Ok, here we go. My goal is to grind enough money to be able to cover plane tickets, accomodation, shopping and participation to one WSOP event in 2017.

Little background info who the hell I am and why I am doing this. I am mid 40s guy from Finland and I have been playing poker since 2005. From 2009 to 2014 I was play a lot and I had moderate success at some point.

After 2014 I have been playing a lot less partly because of my job (I have a small transport company) took more of my time and partly because the games werent exactly getting better and I was also not enjoying online poker that much anymore. There has been some periods when I wasn't playing at all excluding our weekly mixed cash game with my friends, which has been going several years.

Anyway, my friends were in WSOP last year and they are in Vegas at the moment too. I wanted to join them, but because I don't have separate roll for poker anymore, I just didn't have the guts to withdraw couple of thousand from my account and go for it.

I didn't play much at all online this year before april, but I started to feel the urge to start playing more frequently so I decided to make I challenge to myself. I have to be able to grind all the money I use in vegas next summer (excluding cash game roll) or I don't give myself permission to go. So

The money needed isn't that big that I couldn't do it anyway, but I think that if I could not win that kind of money in year, there's no point to travel to the other side of the world to play a cardgame.

The other thing which made me want to start a thread is that I have had pretty big mental leaks in my game and I hope that this thread will plug some of those leaks. My wife who also plays sometimes will read this thread and also take a weekly look at my bankroll. If I do my spewmonkey tilt session she will put me back in line.

Also I think that when you start paying more attention and track something you do, that something will usually improve.

I started to write some notes, hands and things what came to my mind in my facebook group in april, but I think this place in more suited for my writings.

So its been about two and a half months now. I am up little bit over 1k$ and I have estimated that I need ~1.5k to airfares and accomodation, 1.5k to shopping and dining and 1-2k to tournament ticket (don't know yet which WSOP event I want to play). That's a 5k total so I have almost a year left and I need to win 4k. Piece of cake?

Profit June 9: 1126$, goal 5000$

I am a guy who like to play every possible game available. My strongest game is prolly Stud hi/lo, but I enjoy every kind of split pot version of Omaha and Stud. PLO is another game I still think is making me some money and obv 8-game.

A thing which turned me to become a tournament grinder for almost three years, was that I become bored pretty easily and a steady cg grind for one game hasn't ever suited me that well. If I play an hour of let say for example PLO, I start to make mistakes, because lets face it, online 100bb cg grind is quite boring. In tournaments there are always different things in process and some tournament is in different phase than other.

But even in 2012 when I played mostly tournaments, I still played some cash in every session. Like I said in my OP I also play mixed live cash game almost weekly and I go to our local casino maybe once or twice a month. Sometimes to participate to a tournament and sometimes to play some cash.

I find tournaments a bit waste of my time nowadays. I am not good enough anymore to make very much money from those and I don't plan to study MTTs besides maybe a little number crunching. I also don't like at all the changes Stars has made to their tournaments.

So what I have been doing these past 2 and a half months is that I have been mostly playing cash games, but I either change a game after one game starts to bore me or I mix couple of different games and have one table of PLO, one table of stud hi/lo etc. I also play 8-game almost every time a launch a session. I still play some tournaments, but most of the time I have some cg side action going on too.

I had a long session yesterday (I post some hands later today) and in that session I played NLO8 and NLHE tournaments. Stud hi/lo cash, ZOOM PLO cash, PLO5 cash, PLO5 hi/lo cash and 8-game. That's a pretty typical session for me. Sometimes I add FLO8 table or two if I feel like it.

I failed to mention in OP that this challenge I all about having fun playing and to keep some score. If a dont make it, its no biggie. I don't have any illusions to become a pro in 2016 or ever. I also don't have any false thoughts about my poker skills. I think I have a good knowlegde if I am a favourite in table lineup or not. If it is a fun table I play anyway, if it isn't I change to an easier table.

