First and foremost I hope all of my readers and their friends and their families had a very very very Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all had an absolutely great day.

So where do we stand on the half action stake. It began on October 28th so one full month was completed at the conclusion of yesterday's play and at its conclusion the account balance stood at $499.46. All initial investment money has been withdrawn so we are in fact playing on just the profits so there are $499.46 in total earnings going into today. These are some of the highlights that I have been able to accomplish in the first full 30 days.


$3 Deepstack Rebuy $800 Gtd / 4th of 143 / $94.14

$5 Freezeout / 1st of 19 / $43.22

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $350 Gtd / 4th of 80 / $49.53

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $350 Gtd / 6th of 117 / $43.69

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $400 Gtd / 3rd of 64 / $62.81

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $400 Gtd / 5th of 86 / $50.88

$20 KO $500 Gtd / 4th of 63 / $127.33

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $400 Gtd / 5th of 86 / $50.88

$5 Freezeout / 1st of 23 / $52.32

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $350 Gtd / 1st of 78 / $172.80

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $350 Gtd / 3rd of 76 / $65.84

$5 Freezeout / 1st of 34 / $61.88

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $800 Gtd / 3rd of 133 / $101.57

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $350 Gtd / 1st of 79 / $178.54

$3 Deepstack Rebuy $400 Gtd / 2nd of 78 / $120.66

$5 Deepstack Rebuy $500 Gtd / 5th of 72 / $79.67


Total earnings from multi-table tournaments online were approximately $740. All of these earnings were from tournaments that cost from $5 to $6. I must now see how the next month goes because if the next month playing $5 and $6 buy-ins produces similar results then I'm going to have to really think things over about my current goals. I mean if I can make $700 a month playing $5 and $6 buyins, how much will I be able to make when I'm playing the $10 rebuys on a regular basis and would playing online produce more money on a monthly basis then playing A month's worth of $65 tournaments at the Golden Nugget.

That's something I need to bring you up-to-date on as I've been rethinking the Sam's Town plan because the best blind structure tournament for me in this town that are less than a $120 buyin are without a doubt at the Golden Nugget. However in order to play those I would have to be spending $65 per tournament which would require an additional $1000 in online earnings to try a month of those, but their slower climbing blind structure are an almost perfect fit for someone with my playing style. Slow, patient, with tempered aggression. An example in the differing blind approach between the two casinos or any other casino for that matter at level 7 a tournament will be at 500/1000 blinds, but at the Golden Nugget you won't hit those 500/1000 blinds until Level 10 not to mention the Golden Nugget has 10,000 starting chips in their $65 tournaments as opposed to the max that I can get over at Sam's Town which is $7500. All of these things have to be taken into consideration when deciding just what live approach I'm going to take. Do I need to grind online until I am rolled for $120 and $240 tournaments as opposed to $65 tournaments. Can I make more in a month online playing $5, $6, $20 tournaments than I can playing $65 tournaments live. The other question is does it really matter. I mean let's face it I play poker full-time and I live in Las Vegas even if online can produce more earnings there is no way I see myself staying inside on a daily basis grinding online if I could be grinding live. Yes, the money could be important, but it would have to be a substantial significant increase being made online than being made alive in order to keep me inside.

So for all intents and purposes we're at $500 in earnings going into today and $500 is the magic dividing line in my mind. When I began play today and I began my day at 12 noon with the $3 $350 guaranteed deep stack rebuy, if by 6 p.m. I'm showing a profit then I will be playing and start to play the $10 rebuys which will be a $20 total investment. I probably mentioned this before but I approach rebuys in a very unorthodox manner in that I am sure many of my readers will look at this and say are you out of your mind, but I do the initial buy-in and then I do the immediately rebuy to start with a double stack and that is all. I will not do the add-on, and if I get knocked out in the tournament within the rebuy period I do not rebuy any further I just decide that tournament was not for me and I move on to the next one. I know many people are going to criticize this method of doing things, but to me this is what has led to the profits that I have earned thus far. Allowing my opponents to be the ones to build up the prize pool and not myself.

I am very insistent about this approach and will not change it as I personally feel it is the best approach and I know there's going to be readers that say that I should take the addon but when I was in a half action stake previously with ManInBlack it turned out that the additional cost of the add-on because I was doing the initial entry, rebuy and add-on over I believe it was 20 tournaments affected our profits by at least $60 and I have come to learn that the initial entry and the immediate rebuy is the absolute best way to go although as I said many will disagree with that I'm sure.

So pretty much I have decided that the Sam's Town tournaments are out even when I hit my monetary goal which will now have to be increased by an additional $1000. I will instead, be grinding live, when the time comes, the $65 tournaments at the Golden Nugget which works out better for me because I love being down on the Fremont Street Experience. Just so many things to do, so many things to see, so many lunatics in and out of that area I love it, but the question is going to be will the $65 at the Golden Nugget provide more or less profits then grinding online especially when I start grinding the $10 tebuys for a total cost of $20 per tournament not to mention as the bankroll rises adding in the $20 deepstack at 4:45 p.m. and the $20 knockout at 9:30 p.m. and potentially the $20 Midnight Madness in which all of these tournaments could produce hundreds and thousands of dollars in earnings.

I'm on a first things first situation right now. $720 dollars in online MTT earnings in the first 3O days and now we see how much the earnings are going to be over the next 30 days and we also see if I can start grinding the $10 rebuys on a steady basis that will also give us a better viee as to what the earnings will be for the second 30 day timeframe if there are any earnings at all. Perhaps I'm ready for a deep cold run who the hell knows. Any poker player reading this, specifically any tournament player reading this entry right now knows the swings that we can go through in tournament play although I'm absolutely convinced they are much less so than cash games but that's a discussion for another time, and quite frankly I'm ready for anything.

That's going to wrap this one up. Got knocked out early in the $3 deepstack rebuy and am currently playing a small $5 freezeout in which I play usually at least three of these a day. Assuming the Golden Nugget goal is in fact the way that I'm going to be going the new monetary goal is up a grand to $4000. Three grand for the live play plus $1,000 in reserve. Whichever way poker destiny will take me on this I'm going to find out as the days pass, as each session is completed, as each week is done, so in the meantime it's just time to continue the grind. Take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $249.73
Goal: $4000
Progress: 6%

Saturday it looked like we would take our first rather significant loss as I was in for tournament buy-ins in the neighborhood of $100 but a 4th place finish in the $10 Deepstack Rebuy for $151 turned a potential $100 loss into a $50 profit for the day. We ended the day with total earnings of $752.36 with $50 of that being held offline for reasons that I will make clear shortly. With just over $700 available and it was done the previous day as over $600 was available I have started delving into the $10 Deepstack Rebuys and which like the $3 Deepstack Rebuys I do the immediate rebuy only so it's a total cost of $20. The schedule for Sunday looked like this.

