I am living proof when it comes to Franks luck. In only my second time playing tournament poker i finished 3rd out of 80 a few yrs ago limited to about as much experience as knowing the basics . No doubt he ran good. As far as other players being nervous or in awe of the greats of the game? Its like anything else in sports. Adrenaline, goosebumps and jitterbugs are par for the course then as you get comfortable playing at the table, everything cools down and becomes second nature. If you happen to run good or take a down a few pots from the pros the confidence builds even more. If you get lucky and bust one of them,, the very next time you play against a well known pro in a future tournament the nervousness will be a thing of the past . Am i correct to assume that ? Two more quick points i want to mention. Glad you agree that playing with same opponents in future events helps a great deal. Same applies to boxing. When Ali fought Frazier the first time he had a hard time figuring him out He lost to him the first time beat him second time and by the final third fight he knew all his moves. Another point is your online play advantage over live scene. Although most pros mix it up online and live most of the recs do not. With the exception of the young breed of players, the middle aged and older rarely dabble online. Online play is like playing winter ball when MLB season has ended and the players want to gain an edge on their teammates or opponents from other teams by playing in the PR league or dominican league so they stay in shape while others relax during the winter . I assume playing online must give you an edge in live play because its more like extra batting practice in the cage since you see much more hands as opposed to live play

I had the JJ that held vs. your AQ on day 2. Nice playing with you and just to echo what you yourself said I would have never guessed this was your first bigger buy-in tourney. You seemed super comfortable and confident. Nice run in the tourney and GL in future

Thanks man! Thought you played well too. I made sure not to tell anyone I hadn't ever played a buy in this high before at least until the day was over haha. I almost just peeled BB vs your open but just decided AQs was too good to not rip it in and maybe I'd get some folds from small pairs (and not get blown off it post vs worse hands).

Dan i have online accounts with Poker stars ACR, Borgata WSOP and i think 888 . I rarely use them. I think if i play more often it might help my live game. Which accounts do you think i should stick with?

Personally given I live in New Jersey I stay away from the unregulated sites. I used to play on ACR but with the other options I simply use Stars, Party, and WSOP. All of them have their upsides and downsides but as a pro I need to get all the volume possible so I use them all.

Everyone raves about Bovada because of the super soft weak fields but my location prohibits me from playing. Ill stick with the sites you mentioned Playing online payed its dues for you the other day. Are you playing any more live events? I might buy a piece of you

" I'm not sure that what you're saying about seeing the same players on repeat being beneficial is correct. If I see you and you see me the same amount of time, then it is just going to benefit whichever one of us is better, not me because I play more. It's just going to benefit whoever uses the information better. The actual act of playing a lot might allow a good player to pick up some of the same tendencies from different players, but if I play with Paul a bunch I'm not gonna have a leg up on him because he is also playing with me for that amount of time."

You are wrong Dan. Take a player such as William Wang not a household name but a decent rec with modest earnings on hendon. Played against him in a 3k daily which is his comfort zone along with the deepstack series . He was basically running over the table 3 bet 4 bet stealing blinds, asking if he players could put higher denomination chips in front (which i agree) because some hide them in back of their stack . Towards the late stages he would get up and observe the other stacks at remaining tables and writing stuff down while floor person would find it somewhat annoying observing his patterns. He would never show down with monsters more like one overcard middle pair kinda stuff. You are at an advantage playing the bigger buy in such as main event because some of your opponents are easily recognizable where you can look them up on hendon. As far as the recs who play the daily's , the only way you can look up their stats is if you happen to stumble upon their name & photo on the borgata blog where sometimes they play a seasonal event . Bottom line when you play with same player on a repeat basis they wont be able to exploit you as much as the first time because you have a better idea on how to play against them.

Last Sunday of the Month

So I am down slightly over $2K this month coming into today. After a -$1700ish June (with incredibly low volume) I'm looking at a potential period of 2 losing months in a row! I believe this would be my first time ever (and definitely my first time since starting this thread) of losing 2 months in a row. That being said, the complete lack of volume last month means I can't take it too seriously, and with the live poker I played this month I haven't gotten a ton of online in July either. However, today is going to be a big day.

