New start for Poker (hopefully career)
11-19-2016
, 03:07 AM
Hello everybody and welcome. I'm from Russia originally and now residing in USA. I played poker occasionally from 2008 and honestly lost a lot of money online at PokerStars and lately in Bovada. Hard to accept it but those times are gone and done.
I have been playing small live tourneys and 1-2$ NL and 2-5$ NL live games.
I will start from mistakes. First and foremost-Bankroll. For about 2 years I been playing on about 200$ a month bankroll. Sometimes I won and was happy and spent money freely just to find myself without it, or lost them in next sessions. Bad play. Last *big* win was when I won 6k$ by taking first place in monthly live tournament in WPB PBK. Spent them to pay off debts that I took to get my wife legalized in the USA. Since that time I was semi broke and with losses at each time I tried to play I lost my confidence.
Good things, from this forum I met Elliot Roe, great psychologist. I greatly appreciate his help with getting me back into mental shape. I was really amazed about all those bugs that we uncovered and took care in my head 
So, after some debating with myself and my wife, I decided to take 6000$ loan in the bank to spend on playing poker and improving my life in general.
Goals for this year:
Grind up in live NL Holdem 1-2$ and small Live Tournaments to pay off debt with bank
Grind up enough money or win satellite to 2017 WSOP Main Event. I really want to go and play there.
So far I spent two weekends in WPB PBK.
My first weekend was bad. I played in 2-5$ NL with people who outmaneuvered me at the table hardcore. I lost 800$. I didn't play anymore this weekend because needed to regain some comfort.
So far this friday was great. I sat down in 1-2$ NL game with 200$ cap buy in. Guys at the table were easy to read and exploit. They were mostly straightforward players except for one. So once I made a play where I raised a table to 20$ from the button with 55 with 4 people in the pot.
I hit set on the river and won about 60$. Since then IT didn't matter if I held AA and was raising to 40$. Table though that I raise out small pair and called around. That was amazing how they didn't want to remember that I switched to play only BIG pair with big raise... I didn't think it was actually possible.
After about 6 hours of play I stood up with 1245$ in chips. So total win was 1045, and net gain for 2 weekends is 245$. So far I'm impressed.
Starting next week I will hit at least 1 live tourney at weekend. They have 120$ buy in 10k guarantee on every friday @12 and then 30 buy in 20 rebuy 10k guarantee on friday at 6:30pm. Since I'm working, 90% of the time I will end up on the 30\20 tourney. I don't plan to spend more than 100 at that tourney since it has some crazy action with Turbo structure.
My main source of income would be actual cash games and some online action. Unfortunately for me I'm a bad online players as of right now. I don't get a good portion of the reads in online game and only thing that I have to rely on is bets action, which I try to improve, but not making much progress there yet.
Oh, btw. If you play online, I would recommend to try out PokerSnowie. It is great analyzing tool to see how to act for max EV in optimal game theory strategy. You might be surprised for yourself!
I have been playing small live tourneys and 1-2$ NL and 2-5$ NL live games.
I will start from mistakes. First and foremost-Bankroll. For about 2 years I been playing on about 200$ a month bankroll. Sometimes I won and was happy and spent money freely just to find myself without it, or lost them in next sessions. Bad play. Last *big* win was when I won 6k$ by taking first place in monthly live tournament in WPB PBK. Spent them to pay off debts that I took to get my wife legalized in the USA. Since that time I was semi broke and with losses at each time I tried to play I lost my confidence. Good things, from this forum I met Elliot Roe, great psychologist. I greatly appreciate his help with getting me back into mental shape. I was really amazed about all those bugs that we uncovered and took care in my head So, after some debating with myself and my wife, I decided to take 6000$ loan in the bank to spend on playing poker and improving my life in general.
Goals for this year:
Grind up in live NL Holdem 1-2$ and small Live Tournaments to pay off debt with bank
Grind up enough money or win satellite to 2017 WSOP Main Event. I really want to go and play there.
So far I spent two weekends in WPB PBK.
My first weekend was bad. I played in 2-5$ NL with people who outmaneuvered me at the table hardcore. I lost 800$. I didn't play anymore this weekend because needed to regain some comfort.
So far this friday was great. I sat down in 1-2$ NL game with 200$ cap buy in. Guys at the table were easy to read and exploit. They were mostly straightforward players except for one. So once I made a play where I raised a table to 20$ from the button with 55 with 4 people in the pot.
I hit set on the river and won about 60$. Since then IT didn't matter if I held AA and was raising to 40$. Table though that I raise out small pair and called around. That was amazing how they didn't want to remember that I switched to play only BIG pair with big raise... I didn't think it was actually possible.
After about 6 hours of play I stood up with 1245$ in chips. So total win was 1045, and net gain for 2 weekends is 245$. So far I'm impressed.
Starting next week I will hit at least 1 live tourney at weekend. They have 120$ buy in 10k guarantee on every friday @12 and then 30 buy in 20 rebuy 10k guarantee on friday at 6:30pm. Since I'm working, 90% of the time I will end up on the 30\20 tourney. I don't plan to spend more than 100 at that tourney since it has some crazy action with Turbo structure.
My main source of income would be actual cash games and some online action. Unfortunately for me I'm a bad online players as of right now. I don't get a good portion of the reads in online game and only thing that I have to rely on is bets action, which I try to improve, but not making much progress there yet.
Oh, btw. If you play online, I would recommend to try out PokerSnowie. It is great analyzing tool to see how to act for max EV in optimal game theory strategy. You might be surprised for yourself!
