Hello all,

I thought I would start a thread as a means to hold myself accountable. I know I have the skills to crush in poker but I have punted off so many 50k-100K rolls and had to rebuild it's sickening. Firstly, my BRM is horrible and I got addicted to high stakes blackjack pretty bad while living in Vegas. I will change all that and report back to this thread starting today. No more degen life for this guy.

My background: I was doing well making a living playing poker from 2013 or so onwards but also had massive swings up and down stakes because of poor BRM and monkey tilt problems. I moved to Asia in 2014. I won an APT high roller side event and my BR was at an ath. Over 100k. I punted that off. I moved back to California. I deposited $100 on Bovada. Ran that up to 3k and moved to vegas with that. I ran hot that summer and had the bankroll back at a healthy 60k or so. This was summer of 2016 and I started getting addicted to blackjack bad. I punted off another roll. I got staked and punted off money that didn't even belong to me. I still owe my former backer money and will pay him back over time. It's embarrassing to admit on a public forum. And this is a lot of personal info so a lot of people will probably figure out who I am. But, this is all part of my story and I need to be honest and hold myself accountable if I will ever grow.

So now fast forward to 2018. I'm busto again. I move in with my cousin in Florida because he agrees to back me. I play 1/2 and 1/3 at the local dog track. I win 10k the first month. Chopping it evenly so now I'm at 5k. More than enough to play 1/2 on my own. (These games are ridiculously soft) I find it easier not to gamble here than in Vegas. They don't even have blackjack at the local dog track/poker room. I feel I am finally making progress. Then I get pulled over and arrested for a 12 year old warrant.....

When I was a senior in high school. Literally the day after I turned 18, I was arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to sell and sentenced to probation. I violated but Florida didn't want to extradite me from out of state. So I fell into a sort of legal limbo where I had a warrant but they wouldn't come get me for it. Well that changed when I was pulled over in Florida lol.

All of my money went towards lawyer/legal fees. So I'm busto again. And then I get sentenced to 6 months in county jail. I serve 4.5 months. I just got out recently and am being staked again. My cousin gave me $500 and I ran it up to $2600 on ACR playing HU PLO under this sn. Obviously, very reckless. So, I'm still scared of my inner degen coming out and punting off all my money and being broke again. Hopefully, I can keep myself accountable with the help of this thread.

So I'm waiting on the cash out now and the plan is to grind it up playing 1/2 and then keep grinding higher and higher. Beating poker is not a problem. I can beat any stakes but the nosebleeds I feel like, honestly. 1/2 and 1/3 and 2/5 live and even most 5/10 are a joke live. I feel I am the best player at the table always. It's just a matter of staying disciplined and working hard and not degenning. As you can tell from my back story, that's easier said than done for me. But, $2600 should be enough for live 1/2. Yes, I'm leaving myself a slim margin for error but that's the plan. Almost 9 BI's is plenty for live.

Will post results in here. Hopefully ACR doesn't take forever and I can start grinding again. Will be playing 1/2 live and hopefully some bovada/ACR action once I've proven to myself I have the discipline to not punt off the rolls. (Punting off rolls seems way easier to do online than live for some reason) Hopefully, I won't degen and I'll grind my way back up to being a 2/5-5/10 live pro. It shouldn't take long if I stay away from gambling. If I do degen I'll post it here, though. Going to be completely open and honest in here. Feel free to post or ask any questions. Thanks for reading.

****ing sick,

we're so similar actually, I'm crusher, beat everything
but HS, also I think you might not ever be able to not degen your roll speaking from someone who's done it maybe 15 times in the past 5 years, gl gl

Thanks buddy. Maybe we can start a support group and figure this thing out ha.

I personally think it's because I'm never happy with what I've achieved and
more money is what I'm always wanting, or money fast, I can sit and grind out vs noobs and print but eventually I seek the rush of either higher stakes poker or a bit of bj or roulette, lucky I've not touched roulette or bj in a long time and it's really easy for me not to do that anymore as I'm SICK of the casinos edge, but my latest fad is PLO xD

Yeah the allure of fast money is a problem. High stakes poker/gambling is such a rush. It's like a drug. Grinding small stakes day in and day out is so tilting. The allure of playing too high or BJ is still strong. But, it must be done. We all have to start from the bottom... No gambling and use good brm and we will be alright. Sounds so easy to do when you type it out. Now just have to do in real life and make it stick

Ok just woke up. Think it would be a good idea to post a checklist of goals I want to accomplish today. And see if we can get them done. Discipline is a muscle. It's gotten weak from mindless scrolling on the internet and shot taking 3/6 short HU PLO on ACR on 2 buy ins. Time to start building that discipline muscle. Goals for today:

1) Hopefully ACR cash out comes through finally and we can play some poker

2) Theres a Brazilian jiu jitsu place right down the street from me. I've always been super interested in working out/ learning a martial art but have always been too lazy to either join/ or I will join and quit after 3-4 months tops. That changes today. We're going today boys and we're going to stick with it.