0900am: $3 DS RB $350 Gtd
1200pm: $3 DS RB $400 Gtd
0400pm: $3 DS RB $350 Gtd
0430pm: $5 DS RB $500 Gtd
0530pm: $10 DS RB $1000 Gtd
0730pm: $3 DS RB $800 Gtd
0830pm: $10 DS RB $1250 Gtd

I seem to have been in if not a cold stretch then a chilly one since I won the 12 noon $400 guaranteed $3 DS RB on Thursday for a $176 return. As I progressed through today I found myself in a 1 for 12 stretch with that one cash being the fourth place $152 return in the $1,000 guaranteed, but no other cashes. Sunday started out with me making an error which got me kicked out of the 9 a.m. when I shoved over the top on the flop with AQ top pair top kicker against an opponent who had significantly raised me on the flop, but because of my previous experiences with this particular opponent and the knowledge that they can be overly aggressive to the point of recklessness at times I let that dictate my decision when I really should have simply folded the hand. The 12 noon tournament I got knocked out when I flopped a set of fours against my opponents set of queens and I was out of the 4:30 p.m. $5 DS RB within the first hour when for the second time on Sunday I was eliminated from a tournament with a hand of three of a kind. It was a bad day dropping a solid ($75). After the completion of tournament play on Sunday the profits in the half action stake stood at a total of $677.36 with $50 offline. This coming Friday that $50 will be utilized in a live tournament at the Golden Nugget. $627 available going into Monday. Only 5 tournaments scheduled the four $3 Deepstack Rebuys and the $10 Deepstack Rebuy $1250 Gtd.

You'll notice that my current schedule of tournaments no longer contains any of the what WSOP would consider normal stack freeze-out tournaments as looking over my results for my entire playing time on WSOP utilizing PokerProLabs it is blatantly obvious that I do best in tournaments that have the most starting chips aka the rebuys in which I do the immediate rebuy for a double stack. Don't get me wrong I have done significantly well in the $1 and $2 MTTs, but those are no longer in my playlist as the available amount of money has increased.

The half action stake is tentatively scheduled to end when earnings reach $1,000. If the earnings jumped up to $1,200 as an example we would then utilize $200 as a stop loss to try to increase the earnings even further and if it fell to $1,000 we will cash out. If we turn that $1200 to say $1,500 then we would up the cash out plan to $1200 and utilize $300 in tournament buy-ins as a stop loss in an effort to increase the profits even more and so on and so on. With my half of those $1000 in earnings I would utilize that $500 to play 4 tournaments a day, the $3 Deepstack Rebuys and like I am doing now as soon as I got it up and over the $600 Mark delve right back into the $10 rebuys, but would be doing so on my own and no longer in a half action stake obviously.

Well that's going to be a wrap. I will be taking Thursday and Friday off from online poker. Thursday I have two doctors appointments in the same office that have to do with my pulmonologist and the other one is actually his brother who works at the same office who deals with sleep apnea. It turns out when I had a sleep study done a month or two ago I was told by the nurse at my doctor's office that in the first hour I stopped breathing 68 times!! Damn!! That's pretty severe so undoubtedly they are going to want to get me one of those crazy machines that you have to sleep with at night, but we will see what they say on Thursday and then of course Friday I will be playing in the 11 a.m. tournament at the Golden Nugget. Until next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $338.68
Goal: $4000
Progress: 8%

The half action stake has reached its conclusion as my friend and I decided to end it a little earlier than originally planned with the holidays coming up it seemed like a good time to cash out the earnings that I was able to accumulate. I am happy to say that during these last 6 weeks or so I was able to accumulate a grand total of just over $746 in earnings which broken down was $373.11 for each of us. Had I not attempted SNGs or online cash games or made the attempt at the two live tournaments those earnings would have been $1,000, but live and learn. $746 is still a respectable outcome.

So at this point I owe my bankroll $50 which will be paid at the beginning of January and my current available bankroll is $323 and I am now on my own with no stake involved. I will be playing 4 tournaments a day with this bankroll that being the $3 deepstack rebuy tournaments which cost me $6 each for a total daily investment of $24. When I get that bankroll up over $600 I will then return to the $10 Deepstack Rebuys in which during the course of the half action stake I ended up finishing in the money in three of them and am showing a decent profit in them.

What will happen in January is still up in the air. My friend and I may in fact do another half action stake if we each have a similar amount of money to put into this. I'm thinking that if I can work my $323 up to $500 and if he could provide the same we could start a half action stake with $1,000 upfront where the $10 rebuys would be a daily staple also too would be the Saturday $25 Super Deepstack Freezeout and possibly the Sunday $50 $3,500 Guaranteed Freezeout but we will see just what each of our financial situations are in January.

I wasn't sure if I was going to relay this but I have now gone 5 full days without any cigarettes however it should be noted that I have not gone without nicotine. I made the switch over to the Vape system 7 days ago. The first day along with the Vape I had approximately 6 or 7 cigarettes, the second day I only had three cigarettes and for the last 3 days I have had absolutely none. Some people may look at this as not really giving up a lot since I am still inhaling nicotine in the Vape system, but the Vape system, and this is according to WebMD, is probably 80% to 85% safer than smoking cigarettes. I am utilizing the juice that you add to these Vape things that is 12 milligrams of nicotine and that is actually even less nicotine than the Step 2 of the nicotine patches and I've been getting through this very well. I do not at all plan to be on the Vape system for the rest of my life and to me this is simply a tool to the ultimate goal of at some point being nicotine free. From the 12 milligram juice that you buy for The Vape system I will then cut down to 6 milligrams and then hopefully be able to be off of it permanently at some point. The only question I have is how long should I utilize the 12 milligrams before I cut down to 6 and that I am not quite sure of yet.

That's going to wrap this entry up. Hopefully I will be back on the tournaments for at least a couple of tournaments tomorrow and if not it will be a full day of all 4 on Friday and beyond. So until next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $373.11
Goal: $4000
Progress: 9%

So I took the last couple weeks of any serious poker off the end of December, played a few freerolls, some $1 tournaments a couple of twos mixed in here and there and I begin 2017 with the $10 in profits from that and the $250 deposit that was made at the end of December. With 2016 now complete, final recorded earnings were over $2,500 with $1,961 in online earnings, $573 in live profits. Add another $500 minimum in additional live earnings before I started recording those as well and I end 2016 with roughly $3,000 in total profits in poker. Every dime of that $3000, plus more, was spent during 2016. I have addressed this before and while I've always said I don't regret it obviously part of me has to. Yes, I've had a lot of fun in 2016. I've had some nights that are still a bit hazy, there has been a moderate amount of alcoholic beverage consumption during the year to say the least, hanging out with good friends, 15 hour limit cash game sessions at the Golden Nugget, hookers trying to solicit me on Freemont St at 5 in the morning, playing Blackjack, roulette, having a good time on Fremont Street with the live bands and chasing girls, and pretty much just simply had a lot of fun.

However, it can not be denied that if I had left those profits online and continued to build how fast would I have been in those $10 deepstack rebuys and how many times would I have won them?? How many times with those $10 rebuys and $25 super deepstacks would have provided hundreds of dollars in returns. I can easily see that nearly $2k in online earnings could have easily been $10k considering a $10 rebuy and $25 super deepstack is 3-5 times the stake of a $3 rebuy or $5 freeze out and I would have had the ability to play them months and months sooner to say nothing of the potential of the $50 freezeout $3,500 guaranteed that I could have been playing and the only reason, the only reason that I have been restricted to those lower buy-in tournaments for most of the year is because of the withdraws, not building up the bankroll, spending recklessly and that's why not doing that is my number one poker resolution for 2017.

The bankroll management plan that I posted in the last entry was not set in stone and the whole process was a work in progress. I decided to hit 2017 with an aggressive approach so that I am not stuck in mini stakes for an extended period of time and at the same time gives me the opportunity to take my shots on any given day at higher tournaments specifically speaking the $10 rebuys, $20 Deepstack, $25 Super Deepstack and so on, but at the same time I want to protect this starting deposit of $250 that has been made for 2017 as I intend for it to be the only deposit made this year unless I am faced with a situation where I will withdraw the entire balance for a day or two and then redeposit it because of a reload bonus of some sort.

The standard bankroll approach for tournament players is 100 buyins or 100 average buyins, but my approach is going to be a day by day 30 buyin approach. I have to be careful with this because if you take a day like Saturday under this approach, supposing I got into a very bad cold run, the amount of money lost in just a single day could add up very fast. As a typical example let's assume a typical Saturday on WSOP with a bankroll of $600. That would mean playing three $10 rebuys, a $20 Deepstack, the $25 Super Deepstack simply because it is only once a week, probably four $5 freezeouts, two $5 Deepstack Rebuys, two $2 freezeouts, and maybe six $1 tournaments during the course of the entire day and if I did not have a cash it would cost $155. That $600 bankroll could be down to $355 is in the space of a single day. This approach will undobtedly mean a yo-yo scenario of the bankroll in the short term, but at the same time it's going to allow me to climb the tournament buyins much faster.

So with the online approach settled does that transfer over to the live approach. I really fail to see why it shouldn't. If I'm utilizing a 30 buyin approach for online then utilizing a 30 buyin approach for live tournaments seems reasonable. This is not saying that it would be a full bankroll for live tournaments, but it is saying it would give me the opportunity to make a run at it, but I will only do it if I can keep roughly the same amount online. This way if I were to fail at my first trial run at the live tournaments because of an immediate cold run and a bankroll not large enough to withstand it, I would have a significant amount still remaining online to fall back on and I would only be playing live tournaments 5 days a week anyway as the weekends will be reserved for online. The extra $5 rebuy and $10 rebuy they add on the weekends plus the $25 super deepstack and $50 freezeout $3,500 guaranteed are too damn lucrative to pass up.

What all of this means is 30 buyins for the $70 tournaments at the Golden Nugget will be only $2,100, plus an equivalent amount remaining online so let's round things off and it would mean a goal of $4,000. $2000 for a live run and $2000 remaining online. This can and will be achieved much more quickly then the $7,000 goal I had talked about recently and will actually leave more money in reserve online than previously planned. To start out with all live tournaments will be played at the Golden Nugget as after looking over the structure for the 2pm $75 tournament at Treasure Island I have decided to forgo that one. Even with a $15k starting chip stack the structure at the Golden Nugget is much better for my particular style of play and if I'm looking for something to do in the middle of the day, I will jump in the 3 p.m. $50 tournament at the Golden Nugget. Yes it's only a $5k starting stack, yes it has a 34% juice, but the sheer convenience and structure of that tournament is enough to give me the edge I need and that will overcome any other negative aspects.

The 2017 starting balance is $260. Under the 2017 bankroll management plan I will be able to start out with the $1, $2, and $5 freezeouts and $3 Deepstack Rebuys and a deep cash in one of those could start 2017 off in the right direction in a big big way. A few deep cashes in succession and I could be playing $10 deepstack rebuys which pay $500 and $800 up top so fast it'll make my own head spin. Under circumstances such as that I could have that four grand in a matter of a few months. No, I do not think it will be that fast, I mean that would be asking an awful lot, but just how long do I think it will take?? I feel that this can be done in 6 months or less.


I posted a couple in the last entry but these are my resolutions both poker and personal for 2017.


1. Do not make any withdraws from the online account unless absolutely positively necessary and these would be loans only in which all loans must be paid back within 30 days. If I am unable to pay it back within 30 days the loan cannot be made.

2. Make every attempt to manage my monthly money better so that I do not have to make loans from the bankroll.

3. Play only tournaments in 2017. This is specifically for online as if I get together with some friends and they want to play some live to $2/$4. I will do that if I have the money for it, but unless it is a special circumstance like that tournament only both online and live.

4. Do not have a real cigarette in 2017. I have gone over 3 weeks since my last real cigarette and I simply want to continue that on and 2017.

5. Although I don't think it will take me the full year and if I stick to the resolutions listed above this one should be easy, but get the online account balance up to $4,000 sometime in 2017.


Well that's going to wrap this up. I have started off 2017 with a head cold actually it began a couple of days before New Year's Eve and I knew it was headed my way, but now it's full-blown. With that said my sleep schedule is so whacked I have no way of knowing if I'm going to be able to put in full poker days until this clears as I am sleeping all sorts of odd hours. I'm beginning 2017 poker today, January 1st, but it's now 3 a.m. and I've been up since I woke up from a nap earlier and I have no idea what time I'm going to be dropping off to sleep today so I'll just get in as many tournaments as I possibly can. I hope to start things off with the 8am $5 freezeout if it goes off which it does not always at that time of the morning and then the 9 a.m. $3 Deepstack Rebuy. I want to wish all of my readers a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. May you accomplish everything you want in 2017 and may happiness be your most consistent companion. As always my friends and readers, I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $260
Goal: $4000
Progress: 6%

First things first. My friend Michelle is in the hospital. Anyone that knows her knows she has certain medical issues and the last five to six weeks she has not been able to keep food down in any way, shape, or form. They've been running tests and scans on her but so far unable to figure out why. During this time she's lost at least 25 pounds. I would appreciate any prayers that anybody might want to say for her recovery. I'm over at her house where I will be staying until she gets out of the hospital so I can take care of things for her at her place until she gets back.

The start of 2017 has been completely hideous. Going into Wednesday's action, I had played roughly 43 tournaments that were not staked in any way and completely on my own dime, and I had finished in the money only once and that was winning a $1 tournament that only had 5 players in it. 2017 has started off horrendously. I didn't even come close to a cold run like this during 2016, but as we all know, it has always been said, you can run like this in tournaments........or can you??

Was this simply a bad streak of variance or was I at fault for this horrendously bad start?? I decided I better find out one way or the other before this went any further and to that end I went back over the first 43 tournaments that I played on my own dime. I looked at instances that I went out on and also hands where I lost a significant amount of chips and what I found shocked me. In 2017 I made errors that cost me a significant portion of my stack or knocked me out of the tournament completely in a total of 22 of 43 tournaments played!! After seeing this I was so disgusted with myself as a poker player I was ready to physically vomit.

How could this have happened?? What the hell form of temporary insanity came over me to start the new year?? What were these errors that I was making?? Most of them boiled down to being too aggressive, overly so, instead of utilizing the tempered aggression that proved successful in 2016. Shoving hands that were not needed to be shoved at the time, doing so with hands that virtually guaranteed me to not be ahead and a coin flip at best when it was unnecessary. A prime example of this was calling an all-in when I'm sitting on 40 or 50 big blinds in a tournament with 55 . A hand that unless your opponent has 44, 33, or 22 where I'm definitely behind or at the very best in a coin flip for my tournament life completely unnecessarily. A large degree of complete impatience on my part. There were a few instances of overvaluing hands such as AA and flopping top and bottom pair, situations where I should have known I was beat even with these large hands, but called all-ins anyway or shoved over the top of large raises, but the vast majority was going all-in preflop during times it was completely unnecessary or calling an all-in preflop very unnecessarily and/or unwisely. Essentially it was playing poker completely and utterly recklessly.

Patience has always been my key to success in tournament play. It is the thing that I absolutely pride myself on, but for some reason in 2017 I completely got off of it for the first part of 2017. I can't even begin to explain why I felt the need to take this overly aggressive approach and to be totally honest I didn't even realize I was doing it. The most likely reason this happened is because I probably tried it in a couple of situations and it was successful and subconsciously, without even thinking about it, I continued down that path. I think the thing that angers me the most is waiting over 40 tournaments and consequently over ($100+) in losses in online tournament play before I decided to go over these tournaments and see why things were going this way. I should have done it after the first 20 tournaments played hell I should have done it after the first 10. If it weren't for my earnings from being staked which adds up to just over $80 so far this year the situation, bankroll wise, would be far more worse. However, whether I waited too long or not and I already know I did, I was able to see what I was doing wrong so at least going into yesterday I would make every effort not to repeat these mistakes. This did not mean I would make any money, but if I didn't it would not be because I was continuing to repeat the mistakes that I have made to start 2017.

So I entered the action Wednesday realizing the error that I have made and determined not to repeat them and tired as hell. I did not know if I wouldn't make any money or not, but even if I didn't, it wouldn't be because of continuing to repeat errors. I only got 5 tournaments played Wednesday and I ended up finishing in the money in two of them. A fourth-place finish in the $2 rebuy for a $25.66 return and a fourth-place finish in a $5 freezeout for a $21.15 return. Earnings for the day we're a little over $20, nothing to write home about of course, but after the way things have gone I was ecstatic.

After getting a good solid 10 hours sleep Wednesday night Thursday would be a full day of tournaments on WSOP. As it turned out I ended up playing 15 tournaments on the day. It's funny because as I played during the day the situations that I realized where I had made errors popped up from time to time and I found myself almost instinctively wanting to repeat those errors. On more than one occasion when I was going to call an all-in shove by somebody with just a small pocket pair I had to stop and actually aloud to myself said what the hell are you doing?? It was actually an effort that had to be made to maintain from acting recklessly. I simply have no explanation for it. In the 15 tournaments, doing my very best not to repeat my errors, I finished in the money 3 more times which was absolutely topped off with a second-place finish in the 12 p.m. $3 deepstack rebuy $400 guaranteed which returned just over $135. In two days almost all losses were eradicated. I started 2017 with $260, made $80 in tournaments I was staked in, so I'm still down roughly $9 in others played.

I took Friday off and slept late not waking up till noon. Guess my body is needing to sleep. I then spent the afternoon and part of the evening over at the hospital with Michelle. Saturday morning I will return back to the tournament grind, and starting with a bankroll that is now up to $331. The bankroll management plan has been taking some fluctuations and I've really come down to the point where it's almost like in order to realize what my true bankroll management plan is I have to ask myself what I would do in certain situations. Let me try to explain.