One good thing about being able to play almost any game is that it makes table selecting quite easy. I had a wonderful table in PLO5 hi/lo yesterday for an hour or so, but after that two donators left and were replaced by strong regs. It was an easy decicion to leave and look for another game which I found at the superjuicy 5/10 Stud8.

I try to post some interesting or big hands from every session starting from yesterdays session.

#1 This is from the juicy 5/10 Stud8 game I mentioned in earlier post. Seat 2 is a reg who is almost overly aggressive and imo overplays his high hands. Seat 3 is known drooler. Seat 1 is unknown to me, but in the first 30 or so hands has made couple of questionable plays.

My hand pretty much plays itself, but there's couple of very optimistic plays from villains...

Poker Stars $5/$10 Limit Stud Hi/Lo $0.75 Ante - 8 players - View hand 2922921
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

3rd Street: (1.2 SB)
Seat 1: xx xx 6 ____Seat 1 completes____Seat 1 calls
Seat 2: xx xx A ____Seat 2 raises
Seat 3: xx xx T ____Seat 3 calls
Seat 4: xx xx 7 ____Seat 4 folds
Seat 5: xx xx 4 ____Seat 5 folds
Seat 6: xx xx 7 ____Seat 6 folds
Hero: 4 5 3 ___Hero brings in for $1.50___Hero calls
Seat 8: xx xx 9 ____Seat 8 folds

4th Street: (9.2 SB) (4 players)
Seat 1: xx xx 6 K ____Seat 1 calls____Seat 1 calls
Seat 2: xx xx A K ____Seat 2 bets____Seat 2 3-bets____Seat 2 calls
Seat 3: xx xx T 2 ____Seat 3 calls____Seat 3 calls____Seat 3 calls
Hero: 4 5 3 6 ___Hero raises___Hero caps!

5th Street: (12.6 BB) (4 players)
Seat 1: xx xx 6 K 4 ____Seat 1 calls
Seat 2: xx xx A K 3 ____Seat 2 bets____Seat 2 calls
Seat 3: xx xx T 2 9 ____Seat 3 calls____Seat 3 calls
Hero: 4 5 3 6 A ___Hero raises

6th Street: (20.6 BB) (4 players)
Seat 1: xx xx 6 K 4 A ____Seat 1 calls
Seat 2: xx xx A K 3 J ____Seat 2 calls
Seat 3: xx xx T 2 9 2 ____Seat 3 checks____Seat 3 calls
Hero: 4 5 3 6 A T ___Hero bets

7th Street: (24.6 BB) (4 players)
Seat 1: xx xx 6 K 4 A xx____Seat 1 calls
Seat 2: xx xx A K 3 J xx____Seat 2 calls
Seat 3: xx xx T 2 9 2 xx____Seat 3 checks____Seat 3 calls
Hero: 4 5 3 6 A T 4 ___Hero bets

Final Pot: 28.6 BB
Seat 1 mucks 8 7 6 K 4 A K
Seat 2 mucks K 3 A K 3 J 9
Seat 3 mucks 6 3 T 2 9 2 T
Hero shows 4 5 3 6 A T 4 (HI: a flush, Ace high; LO: 6,5,4,3,A)
Hero wins 14.15 BB
Hero wins 14.15 BB
(Rake: $3.00)

#2 Couldn't figure how to convert 5 Card PLO H/L hands, so I deleted the fifth card to make it work. My fifth card is 8c and Villains fifth card is 4h. Standard hand, but I LOL'ed when villain started to call me a huge whale after this. He is prolly right, but I think my boat+nut low is pretty decent holding

Didn't have huge motivation to grind tonight after playing 14h yesterday, so I already finished playing.

I only launched Big22 and 27$ Omania and busted both early. Big22 bustout hand was pretty sick. I lost 70% of my stack very early with AA pfai. Got a decent 3b spot with AKs, someone re-shoved from behind with 63s flopped trips and rivered quads

I played some NLO8 CAP on the side. I haven't played that for a long time and felt really rusty. I play some NLO8 sng's occasionally so I am not totally clueless. Obv I have some work to do if I want to play more if it later. Shoving ranges are prolly ok, but I am pretty sure that I am not calling enough.