3) Go over Pt4 database for 1 hour and study and see what's up with my stats over these past 2 weeks of playing on there.

4)Limit myself to phone/internet addiction. It really is a drug. I beat this leak in jail but I find myslef slowly getting sucked back into mindless internet surfing and wasting time on nonsense when we could be improving ourselves. That also starts today. I gave myself 2 weeks to have fun after being in jail. Now it's time to get back to being self disciplined. Everything I do from now on is geared to winning more money at poker/putting time in the lab/and self improvent. I have no time to get stuck into 3-4 hour facebook/youtube holes just mindlessly scrolling through dumb ****. TIME IS OUR MOST PRECIOUS COMMODITY.

Wow Quaddeuce. Most people can only dream of having your talent of running up their BR so effortlessly.

I think Brunson once said himself, no matter if he goes broke, he's good enough to make money again through poker.

Obviously, that's not your problem. But, honestly, how many times do you want to be starting from scratch? To be begging relatives for a place to stay?

Dude, you'll only change if you change your attitude. I don't sense any real remorse or sense of recognizing that you failed!
You're obviously a great poker player but you're a failure.

Get someone like maybe Tommy Angelo to help you but you need help.
Acknowledge that first. It all starts from self awareness.

Good luck, I'll be following.
And yes, I know what you're thinking. I wish I only had half your talent!

Thanks NePeeme2008. That's good advice. I also have a few HS crusher friend who I reached out too since being out of jail. And one of the best players I know agreed to coach me/sweat seesions/ and give advice after. So maybe he will be my poker mentor and keep me in check hopefully. But, I will definitely take your advice into consideration also. Solid advice ITT. Thanks brother

I'vve been mostly live grinder last few years. I forgot how to replay hands from past sessions. I want to do a little studying. My ACR withdrawal literally just came through. So I will be playing live tonight and posting results.

But it's been so long. I can't remember how to review HHs from days past. It shows the hands u have played for the day on the screen. But after that they disappear lol.


Any help? how can I find my hands to review from a few days ago. I went to export hands and exported the session I wanted to review... But it was all in text format. And bad text format too lol, not the standard one. And there was no option to replay the hand etc...

Any help?

Never mind. I won't be playing any poker tonight. First of all, I forgot about this but it takes 1-2 business days to cash out from coinbase. Thought I remembered it being instant for some reason. Secondly, from some research a friend and I have done we are pretty sure btc will hit 7400ish before a trace back. So I placed a sell order at 7400. Make a few extra bucks that way. Why not.

So no poker updates today. But I have been working on my self discipline issues. I joined a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym today and just got back.... I'm already hooked. I'll be going 5 days a week from now on (That's how often the adult beginner classes run).

I think martial arts will be a great way to help me build self discipline and hopefully that will transfer to my poker game.

Here's a pic from my BJJ class. I know it's not poker related but my PG&C goal is to gain self discpline. So I think this fits:

getting fined for weed stuff in 2018 is so backwards. gl bro

Out of curiosity, what does your research entail? Outside of technical analysis(lol) there's no way to properly evaluate any cryptocurrency considering none have any practical applications that are currently being used in the marketplace. Most people knew nothing about equity valuation, got excited about crypto and tried to learn chart analysis, and now consider themselves more in the know than the next guy.

Anyhow, didn't mean to come off snarky just curious how you place value. My story is similar to yours but with fewer moments of success, best of luck moving forward.

It's the south. They're 20 years behind civilized society down here. But ty sir.

Not snarky at all, my man. Actually very accurate. Basically the research is me being in a group chat with the smartest crypto guys I know (mostly through poker) and then just following their advice. But, I agree with everything you said for the most part. I actually thought about that last night and canceled my limit sell order and placed a new one at 7200$. Just woke up. Andddddddd it's at 6800. RIP lol

Day 2 update (or is day 3?) whatever.

SOoo no poker again today. Still waiting on the coinbase cash out. But, my cousin does get paid tomorrow and will give me 1k towards the stake. So the bankroll part of the challenge will kick off tomorrow night.

As for the staying disciplined part of the challenge: Here is my current routine to try to build self discipline. I make my bed soon as I wake up. I take an ice cold shower (as cold as it goes). This has many proven benefits besides just trying to build the discipline muscle. I go to Jiu Jitsu (today was my second day). I get choked out by a small Filipino man. I go home. I have a tendency towards anti socialness and I've discovered in life it's all about momentum. So I try to talk to everybody I see to keep this positive momentum flowing. I force myself to hit on every girl I think is cute. My confidence and outgoing-ness are currently at an ath. I'm going to keep this positive momentum flowing. Thanks for reading fam.

