Hey man happy to follow your progress. Will be starting a challenge like this of my own next sunday when i can start playing on Pokerstars.

Best of luck, youll beat nl50 in no time

SUCCESS! ....kind of

BR: $1,988 +256 from yesterday

Made 5 buyins at my first full day of 50nl in about 3 hours of play.

The Good: Ran well, made some really good thin value bets, extracted value well when I hit.

The Bad: Quit early while up, made some small hero calls I shouldn't have, lost focus after winning big pots/got too excited, low volume.

Quitting early is a form of tilt. I'm not playing my A-game if I can't follow through on finishing a session. My attention was slipping after having such a good session, and I was happy just closing out the tables and relaxing. Going to fix this with a mental hand history.

I'm also calling in a few spots where I shouldn't be. I have the mistaken mentality that people at 50nl are trickier, and it has caused me to make a few bad calls.

Some differences I've noticed since moving up to 50nl in the first day are that preflop aggression is a little bit higher, and I've seen regs make some good plays that I think are rare at 25nl.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I call my Sundays "Marathon Sundays." I've got nothing to do as I take off from my workouts on Sundays, so I'm going to go for 12 hours of play tomorrow in four 3-hour chunks. It's going to be tough.

Thanks man. I appreciate it Good luck to you.. I'll look out for your thread.

Subbed. Solid progress. Keep it up!

Cliffs:

-Total profit of $4,450 (90% 50nl)
-Self-discipline greatly improved
-Motivation higher than ever

Figured I would update this. Still been playing a lot, but haven't had the desire to update my thread until now.

I withdrew my roll from Bovada recently because I wasn't playing there very often anymore.

My total profit there was $1,750.

I started playing on Carbon because they had a rake race promotion, which was good for me since I don't have a life . So I mass-tabled (12-14), usually a 60/40 split of FR and 6max.

My total profit on Carbon was $2,700. $2,500 of this came from a 5-day stretch where I played 12 hours a day and made 420, 720 (biggest winning day of my career), 30, 130, and 500, +promotion money. This was all 50nl. Kind of sad that they aren't paying out on a timely basis, otherwise I'd be playing there because it's super soft.

I've started playing on WPN because of the carbon cashout problems, and so far I'm only up $50 on there. It took me a little bit to get used to the new player pool, but I'm learning a lot and beating the games in my most recent sessions. I'm positive I'm a winner in the games now.

The plan is to play a small amount of tables (6) until I've got a really good grip on the players at 50nl. I play enough to make solid rakeback and will be able to level up to a good rank.

My total profit thus far has been $4,450. My financial situation greatly depends on whether or not Carbon ever pays me, but I'll be OK in the end regardless.

More importantly, my self-discipline has been fantastic. In late march/early-mid april I was hardly putting in any volume. Since the end up April and beginning of this month I've been putting in 10-12 hours a day.

I find that 10-12 hour marathon sessions work a lot better for me than breaking it up into chunks. I usually take one small break in between just to eat, but then I'm back at it before I'm even booted from the tables. The hardest part for me was always starting a new session, so playing 2 hour sessions and taking a 1 hour break just didn't work for me. I'd always procrastinate/waste time on my 1 -hour breaks. When I play all of the hours in a row, it's smooth sailing the entire time.

That should be it for now, I'll try to post updates more frequently.

Rough day at 50nl yesterday. Couldn't have hit a flop with 6 hole cards. Finally picked up at the end.

Impressive comeback yesterday & good work overall. I can relate to much of what you've said.

Good luck

subbed, good luck

Alright I really need to update this more regularly just to keep a log of everything I'm doing.

I've been supporting myself solely with a credit card since all my money is being used as a poker bankroll. I'm finally to a point where I believe I can start making some serious money playing poker and can start paying off the card, which is huge for me.

I haven't been playing much cash lately... been playing MTT's more and more.

I've gotten second place twice in a 3k guaranteed on bovada for about $500 a piece, and on WPN I won a ticket to the 15k $109 and shipped it for $3500 this past Tuesday! Super pumped about that.

I'm super confident in my MTT game right now and it's what I'm most motivated to play at the moment.

So right now this is how my BR looks:

WPN - $400 (withdrew $3500 and am putting it on vada)
Bovada - $5500
Carbon - $3600 (trying to withdraw it all)

Total: $9,500

I think I will use the $3,600 from carbon to pay off a good chunk of my credit card.

My plan for now is to play any MTT I like from $10-$50 on Bovada and grind 4 full ring tables on the side since I can robot them.

Probably won't get back to the grind until Monday because of Father's Day, but I'm super excited for Mad Monday. Yesterday I won tickets worth $109, $60 (MM event #10), $55, and $44 with only $40 invested into the sattys, so I'll be using all of those for a solid MTT schedule on Mad Monday.

The only ones I won't be playing in are the Main Event, Second Chance, and anything under $10.

Hope all of you are doing well!

Mad Monday was a bust.. played 12-14 tournaments in total today and didn't cash a single one!

Oh well. I was playing full ring on the side and made 3-4 buyins at 50nl. I used all my tickets today on Mad Monday events, so those are now gone, except I did win another $109 ticket today.

Not sure what I'm going to play tomorrow. Not feeling the MTT's right now after a rough day, but we'll see.

Bovada Bankroll: $5,550
WPN Banroll: $400

Today's result: +40 and a 109 ticket

Subbed. Things seem to be going well for you.

Care to share any more info on the writing gigs? What kind of stuff do you write? Maybe links to articles?

I've been thinking of getting into freelance writing so would love to hear more from somebody who is already doing it. Like how do you get clients for instance?