Let's supposing that I made a deposit online of $150. With $150 would I play a $3 rebuy that cost $6, sure I would. Say I had made a deposit of $125 I probably wouldn't play that $3 rebuy but I would toss in a $5 tournament or 2 to see if I could get something going. Supposing I made a deposit of $500 would I see myself playing a few $10 rebuys for a total cost of $20? The answer to that would be absolutely yes. In each of these hypothetical situations that I put out I would be playing a few of these tournaments with only 25 buy-ins for it. It doesn't mean that I would go broke playing these tournaments but I would try them a few times to see if I could get something going and since this is the case it made me realize that the 25 buyin approach is pretty much the way I go. So with the bankroll of a $331 I am not yet at the comfort point to play $20 tournaments but I will be able to throw in the $5 rebuys for a total cost of $10 in these along with the $3 rebuys and $5 tournaments and mixing in the $1 and $2 MTTs as well. Hopefully I will be able to wake up in time for the 9 a.m. $3 rebuy which is going to be problematical as it is almost 2 in the morning and I can't seem to fall asleep, but we will see what happens.

That's going to be a wrap up for now. I'm still banging my head against the wall trying to come up with some logical reason why I begin 2017 down this Reckless Road but for the life of me I am at a loss to answer it. I'm also at a loss to answer is why am I instinctively wanting to do this and I'm actually having to force myself not to when the results from the two separate approaches is obvious, but whatever the reason I simply will continue on just simply trying to play the best poker I can hopefully continue on with more and more earnings. So with all that said, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $331
Goal: $5000
Progress: 7%

Pretty much the first half of January has been one struggle after another. First off I realized mistakes that I had been making and even when I figured out those mistakes the Poker Gods saw fit to put me into an immediate cold run that would make Antarctica look warm and balmy. I mean we're talking seven straight times of flopping top two and getting beat and consequently knocked out of the tournament, getting knocked out of tournaments with a flush by a higher flush three times, having AA cracked in tournaments five straight times. There are additional examples but you get the gist.

To begin 2017 in the first 108 tournaments I was stake to 14 of those tournaments in which my share of the earnings were $36.05. That left 94 tournaments that I played and paid on my own dime and to begin 2017 I had shown losses in those 94 tournaments of ($97.93.) If you recall I had wrote about eras that I discovered in 22 of approximately the first 45 tournaments played but that was still a tournament run of over 45 tournaments where I was playing my absolute a game but getting screwed left and right. It was a relatively new experience for me because I do not believe I had a run like that at all in 2016 and certainly did not in the last 3 months of 2016 when I turned for all intents and purposes to strictly tournament play. Frustration does not even begin to describe the situation.

On January 18th I played six tournaments that day and finished in the money in two of them and ended up making $22 that day. Obviously a small amount of earnings, but the way January had been running $22 seemed huge, hell any profit I made would have seemed huge at that point. The very next day I played six more tournaments on the 19th finishing two out of the six once again with earnings of $77. I had said previously on Twitter that when I busted out of this cold run it would probably explode like a volcano. Was this a sign that the volcano was rumbling a little bit. I followed up the next day losing the $9 on the day but then Saturday the 22nd, I cashed in three out of five with two second-place finishes in $5 freezeouts for $36 and $34 respectively and this was topped off with a third-place finish out of 99 Runners for $88.12 in the 4 p.m. $3 deepstack rebuy. Bam the volcano had exploded. Just under $220 in earnings in the last 26 tournaments played. Damn did it feel good to bust out like that and all of a sudden January turned itself into a winning month so far to the tune of a bankroll going into today's play of $469.14 with me now showing earnings for the month of January of $209.14.

Now let me be clear $200 in earnings in 22 days is nothing to totally celebrate I mean we're only talking just over $65 a week and I understand that, but when everything that can go wrong seems like it did go wrong in the first 94 tournaments with very very few exceptions, it is a real good feeling to turn things around and get into the positive. Someone on my Twitter tweeted that it was about a buck a tournament so was it worth the time and my immediate answer is definitely yes because it's not about what I'm making now it's about what the earnings will produce later. Because of all the spending I did of profits in 2016 I was only able to play the $10 rebuys and $20 tournaments in October and November when I was half staked because every time you win a few hundred, go have fun and spend it, and leave yourself $200 or $300 online to wash, rinse, and repeat with, you still have to play the same $2, $3, and $5 tournaments. Here we are in January, I'm now up $209 for the month and last year this would have been an immediate withdrawal and go spend the day at the Golden Nugget, but because I am keeping it right where it belongs, I am now able to play the $5 rebuys and just an additional $31 in earnings and I will be able to make some stabs at the $10 rebuys and $20 and $25 freeze-out deepstack and super deepstack tournaments and the timing of which will be 8 to 10 months earlier than it was last year. These $3 rebuys and $5 small field freeze-outs aren't going to make the significant earnings in the long run but the $10 rebuys, $20 deepstacks, and $25 super deepstacks in which these tournaments pay anywhere from $450 to up over $1,000 up top is where the real earnings will come in, but you need the small ones to create the earnings for the larger ones.

What really floors me about the beginning of January is I realize that I had made 22 errors in different tournaments that caused me to be crippled in the tournament or completely knocked out, but yet I constantly see my opponents making errors and getting rewarded for it. I can honestly say when I went back and reviewed those tournaments that not in a single instance did errors by me get rewarded. I have to actually laugh at it because I can't understand why it is this way. If my opponents get rewarded when they're making errors why wasn't I able to get rewarded a time or two. I guess actually in retrospect I'm glad I didn't get rewarded because if I had I would not have realized it was a problem, then I would not have been able to fix the problem, and I could have been making those same mistakes in tournaments three times the cost of what they were so I guess in the end it worked out for the best.

I took Sunday off and spent the day with Michelle visiting her in the hospital which she is back in the hospital again so please your prayers and thoughts are appreciated, and we spent the day watching the football games. She has a private room and it has this very long couch which has to be at least six and a half feet long and rather than go back to her place I just decided to sleep on the couch and I left early Monday morning so that I could get back to her house and back to the laptop for a full day of tournaments....... or so I thought.

I got back to Michelle's house around between 6 and 7 a.m. as I woke up at 4 a.m. and I only played 4 tournaments on Monday and took three bad beats out of the four and I was so tired that I fell asleep between 3 and 4 p.m. and did not fully wake up until 7 the next morning. Count it people that's about 15 hours of sleep. Don't even ask me why my body needed that much sleep because I do not have an answer for you, but I did wake up Tuesday morning at 7 and man did I feel refreshed and I knew Tuesday would definitely be a full day of tournaments. The 0 for 4 run on Monday cost me $19 so going into Tuesday I was exactly $50 away from being able to get back to those $10 rebuys and $20 deepstacks that were aforementioned.

