I am not a super frequent 2+2 user and have only been on here for about 14 months reading only intermittently, but now once every few weeks I am going to write updates on what has been going on in my poker life. What I have been studying or not studying, how my games are going, and everything else.

At first I was going to keep this to myself, but the more I thought about it, the more I think it should be public. If it falls beneath the cracks or becomes something of a point of shame and embarrassment as time progresses so be it, but I think my goals are more likely to be achieved if I put them out in the world and much of what I have read on here has inspired me greatly so I hope to lead my own journey now.

What will follow below, both today and in the future will not be as clean or organized as it ought to be. The purpose of this is more documentation and publicizing my intent more so than any aesthetic pursuit.

But I will start with brevity (just kidding) and expand in the coming weeks. My goal is to play poker professionally. I am a 25 year old living in the Kansas City suburbs, I work in Real Estate Finance, and graduated with degree in Economics and Philosophy. My desired timeline is around September of 2023, although anything within the next 21 months I would deem as acceptable enough.

My plan is to quit my job next September and play and study for a year in the KC area, both live and online. My heart and skillset are in live poker but for the time being I am focused on getting acquainted with online as I would like to eventually be competent and great in every realm.

To do this I am going to need to perfect the art of living a low cost means. I am not an extravagant spender by any means, but I have not yet cut my habits to the bone, and this is one of the things that will need to be done. This is in part, because I know I am not some insane crusher yet, and despite my strong will and work ethic, I don't expect the first year or so to be smooth sailing. I expect the first year to be a lot of learning, and a lot of growing pains, and to give myself that wiggle room while playing smaller stakes I need to be able to survive on as little as possible so I can pay my bills and expand on my bankroll.

Within 1-2yrs of playing in KC, I hope to move to Vegas. I have already gotten coaching from some pros out there who have made very generous offers to help me get acquainted out there whenever I am able to actually get out there. I choose Vegas for that reason, the other obvious reasons, and because of my passion for rock-climbing. Vegas is one of the epicenters for climbing in the states and that would help me provide my future life with the balance it has so painfully lacked the last 10 months. I have plans that extend beyond the next 2-3 years, but they are muddy and I will leave them for another time.

To begin the end of this first post, I will briefly go over my history of poker.

During covid, one of my roommates introduced me to the game. I grew up an avid lover of chess and my love for poker followed suit. I played for a little over a year, perhaps a year and half, doing nothing other than clicking buttons. I didn't consume any content, I did not know what a range was for a very long time, I did not know there was math involved besides generic hand equities against each other, I did not know there was sophisticated strategy, solvers, training sites, books, courses or any of that. I simply spent 16 months playing very small stakes and consistently losing small amounts for about 16 months.

Jumping to June/July of 2021, I realized I sucked, was embarrassed at how unsuccessful I was, and bought a poker book. The Theory of Poker by Slansky was the one, and I read that and was shocked by how much I learned. Around that time my roommate took me to the casino for the first time ever. I was scared money and also just horrible all around, and lost everything.

I was a very poor and financially pained college student at the time, so $200 was a lot of money for me. Every few weeks or so when I was able to come by enough by working extra hours and sacrifice some meals I would go back with him, but I never really did well and didn't understand anything. For the next several months I read several books, (Like the Harrington on Holdem series, Schoomaker's The Psychology of Poker, Mathew Matteos The Making of A Poker Player, Kill Phil, etc) and saw an ad for DNegs Master Class which I bought and watched religiously over and over again. After this, I had a brief stint in October of 2021 where I went up a little over $1000, but lost it all by the end of November.

It was not until I graduated uni in Dec of 2021 that I realized there was such things as training courses, and being broke, I used my credit card to buy a PIOpro solver and a month of a PokerCoaching.com membership.

The first thing I studied on there was Spin n Go course taught by Ryan O-Donnell, and I got a free trial for Lucid GTO software. Over the next month, I spend 6-8 hours a day studying that course and the solver and began learning what poker actually was for the first time. By late January I believe I was profitable in the format, having worked up from $100 BR at the $2's and had a ROI of ~10% at the $10's-$15's and made a little over a grand. At that point, I had been working my new gig for a couple months and had saved up enough to try a few more stabs at the live cash arena. They did not go so well.

By April, I was down about $4.5K all time and more from that from my peak 1.2K profit and was feeling quite a dark bit. At that point I paused playing and got one of the pros on PC to coach me. I was about to quit as I felt like such a loser. Money had always been tough to come by myself and my family my entire life and to be in this position when I graduated uni with $0 in the bank and a lot of debt felt incomprehensibly bad. Anyway, the coach at first looked at my graph and was quite unimpressed, expectations were quite low. By the end of the session however, I was told that my thinking and play far exceeded what others were doing at my stake and above and she encouraged me to keep playing. I did, and for the next 2-3 months I kept swinging back to even then losing thousands again. I decided to do more coaching, and reached out to some other pros to see if they might help me and one of them recommended I read Ed Miller. I read 3 of his books and also ended up buying a course on live tells from a pro I really admire and the way that I looked at and thought about the game changed almost over night.

For the next 3 months I grinded my absolute ass off. As soon as I would clock out of work I would call to get on this list , would drive 40 minutes and then play until midnight or often later, getting home between 1-3am most nights and at work again by 8:30. Most nights I was only getting 4 hours of sleep, and on days off I would often go to a public library and take adderall and study for 8 hours+ without access to any distractions.

That span of 3 months I made just shy of $11,000 from trough to peak grinding mostly 1/3. At that point, most of the regs at my casino figured I did this for a living given my wr and unfettered attendance. In August, I spent a week out at MGM National Harbor and played 2/5 every evening after work. Most of the players on the weeknights were self titled pros and were not very fun to play with. Ironically, I remember how anti-social and miserable they were, how low their VPIP's were, and how negative their attitudes they were. I had a swingy week there but came out on top after the weekend recs gave me a bit of a boost, but I remember not being very impressed with those "pros" and vowed I would never have an attitude like that myself.

Fast forward a few weeks, and poker had been going so well I had more money than I had ever had in my life. I paid the rest of my year's rent in cash, turned the cell that I called a home into a pleasant place to live, and invested in other training sites and bought multiple other courses online.

This proved to be a bad move, as I left myself with only $3.5K in cash and many of the games I was playing in were of quite variable size. Over the next 3 weeks, I went on a run from hell and lost close to 100% of the biggest 20 pots I was in, and all of a sudden, most of my bankroll was gone.

At this point, I decided not waste the last of my money, and would use this as an opportunity to fine tune my fundamentals and learn the online streets, as I had never put any real volume into online cash.

When I started out I realized very quickly how different live 9h 300bb stack play vs online 6max 100bb play were, and how obscenely bad I was at the latter. I spent a lot of time studying over an adderall fueled weekend and found a small youtube acct from a european pro (who did not claim to be a coach) who's ideas on exploits and online play impressed me substantially. That night, I sent him a very intentional message and wrote my story (in less words than above) and explained that I would be grateful if he could coach me in online cash. He agreed to test things out, and yada yada yada, I have a new coach.

My online cash grind is not quite a success story yet, in fact quite the contrary. But each week I feel I get substantially better and am starting to study more effectively and think more effectively than ever before, and for the first time, I am actually feeling rationally optimistic.

Anyways, I am going to wrap this up now as I have coaching in a half hour and need to finish up some work stuff. I may post graphs or give better context to document everything in the coming weeks, but this is my story thus far. I will update this once a month or more until I either achieve my dreams or give up on them.

If you got this far, thanks for reading, otherwise, goodbye for now.

Good luck, I wonder if you have accessed too much coaching if that is possible, I would work out a good study routine and get on with it yourself.

Also bankroll management seems to be an issue with you always going busto, so dont neglect the other skills and decisplines required

Goodluck. I have subbed and will follow your journey

I've played you in the 10blitz pool briefly! Good luck!

Not super accustomed to 2+2 so don't know if quotes or quick reply's are best suited for fluidity and for a post of this nature... but, I have done a bit of coaching. I have a live pro coach that I use every 4ish months that a bit on the expensive side but save for stuff that's more serious and not as solver or easy solution oriented. Then, I have a weekly coach that I like alot that I mentioned in the OG post I believe. He is a Euro pro that plays on PS for low/mid stakes and he has been great for me and I am quite grateful.

