Like many thousands if not millions before me I decided about 2 months ago to take a real crack at becoming a profitable online 6 Max NLHE cash player. Starting out I realized this is not going to be at all an "easy" or "fast" endeavour as so many bloggers, youtubers and authors would have you believe. There are numerous connotations besides simply "play TAG", etc and the particular challenge for me has been resetting my mindset in regards to poker to stop being results orientated and instead focus more on the process and correct decision making. As well as not thinking about the money in each pot which has been difficult coming from an MTT background.

In about 2012 I started playing MTT and SNG poker on Stars and a few other sites and after a year or so I started showing small profits thanks to some big (for me!) cashes. But after a long time of being on a seemingly never ending train to break even town I decided to stop playing poker and focus on something else. I tried the other typical "make money online" things, gambling, starting an online business, affiliate marketing, being paid a couple of $ an hour for transcription etc etc. All the while working a 9-5 job. In 2015 I decided my life needed an overhaul and I moved abroad to start a new life, still here 2 years later and still much preferring it to my old one! Anyway long story short in February this year I decided to take another crack at poker, I would like to say I have taken it more seriously this time around but as far as I recall I always did take it seriously as possible, reading books, HUD, analyzing hands, managing bankroll as best I could etc. After weighing up the types of poker I decided on NLHE 6 Max Cash because of the lower variance vs other forms, in particular MTT's, which I found somewhat mentally draining after 30 buy ins for no results etc. I settled on 6 max instead of FR because I would say I have a somewhat Aggressive playstyle and would like to be able to get a better read on opponents by playing fewer tables than I would have to play at FR to get the same sort of volume.

Before playing any poker I browsed through a lot of articles and a few books on cash hold em and winning at micro stakes and developed some standard opening charts based on what info I could glean.

I could probably ramble on a lot more with this intro but I will end it here to move into a hopefully long series of posts about my gradual improvement and progression through the micro stakes!

Opening 17k hands for the 6 max micro learning process, certainly vast improvement from the starting few thousand. A long long way to go to 8+BB/100 2nl goal

http://imgur.com/a/S2BfW

Progress, over 30k hands and over 5BB/100

Sickening zoom session got 10 BI's below EV then tilted off even more...lost 3 stacks with a set on flop vs QQ, turn Q etc etc 5 BI's or so entirely my fault, the rest just suck outs and what not. for playing so long should have just cut and run at 2 hour mark. Maybe next time. This dropped my overall bb/100 from 7.5 to 5.21, will work on my self discipline and maybe start setting an alarm every 2 hours as I totally lost track of time and the fact that my mindset/concentration was gradually slipping.

http://imgur.com/a/3iUd7

Decided to give up on fast forward poker on 888 and nl2 there as playing 50bb just feels horrible to me, going to grind my br up on stars and then take a shot at 5nl on 888 hopefully within a month or so

Sick hand just now! A win would of provided me very nearly the balance to take a stab at 5nl, cooler.

Had quite a big tilt downswing after the 5nl stabs going bad, grinding it back up before another stab.



http://imgur.com/a/ao7sh

Still slugging away slowly, not been playing nearly as much as I'd like

Hopefully coming out of a brief downswing

Not sure what my bankroll really is after withdrawing from several sites and losing track of the totals but I THINK it's $300+ now at least so probably aiming to make another $50-100 at 5nl and then make a serious bid at 10nl. Will probably also try out a new site at this point because of the bonuses available and if I am going to move to a new limit where I have no stats on any villains anyway its a great time to move and at least see what other sites are like. I plan on trying out Natural8, CoralPoker, both of which probably don't have the volume I need all day long so I will still be playing 888 and or Stars.

I have taken a couple shots at 10nl already and I seem to be able to beat it but tiny sample size still so who knows.

For the past month or so I have been doing roughly 1-2 hour of poker study per day. Which in hindsight I realise is absolutely pivotal to my progress and there is such a HUGE HUGE HUGE amount of knowledge that I still have to absorb to become a better uNL player.

I feel I have really strengthened my mental game as well as my poker theory knowledge this year already and it has seemingly been paying off at the tables, at my highest bb/100 winrate of all time now which has surpassed my 2nl winrate even!

Pumped up and ready for more improvement and looking forward to 10nl which will put me much closer to my ultimate goal of being able to beat 25nl and thereby make a decent chunk of income per month from poker!

Struggling a bit with the mental side, specifically continuing playing even when I am mentally tired. Definitely costing me a lot of buy ins and something I MUST improve before moving to 10NL. Read Jared Tendler's mental game book and written some notes on it but nothing seems to be working at least not yet.