A little about my history

I've been playing for around 5 years I'd say. I started off playing exclusively NLHE, and I was a slight loser after 200,000 hands. I had a massive tilt problem back then. I'd deposit $25, two weeks later be at $1000 and I'd take a 'shot' at $0.50/1 or $1/2 and never move down.

Then I discovered PLO. People were a lot more clueless in it than NLHE, and it was full of action.. I loved it. Over the next three years, I played 350,000 hands and honestly ran hotter than the sun and was a 2.4bb/100 winner over all stakes. Up until recently, I mixed stakes from 25PLO all the way to 100PLO.. with small shots at 200 PLO thrown in.

As you can tell by how many hands I've played in 5 years, I've never really put in a ton of volume. I figure this thread will help motivate me toward my goal. I've talked with a few smart poker professionals, and they said this should be no problem if I worked hard. Also, a recurring theme with the people I talked to was that work ethic was more important than actual poker skills most of the time. I don't want a thread highlighting my poor work ethic and poker failures, so like I said this is all the more motivation.

Why some challenge all of a sudden?

Well, a close family member was in a tough spot I don't really want to get into, and was in a desperate pinch for money. I had $25,000 to my name, and gave them $20,000 of that. It hurt, but I know I'll see it back eventually.. and it gave them piece of mind.

Where the challenge comes in.

I recently turned 20 years old, and problems at my job this summer recently gave me a lot of downtime. I literally have nothing to do for the next month and a half or so. That got me thinking about making money playing poker in the mean time. I used to play just to supplement any income I had, but now would be better than ever to take it seriously.

I wanted to start with something really small and build it up. Mostly because of my recent money problem, I gotta be careful. I'm depositing $50 and starting with really aggressive BRM. I'm going to play 5PLO zoom, and hopefully just never look back. If I lose two buy ins at the beginning I'm going right down to 2PLO. It'll hurt, but gotta start somewhere.

Unfortunately my laptop I've used forever crapped out and I didn't get anything back, so I don't really have any graphs or anything. I'll update constantly with graphs as I go along.

This is my first PG&C thread, so I hope I haven't missed anything. If I have feel free to ask anything!

Oops, one last thing I forgot. If anyone was wondering at the math at the end, me playing for the last 5 years even though I just turned 20.. I played underage. Honestly I didn't think it was a big deal, I mean it's not like it gave me some sort of edge. Then I read about some online beast who played under age, and how it hurts both the sites and other people who play legitimately, and that nobody wins in the situation. I sent an email to PokerStars when I was 17 letting them know I was under age, and they thanked me for my honesty and banned my account, telling me to email them back when I turned 18. When I turned 18 I'd have to send in a bunch of documents proving I was who I was, and I was as old as I was saying I was.

Guess when it rains it pours.. This thread was a curse.

Long story short.. when I was in a restaurant someone smash and grabbed the **** in my vehicle. Lost my new laptop, bose speaker deck, and my phone/headphones.

I know it's just material but **** me, can't play in this mindset.

I was up $94 on the day too, which was awesome for starting at $50. Ugh.

Make a new thread and u probably win the Sunday Milly, best of luck

Haha thanks for that, needed a laugh.

**** me though, that laptop was barely 3 months old, I got it when my old dinosaur laptop crapped out. Only have five grand to my name, and I have to pay off $170 on my phone, get a new laptop, and I guess go without whatever else I lost.

I'm still in it for the long haul, but I can't play poker until I get a new laptop.

I'm thinking of pretending to be a blind street singer when tourists come in, maybe that'll help with the new laptop. I'll update in a few days or so.



There was my cash game graph on the day, played a few hands. I was actually up $94, I came 2nd in a $3.50 45 man, and placed in a $3.50 18 man.

Very likely my sad, final update.

As you can see I played under 3k hands and made around $140. ($45 or so was in sit n goes)

It was an awesome day for starting at $50 and not playing a ton of hands, but with what happened to me today I just can't focus with it looming over my head. Worst timing ever. I'll likely try again in the future when I have a clear mind, this is too stressful with everything that's going on.

Suuuucks that a day that went perfect poker-wise was still messed up.

Well, I thought yesterday was going to be my last update for a while. I cashed out my $190 ($50 deposit, plus $140 or so in profit) ready to try this another time, when my mind was clear.

A mutual friend heard about my vehicle getting broken into yesterday, and let me use his 'old laptop' until I get a new one. I said 'old' because it's like 4 months old and feels nice to use.

Looks like I'm back in it! I threw $50 back on just for the time being, and if I lose I'll deposit the other $140, seeing as it was my profit since I started this anyways.

Just firing up hold em manager, and starting anew. When I build up to $300 or so I want to play a minimum of 3,000 hands of 10PLO per day, moving down to 5PLO if I dip below $200. Right now I'm using uber aggressive BRM.. which basically means I'm starting at 50 CAD (38.70 US or so) and playing 5 PLO. When I reach $10 in profit, I'm firing up one table of $0.05/0.10 trying to run it up etc.

I'm also playing the nittiest anyone has ever seen, its ****ty poker but it's working so far. I don't get into any tough situations really, so I haven't been able to post anything interesting.

Only played 500 hands, I'll update tomorrow when I play more. This was my biggest hand of the session. Also shows how nitty I'm playing, but I'm playing really short and it was a weird click-back.

I also had a note on him that said he seemed to hate going all in, but called down light otherwise. I don't know exactly how I came to that conclusion, he must have been doing some funky stuff. I don't have my old small database so I couldn't tell ya. Anyways, that's why I raised him (nearly) all in on the river and didn't just pot it. He had the 10 high flush, and with my wonky note maybe he would have folded the flush if I shoved.. who knows but I didn't have him marked down as some mega fish or anything. I like to think my genius note got me max value..

1500 hands later I'm up $43 or so at $0.05/0.10. I've paid $15.43 in rake.

I'm withdrawing everything again, I can't stand the rake and I've had some more real life shenanigans happen. Of course when I think it's the best time ever to start something like this, it turns out to be the worst timing.

Wonder if anyone would be willing to stake me at these cheeseburger stakes, would take all the stress away.