I went to a friend's birthday party yesterday and it was a great time. She has 3 different groups of friends which makes it fun to mingle with new people. She's got her friends from her childhood and high school, her friends from college (my group), and her friends from work. Everyone at the party was very cool with no one being nasty or confrontational. She has an incredible house that has a backyard that leads into the Manasquan River. My friend and I decided to be adventurous and each hopped on a paddle board (those long boards that people stand on and row while upright). We crossed the river to get to an island in the middle of it and then came back. There was lots of drinking and games and good times with friends. The night ended with my group of friends hanging out in the hot tub until about 5:30. I woke up at 1 and my roommate and I drove back home and arrived around 3. It was a nice way to take a day off.

But today we are back to the grind! I've written down 9 tournaments that I'll definitely be playing today and the total buy ins of those alone are over $1800 so today will be expensive. Hopefully we make a run in some of the good ones. I'll certainly be adding a bunch of volume in after I start busting some of those other tourneys. Some of the bigger tournaments on the schedule so far are the WSOP $500 30K, Party $215 40K, Stars $200 PKO, and Stars $400 50K (the last 2 tourneys are the end of a small series Stars put together for Stars NJ). Apart from those there are a bunch of $50s and I will be adding the $100 10Ks as my screen gains more room. Hopefully today I get back on track with some nice online results!

Just had the worst poker day of my life! Not even close actually. I've never come close to running that bad in every big spot. Whenever I have a bad poker day I tend to think about the rest of my life and I realize how things are not going the way I want them to. When you add the last 2 months of poker in there, I feel absolutely miserable. I never thought I would lose this much money in one day but here I am. Slightly over 10% of my roll in one day is pretty mind boggling and I didn't really even go out of BRM. I'm probably going to have to cut out $500s online going forward until I figure out what the formula for winning at poker is again. I watched a few of my peers and saw them get AA when others had AK late so it seems like that might be the key. When you simultaneously lose QQ to JT on Q42 and 66 to AT on AQ6 you start to realize that you have no control over a lot of this. When one of the villain's in that hand is the guy who takes great joy out of slowrolling you you are reminded that there truly is no karma in poker; scumbags win every day and that will always be how it is. It's been 2 months since I've had that good feeling of having a good day with poker, and it's been 3 months since I've felt good about anything else. It sort of feels like I'm at rock bottom right now but that's only if things start to get better at some point! Stay tuned. And hellofaplaya, go **** yourself buddy. You come in here completely rude and out of line, I decide to be professional about it and encourage you to be positive rather than telling you to **** off, and you respond by suggesting that I might be homeless someday. You will be ignored from here on out and I suggest everyone else do the same. Trolls like this feed off of people giving them attention so while I appreciate you all coming to my defense, I ask you just completely ignore this guy.

Agree, he's obv a troll and an immature guy. FYI it's your pgc and you are allowed to PM a mod and have him not allowed to post in your pgc anymore. If he continues to post in here he would then get banned. Not my place as it's not my pgc so up to you if you wanna do that or just ignore him.

Sorry to hear about the run bad, life and poker. You will be stronger for it. Gl turning it back around.

Yeah I PMed a mod maybe 12 hours ago and haven't heard back. I don't wanna be that guy who bans people from posting in my thread but it's a bit much at this point. Dude is seriously trying to argue that there are GOATs in the $70 MTTs at Bally's. And I mean whatever say what you want but then I explain things to you and how they are and you start off with "you are wrong" lol.

And thanks man I'm just in a rut and not sure what I should be doing to get out. One part of me feels like I should get away from poker for a while and another part feels like it's all I should be doing. I think with the live tournaments and other things I've been doing I've been missing out on exercise. I also haven't studied as I should and haven't been working on mental game. I lost more today than I have ever bought in for in a day before today. It was sort of a shock. AK<AQ 10 from money of a $500 MTT; KJ<88 on KJ8 at FT of another; UTG limps 13bbs, i chk T4 in BB, chk chk on KQT flop, turn is a 4 and UTG has 44--this one with 25 left in the Party 40K with 13K total up top. The list just felt infinite today of unreal hands. QQ in for last of my chips in $400 MTT vs JT runs Q42KA; literally seconds later get 66 in on AQ6sss vs the slowroller from a couple day's ago's AT no spade. Turn T river T. Just torture all day and the number at the end was larger than I ever thought I'd lose in a day (at least in the near future) and when added to everything else I realized I'm down almost 10K since that Sunday at the end of May when I made 10K. Going backward/staying neutral (however you want to look at it) makes me feel like total **** when it comes to poker, but a few months ago I'd talk to Kelsey and she'd always make me feel better. I don't have an outlet now. I need to figure out what to do when downswings hit to find--not a substitution for her because that doesn't exist--but something that will make me realize that things are going to be fine. I think when I was with her I really felt like things were going to be okay, but now I don't have much direction to point my life in. I don't have an ultimate life goal anymore and it makes me feel a bit empty about everything.