Also no degenning or bad brm. So that's another win.

Edit: Also trying to limit my time on the internet. And read instead. Currently I'm reading the mental game of poker. Great book by the way. Highly recommend it.

Is that really you Op? You look like you're 15!
It's a very good thing doing the martial arts, i agree.
Always wanted to do some my self but never got around to it.
I have a sad feeling, you're going to succeed OP.
What fun will that be

Thanks my dude. I appreciate the love. Yeah that's me. I'm 30 but still look 15 somehow ha.

We just started our first session of the BR challenge. In a 1/2 table for $400. My cousin came through with a little more money than he originally told me he was going to give me. So we could go 10 BI of 300 or about 7 of the max BI (400). So we are going to throw caution in to the wind. They also have a 2/5 running, which we will definitely not play. And a 1/3 1k max BI. Which we may play depending on a variety of factors. We are one the waiting list for 1/3 but far down so will have plenty of time to figure it out. Let's go!

Current bankroll: -$500

Lmao. So we already got stacked. Whale limps. SS makes it 5. Sb call. I'm in BB with AKo. I 3b 35. Limper calls. SSer shoves for ~100. I jam for 355. The limper whale announces **** it. I just got back from Vegas. I'm calling with a bull**** hand. Board runs out. 863A6. He flips over 65s to scoop everything haha. Oh well. Just picked up 55 while typing... wow just got in another monster pot while typing this. I make it 10 utg+1 w/ KK. Next to act shoves 47. Maniac calls. Asian lady in sb shoves for 350. Back to me I shove 400. Maniac tanks and says I have another bull**** hand but dont think I'll win this one. He folds 68s face up. KK holds and I'm back to even. Sick thing is the maniac who called 350 last hand with 56s and won and folded 68s for 400 would have flopped top pair with a gutter. But KK would have held vs him too.

So we lost out on 350 of value because of his maniacs crazy spidey senses lol

But we are now up. In for 800 and have 950 in front. This all happened in the span of one orbit lol

This is going to be one of those crazy nights

Ok one more update during the session. Hero got the maniac. Currently up 2.8k. Will post story and pics once I get home.

Welp, to call the first real day of the bankroll challenge a success would be an understatement. I walk into the local poker room/dog track and get sat at a ****ty table. I'm scouting out new tables when two middle eastern gentleman walk in. I decide to stay and see if they were any action before requesting a table change. And HOLY **** were they action.

Well, one of them was anyways. One played pretty solid. But, his buddy, OMG. This guy is the definition of a maniac. He was calling aipf shoves blind. Actually, he played the majority of his hands blind. He wouldn't look at his cards unless he had to.

Anyways, he is running on GOD MODE to start. I 4b jam 400 aipf with AK. Board runs out x6xAx. he flips over 56dd lol. OK so we start off minus 400. Next hand we have vs him he opens 10 in the dark. I make it 50 with KK. Him and an asian lady both call. I forget the flop but it's XXXss. I cb and asian lady folds he c/c. Turn is a brick. I have a spr of 1 to 1 roughly at this point so I just jam when checked to. He calls. Turn is 10s. He flips over K6ss lol. So he gets us again.

Wait, that might not be the exact action because I didn't make two full rebuys. I rebought once for 400 and topped off the stack for 200 once. So we're in the game for 1k. Forget exactly how it played out but he cracked our AK and our KK and now he has a big stack. He cracks AA with A5o and has about 3k now.

Meanwhile we are slowly chipping up and our up to 1.1k when this hand happens: Asian lady straddles B for 5. Maniac makes it 15 from the BB. In the dark mind you. We wake up with AQo. I 3b to 60. Folds to asian lady and she jams for 130 I believe. Maniac calls. I 5b to 500. Maniac tanks forever and then says **** it let's gamble and jams. I snap obv with only 600 behind. Flop is beautiful Q hi. Board runs out Q10xxJ. Asian lady fist pumps on the river and flips over KJo lol. I show AQo and maniac mucks and I scoop the whole pot.

He leaves a few hands later with a bunch of black chips and goes to play pai gow. We stay out here grinding.

And continue to play good poker and run well for the rest of the night. I was in the zone. Some time off from poker can do that for you. I made all the right reads in all the right spots. I have a few other hands I can tell you guys if anyone is interested? Tomorrow, but for tonight I'm too tired to keep typing. So, I'll get to the chase. We are in for 1k and out for 4200. +3.2k in a 1/2 400 max buy in game. LOL what a sick way to start this challenge.

BRC day 1: +$3200

Edit 2: I actually have one kind of cool hand I could share 2moro if anyone is interested

Oh yeah forgot the pics.

Proof: