three hours of online play today for a profit of +$650. stuck a bit early but caught some rungood which is nice but mainly im happy i put down a pretty solid grinding process. im planning on playing some live and watching the finals later tonight.

4 hours of live play tonight for a profit of +200. played well happy with the grind and picked a good time to quit. i was getting a bonus to help get the games started on time but that deal is cancelled now so i will probably end up playing a bit less live overall.

played 1.5 hours online today for a loss of -$150. played 5.5 hours of live tonight for a profit of +$1100. played fairly well all day im happy with the grind and it was nice to run hot at live.

busy day today. i only was able to play one hour online for a profit of +$50. had a few things to take care of and did a nice HH review session with skraper and billy. tomorrow my girlfriend is bringing me to see dave matthews, so i wont be playing at all, and hopefully thursday evening i can get a session in.

How many tables do you play (sorry if you mentioned it already)?

4-6

It's been a busy few days for me.

My car has been in and out of the shop with the power steering broken. I went away with my girlfriend to a Dave Matthews Band concert. Today I played golf with my dad for Father's Day. I think I have mostly fought off the illness I have been battling.

I have played a bunch of live poker the last few days. Somehow I just got in the mood watching wsop live streams or something and I've been enjoying it. Over the last two or three days i put in 17 total hours of live play for a profit of +$770.

26.5 hours live play
+$2070

19.5 hours online play
+$150

I am planning on a big online grind week with no interruptions upcoming. I was stuck about $2500 at the low point online this month, so I'm happy to be even there and I'm ready to get after the second half of the month.

7 hours of live play for a profit of +$30.

The BBJP at the local joint is $8000 (4k to loser 2k to winner 2k to rest of table to split) and the qualifier is down to kings full of queens using both hole cards - so for example KQ vs AK on KK2,A,Q would qualify or 33 vs 22 on AAA,x,x would also qualify.

Does anyone reading this know how to calculate/estimate the hourly value of that?

I played another session of late night live poker last night and messed up my sleep schedule again. I have now officially started regressing to some bad habits in terms of straying away from structured live poker sessions, and I need to correct that. I do enjoy play in the local live games quite a bit, but it's not as profitable as online grinding and it's really just unhealthy in a variety of ways for me to grind the local live games too regularly. I think going forward I am going to adjust my live poker goals to limit myself to one night of week for live play as kind of a fun poker night, and I think I will hold off on playing any further for the rest of the month.

I ended up playing 8 hours for a loss of -$700. I have been playing well at live, and in fact I feel I'm playing better than ever there. I got unlucky in a couple big pots last night but I am happy with my play. I'm not trying to reduce my live play due to any sort of frustration from losing a session, it's more that I need to stick to a healthy structure.

I played 2.5 hours online today for a profit of +$450. I was tired but my mental and technical game were strong today and I quit at a good time. My girlfriend is visiting again for a few days. She is going to be moving in about a month from now, so I need to get accustomed to getting in some sessions while she is here.

Had a nice day at the park with my girlfriend and my dog on Thursday. We went up to Hamlin Beach state park for a picnic.



I got a little portable Weber kettle grill recently, and this was my second time taking it out. I don't have much experience with charcoal grilling, but I'm quickly getting better at it. The hot dogs and corn were excellent, but the burgers left something to be desired. They were premade store bought patties, and next time I'm getting the ground beef and making my own.



I had a bunch of random errands to catch up on today, and tomorrow I have my nephew's birthday party. I was able to play online this evening and am planning on playing online for the next several days in a row.

I played 4 hours of online over a couple sessions for a profit/loss of $0. I played well all day and was happy with my mental and technical game, and although I was stuck most of the day I kept to a good process and won a few pots at the end.

Got in a solid evening of grinding online tonight. 5 total hours for a profit of +$1050. I played 2/4 and 3/6 early and the last hour or two I played 1/2 along with some low buyin tournaments. Was stuck early but kept at it and ran well at the end, but more importantly I was feeling pretty zoned in throughout the day and playing at a high level.

Looking forward to USA v Portugal tomorrow - go USA!

gl dude

Thanks.

Tough way to get a draw for the USA today.

Four hours of online play today for a profit of +$550. Played a mix of 1/2 and 2/4 and played well throughout the day.