Alright enough emo **** for tonight tomorrow's a new day. A reporter is actually coming to my house. He's doing a story on NJ online poker and we did an interview over the phone a few days ago. He asked to take pictures of me playing to include in the article so we'll be doing that at some point tomorrow which should be fun. I haven't gone to bed before 6AM the last 2 nights so I might be up a bit longer but I guess I'll at least be trying to get some sleep at some point soon.

If I am guessing correctly, he is a known troll who got banned multiple times here before, i was going to suggest what tyman suggested to ban him from this thread.

Regarding running bad, i am no expert to give advise but it is part of poker, just one good week will turn things around, i always say to my friends i lose all the money i make on weekdays on sundays, they are brutal, due to the buyin and reentry you sometimes lose control. Not playing $500 for a while is good idea, i tend to keep $250 buyin as high as i go, with one reentry limit even though my bankroll can afford $500, sometimes these unlimited reentries get you as well. Please concentrate on the daily 10Ks, couple of cashes/wins on those will help get back your mindset, good luck!

Keep grinding brother. Work through this hit. Its for sure going to be tough, but hey maybe drop stakes a little to get back on track. You will dominate the 400/500 MTTs better than ever in a month or two. If you never had a bad month or two they'd call ya Fedor :P


Now study up, get more more volume at a lower ABI, and lets turn the ship around!

Thanks guys I really appreciate the encouragement. I hate to say it but my personal life is definitely affecting my poker life. Not in the sense that I'm punting stacks or anything, but the confidence is just low and so when I hit variance in the middle of sessions I just start feeling bad which is probably leading to bad decisions. Eventually it'll give, my buddy who is a very solid player offered to do some HH reviews today. Can't do it today but I'm definitely taking him up on that in the near future. I know things will turn around but I'm definitely frustrated now.

You're 24. Get a real job, play poker to supplement your income. You're getting to the age where employers are going to ask why you haven't had a job. You really can't say you played poker and couldn't hack it.

Yeah that's a rough day/couple months and even tougher when dealing with negative life stuff too. As a professional of course you'd like to be able to grind through it, but if you feel like you aren't going to be playing well then that would be a legitimate reason to take a week off or something and recharge. Everyone deals with downswings differently but generally it definitely wouldn't be a bad idea to cut out the $500 buyins and any tougher more reg filled fields and focus on some easier games for a bit even if it temporarily lowers your hourly. Then as the confidence and positive results build you can start adding stuff back in.

Not saying he should or shouldn't get a more standard job. He clearly has the skills to succeed in today's games, so only reason to leave poker full time would be if he decided he'd be happier/do better with another job. That's a personal decision so no one can really know what's right for him but him. Poker is as much of a real job as anything else though if you treat it the way you should. Sure there is some extra risk to take on without a standard paycheck, but same is true for jobs based a lot on commission/owning your own business/etc. Even a standard job with a salary is not risk free, people lose their jobs every day. Life isn't easy no matter what you do.

Now that I've got some time between family stuff (long weekend here in Canada), I was going to reply to your PM, but seeing this post when I came to check out the thread, I decided I might as well post here instead.

As per the stickies, when you see problematic posts in your thread (or others), it's best to use the Report Post feature (red triangle to the left of every post). This notifies all mods of the forum, which may get you a quicker response. And don't worry about being "that guy" - it's better we know about a troll than not, as they're usually going to be doing the same elsewhere in the forum. And even if they're not, they're spoiling your thread for others as well as you. Usually they'll be on a short leash in the same thread going forward, or sometimes we'll tell them not to post in the thread any more, as I've done here.