Two points before I wrap this up that you may or may not have noticed. On the right side of the blog you may notice there is results for cash games which means I busted one of my New Year's resolutions not to play cash games online. The reason that I did it was at the time I was only 21 points from clearing a $10 bonus and felt by playing some cash games that day that would get me to that bonus a little bit faster, which it did and I was even able to make a small profit on it, but I have not played them since. It's the same old story I don't enjoy cash games I enjoy tournaments, but I may use them from time to time perhaps just to achieve certain goals like clearing bonuses.

The other thing you may or may not have noticed is that the goal amount has risen to $5,000 from $4,000 and there is no grandiose reason for this other than that when I do play live on a daily basis I just decided I wanted to give myself a few more buy-ins. Well that and $5000 seems like a more rounded number than $4,000. Don't have to be why it does it just does can I help it if I'm that anal-retentive lol. So anyway, when I do reach $5000 I will take $3,000 for live play and keep $2,000 in reserve for weekend online play and a return to full-time online play If the live play provides unfortunate results let's say.

That's where I'm going to wrap this entry up. I'm currently in the 9 a.m. $3 deepstack rebuy. Not doing too much in the first hour, but It didn't help that I got sat out with AA and would have flopped a set and turned a boat, but hey it's not the first time that's happened. My attention was diverted elsewhere for a few moments and I paid the price for it. I start the day with a bankroll of $450, which no matter what happens, whether or not I get up to $500 today, either way I've got some breathing room for the current tournaments that I am playing on a daily basis, so for now all is well. Take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $450.14
Goal: $5000
Progress: 9%

I have once again adjusted my bankroll management plan. I am sure I am going to get taken to task for this for changing my mind yet again, but the fact of the matter is that I have to do what is most comfortable for me. It's very easy for me to jot things on a notepad and say "Yes this sounds good, this is great, I want this aggressive bankroll approach" but then when it comes down to actual spending of those dollars I really have to go with what's most comfortable for me, the player.

Under my aggressive bankroll approach taking 25 buyin shots seemed like a good plan but then when it comes actually down to it, when it comes to me actually spending the money, I find I am not altogether comfortable spending $10 for a tournament if I only have $250 or even with a $300 bankroll. I am much more comfortable doing this if I have a $400 bankroll so because of this fact I have decided to adjust things. Go ahead, feel free to give me hell for changing my mind again, but I'm not going to do something that makes me feel uncomfortable.

$1 tournaments have been retired and will stay retired unless I was to hit a massive downswing where all of a sudden it drops my bankroll to below $100, but for $3 rebuys and $5 tournaments there is no bankroll stipulation. A bankroll above $100 and these will be played no matter what. However as I look at the higher amounts I find that I will be more comfortable playing $10 tournaments with a $400 bankroll or higher. This does not include the $10 rebuys however because those are a total cost of $20. When I say $10 I mean $5 rebuys for a total cost of $10 and the $10 6-max PLO deepstack reentry in which I only spend $10 in. For the $10 rebuys, which cost a total of $20 I'm not going to be comfortable with $400 or even $500 I can already tell so I will be waiting for $600 for those.

On the surface I realize it sounds a little weird because for $10 tournaments I'm utilizing 40 buyins yet for $20 tournaments I'm only going with 30 buyins. Doesn't really make much sense to me either, but it seems to me that it's not so much a buy-in level that I'm comfortable with , but more so a dollar amount. since there are only a maximum of five $20 tournaments a day that I would play on any particular day with $600 it would give me a full day of $20 tournaments to take a shot at them and even if I was unsuccessful still give me plenty of a comfort for $10 tournaments. The $25 super deepstack is only once a week and I feel a $700 bankroll would make me comfortable enough to add this and with a $1,000 bankroll I would then feel comfortable enough to add the $50 deepstack played each Sunday.

That's going to wrap this one up. Until I touch base next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

The first month of 2017 could be considered a success, but I guess it would depend on your definition of success. It was a winning month, not as much money as I would have liked, but is any poker player ever really totally satisfied with the earnings that they make. No matter how much it is always striving for more. Some people may look at it as greedy I look at it as competitive. Going into January 31st total earnings for the month of January were $186.02. Specific tournament results can be found by clicking the 2017 tournaments tab at the top of this blog and if you do so you will see that the $1, $2, and $5 MTTs were not entirely successful. These are the tournaments that have a starting stack of only two thousand chips and the only reason I was playing them was because I started 2017 with only a $260 bankroll and felt that I needed to include these. Turns out I shouldn't since I played a total of 85 of those particular tournaments in January and it produced a little over ($48) in losses. Even with only $260 available I should have stuck only with the $3 deepstack rebuys, but we live and we learn. I knew from 2016 the higher the starting stack the better I do, but as I said I felt with the low starting bankroll I needed to include these tournaments and that turned out to be an error. Problem with only two thousand chips or more correctly why I am able to do better with higher starting stacks I think it's two-fold. One it gives me room to maneuver, and two it helps recover from a bad beat or an unfortunate situation provided it's not an all-in situation. Quite obviously it's a lot easier to come back from a 1500 chip loss in a hand when you start with 4000 or 8000 chips rather than when you only start with 2000.

I stated what the earnings were going into January 31st because as it turned out no matter what happened on January 31st those earnings would not decrease. My good friend ManInBlack who had already staked me to one satellite for the weekly $200 tournament and was doing so for a second one decided that he wanted to invest in something and at first we were going to add three $20 tournaments to the mix. He said that he was looking to invest about $100 and I decided to add up what a full day's worth of tournaments would cost him including the satellites and it turned out it would be $124 throwing in the three $20 tournaments as well, but he was all for it so January 31st was in fact a free day for me as MIB staked me to the full day's worth of tournaments and since he was covering total cost, any earnings made would be on a 70/30 split, 30% going to me the player.

Having no idea how the 31st would go he was not too concerned even if he took a loss because the fact is in 2016 I was able to earn over $600 for him and he quite often reminds me of this fact when I feel discouraged during a stake because I've lost some of his money. He knows I take it more to heart when I lose someone else's money rather than when I lose my own and the first time he staked me this year it end up costing him $60. When I apologized for this he just looked at me and said "how much did you make for me last year??" So even when I end up costing him a few bucks he definitely does not sweat it.

He was in for $124 and for most of the day it looked pretty bad and as a matter of fact we were down ($84) on the day, but I ended up winning the $10 PLO 6Max deepstack for $143 and I finished 9th in the $10 deepstack rebuy $1,250 guaranteed for a $57 return. When it was all said and done I had earned him $50 on the day and $26.65 for my part. We decided that we are going to reinvest his $50 in the three $20 tournaments tomorrow where he will have a 70% cut of the 2K guaranteed and the $1,250 guaranteed since he will be covering those costs completely and we will be going in on the 4:45 p.m. deepstack equally for a 50-50 split in that one.


So the final tally for the monthly earnings for January 2017 were as follows.

Non Staked Tournaments: $98.40
19/145
ITM: 13.1%
ROI: 26.9%

Staked Tournaments: $62.70
Live Staked Cash Games: $44
Online Cash Games: $7.57
Promos/RB: $1
Total Earnings: $213.67

As you can see from those non staked tournament numbers things could have been better. The ROI of 26.9% is pretty low for me, but it should be noted that the ROI for deepstack tournaments was 40.2% and I think I can improve on that for February, but even if I maintained a 40% ROI for all of 2017, I would be satisfied with that.


February 2017 Goals

Tournament Played: 150
Tournament ROI: 40%
Tournament Earnings: $440


That you have it and it's a wrap up for today. Decided to sleep late today so my first tournament for today will be the 4 p.m. $3 deep stack Reba and also going to be playing those three $20 tournaments as part of the steak with MIB. Here's to hoping that February is a run well month and a minimal error committing month as well. Let's bring on the a game and let's keep the a game and ride this baby out. Until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $473.67
Goal: $5000
Progress: 9.5%

I decided to remove the initial $260 that I started this year with for a bankroll thus creating the situation where in 2017 I am playing on pure profit only. I initially was going to do this because I was considering buying a new laptop as I thought mine was starting to slow down in certain areas, as it is 2 years old, and it may have slowed down just a notch but it's still functioning perfectly well for my needs.

So instead, a couple days ago I decided to open my heart and my section of the home that I live in to a kitten from the animal shelter.........at least that was the plan going in. I fully expected to go to this animal shelter and be coming home with a kitten anywhere from three to six months old. As I was looking at all the cats and sticking my hands inside the cage this one particular black and white one grabbed onto my finger and when I tried to pull my finger back out of the cage she pulled it towards her. I think at that particular moment she decided I belonged to her. I had them open up the cage and I picked up this three year old little girl and she started hugging me. I was done for and there was no doubt about it she had to be the one that was coming home with me to a new home. Ladies and gentlemen I would like to introduce you to Diamond. She's a three-year old little girl who is maybe one of the most loving creatures I've ever run into in my entire life. She climbs up on my shoulder, she lays on my hip, lays in the crook of my arm, she's one of those cats that needs to be making contact at all times I have never seen such an affectionate creature in my whole life. There is no doubt about it she is my little girl. And what a team we make. I named her Diamond, I'm known as Flushh so together we're the diamond flush lol.

It is amazing to me how poker is filled with streaks or runs, hot runs and cold runs. After starting out February up I went into a tailspin where I had a 0 for 20 run. No matter what I did it was wrong, you know the routine. Then the day before yesterday everything switched around. I won so many coin flips that day I lost count of them all and I ended up finishing third in the 9 a.m. tournament for $69 and then taking down the 7:30 p.m. $3 deep stack rebuy $800 Gtd for $344 when I beat a field of 166 players. In one single day I went from ($10) down for the month to earnings of over $350 for the month of February.

Only played one tournament Saturday total cost $9, but no cash in it and I began action yesterday with a bankroll of $573.49, and remember this is all profits, all earnings, but it does bring up a question. Why am I only playing $3 and $10 tournaments with a bankroll of nearly $600. Am I scared of something? Am I simply employing decently correct bankroll management strategy? Is it a mixture of the two? At the beginning of this year I had stated in this very blog that I wanted to employ an aggressive bankroll management approach. I started with my $260 and he said as soon as I hit $400 I would start taking shots at the $10 rebuys which are a total cost of $20 and the 4:45 p.m. $20 deepstack. As I earned that first $160 and was in fact at a $400 bankroll, all of a sudden the thought of playing tournaments that cost $20 each was very uncomfortable to me. I mean I was fine with it right up until the point that I actually had the money to do it.

I then decided that instead of $400 I would do this with a $600 bankroll. Well I started today with a$573 and I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that even when I do hit $600 I have no intentions of playing three $20 tournaments even just taking a shot, it's not going to happen. Now I have decided on waiting until I have a $1,000 bankroll and utilizing a 50 buyin/40 buyin approach meaning I can play my $20 tournaments when I have 50 buyins for them which is $1,000 and if I drop one dollar below 40 buyins which would be dropping below $800 then I will not play them any longer until I get back up to $1,000 again.

The question I have is why am I doing this?? I was all filled with piss and vinegar at the beginning of the year, aggressive approach, going to take my shots, but then when I get the money in hand figuratively speaking, well not figuratively as it is in my account balance, but when the money is available to me everything that I thought I would be eager to do comes to a screeching halt. I'm fairly certain playing those $20 tournaments at $1,000 and stopping playing them if I dropped to $800 is going to be a comfort level but I can't swear to it. What's going to happen, and I simply going to chicken out again?? I just don't understand why I'm doing this.

I always have had a conservative bankroll approach, but I was so determined to adopt a more aggressive approach with bankroll management for 2017. Was I just fooling myself insofar as that's simply not me, not my style, or do I have an underlying fear taking what would be to me somewhat expensive losses considering those $20 tournaments are more than three times the cost of my normal $3 deepstack rebuys that I play. I'm fairly certain that I will be comfortable enough at $1,000 to start trying them, but at this point I can't swear to it. All I can do is see how I feel about it when I do have $1,000, but if anybody has any idea what may be going on here, all thoughts and opinions are always welcome.

As for yesterday I had some personal business to take care of this morning and was out and about early, but did make it back for the 12 noon tournament. I went 0 for my first five tournaments on the day, but did manage a final table 5th Place finish in the 9:30 p.m. $5 deepstack rebuy for a $57 return. Nothing huge but it did turn the day from a ($48) loss into a $10 profit and any profit is good profit.

