Hi,

For a little background - I have been playing poker for 8 years now, on and off.
Started live in penny homegames and got hooked pretty fast, started to study the game, etc. Eventually I progressed to online poker about 4 years ago.
Due to some life swings in last few years I have not been able to play consistently entire 8 years and keep up with game. But recently I have been trying to become a proven winning player very hard. It's not working out though. I am lifetime small winner live, and several thousand dollars down online.
I have leaks in my game, but I believe that real problems are focus, discipline and tilt. I have never been able to consistently stick to one game, even if it was a very profitable one. I have played SNGs, MTTs, cash, ZOOM, hypers, you name it. I have done well in micro cash and SNGs, but I would always blast my money somewhere else or just jump up the stakes. And I am simply fed up with losing my money.

So I have decided to have one last chance to make something happen in online poker. To be precise, I want to prove to myself, that I can be a winner over decent sample. I will be playing $3.50 Fifty50 SNGs on Stars, 1k games. Over this amount I feel I should have a good idea about the level of my skill. Should I end up with a loss, I will stop attempting to play online seriously and maybe occasionaly play just some MTT to try and luck out and ship it...

So the plan is 1k games over next 2 months, which is until 1st of October. The reason for small volume is that I have a full time job, sometimes working 6 days per week. I have a small roll of 30 BI and if I bust that, I am done.
Target is to complete the 1k games at 30% ROI, which works out to $1050. If I bust BR or complete below the target ROI, I am done. But I hope that it works out. I will be studying some SNG strategy and reviewing hands. I will be posting interesting spots in this thread.

If you have any suggestions please post them. I am especially interested wherever you think that 1k SNGs is a good sample and if 30% ROI is good goal.

Ok, going to start now, wish me luck...

here is first update

games played 10/1000 1% completed
ROI 15.8% 30% target ROI

Gl mate

How many tables do you play at once?

I am having trouble with putting in the volume, 3 tabled now, want to increase it to 6. I think that is about my optimal amount of games at once. Once I have like 12, I start making substandard decisions.

Just had a spot that I am quite unsure of...
7 left, 5 paying ( $3.50 Fifty50 ). I have 99 UTG + 1, 15BBs effective, can I really raise here and then fold to 3bet? Feels wrong to me, but I still folded. Oh, and villain was a random.
I am not using hud on this PC, so that's why I am not posting HHs, or converted hands.

So far my discipline and mental game has been perfect. Let's just hope I won't be playing 50NL ZOOM tomorrow...

Another spot...

Unknown villain limps in EP, I raise to 3x with effective stacks of 50 BBs in MP, everybody else folds and villain calls.
Flop As8s5h villain checks, I bet 155 into 245 pot, villain calls
Turn 3d both check
River 4c pot is 555, villain bets 286, I call



Until the turn I think it's a standard play since I hate limping pre. On the turn I check, since I am not getting called by many worse hands apart from flushdraw with no pair and I still have some equity. When I hit set OTR and he bets half pot I feel like I definitely should be raising here for value, but I didn't think about it for long enough and just called in case he had some sets or weird A2 or something. Feels way too tight though...

I have intended to play only $3.50 Fifty50s but since I am also getting StarCoins for playing, I will be using those to satellite or buy into some MTTs. Might earn some extra cash. Or I might just use them to get cash rebates. I will be posting current BR vs starting BR so if numbers don't exactly add up, then that money has come from points.

update...

games played 40/1000 4% completed
ROI 9.7% v 30% target ROI

I am really struggling to put in the volume. Like I mentioned before, I work full time, so it's not easy to find times when I am not tired and I feel that I would play my A game. Also my ROI seems to be decreasing so far, which is not a good sign.
However, I have set myself 1k games to complete, so I will wait and see what my ROI is then.

Starting BR $105
Current BR $124.81

So I just went and dropped a bi on 10NL. **** knows why, when I know, that only thing that I should be playing is SNGs...
So angry at myself for doing this ****