As for now, my regime has been getting volume in at 1-2 tables, and then when I feel stuck I hit pause and hit the solver for a week or so, so I am always trying to follow momentum and listen to what my body and mind want to do as best as possible.

Missing the **** out of live at the moment though, but think it would be strategic to hold off for another couple months so I could build a larger roll and plug some leaks that I have that are prevalent in both live and online for me, but online definitely burns me out more for reasons I'll explain in a sec.

One of the leaks I have across the board though is I am too aggressive. I bluff too much, not in dumb ways imo but in over the top ways. I hate the mundane and drudgery of online play and work an 8-5 remote job mostly on excel all day. I have previously been a very active and jittery person so sitting down all day and then sitting down after work and grinding for hours at the same desk implementing a system instead of trying things out is quite the mental battle for me.

I am sure the above can be fixed over time to a solid extent, but, over the last month my wr from Oct to Nov went from -13bb/100 all-in adj ev to ~6-7bb/100 all-in adj ev. Abg per month is a little over 20K hands each mo I believe.

Despite that though, been running horrendously for 2-3 weeks now barely winning a session, and micros rake has been roughly 10bb/100 for me so that really cripples the max win rate I could have, but I am definitely getting better and my main purpose here is improving, not making bank at $10NL or anything. So I think my goal in the short term is going alright despite not fulfilling the ego and ocd parts of me for a super sexy graph.

Besides that, I post some play and explains for shits or coaching purposes intermittently and also do the occasional theory video. If there is interest I am happy to link it although I am not super dedicated to that, as I said, mostly just for shits or archiving.

Other than that, not really sure what to update on.

I suppose the nerves of ever playing professionally simply in prospect have been building over time the more I work. It's quite terrifying for a number of reasons, but it is still my dream.

I'll be checking this on and off throughout the weekend so if there are any thoughts or questions I will be happy to add anything, otherwise, probably won't check back in until January sometime.

How did that go? Did you run me over?

Thank you! I really appreciate the support! Any positivity when it comes to poker or poker goals always greatly stands out to me.

While I finish up some work for today, here is a hand history that accurately displays one of my leaks:

*(This quick reply is meant to be read as an expansion after my first reply to a comment. I not skilled in 2+2 so not sure how this will appear)*

Yatahay Network - $0.10 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 119.7 BB
SB: 273.8 BB
BB: 121.2 BB
Hero (UTG): 113.9 BB
MP: 102 BB
CO: 111.2 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 9 9

Hero raises to 2.5 BB, fold, CO raises to 8 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 5.5 BB

Flop: (17.5 BB, 2 players) 3 6 7
Hero checks, CO bets 5.6 BB, Hero calls 5.6 BB

Turn: (28.7 BB, 2 players) 8
Hero checks, CO checks

River: (28.7 BB, 2 players) A
Hero checks, CO bets 17.7 BB, Hero raises to 100.3 BB and is all-in, CO calls 79.9 BB and is all-in

Hero shows 9 9 (One Pair, Nines)
(Pre 55%, Flop 75%, Turn 86%)
CO shows K A (One Pair, Aces)
(Pre 45%, Flop 25%, Turn 14%)
CO wins 212.8 BB

This isn't the worst play in the world, but it is clearly not the best, and a mistake. I do not hate donking turn here given small and linear flop sizing from villain ( and how much better the turn card is for my range comparatively), and I do not hate the river line as a value play (when I have value), but one of the things I often do is merge my range really quickly. I knew this hand was a fold, and against some, an occasional call, but I am stubborn, and I saw my blockers, saw how capped villain was to top pair holdings, and thought I would test him out. When I know my hand is no good, but I like my blockers or think I can get someone off a capped range, i go into hyper aggression mode, and am willing to turn any hand into a bluff, no matter the showdown value or sometimes even the lack of credibility of my particular line. There is a time and a place for this sort of stuff but in the way I employ this, especially in this hand, is not the way.

I will work to stop making plays like this, make the fold despite the emotion of frustration here, or the ego that thinks to attack players whom I may not always respect, and will improve the bottom line of my win rate. This hand is a great example in how I often think during a hand though, and is fitting to much of the leaks I was talking about in my comment above.

No, you're the only one who actually calls my flop overbets - I do like playing against you though, it's fun to challenge myself when in my live games that doesn't really happen. Cheers!