There where one good reg at the table, who I recognize from PLO5 hi/lo tables and the rest of the players were unknown for me. Something tells me that 2 of those players aren't exactly winning a bunch in the long run. If my problem was not calling enough, those guys didn't have fold button

Some of those calls are prolly ok, I have to open odds calculator tonight and check some equitys, but they were calling so damn much that it can't be good.

#3 QJ67ds seems quite loose to me, but he snapped it.







4# This was the other loose caller. This looks bad to me and he is not even closing the action. Allthough he might actually be in better shape if there's another caller and it goes three way.








#5 Caller from the first one makes another snapcall








#6 Now they are both calling. The first caller has to be on tilt at this point. He was down 6-7 bins and that shows. Overcaller has a legitimate hand this time









I run extremely good and won almost 150$ in that table and finished 8-game at +100$, so after tournament buy-ins I managed to finish this short session about 200$ on the positive side. Its relatively easy to play when you run good

June 10: +232$, total profit 1358$. Goal 5000$ (In the OP the june 9th profit is profit from the start of april, not yesterdays result)

Looks like I am too stupid to even read a calendar. Its 10th of june today, not yesterday

Started playing tournaments at 11am today and played a bit over 5 hours. Normal early tournament schedule (Big11, Big16.50, Big22, BB11, 4.4 Omania and some NLO8 and NLHE hypers).

I Didn't play very well and lost couple of crucial flips, so it was less than a surprise that I didn't cash anything big. I was close to get a ticket from Big162 satellite, but busted that one couple spots too early. Managed to crawl in to the money in Big16.50, got some bountys from BB11 and finished 21th in one of the hypers (NLHE 11$).

#7 Not sure about the bust-out hand on that hyper. Villain from BB seemed like a donk, so I thought that its very possibe that he will do something stupid if I c-bet and I planned to call it off. Well live and learn. Winning that would have made a deep run quite possible.








Won some medium sized pots in PLO5 hi/lo, but games were surprisingly passive today and I think I were all-in only once and that was a split pot.

Managed to turn my session in the green because of the cash games, which is always nice, but all in all the whole session was pretty boring. Just mindless grind. I have to play better in the future. I was autopiloting too much. There were some good spots to make a bluff or valuebet thin, but I chickened out just to see the hand range I was expecing to see.

I plan to take tomorrow of and maybe play some cash in sunday. Can't lauch a big tourney session, because I have some important work stuff on monday.

My goal is the grind a lot in next two weeks. After that its vacation time and I will be in Thailand and Malesia about three weeks, so no poker at all in vacation.

I have 4k VPPs so far this months, so I prolly will be a platinium star next month. That would be my first platinium star status after 2014.

June 10th + 49$, total profit 1407$, goal 5000$

I don't know if anyone is actually reading this, but I wish a nice weekend to everyone!

Decided to play a little after all. Summer in Finland didn't co-operate with my plans. Its 14 Celsius and cloudy, so no outdoor activies for us. Damn I hope it gets warmer. May was excellent, but first ten days of june the weather has been pretty bad.

No hands to post today. I played about 700 hands of PLO z25$. No big pots or out of ordinary plays either from me or any villain. Couple of normal PLO flips where I had a bit more luck than my opponents.

June 11th +38$, total profit 1445$, goal 5000$.

Sunday, bloody sunday!

Played a bit over 10h and I don't think I was in green at any point. Spent about 200$ in satellites and bricked them all. Run pretty horrible in CG, but "luckily" I was able to bubble FT twice in MTT's, so I ended losing only a bit over 100$

I didn't mark any hand while playing, so I have to browse through HH's and look if there are any interesting hands. Most of the CG volume was PLO5 hi/lo. It was nice to see lots of new faces in those tables and the action was pretty good.

June 12th -142$, total profit 1303$, goal 5000$