Hey all -

I've been contemplating making this thread for a few weeks now and finally decided to pull the trigger. I think one of my reservations was that I didn't want my inner degen to define who I am as a person and the goals I've set for myself. The true purpose of this thread is to keep myself accountable for my actions in poker moving forward.

A little bit of background.

I've been playing poker for about 10 years. Started playing when I was 18 and $5 sit and gos with my friends at the park, which ultimately led to .25/.50 live games with OMCs. I was never really an online player.

As my friends and I got more into poker, we got introduced to underground games in the NYC area. Mostly 1/2 games. I played a couple of sessions, but since I was still in college and didn't have much of a roll, I couldn't really play much. This ultimately led to a staking deal with a buddy of mine that worked out to 10% interest on my initial buy-in + 10% of the profits over double my buy-in.

I won a few thousand and continued the staking deal while moving up in stakes. This led me to play some 2/5 and oh man, the rest was brutal. Over the course of the year, I was $20,000 in makeup. I took a break from poker as I moved away to finish my degree. Was fortunate that my friend wasn't pressed for cash and allowed me the time needed to graduate college, get a job and work to pay back the makeup.

So, fast-forward a couple of years. I graduate college, move to Miami for a job and start paying my buddy back a little at a time. Fast forward a little bit more, and I'm back in NYC with a new job paying 2.5x what my previous job was paying. Began to aggressively pay back my buddy until I was out of makeup completely.

I start playing poker a little bit more, not much more, but now playing on my own dime. Trips are few and far in between since as most New Yorkers, I don't drive so would only go out and play when my friends felt like making trips. Let me tell you, it was so much less stressful playing with my own money. I felt like I was playing much better without the added stress of trying to win large pots to try and climb out of makeup.

I get a couple of raises at work and decide that I don't want to commute from NYC to Jersey City and have to deal with taxes and transportation, etc and decide to move to Hoboken.

As most of you know, Jersey is a market for regulated online poker in the states. A couple of weeks into living in Hoboken, I deposit a few hundred bucks on Stars. Next thing I know, I've binked one of the nightlys for 3k. WoooHOOOOO. I cashed out about 2k, and left a 1000 in my account. About 2 years ago (which is when this happened), I didn't really see much action online for the cash games for NLH, but did manage to see some for PLO. I've only played a little PLO in my life, but I knew the basics and decided to hop in the game. What game you ask? 500PLO

I hopped into 500PLO with only 1k in my account. Remember I said I didn't know anything about online poker since I was predominantly a live player? Well, if I had, I would have known that you need about 30k in your account to hop in a game like that. Granted, that's a slightly aggressive BR strat, but the Jersey sites don't offer the same volume of games that the ROW site does. Anyways, decide to hop in, and get absolutely rekt.

Before I know it, I'm stuck 20k again online over the course of a 8 months. Some days I would go on +5k heaters, only to dump it all back the next session. I was playing way too high with not enough dollars in my account. Keep in mind, I wasn't trying to do this for a living. I have a full time job that pays 100K+ a year and I kept justifying my losing sessions saying that it doesn't really hurt me too much and I'm getting paid next week so I can just deposit again, etc. But after running my numbers on PT4 and seeing that 20k loss, my stomach was sick and I decided to take a break.

I put a self-exclusion on my account for 6 months while I tried to build back my bankroll and re-evaluate. This was last summer. My 6 month exclusion period was ending around Thanksgiving, and during the Thanksgiving break I took a trip down to Borgata with a buddy of mine during the Fall Open. I was going down to predominantly play MTTs as I thought some of the events looked fun with decent prizepools and small-ish buyins.

My buddy was going to play the $1000+500+60 Purple Chip Bounty tournament. I only had about 2k with me for the trip so I didn't want to play it, but my buddy offered to buy 1/3 of my action and so I accepted. I ended up chopping heads up for a little over 20k and my biggest poker win.

It was an amazing feeling coming back to poker and immediately binking a huge tournament like that - confidence was up and so way my bankroll. What do I do after that? Deposit 5k on stars and dust it off playing 5/10 HU PLO.... Christ.

So, back to the drawing board. Took another break and mostly decided to focus on MTTs. I love poker, but I think the rush of winning and losing at HU PLO was what really got me going. I wanted to be able to win large sums of money relatively fast, and at times i would, but I just couldn't control myself. I told myself I would stop playing PLO and focus strictly on MTTs.

