Hi everyone, I have been playing for several years live with friends and was a breakeven/slight winner online until November of last year. I began grinding with $3 left in my account on bovada after my last withdrawal from the site. Won a couple of flips and then played normal poker the rest of the way. I grinded through 5nl, 10nl and am currently playing a combination of 25 and 50nl zone and regular tables. I am up 2.5k total since the challenge and have cashed out 1.1k leaving my bankroll at $1402. My goal with this thread will be to chart my progress as a poker player and to develop poker-related goals.

My first goal will be to have a +2k month. I believe this is possible with a bit of rungood and/or putting in a large amount of hours. Second goal will be to earn enough to pay for this semester of grad school by the end of the semester ($10k). Both of these are lofty for the stakes I am currently playing but possible if I put in a lot of hours. Obviously I will move up to 100nl if my bankroll gets to a reasonable level. Here we go!

Graphs and stats incoming:
http://imgur.com/a/7ukyH

The smaller samples in the album are the results from January 2016 so far. Larger results are my all time results to date.

GL with that, bro

Played a decent amount the past few days. Down about $120 total between 25 and 50 zoom unfortunately but believe I have mostly played well. A lot of gross coolers such as running into K10 on a AQJ board when I had QQ after isoing a limper. Spent several hours studying yesterday and doing some database review. I think I am going to tighten up a bit from the cutoff and button. I had been opening 45% from the cutoff and 66% from the button. From my database review it was clear that many of the marginal hands were slight losers for me from the cutoff and button so I will be cutting them. At anonymous zoom they also don't have the advantage of altering others perceptions of me so there is no reason to play them if they are losing money. Another area I think I need to improve on is BB defense range. Defending too wide and losing more than I should. At the current pace I'm on I expect to finish with around $1200 profit for the month. With school ramping up I expect I will have to get more hours at 50 nl zoom than I did this month to have any shot at a 2k month.

Played a session tonight 4 tabling 25 and 50nl zoom. Had a pretty big night and finished up $300. Bankroll is currently at $1594 with 1200 bovada points to use. Debating at what point I will start taking shots at 100nl. I'm thinking 2.5-3k is a reasonable time. I think that as I move to higher stakes the money already seems like a lot, I don't want to be frustrated from losing a flip due to it being a large part of my bankroll. Also wondering whether I will play 100 nl zoom or regular tables. I love the volume of zoom but wouldn't be surprised if there is a massive skill jump from 50 nl zoom to 100 nl zoom just because 100 is the highest stake that regularly runs for zoom tables on bovada. Anyone here play 100 nl on bovada and can speak to this?

Past few days have been a bit of a rollercoaster. My bankroll is back down to $1311. I have had 2 major losing sessions since my last post. One of them was primarily due to horrid play on my part. Unfortunately it was probably the worst I have played in a long time. During the second losing session I played exceptionally well but ran into quite a few coolers.

Decided to have a look at my database again to look at winrate across different stakes now that I have a more reasonable number of hands at 50nl regular tables, 50nl zoom tables and 25nl zoom tables. Over 20k hands my 50nl zoom winrate is only slightly positive while my 25nl zoom winrate and 50nl regular table winrate is extremely high. As a result I think I will be dropping 50nl zoom entirely. I will play a combination of 25nl zoom and 50 nl regular tables for the foreseeable future.

My goal for improving over the next few days is to let myself make big laydowns. In my opinion, one of my strengths in poker is my hand reading skill. Yet I still let myself call versus a reg when it is fairly obvious they have hit the straight or flush based on their line and sizing when I have a set. I will be putting a sticky note next to my computer with this goal and force myself to read it when I get into a spot like this.

I am sitting at 1k profit for the month. As a result, I am going to revise my goals as they may be unobtainable for the near future. My goal for february will be 1.3k profit for the month.

Results for the month: +1.4k. Ended up starting an approximately 30k hand breakeven stretch after my first post. Over the past couple of days I finally started to pull out of it with 3 winning days in a row including +250 yesterday. I finished the month with an EV adjusted winrate of 7.2 bb/100 for 25nl zone and 7.06 for 50nl regular tables and a total of 60k hands for the month. I will be posting a graph in the coming days to chart my progress.

Updated goals for february:
-1.3k profit
-Minimum of 30k hands
-Begin making the transition to 100nl

As I will be transitioning out of zoom entirely when making the jump to 100nl I expect my hands per month to drop significantly. One option I am considering to combat this is to withdraw a portion of my bankroll and place it on ACR so that I can 4 table bovada and play another 2-6 tables on ACR. Does anyone know how the skill level compares between the two sites at 50 and 100nl?

Running absurdly hot at the moment. $600 over EV for the year so far. Will be taking a 5 buyin shot at 2.5k bankroll. Bankroll is sitting at $2036. I will start posting interesting hands in the near future as well.

Graph for January and February so far: https://gfycat.com/AstonishingCreamyAustralianfurseal

The rungood continues. I took a shot at $2200 on one NL100 table because it had 5 players that were sitting between $60-80 stacks and they all ended up all being 60/0 type players. Bankroll went up to $2500 fairly quickly and today was the most profitable day I have ever had. +527 at nl100 and also got my second royal flush ever which netted me an extra $50 (royal flush bonus on bovada).

Bankroll: $3038
Profit Goal: $1307/$1300. I will be setting a new profit goal of 2.5k for the month.
Volume: 11.5k/30k despite having many real life obligations I have had to take care of. Should easily meet this goal.

Thought I'd post an update. I moved up to 100 zoom and crushed after taking a couple coaching lessons from brad wilson. Fantastic coach by the way. He is extremely knowledgeable and excellent at conveying information to you. Easily worth the cost. Bankroll is now at 6.5k and I am taking shots at 200 zoom when it runs on bovada. Winrate since the last coaching session has been an EV of 9bb/100 at 100 zoom and over 20 at 200 and 50 zoom. The second two are definitely unsustainable but a good sign. Not a ton of volume this month but nearly at the 2k profit mark this month already.

I think that I have achieved my goal of 2k/month relatively quickly. My goals moving forward will be much more ambitious.

New goals:
5bb/100+ at 100 zoom and 200 zoom over a large sample.

Earn 5k/month playing 100 zoom, 200 zoom and 200nl regular tables.

Move up to 2 tables of 400nl and 2 tables of 200 zoom once I am sufficiently rolled.

If all continues to go well I will set an ambitious goal of funding the entire cost of my graduate program through poker by the end of the summer. Last summer I spent a great deal of time applying to scholarships for graduate school and had small amounts of success. I guess this is my way of creating my own scholarship.

If anyone is following this stop by and post. I can start posting hand histories and will answer any questions anyone might have.