About Me: I'm in my late twenties, married, and a lawyer. I make low six figures and live in Dallas. My experience playing poker is extremely limited - I'm brand new. As of this post, my experience is: six months reading books, two months playing online, and a weekend playing live. I believe keeping a journal of sorts, expressing my goals and my progress towards (or away) from them will help me reach said goals.

Short-Term Goals:

• Play live poker at least three times a month.
• Continue reading and studying poker an average of 1.25 hours a day.
• Move up to 2/5 live by April 1, 2019.

Play: I will be playing NLHE on Ignition and ACR for online play and at Winstar and Choctaw for live play. I expect the occasional vacation to Shreveport and Vegas where I will play as well. Online serves entirely as an avenue of practice and for getting in more hands. I don't enjoy it nearly as much and prefer the social aspect of live play.

Since I am a recreational player, I have no real bankroll. I can continue to fund this as long as my wife remains happy and I responsible. With that said, I'm keeping my initial funding low to account for my low experience. I'm ready to increase it when I'm more comfortable with my skills, experience, and results.

Winstar and Choctaw are both slightly under 90 miles from me. The IRS currently values each mile at 54.5 cents per mile. That means I would need to make $98.10 per each trip on average to at least break the standard mileage rate. That kind of sucks, but I will find a way to make it work, beginning with using an old car to make these trips that has no cost of depreciation and low maintenance costs. If I account for only gas using this car, I need to make 7.82 gallons of gas per trip, or around $23 per trip. Therefore, I will subtract $23 from each trip.

Initial Funding: $400.

First Session:
Location: Choctaw 10/19/2018
Time: 3:45 played at 1/2 table
Buy-in: $400
Cashed out: $603

I played generally bad, as I was more focusing on the rhythm and getting the hang of live poker. I was down one full buy-in of $200. No eventful hands up to this point. On the button, pocket 88. I raise and two callers. Flop comes, 8, 5, 2. First to act all-ins, a second all-in, then I all-in. One guy had a backdoor flush draw (???), the other a pair of queens. My set holds.

Second Session:
Location: Winstar 10/20/2018
Time: 14:45 played at 1/2 table
Buy-in: $500
Cashed out: $500

Obviously played way too long (nearly 15 hours) without being conditioned for it and most of it was working back to even. I made some friends and great contacts, which is what I was after this early in my poker career. I was much more comfortable playing as I now had a general feel of how live poker played out. No notable hands.

Current bankroll: $500 (gave $100 of the profits to my wife to buy some candles).
Gross earnings: $203
Net earnings: $153

I plan on playing again this weekend.