I decided to hire a coach, who happens to be a friend of mine and has something like 1.8MM in live earnings and we've gone through a few sessions together. Until recently, I was playing mostly live MTTs until the online merger with NJ, DE and NV happend earlier this month.

I once again told myself that I would only be playing MTTs, until I saw all the 5/10 PLO games running. I don't know any of these player, don't know how good they are, etc, and decide to hop into 5/10 PLO just for the gambooool. Ran up a $600 roll into $7k in 24 hours. Only to dump it off again. I eventually ended up depositing a total of 7k more over the course of a month only to have busted my roll entirely again last night.

So, now we're back to the reason for this thread.

I'd like to use this thread as a way to keep me accountable for not playing PLO and focusing strictly on MTTs. I don't have money on the site now, but I'm going to start with a $100 deposit and fire a couple of MTTs and see how it goes. I'm going to be going through hand histories here as well as talking about mindset and resisting urges.

Like I said, you guys might consider me a degen, and yes I do have degen tendencies, but I want to control them. I know I'm never going to be a successful player if I don't.

I live with my younger brother and he also plays on the site. He's a super sharp kid and loves the game and also gone on a sick heater this month - started with an initial deposit of $200 and ran it up to $8k playing only MTT. He's the person I talk to most about the game and he's going to try and help me keep the bad habits under control.

As far as goals go, I'd like to make 20k this summer playing strictly MTTs. I don't have a poker roll per-say since as I mentioned perviously, I have a high paying job and can deposit money as needed, but Ideally, i'd like to accomplish this without having to deposit more than 1k more moving forward.

There's lots of great value tournaments on the site over the summer and I'm hoping that with the continued coaching, mental discipline and focus, as well as other studying that I can achieve this goal.

That's all, will update once the weekend is over and I've gotten a chance to play some more MTTs.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

Not a bad weekend, but nothing significant.

Made an FT for my last tournament of the day which was a $7, 1.5k GTD - prize pool was around 4k and first was about $800 after bricking every other tournament I played

My brother also happened to be on the FT with me as we were both grinding Saturday night.

Came in 2/9 and got into a spot where I flatted KQss against a MP open. Flop was Qxxss and the opener 2x pot jammed into me. I snapped him off and he had AQ and held.

Bankroll is currently at $250 after an initial $200 deposit.

I was thinking your SN looked so familiar. Then I remember you started the LATB Harry scumbag thread lol.

Anyways, one of my closest friends struggles with the same gambool issues you do. I gotta tell you it's def a tough nut to crack. But I hope you make it.

If you gain a certain amount of money online are you going to start playing any live events? I've always been a fan of tournaments myself.

What site do you play on?

Thanks, man! Appreciate it.

I do play live events when I can, but as I mentioned, I work full time so usually when I go play, I need to take time off work. I'll probably be heading down to Parx in August for their Big Stax series, and I'm hitting AC with a few friends for July 4th weekend (mostly to party, but will mix in some 2/5 NL while I'm there).

I play on WSOP right now.

Welp.

That didn't take very long. Dusted off my roll earlier today.

Going to take a week or so off to re-evaluate. Will update once I'm back playing (probably around next weekend or so).

Any tips on resisting the urges whilst I'm away?

Played some live poker this weekend.

Went down to Sugar House for their $250, 100kGTD series.

Got in at around 11am and hopped in around 12:30 after waiting over an hour for a seat to be available.

First table draw was intersting.

25k SS and I believe I hopped in at 150/300/50

I started this hand with about 17k in chips.

MP opens to 1k, MP2 Flats.

I look down at 10 10 in the SB and 3b to 5,200

Folds around to MP2 who calls.

Flop is 367dd

I bet 4k and get piled on. I called and was up against 63cc and couldn't improve

Second bullet managed to get into a dream spot where I open and 5b shoved KK and got called by AQ and AK for the triple.

Was hovering around 100k for most of the day and three hands before we bagged up for the night, I got 1010 in against 66 to lose 1/2 of my stack.

Ended up bagging about 11bb for day two.

Come day two, I got a few shoves through and was around 14bb.

I 3b shove UTGs open with KK and get snapped off by AA for my tournament life.

Probably will be hitting up the Parx Big Stack series in August, but that's about it for live poker.