41.5 hours live play
+$1300

35 hours online play
+$2150

My volume this month is quite poor. It seems like one thing after another keeps coming up in my personal life, but I need to work to find better strategies to get in more grinding time while still keeping a busy happy life.

However, I also think that as a result of going through some runbad at the midstakes I subconsciously wanted to avoid those games and the online grind in general. This may have been leading me to want to play less in general and also to play more live as a way to justify my lack of quality online volume, which really should be my primary focus.

My girlfriend's birthday is this weekend, so I won't be grinding Thu/Fri/Sat in all likelihood, but I should be able to grind Mon/Tue a bit on Wed and then also Sun/Mon to close out the month.

Five hours of online grinding for a profit of +$600. Got hit with a big wave of negative variance early on, but luckily it was mostly at 1/2 against medium stacks so the damage wasn't too severe (-$600ish at one point). I did get a bit frustrated losing pot after pot, but I was able to stick to a quality grinding process and I was happy with my technical and mental games both throughout the day. I found a few bluffs that worked out with the bottom of my range in some spots I perhaps don't traditionally bluff enough, and obviously hit some positive variance at the end to come back and finish winner.

Here's an updated graph for those who enjoy graphs:

Had a nice hand review session today with skraper and StungEm.

Played 4.5 hours of online today for a profit of +$350. In my first session I made several poor big calls. I went into the session being short on sleep from last night (as I was up way early this morning), and also facing a quitting deadline as I had an errand to run. These are normally factors that are big tilt triggers for me, but my mental game has been so strong lately I had over confidence in it and didn't go into the session focused enough on a quality process. Early in session I misplayed a hand and got overly emotional about it, and that trend basically continued throughout the first session despite trying to get it back on track. That is obviously disappointing, but bad sessions are going to happen I suppose. I regrouped and came back later, and played better in my second session. I still wasn't playing my very best, but it was a much more reasonable grind. I was able to grind back to near even, and then someone spewed off a stack badly to me at 2/4 and I was happy to finish winner for the day.

Only had time to play one hour today and just finished that session. I lost -$400 and I played poorly. It is clear to me at this point that I have a serious leak when playing with a deadline, and I need to address it in a controlled fashion and avoid it entirely otherwise until I get a more solid baseline mental approach to grinding in that fashion.

I made one very poor river bluff vs a fish, one marginally bad river bluff in a small pot vs a reg, and one slightly bad river call when I took a x/c down line with TP as the PFR but the way it played out I should have folded river. I played some hands well too, but that's several large misplayed pots in just one hour. I think I will force myself in the future to do a few one hour practice sessions with a fake deadline at my normal stakes, and also a couple actual one hour sessions before I have to go somewhere while dropped down in stakes to get practice that way as well.

If my schedule on a given day allows me to only play an hour or two, I want to be able to take advantage of that. My mental game has been very strong lately when in grind mode, so I just need to put in some effort to address this issue and I'm sure I can improve it.

Literally the first hand I sat down today I got dealt KK in the big blind and my first thought was "well if I double up maybe I will just quit instantly since I have only an hour anyways". That is obviously a very unhealthy thought for a variety of reasons. Firstly, that sort of attitude could influence me to overplay the hand in hopes of doubling up. Second it goes against what I know to be true about grinding: you need to focus on making good decisions and disregard short term results. An hour of quality grinding has a given expectation for me, so I need to just put in a solid hour and understand that over the long haul I am likely to have more one hour winners than one hour losers, and understand I'm just earning X dollars with an hour of quality play regardless of what the cashier says.

I recognized that thought process was poor, but I didn't actively try to take enough steps to correct my mental game. Instead in some ways I indulged a gambley urge to kind of "push it" and see what happens in the hour.

(writing this stuff down is kind of a stream of consciousness self analysis to help me gather my thoughts as well)

Anyways, not a professional approach. I do think though I am becoming more self aware of the factors in play contributing to this mental leak after writing this post, and I have some steps in mind I can take to help address it. Self improvement is a perpetual process and I need to remember that, and not get too down on myself for playing poorly, but instead try to feel good about shining a light on the problem and facing it and working to improve the situation.