In. I am also trying to git gud and currently grinding the 10NL streets. Like you my results have been somewhat suboptimal of late, and like you I have had issues with taking uneccessarily hyper aggressive lines. Good for the redline, bad for the green line.

Hit me up if you ever want to talk through some spots, go over some hands etc

I do be stationing lol

But I am happy to hear that. Someone's gotta keep the $10NL streets honest around here

So it's been about 6 weeks since I have made an update. Since then a lot has happened. About a month ago, a retired pro and coach stumbled across me and decided he wanted to stake and coach me. I was very skeptical and was not particularly interested in the beginning, but over a few days I was convinced and in hindsight have to say it was a great decision and I am very fortunate to have that opportunity bestowed upon me. I hope to take advantage of it as I have learned a ton across the board already in this short time.

Since the staking, I have switched to playing on ignition mostly w a little bit of clubgg. I do not play on ACR anymore. I started at $10NL and at certain win thresholds have moved up w a stop loss. My wr on $10NL was roughly 30bb/100. After 7,500-10,000K hands at $25NL winning over 20bb/100, I have moved up to $50NL. Have not played a ton of hands there yet but I am up about a buy-in. The goal is to get comfortable at $100NL and make that my main stop for awhile, as that appears to be the equilibrium with respect to difficulty of the game and the opportunity for meaningful money to be earned. Eventually the aspirations include $200NL and $500NL but I have been told the skill threshold at 200 is significantly higher as that is when players start to actually get pretty good.

Anyway, that for me has been a big step, not necessarily because of the money but because I am learning how to scale poker better, how to have better game selection, and I am learning theory that is absolutely transforming my game overnight. Every month I seem to be getting so much better I feel almost unrecognizable from any mere 8 week stretch.

Besides that though, I really feel the need to emphasize how significant the coaching has been. I am getting coached 2-3 times a week and learning things that absolutely change the way I think about every hand and every decision in an extreme way. I think for me that has been the most exciting part.

On top of that I have also began playing live here and there again. I think this will be part time, and outside the short high concentration upon my return will be fairly inconsistent and sporadic as online needs to be my main focus as that is where I learn the most and feel that my responsibility to myself and others are highest. I do not have volume boundaries per week or month my staking agreement so it all really just comes back to me and my discipline and dedication.

On the other side however, live poker has been an interesting experience. I have played about 65-70hours in a very short span since taking over 3 months on, mostly just super long weekend sessions until 5 in the morning, but a few week nights as well. I have been running extremely bad but I have gotten so much better than almost everyone that I sit with, it almost doesn't even matter. I realize how many mistakes I was making before even when I was beating the game, and I have found a lot of spots to implement the principles I learned from my coaching for online 6max that are almost cleaner examples that spots than I easily get into online. The difficulty for me, lies in how long you can be card dead, and how vulnerable you are to run bad. Over this short sample I have had many 4-5hr+ periods without winning a single hand, and had a 14 hour stretch where I never won a hand at showdown. Currently I have lost about 10 all-ins in a row, avg equity being well over 50%, probably closer to 60-65 in reality.

Upon this return I am being reminded of how different these games are, how much you need to risk to capitalize the most on villains biggest mistakes (when avg open size is large, spr is always small when compared to 100bb eff, and it is harder to make or capitalize on mistakes with lower spr's, so to put yourself in the best spot to do so, I typically like to play 200-400bb eff if not more), and how much nuance and patience is required to truly review hands and study ways to increase your edges in the games effectively. To summarize some short stats, I have made ~$45/hr thus far (over 11 sessions since late december), and have won ~80% of my sessions. My wins have mostly been moderate but steady, and my losses have been quite large. My most recent session was probably the biggest loss I ever had losing almost 600bb over 8 hours. In this session, I had someone 5 bet jam into me w 52o pre and I called w AQs to lose an 1100 pot, I also lost w T8 to QT for ~1400 on J883r to the 4-outer. I lost AQ again for a ~150bb vs 64s jamming pre. I lost an all in pre w AK to QJo twice, and then KQs to 88, among multiple other flips. I made a bunch of sets and lost large pots every time. And since having returned to live I have lost multiple set over sets spots, have had my AA cracked every time I have had them in a medium or large pot, and have ran KK or QQ into AA close to double digit times without the luxury of being on the other side succesfully. My live return has been filled with this stuff, without much of the other side, and the frustration of losing $2K when running well over 10 buy-ins under EV in all-in equity in a single session reminds me far too much of the pains and frustrations of the last year.

