Hello, and welcome to my poker journey!


I have decided to stay anonymous for this thread for reasons including the obscure goals of this thread (It will make sense soon!), but I can assure you that I'm no one you've heard of. I've been an online grinder for about 5 years, full time since May 2015.

I currently play 200NL to 600NL online and occasionally travel to events where I play cash games 2/5 and up (future trip reports will to come!).

The Networks I play on include Party, Bodog, PokerStars, MPN and smaller networks for bonus unlocks. I'm just a bumhunter for the best 6max tables online. I play 3-6 tables at any given time, and the best tables that I can find.

My Results since 2015 look like this (lets be honest, you won't stick around without something interesting to look at!)

2/5
5/10
10/25



Now, onto the goals of this thread:

I'm hoping to use this thread to create a new persona as the kind of person I would like to become on and off the felt. I would like to work hard to better my tilt issues among other things. I would like to lead a more balanced lifestyle as I find it hard to be motivated in other areas when poker related stress takes over.


I have major tilt/mental game issues
I am going to be using this thread as a blog to go through my every day process as a poker player and to help me (and others) overcome what I consider to be the hardest part of poker to handle, the Mental Game.

My issues include;

Anger/Tilt
Focus
Motivation
Fear
Happiness


I've included the last one because I think it is important to find that balance in life while playing poker, so I can truly be happy and enjoy the path that I'm on.

This might sound cliche' but I am going to start studying things like meditation and I will include that aspect in this thread. On recommendation I will be starting with a book called 10% Happier (Dan Harris).


The Content Ill be posting will usually be daily results, HH reviews and graphs etc etc. Ill also look to explain my thoughts and emotions as a way to get them on paper and review/analyze them. The goal is to improve on tilt and other issues so hopefully you guys will join in on the discussion! I'm open to any and all criticism whether it be on how badly I played a hand or how I shouldn't be so upset over losing 3 buyins in a day.





"If you're healthy and you're playing cards, don't complain." - Bill Gazes on his return to the WSOP

He made this quote in a recent PokerNews interview during the 2016 WSOP and I feel it rings very true. Despite my mental game issues, things could always be much worse and that is a theme I am going to try and drive home within this thread.

He goes on to say "You're not a syrian refugee, you're not cleaning bathrooms."





In fact, if I succeed on this path to bettering myself (using this thread) I will donate $1,000 (CAD) to a charity of this thread's choice at the end of 2016.

This will be an informal goal of my own directly for this thread. It will be hard to judge otherwise, so to make it simple; if I am still posting in this thread, showing great mental game improvement in my poker journey and in life, and am still financially stable through continued poker results, I will make the donation date for January 1st, 2017.

The above paragraph will serve as requirements to accomplish this goal, and for my own sake I truly hope I achieve them but also to give a little back to those who need it more.


I'm going to end this first post here before we get a little too emotional! But other areas I would like to post about will include:

Working out
The Toronto Maple leafs (Yes, I'm Canadian)
Trip Reports to future events
Lifestyle and health discussion


If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. Otherwise I will let poker drive my content from here. Thanks for reading guys and gals!

Awesome threadstart. Looking forward to following you

nice story gl

Thanks guys!


I took the night off last night and now Ill do a little continuation about me before I get into playing for the day.



I have a long history in competitive gaming (and subsequently where most of my tilt issues were probably born) going as far back as 2000 (or 2002 even? I don't remember!)


Back then I was 12 years old playing Americas Army 1.6 among the best players in the game in CAL Main and Invite (AA never made it to CPL). It was my first experience FPS games or online gaming in general. Needless to say, I was young and I complained a lot, but nothing out of the ordinary at this point. I also dabbled in Counterstike Source and Starcraft between then and 2006.


I then got into Call of Duty (3) on Xbox 360 and ended up becoming an MLG ranked pro for Call of Duty 4 by 2007. I generally credit this era (2007-2008) for my biggest tilt and anger issues.

To say the least, it was not a nice community, full of teenage gamers who all hated each other except for their own cliches or groups of friends/teammates etc. The game was intensely competitive with literally thousands of competing teams across Gamebattles and Major League Gaming. I played two Pro Circuit Ladders on COD4 for a couple (debatable) top 25 teams. I was constantly playing against the best, some of whom are still playing COD professionally today.