I turned 25 recently! I didn't take playing full time lightly and I took much longer to commit to doing so than most of my peers. I made sure to secure my degree before just hopping in, and when I had a successful first 6 months (after being a winning non-pro for years before that) I decided to take the leap and sign a 1 year lease with 2 close friends to rent a house together. This year is just a test run really. I'm just explaining because I've had dozens of other people echo your sentiment without really knowing anything about my situation or mindset. For them it came from a place of concern and a desire to help me out, and I'll assume your sentiment is the same, but I'm confident that I know what I'm doing. The downswings suck but it's all part of it. Yesterday just wasn't the best of times to take the biggest hit of my life (a hit that would have been my biggest downswing just a year ago, now being lost in a 9 hour session), but poker doesn't allow you to pick when the good or bad comes, so it's just important to be rolled for what you play. Yesterday I was playing slightly out of my BRM guidelines (though I'm sure most wouldn't see much of an issue with buying in to $500s with my BR) so it hurt more to brick it all. Such is life.

I'm not sure if it was you or someone else earlier in this thread who compared other jobs to poker, but did it in a way that made poker seem less risky than most. The idea that a company can get downsized and an employee can lose his job with no warning really stuck with me. There's risk no matter what you're doing in life; people who argue it's worse in poker are just those who are either uninformed with how it works or those who have seen loved ones get addicted to it and therefore assume that's how it must work for everyone.

Alright thanks, didn't mean to imply you were taking a long time, I was just irritated that the guy got back in here fast enough to tell me I was gonna be homeless soon. I'll make sure to make use of that feature in the future if the need arises. Thanks Bobo!

So just the photographer showed up today, he took a bunch of pictures of me and the monitors, and I am proud to announce I have changed careers and am now a male model.



On a serious note, he was a very nice guy and did a good job and I'm excited to see how the article turns out. I guess that's why the reporter and I did the interview over the phone; he knew he might not be able to make it today. I also made $60 playing 15c/30c while he was snapping the shots so that's a nice little bonus! I'll link the article here whenever it comes out.

Little punks like you have no idea what its like to go out and earn a real living working at a real job and not sitting on your ass playing with a deck of cards to make ends meet. In my day if i was to tell my folks id rather be a pro poker player than work a 9-5 grind they would have tossed my ass out of the house head first. I could see wanting to be a rock musician , a pro sports athlete but a poker player? You little internet whores have no idea how spoiled and how good you have it . Flop artist hit it right on the nostril. Go out and get a JOB feel the pain and know what its like to bust your like most Americans have over the last century I know i have (30yrs worth ) and i hated it but i had no choice because i had to put bread on the table and provide a roof over my head
You basically want an audience to sympathize with you which is why you started this thread in the first place. As soon as someone opinion is contrary to your beliefs , all of a sudden he's a troll. WTF is a troll anyway? Where i grew up that word did not exist in the English language . Is that the new slang word for hipsters growing up during the social media era? Do you take pleasure in slapping that word on anything that annoys you?

lulz, who is looking for sympathy?

your life clearly sucks and you suck at life at the same time, well done.
this is a pgc thread, meant to be a hybrid blog/challenge/goals. people run bad and good and the point is they post it all for others to follow.

to OP: something i mentioned to you earlier in your thread is realistically your daily/weekly/monthly volume is way too low. you need to get your multitasking up and get healthier volume/more tables in. the lower your volume the longer its takes in real time for you to bust a slump. just because the fields are smaller in nj doesnt mean you cant possibly see mutliple k games downsings, the math says its bound to happen regardless of how good you are. your avg buyin will most certainly drop but your monthly earnings go way up so its fine. also i noticed you occasionally playing lower buyin live events. you really should never play a live mtt for less then $300 buyin and thats assuming its a 1-2 day max duration.

Supposedly 50+ year old man that posts about farts repeatedly in other people's pgc doesn't think he should be considered a troll. You are an obnoxious person, not clever at all, and you've already been told not to post in here anymore. Reported your post, hopefully the mods will deal with you soon.

Yeah you're definitely right about this. Along with not playing a ton of games, I've been skipping too many days. I know if I run good in a few sessions I always get that motivation to grind back again, but obviously I need to find the motivation regardless of results. I'm happy with my volume so far today and hope I'm gonna be able to continue at this pace in the future. Your previous comments are what reminded me that I just have not been doing enough to really complain too much about the run bad.

Yeah, that's amazing if true. You'd think by his (supposed) age, he'd have better things to do.

Ah well. Thanks for the reports, guys - he's permabanned now. Feel free to use that button again if he's bored enough to try with another account.