I do not know if this sounds extreme or unbelievable since I have still been winning, but to me that has been the biggest positive twist, is that I can run this bad and still win at a reasonable rate, as I can only imagine what my wr will look like when I start winning all-ins and coolering other people. But I do greatly fear the inability to truly ever reach a relevant sample size, as I’ve mentioned before so much of the last year looked like the last session and is the reason I started playing online in the first place. A blessing in disguise it has been, although still very frustrating nonetheless.

Other things I have realized when playing live is that people condense ranges to the extreme with their every action more than I ever thought about before, and I have learned that playing less hands pre and focusing more on position, isolation, and hands with great multi-way equity are incredible strategies that can win well on their own. Some of the things I have been struggling with are the extent of which I should exploit as well. This includes preflop hand selection, the decision about whether to bluff and how much pressure to apply when I do (most people are stations but everyone has a price), and most of all (but not unrelated to what is before) merging ranges. Because "showdown value” has such stringent cutoffs because of extreme range condensation after every new action in low live games, it is possible to take hands with otherwise great showdown value in theory, but not enough against a certain range in a given line, and use that to bluff. The examples of these are plentiful, and are things that would give most coaches I've had a sick stomach and any sentient solver a disapproving look. I may post some examples of this stuff soon, but if I give live poker any mental real estate over the coming 6 months, this will be one of the main columns of observation, and where I have the most answers to find.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my update. That is all I have for now. In another month or two I will try to tell you how $50NL is going or went, what I am playing and studying now, and will update YTD live results if I even decide to play much more. Besides that I may stop in to talk about live hands with respect to the above, who knows.

Have a good one and good luck in your games!

I’ve played briefly lately on acr blitz. 2guys1cup

This is a bad play based on my experience of the pool. He has an ace. He is not folding an ace. I live in kc as well on the Kansas side. You ever play pub poker ?

Agreed bad play. Was kind of the point of sharing it as it was to demonstrate my limitations at that time. And I mostly play Hollywood Casino and Harrah's on the weekends sometimes. Never tried anywhere else/know of anywhere else.

Great thread, so far. Appreciate your thoroughness and honesty.

Could you say more about what these different transformations? Like what each consisted of?

Would love more details on this too, though you did mention this further down, which maybe is the extent of what you meant?

I would never make this play tbh, No idea why you want to try and bluff someone off an Ax hand. Majorities of villians will not fold their AK/AQ in this spot so this is only good for value when you trap with sets or better.

Hand as played I will tend to block turn to charge and deny equity, but I'm folding the river on an Ax always here.... It is a total spew and there are better spots of hands to turn into bluffs than this one.

Don't mean to come off brazen but dude, *I know*. As I have said many times, I posted it not as a triumphant display of my skill and depth as a thinking player, but because it was a good example of how I needed to improve and what mistakes I was making at the time. I thought it would be a good time stamp of the post as even just a few months later I would never think to make that play. Having to say this so many times makes it *very* difficult for me to even slightly want to share hands in the future.

Please read before you reply to something specific.

