have ended up chasing my losses and tilting my BR away. I don't even want to get into all the hands that I got my nuts kick in by. It clearly wasn't my night. The final straw/hand was against the little c*nt who I had a run in once before who talks sh&t when he stacks people. I didn't even notice it was him until the pos stacks me and proceeds to talk sh&t. I know I probably shouldn't care... and TBH I normally wouldn't care but my night was brutal and the last thing I need is this little c*nt rubbing it in my face when he sucks out on me again.

AKo vs 8hTh I'm 60% Pre, 78% Flop and 95% Turn when all the money goes in.
Board: TdKc7d 7s and clearly he catches a T on the river. I hate to say this but I'm so f*cking angry right now. I closed all my games right in the middle of the hands I knew that if I played any of them I would have potentially f*cked myself worse. The way I'm feeling right now I'm not sure I will be playing tomorrow. I think I might need a break...even when I'm playing well things aren't going well for me this week and TBH I'm really not sure I'm playing all that good right now. Frustrated.

2 sessions: 4:06 hours @ 3 tables for 999 hands played w/ -30.23 BB/100.

So I've had some time to cool off. TBH I really didn't want to post last night because I knew it was just going to be me ranting... which it was. The only real reason I did post was that I didn't want to be that guy who only post "good" graphs or "good" stats and never the bad stuff. I've seen many threads where it just looks like a big brag fest on how great they are. At some point they must run bad but you would never know it with some threads. Anyways that is why I posted when I didn't really want to.

Looking at it now with a clear head it seems silly but in the moment I was so p*ssed. I feel this hasn't been a great week. Part of me feels I've opened up my range a little more, I feel maybe I got a little to confident, I feel maybe I'm not playing as good as I have been and overall I'm just questioning everything right now. Right now it's just a bit of a mind-f&ck. So I think what I need to do is tighten up the range just a little and keep playing my game. Over time I will find out if I was just running hot earlier, I will find out if I was actually playing good poker and beating 2NL and I will also find out if I'm just in a losing down swing. I just have to keep grinding and putting in the hands... quantity will tell the truth eventually.

Now with all that said I also think maybe I'm being super sensitive to the entire thing. What I feel is a bad week because of all the ups and downs it turns out I'm only down 2 buy-ins for the week. So what my mind perceives as this awful week is actually NOTHING. I think this challenge has help open my eyes to many things. Take last night for example... I was sooo titled over 3-4 bad beats. Granted it was a progressive tilt and the bomb went off when someone ran their mouth but 3-4 beats isn't that big of a deal. Ultimately I was only down 3-buy-ins in last nights session but in my head it was way worse than that. If not for this challenge and keeping myself grounded I think it would have been very possible that I would have lost my BR... All over 3 buy-ins. In the moment with all the anger and tilt the silliness of this notion is buried. A weird part of me wants to run bad/variance so I can work on this part of my game. I guess I will have plenty of time for that tho. TBH I'd rather run good.

Ultimately at this time I've improved... whether its actually showing at the tables or not who knows but I have been able to stop playing when I'm on tilt. That alone is huge and a major victory. Not to say it won't win in the end but I'm fighting to do the right thing when it pops its ugly head up. I feel like I'm on the wagon.

Guess that is it for now. I'm on the fence whether I will play any poker today. I feel fine now but I also feel maybe I should make myself take a day off. We will see.

While deciding on whether I wanted to play or not I decided to review the biggest losing hands and biggest winning hands from last night. I like to see what I could have done differently and try to learn from them. Ironically what I noticed was a decent amount of my losing hands were bad beats (which is good) but I also noticed that most of my winning hands were suck outs. LOL I guess that was the theme of the night.

I did post a HH looking for advice on a hand that I catch myself doing often so hopefully I can get someone to reply with actual advice and not just someone commenting on how poorly the hand was played.

I also read some stuff on the forum and ultimately decided to play a little poker. I quickly realized I just wasn't feeling it and decided to end it almost as soon as I started it. I'll just watch some March Madness and go to bed early.

Not much to look at but I'll put stats down anyways.

:38 hours @ 1-2 tables for 60 hands played w/ 55.00 BB/100. Grinding like a mother!