Back then there was very little structure and only one true LAN competition (2008 Vegas Championships) and online cheating in the form of lag switching was rampant. During this time my anger was getting so bad during competition that it led me to quit the game. My team and I were getting so upset with eachother and ourselves that we dropped out of the Vegas Championships two months prior and at least 3 of us quit for good at that point. I was 16 at this time.



Over the next few years I generally stuck to discovering alcohol and partying with friends in my last years of highschool, but I also managed to find my way onto the number 2 ranked WarRock team (Freemium PC FPS game) but that venture didn't last long.


I moved on to University for Graphic Design while picking up a copy of Starcraft 2 (what an insanely exciting release right?!) where I made it as high as 1700 Diamond rank as a Zerg. I played with a couple pros here and there but I was nowhere even close to breaking out into the competitive scene because it was so ridiculously tough.

It got to the point where I was literally afraid to load up a 1v1 ranked match because I knew it would be 5-20 minutes of extremely intense grinding (my APM was fairly high as a zerg) and I eventually fizzled out into custom games for pure enjoyment.



This was in 2011 and around the time that I first found poker by playing a mobile app on my iPhone for free. I got hooked and got into PokerStars and eventually found myself playing 1/2 occasionally at my local casino. In fact I was sitting in there playing (long before I knew anything about poker strategy or its community) on April 15th, 2011 AKA Black Friday, where I heard two other guys talking about how all the big poker sites just got shut down my the US government. I didn't care because I had no money there nor did I understand the impact of the situation.


4 years later after dropping out of university and college multiple times I finally had the opportunity to play poker full time. I spent 4 years studying my butt off to learn poker and just like any competitive game I mentioned previously, I tried my absolute hardest to be the best player I could be.



To summarize from an emotional/mental side of things, I feel like poker was finally the thing that I broke through in and made something of myself with it. Now I think it's gone too much to my head and the effects of entitlement and mistake tilt have settled into my mindset. I've always had issues with frustation, complaining, tilt and what not as mentioned before, so you can see how that only compounds when you call the game poker and you try to make a living out of it.



Starting tonight I hope to use this thread to reach the core of my issues and help solve/relieve them. I think if this fails, including all the self help and meditation work im going to put in, I will resort to professional help (anger management persay?) and go from there.

I will never stop playing poker I can promise you that! This is my passion and truly the game I love over any other that I've logged extreme hours in.

Again, any question, feel free to drop them here!

alright sorry for the wall of text! so here's my first day since starting the thread.

Im on a bit of a nasty downswing to start this month after having a good month in june so it's a bit nerve racking. I played mostly 200nl last month but am adding in more 400 this month and soon 600 again as well.




I made a nice little comeback!


$4 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 96.4 BB
SB: 100.5 BB
Hero (BB): 133.13 BB
UTG: 100 BB
CO: 94.48 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 6 6

UTG raises to 3 BB, fold, BTN calls 3 BB, fold, Hero calls 2 BB

Flop: (9.5 BB, 3 players) 6 9 T
Hero checks, UTG bets 7 BB, BTN raises to 22 BB, Hero raises to 44.25 BB, UTG raises to 97 BB, fold, Hero calls 52.75 BB

Turn: (225.5 BB, 2 players) 4

River: (225.5 BB, 2 players) 5





This was a tough one but their ranges are still wide enough here to just gii and move on imo. utg shoving really sucks but if he ever makes the mistake of doing so with any amount of overpairs then were still totally fine EV wise, and some weaker players def will. no info on UTG but btn is a fishreg and im stacking off vs him all day.

This was early in my first session of the day and it got me a little tilted but I think I calmed myself well throughout the day and was able to log almost 5 hours despite doing a ton of house cleaning and a bit of barbequing today!



$4 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG: 106.7 BB
MP: 43.91 BB
CO: 100.25 BB
Hero (BTN): 99.65 BB
SB: 110.54 BB
BB: 149 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 4 A

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, SB calls 2.5 BB, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (9 BB, 3 players) 2 3 4
SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (9 BB, 3 players) 4
SB bets 8 BB, fold, Hero calls 8 BB

River: (25 BB, 2 players) K
SB bets 24 BB, fold

SB wins 48.25 BB



This hand was a toughy for me. villain is a whale playing like 52/25 over a short sample. My coach said he would probably raise turn, what do you guys think? villain snap pot turn and then tank pot river which and it was just super weird. kind of a big explo fold but I think im fine with it. im not usually this nitty trust me!



Unfortunately Im short on time right now so I will make another post maybe tomorrow showing my recent results and situation. its a bit of a rollercoaster