--> There is a lot here, comment more later on for whatever I've missed and I will circle back. So... in low live poker, people have really really predictable ranges that narrow drastically w everything they do. Take an online 6max spot, w btn vs sb 3!. When SB 3!, we don't know what they have, but we can have a greater idea of what they are probably likely to have. We may have a HUD w a few 1000 hands that shows how often they 3! in that position, and thus we can infer their range. At lower stakes online, this may be more variable because despite range access being everywhere players are still likely to miss a number of mixed freq combos. At mid stakes, they are probably closer to gto 3! ranges there when they want to me. All of this, however, as you likely know, narrows or condenses a players range. And so, the same thing happens in live, except, players play on way different assumptions. In online, players may have very different strategies, but most of them are playing the same hands from same positions more or less, and have a lot of overlap in all the other spots. In live, especially low live, none of this is true. There are a number of players who will only 3! AA, or AA and KK. Others will 3! JJ+ and AK, or something similar. These are narrower ranges, and often they don't take time to figure out. So some players I have learned very genuinely only 3! AA and I have learned I can fold KK preflop to them if I am not getting the odds to set mine. This sounds ridiculous as people always say "you just *can't* fold KK pre" or whatever. These same players also say on river spots "oh you just can't fold a hand that strong" when getting reasonable enough odds on the river. However, this is just a bad way to play in a lot of contexts. So the same way we can learn fairly quickly (maybe a couple of weeks) that Player A only 3! AA, we can also learn that Player B is super linear w bet sizing, or that donks multi-way always mean top pair or better, or that all-ins are only nuts, or xr's are only of this strength, etc, etc, etc. Well, when you can do this enough times over several streets w betting lines or physical cues and any other range narrowing information you might have, very very often you can put players on a very specific set of hands via hand strength thresholds, meaning it is basically impossible for them to have a hand under a particular strength threshold. SO if that threshold is a pair of aces on A86K5, then KQ might not be real showdown for you, and you are left with the option of bluffing or giving up. I am not suggesting you should or shouldn't ever bluff here in this spot w KQ, but my point is that online KQ on A86K5r will have showdown in tons of formations very often, and so, if you took a hand like that because you think it would make a good bluff, using solvers without node locking or having coaches look at it in (or even without) a vacuum would make you look insane. But the reality is, in this KQ example, online, sometimes KQ will be good showdown, other times it wont, and you wont always know, but in low live, the threshold for showdown value can a be very, very tight and known line and thus you can find yourself in weird positions where you merge strange hands that appear to have showdown when in fact they actually have more fold equity than showdown. I am not sure if that makes sense, but I have plenty of live examples of hands that demonstrate this I would be open to sharing and explaining if people behave.

Where are you at in the metro

Don't want to dox myself but I am an hour away from Harrah's, and less far from Hollywood. If I play on a weeknight, I go to Hollywood, if I play on weekend, usually go to Harrahs between 10-12pm and stay until 4:30-5:00am. Works out well because weeknight games are better at Hollywood imo and weekend games are much, much better at harrahs, especially late.

Hit 100hrs live YTD though and am making $50+/hr between 1/2 and 1/3 though which is nice given how rough my start was.

Not sure if I got the images posted right but just posting the YTD live cash results. Still mostly focus with online, and feel that I have been improving. Studying hand reviews with both of my coaches often, then doing GTO studies by position and the why behind solutions, and doing Kanu and Uri course discussion's with the other. Results onlinr have not been great though as I am slightly below even since Dec 22'. Am running below EV at every stake level and up all-in adj ev profitable at 50nl and above on every site. Too many graphs with not enough hands on any individual one to make it worthwhile to post and delve into more yet, but that is my update.

Live results are exclusively 1/2 and 1/3 btw

Just shy of $8K profit this year playing live. Haven't had any crazy sessions lately, just slow and steady.

Had an interesting scenario last night though. Don't want to get too into it as I am short on time, but, was playing $1/$3 and some drunk ass constantly raving about his net worth, his Tesla, how good he is, and how much less money everyone else at the table has, was playing to my right and was raising every hand and trying to gamble abit. As the night goes on, he moves to the $2/$5/$10 rock game and I go play over there and sit on his left this time.Unfortunately, as much as I would like to have had some poetic justice for all the condescending behavior he had towards me throughout the evening, I was incredibly card dead the entire evening. As for the rest of the table, I did not recognize many, nor had I played with any of them before. They didn't seem that good but I didn't have any information on any of them.