Another bad session. I'm hear to b&tch...yep another poor f*cking me post:

Ran below even got it to even went below even ran it to even and then got my nuts smashed. I think the grinding it back to even all the time only to lose a big hand and have to work it back is getting to me. It takes 30 min. to get it back to even and 30 seconds to lose everything you just got back. Clearly I'm a poor loser because I need to complain when I run like this. Too many things to work on so I guess I'll just be a little b*tch for now.

AQ vs KK A on flop K on T(loser).
TJs vs 44 TJ4 flop oh wait as if a set isn't enough Turn is a 4 just a 4 of a kind (again) (loser).
66 vs JTo Q9K Turn 6 and River 7 set vs str8 (loser).
AKo vs QJo Flop 867 Turn T River J ace vs jacks (loser).
KQo vs AQo Flop 96Q better kicker (loser). This hand I can't really complain just sucks I was out kicked. Ultimately the better hand won.
JJ vs AQ Flop K34 Turn 6 River jacks vs aces (loser).
AA vs 33 Flop 963 aces vs set (loser).

Yeah I know all standard... suck it up buttercup.

All joking and cry aside I'm worried I'm playing bad and losing and that it isn't me playing well and just getting unlucky. I can't tell and I don't know how to tell. I've tighten up like I said and I feel I'm playing pretty close to how I was the past month when I was doing better.

A major issue is that I've never really experienced this before because in the past I would just blow the BR and stop playing for months. That and I've never really been a cash player. This is all new to me and I guess I just don't know what is what at this point. The only thing I can think is that I keep working at it, keep playing, keep learning and hope things turn around. I really hope it is just me getting unlucky and that it isn't the fact that I can't beat 2NL. So glad I didn't try moving up to 5NL... well I did play a few hands today (maybe 20) when I was waiting for 2NL tables to open. Nothing really happen but I'll say it again... I'm glad I chose to stick to 2NL for now. SIGH...

Going to take a break, get something to eat and head back to the tables... GOD please don't let me lose another session. LOL I'm sick of crying about it and anyone who might be reading this is probably just as sick of hearing about it.

2 sessions: 3:35 hours @ 4 tables for 1,095 hands played w/ -13.21 BB/100

So I'm just wrapping up session 3 and 4 for the day. I'm calling it a night as I'm exhausted. This was by far the most hands I've played in one day. I actually played 5 tables at one time which actually didn't seem that difficult. I might work in 5 tables later on as well so I can start getting some decent hands played. By decent I mean decent by my standards. lol I said it before... I'm not sure how some people can play so many hands in a day/week/month... I have a lot of respect for those people.

Something I want to work on which has nothing to do with poker but has to do with my posting. I re-read some of my posts this week and I really don't want this to turn into a thread where all I do is complain when things aren't going right. I think it will be ok to do so every now and then but not every bad session. So for next week I will try to keep this a little more relaxed and a little less sensitive.

Session 3 and 4 went much smoother... a bunch of my big hands held and I managed to get a huge suck out earlier to get me above even. It was a 2 outer on the river. I actually felt bad for the guy who lost but not "that" bad. I felt it was time for me to be on the other end of one of those. lol

I will put the graph up tomorrow with the stats for week 5. Right now I just want to finish this up and get my @ss in bed.

Session 3: 1:01 hours @ 3 tables for 237 hands played w/ 38.19 BB/100
Session 4: 2:01 hours @ 4 tables for 541 hands played w/ 52.13 BB/100

Well it's that time of the week. Can't wait to show this sweet graph off. Bit of a roller coaster of a week and I'm glad it's over. Looking forward to starting a new week.

With a lack of confidence in my game right now I have no plans of moving up to 5NL. If I find my confidence at any point maybe then I will throw in a table but only if I'm mentally ready.

I will keep watching videos, reviewing my losing and winning hands and that's about it. I can't really think of anything else at this time.

Side note... should be a fun day... wife is in a wonderful mood. Holy miserable. Think I might go for a hike today to GTFO of the house.

I did have my most hands played in a week which is cool and I'm actually pleased with the pathetic profit of $0.37 after the week I had.

Week 5: (3/16-3/22)
Hands Played: 7,581 (Total: 25,524)
Money Won/Lost: $+0.37
Current BR: $83.52