When I'm playing online I always keep a notepad journal open to help gather my thoughts and keep my mental game on point. Here is an example:

---
6/3/2014

goal: one session midstakes grinding to get back into the swing

655 starting
720 playing ok so far a bit distracted by txt but good decisions and thoughts over short period so far
730 games dry tired unfocused taking first break early but hanging in there
744 tough negative variance breathe inject logic
750 stacked again tough breathe inject inchworm be professional
751 just try to play one more good hour and wrap up either way regardless of results
815 maybe the KQ river call was poor just on that particular runout but gto land probably not its close you always want to blame yourself on blank rivers its a snap on that river its closer maybe losing call but not unreasonable at all given the way the hand played out
857 stopping good feel i played well this session despite the negative variance the one river call was a bit loose perhaps but otherwise good play and professional approach despite runbad

mental: a-
technical: b+
---

I always grade myself with mental and technical grades after each session. I'm going to tally those up below to see how I've been grading myself for online play this month.

Mental:
A-
A-
B+
B+
B
B
B
B+
B
B+
B+
A-
A-
B+
B+
B+
B-
C

Technical:
B+
B+
B-
B+
B
B
B
B+
B
B+
A-
A-
A-
A-
A-
B+
C+
C

I never give myself A or A+ it seems (lol what does that say btw?). I think my technical grades are slightly higher on average which makes sense since I have spent much more time on my technical game than mental, and also naturally there is a correlation between the two. I've been mostly playing at either my relative peak grinding level or just below it for most of the month and have only had a few bad sessions. That is a big improvement from a year or two ago, where looking back I felt like I was living and dying with every losing and winning session I'd play and was generally just a huge tiltbox without even really realizing or understanding it. I still have a long way to go but I'm glad I'm making progress.

Spent a nice few days with my girlfriend. Went to the petting zoo and later out for a nice dinner on Thursday then partied out Thursday night, spent Friday recovering on the couch for the most part watching movies, and Saturday out for another picnic and swimming day at the park.

I decided to play some live tonight, as I have been off for a while, and also I wanted to set up a "deadline" and play a 2 hour online session before leaving for practice with my mental game. I played well and ran well today, but it's always much easier to play well when the cards are all going your way. After a little over an hour I started to feel too many quitting urges, and although it's not optimal I decided to just book the session early and get a well played deadline session under my belt.

1.5 hours online for +$750.

Petting with the girlfriend is always fun...

2.5 hours live play for a profit of +$160 tonight. I played well but the main thing is I'm happy that I went ahead and quit early when the game got stale.

44 hours live play
+$1460

47 hours online play
+$3450

Another "deadline" practice session before live tonight to close out the month. 1.5 hours of online play for a profit of +$170. Played well and again got a bit eager to quit a bit earlier than played but I'm happy to get in another of these practice sessions and play well doing so.

Final live session of the month did not go well. I played pretty well but just ran bad all night and finished with 7 hours of play for a loss of -$700.

51 hours live play
+$760

48.5 hour online play
+$3620

I think my number one goal in July is going to be to go an entire month with absolutely no live poker play. I am about to tally up my results for live so far this year, but with the ultra high rake it seems to be a colossal waste of time. I keep saying I want to play less live poker, but I have to realize that right now I am not effectively playing in moderation so I need to cut it out cold turkey.

I don't have results unfortunately for January thru March at live but I estimate 100 hours of play for a breakeven result.

january thru march 100 hours +$0
april live 59.5 +$1780
may live 38 hours live +$410
june live 51 hours +$760

Total: 248.5 hours +$2950 profit

So I'm making less than $12/hour so far this year playing live, and worse my live sessions tend to mess up my sleep schedule and result in a more unhealthy lifestyle and thus affects my online grind negatively in a few different ways.

Do you think you have underlying motivations for playing live? Its easy to look at the live play and say that the hourly is much lower and it interferes with other parts of your life so you clearly shouldn't do it. But it seems like our brains are always making EV decisions subconsciously. Maybe your subconscious is weighing things differently than your conscious brain. Perhaps live poker gives you some personal interaction you want or maybe it lets you be recognized for your skill in a way online poker can't or maybe some other reason. Cutting live poker out will be a lot easier if you can inject logic. But to inject logic you have to fully recognize the emotions that lead you to do the thing you don't think you should do (ie make light river calls, play too loose preflop, play live poker).