So the one hand I was going to share, was a hand after drunk maniac won the prior and had the rock which served as a $10 straddle, and being to his left I was first to act, since he raised almsot every straddle, I thought I would limp my open, which was not super conspicuous at the table at this point. My hand was AKo, stack was ~$1,500 eff, as I had smallest stack. Someone in HJ whom I had not seen a ton of hands played from yet, raised to ~$65 or so, surprisingly, no one had limped behind, everyone folded including drunk rock, but I went for the raise anyway given I was in a blind and didn't want to play OOP, and raise to $185 or so? Raise sizes are fairly approx so lets not get stuck on that. Surprisingly, he 4!'s to about $375, and I think about it, and hadn't seen many 3!'s yet, and had not seen a single 4! yet, and did not want to get it in w AKo for this many bb's and flat. Pot is $765 or so and I have $1100 behind give or take, flop comes Axx and I check, he checks back. Turn comes a Q, and I think about betting, but given I don't know his range or tendencies, decided to check again. Figured he may have AA that he slowplayed on flop (unlikely but possible), could also have AQ, or most likely, QQ. He checks again. River is another blank and I feel that I should bet at this point, look over at him, and see him doing that whole fake grab chips to bet thing when players don't want to get bet into and prefer to showdown, but sometimes at this stake players do this as reverse tells, and I didn't want to overthink it w no info. I decide getting jammed on over top would be miserable, and I didnt know what I was targeting anyway besides KK or maybe AJs/ATs? and would simply check-call. My first thought of betting was somewhere close to $500, but I couldn't think of any hands listed above that would call that, and thought maybe going small would be best, as he would very likely call and may even see it as weakness and spew over top, but in the end, he checked back, I did not get to see his hand, and I took it down.

Any thoughts on how I could've played this one differently? Seems pretty bad to flop Axx in 4! opt w AK and not get anymore money in.

Hand I played at $50nl last night. Running about ~$900 below EV YTD over <10K hands, but I might just throw some hands on here every now and then when I am bored.

Realizing how much I need to work on my mental game. Shot took again couple Fridays ago. Switched from 700 eff at 1/2 and went to soft 2/5 game that switched to 2/5/10 my first orbit. Originally only added 300 but added an extra 500 once it switched. By far the shortest stack w $1500. Avg may have been 3500-4000. Anyway, only had maybe $10K for poker at the moment so it was definitely an aggressive move but the 1/2 games were **** and I drove and waited 90min+ and didn’t have anywhere I could be for a sec so I said **** it.

Players were pretty bad overall, ranges were horrible, not a lot of depth or difficult decisions to be made. Was OPP to most aggro so just 3-bet and 4bet a shitload. Wasn’t getting too out of line just hands KTs A5s etc were most common candidates. Probably 4-bet 5 times or more within first half hour, players were started to get tired of it. Next hand I actually get AKs, raised UTG and get 3-bet, folds around and I make the obvious 4! Bet to around $220, he quite literally says you can’t always have it and jams into me. I call so fast I have to put my chips in twice since no one knew I called. He has K8o and wins a $3600-$3700 pot. Lovely.

I rebuy, few orbits later I get AA. I 3! CO open and BTN flat in BB. Both call. Flops is K-6-4max I have AsAc. I cbet 25-30p, both call, SPR less than one for me. Turn is 3c. I bet more than half remaining stack, making any SPR less quite small to make myself indifferent to bad rivers should they call. CO calls BTN jams for like $4K. I have less than 30bb left, don’t feel good about it but can’t really fold, so I call. The other guy calls. BTN flatted CO and my 3-bet w 75o and made nut straight on turn. I lost $3K in less than two hours and get pretty tilted after that. Lost $8K in pots I felt entitled to which basically would’ve doubled my role.

Anyway, after this I realized it was bad decision to play that game w my roll. Game selection was clearly solid though. But felt pretty tilted after that. Told my coach about it and got ripped into the day after for quite some time. Deservingly so, my mental game can be quite bad sometimes and it was just explained to me how making decisions like this stops people from making careers or moving up and good players go broke doing **** like this all the time.

Really made me think about it though and my mental game really is quite bad when I put any sort of reflection into it. Waited until last night to play live again. I ran pretty bad lost about $700. Lost every all-in and never got it in bad or even not way ahead. Got in a really nasty cooler for $1600 too. Anyway, realized even when I’m not outwardly tilting I just have a layer of tilt beneath the surface pretty much every time I sit down. It’s pretty bad and I don’t want it to continue any longer. Trying to work on it but not really sure what to do. If I want to be anything in this game though I’m going to have to figure out how to be numb to absolutely all of this, and I am just no where even remotely close to that right now. May circle back to Tendler’s book this month idk.

But yeah anyway, that’s my latest update on the live front. Not much has changed online. Running far below EV still but getting closer to even on GG. Also just discovered a 10-person collusion ring was exposed yesterday so I may be getting some funds back anyway. But yeah, that’s all I got for now.