GL.

I write mainly for a content mill called WriterAccess. Basically you submit a written piece to them and they rate you at a star level. Most people start out as a 3, and then they bump you up based on client ratings and their own ratings. The higher your star level the more you get paid. The way you get clients is to accept jobs off the open board that they post, or they find your profile via search.

Starting out you don't make too much, but once you get clients who really like your work, they keep coming back, and a lot of them will pay you more than what your star level normally gets. I was making $20-$50/hr depending on which client I was writing for.

I was writing for a guy who owned two casinos out here in AZ (attractions and things to do in AZ for people coming in for spring training), a driving school and an entrepreneurship magazine. Then there were a bunch of really random ones sprinkled in.

I haven't written anything since the beginning of March, however. It's been all poker. It's always an option for me to go back on the site and build up clientele again, but it's not something I'm interested in atm.

Poker is more fun

I'm finding myself in a bit of a slump because I haven't set any real goals in quite some time, so it's time to change that.

Last few days I've lost about $200, roll at about $5,300 on vada, $400 on WPN, and $3,600 on Carbon. Total Profit thus far is about 9k.

Goals:

-Yoga for 20 minutes every day
-Meditate 20 minutes every day
-Stick to my diet 5/7 days
-Gym every other day
-Intense poker study 1 hour/day
-Play poker at least 40 hrs/week, as many days off as I want after I reach 40 hrs in a given week. I do not have to study on days I don't play.
-In bed by midnight every night, no exceptions
-Up at 8 every morning, no exceptions
-No Facebook or forums (biggest time wasters)

Biggest goal: Reach 200nl by end of September (10k bankroll). I will hire a coach at this time.

Looking into the future: Make 100k from poker in 2016

Here's the chart I'll be using to keep track of how well I'm sticking to my daily routine. Every day I successfully complete each of them, I will make the box green; every day I fail, I will make it red. (Obv profit will just be a number)



I have a short vacation to Rocky Point Mexico from July 3-5, so those days won't count. I plan on keeping all of the boxes green up until I visit back home in WI in the middle of August (impossible to keep a routine while I'm there). Then I will come back to crushing my daily routine.

I'm also looking for other 50nl+ regs to discuss strategy with. If interested please PM me

Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables

Good day.. off to a good start on my new habits. Only thing is I didn't play very much at 4.5 hours. Dad wanted to go see Ted 2 today. It was actually pretty good and I didn't really like the first one... not really my sense of humor, but it was good.

Today was all 50nl, will hopefully have my other $3400 on vada by next week before I start playing 100nl.

Going to do some bikram yoga tomorrow. Today my yoga and meditation felt sooooo good.

For studying I went through a bunch of hands and played the handreading game on hands that went to showdown. Basically just narrowing my opponents down to a small range of hands based on the action. Did really well imo.

Feeling good.. gonna get at it tomorrow. Have a great weekend everyone

Errors:
-Went to bed 45 mins late one night
-****ty diet yesterday
-Not playing enough (played 2.5 hours yesterday and caved in to hang out with friend)

Things are going pretty well overall. Even though I lost 90 yesterday, it could have been much worse. Ran into some pretty sick coolers/setups, but that's the name of the game.

I did my first bikram yoga session yesterday. It was super intense. Was literally dripping sweat like CRAZY, and some of the postures were incredibly difficult, especially the standing ones. Feel like I did pretty well for my first time though. Had to take some breaks due to feeling nauseous so I'm going to try to take less and less breaks as time goes on.

Had my second session this morning. Really intense once again. Almost passed out by standing up too quick at one point. Probably need to drink more water.

One thing I'm noticing about myself is how much I berate myself while trying to do some of these postures. I'd say 60-75% of the time my mind was occupied by berating myself for not being able to do a lot of it and having to take breaks.

I tend to do that with anything, poker included. I'm really going to work on just doing my best, trying to improve, and letting the rest take care of itself. I know why I get upset; It's because I want to be better, I want to be one of the best in the class. That's silly to expect right away obviously, so I have to just keep working at it. I'm like a kid who wants his parents to buy him a toy and they refuse, so the boy starts crying. I'm essentially being that boy when I "cry" about not being good at yoga when I haven't done anything to deserve it.

Thinking about it that way helps me realize how pathetic it is. I can relate this to poker too because I do the same thing when I'm not winning or make a few mistakes. I expect too much of myself when I know logically that I have to put in more work if I want to get better and stop making mistakes.

Errors:

-Not playing enough

I've been very tired lately and it has left me with very little motivation to play, and so I've been slacking. I also didn't sleep very well last night. I'm not sure if it's the yoga or adjusting to my new sleep schedule, but I've really got to pick it up. It could also be because I'm not drinking enough water. I'm literally dripping sweat almost like a shower the entire time I'm doing Bikram.

I had my third Bikram yoga session this morning. I definitely did a much better job of not berating myself, and I'm getting better at a lot of the postures. I'll be going again tomorrow as well.

Met someone in my area who plays poker so we are going to have some grind sessions together eventually, so that should help with motivation and learning.

As far as playing, I feel like I'm making great decisions and am ready for 100nl. I won $200 yesterday so once I am able to deposit my $3,300 this week I'll have a $5700ish bankroll on Bovada.

Got 3rd in the 10k guarantee yesterday for 1k and 3rd in the 15k guarantee today for 1.6k.



It stings a little bit getting 3rd tonight because my final hand I lost AQ vs QJ, but I can't complain because I was dead last with 27 guys left.

Gonna have to add everything up to see what my current BR is, but it feels great to have a nice cushion now.

Hope all is well with you readers