One of the tournaments that has become part of my daily schedule when it goes off though there are times that it does not get the required minimum players to get it started is the $10 PLO 6 Max reentry. This PLO tournament is a reentry as opposed to a rebuy which means you can only reenter the tournament if you have one chip or less remaining whereas in the rebuys you can rebuy if you have 4000 chips or less remaining. It generally doesn't get all that many people, but it is a $250 guaranteed prize pool. Tonight it had 28 runners paying the top five with first place paying $148 and it has a 90-minute reentry. I did not cash in it and playing this tournament on my own dime this year I am now 0 for 11.

Being I am 0 for 11 in this PLO tournament one might think that it might be a good idea not to play it as I don't do well in it, but I did win this tournament while under a staked day. However that is only 1 cash in 12 attempts an ITM percentage of only 8% which is not good at all and would actually put me with a very small ROI had the one time I won this particular tournament been on my own dime instead of part of a stake. I have taken my fair share of bad beats in this tournament runner runners and that sort of thing, but I believe that's the very nature of PLO. I think I'm going to continue to play this particular tournament when it does go off for at least the remainder of this month then reevaluate at that time whether or not I should continue doing so. Even a full month of it is probably not enough of a sample size but if at the end of February I find myself down over $200 just for this particular tournament I think that even with a small sample size the Poker Gods might be trying to send me a message.

Another tournament I sometimes wonder if I should be playing is the 7:30 p.m. $3 deepstack rebuy, the same tournament I won a few days ago for a $344 return. I know it probably sounds like absolute Insanity to be questioning whether or not I should be playing in the tournament in which I just beat 165 opponents to take the top prize, but that is a tournament that I generally struggle in and it was the first time I had won it in 107 attempts since I have started playing on WSOP. In fact in the first 106 tries I only finished in the money 7 times. On WSOP I generally run an ITM percentage from 12%-16% which I know probably sounds small but an ROI, well at least in 2016 anyway, of approximately 60% so as you can tell my ITM percentage in that specific tournament is less than usual, but of course that specific tournament also gets over 150 entrants every time whereas the other $3 deepstack rebuys that I play generally speaking get 80 or 90. The 7:30 p.m. also has an 85 minute rebuy. Whereas the other ones only have a 55-minute rebuy. And historically I perform so much better in the 55-minute rebuy period tournaments as opposed to this 85 minute one so even though I finally did win it it really makes me wonder is it worth it. Thoughts and opinions welcome as always.

I go into today with a bankroll of $583.72 and the $5,000 goal remains unchanged although I might have to increase that by a couple of thousand because when I start playing live full-time or at least make my attempt to do so I will be doing so at the Golden Nugget with the first tournament of the day being at 11 a.m. and the other tournament that I would be playing there would be 7 p.m. so that's going to give me a lot of down time in between hanging around doing nothing. I'm thinking of simply sitting in the $2/$4 limit game in between tournaments when the time comes, but I think it would be prudent to have a separate bankroll for that. Granted it would only be filler time, but still nonetheless I wouldn't want it interfering in my live tournament bankroll. I definitely want $3,000 for the live tournament try, I want to keep another $1500 or $2000 online so if I wanted a separate limit cash game bankroll I would want it to be $1500 or $2000 so instead of a $5,000 goal that would be either a $6,000 or $7000 goal.

In a perfect world I would simply play a tournament in the afternoon, but I'm pretty strict about what I will and will not play. It would have to be a live tournament with a starting stack of at least $10k and the buyin would have to be roughly in the neighborhood of $70, and it would have to have a structure similar to the Golden Nugget tournaments and that ladies and gentlemen is not happening. In order to find a similar structure I would have to spend at least $125 per tournament and that will be too high to start out with anyway. The Golden Nugget has a $50 tournament at 3 p.m. and one could always say I could just jump into that, but that only has a $5k starting stack not to mention a 35% juice so no thanks, but I have made no decision as of yet about increasing the goal dollar amount. I may decide to keep things as they are and when the time comes only play the 11 a.m. live tournament and then head home and in the late afternoon and evening so the possibilities are still up in the air at this point. Right now I'm just concentrating on playing good poker and continuing to increase the earnings.

Well that's going to wrap this one up. Me and my new kitty, Diamond are getting along splendidly although she still is a little skittish, but it's going to take her time to get used to her surroundings. I've never seen a cat that likes to hug a human being as much as she does, but cat and owner are definitely bonding......... or is that human and owner it's always hard to keep that straight. So with that said, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $583.72
Goal: $5000
Progress: 11%

MIB and I decided to enter into half action arrangement a few days ago. The $25 super stack, the $30 $3k Gtd, three $10 deepstack rebuys, and the $20 deepstack tournament. My cost for 50% of this action was $65 then of course there were the five tournaments I played on my own dime, three of the $3 deepstack rebuys and two of the $5 deepstack rebuys for an additional $38 and lo and behold my total cost for the day was $103 and it was not looking like it was going to be a profitable day, but I pulled one out of the fire with a sixth-place finish in the $30 entry for a $234 return in essence making us fifty bucks each. Nothing like getting that base hit with runners on in the night to take the lead. A win in that one would have been the grand slam, and even though I wasn't able to accomplish that I was able to get that base hit we needed.

With the bankroll management strategy that I want in place, I am also going to utilize that plan for live play when that comes about. So for the $70 tournaments that I plan on grinding at the Golden Nugget I will start off with $3,500. I ran into a problem however in so far as what the hell am I going to do in between the 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. tournaments when the time comes. If I get knocked out of the 11 a.m. tournament in the first hour that's a long time to just sit around in a Sportsbook waiting for the 7 p.m. I've looked on poker Atlas for a possible mid afternoon tournament, but none of them has the structure set up I like the way the Golden Nugget does. The only one that comes close is the 2 p.m. $100 tournament at Caesars, but $100 will be a little higher then I want to be playing with a $3,500 bankroll.

There really is no reasonable alternative except to simply resign myself to playing the 11 a.m. tournament and then returning home and grinding the $3 and $10 deepstack rebuys, $20 deepstack freeze-out and $10 PLO, and $5 deepstack rebuy all beginning roughly at 4 p.m. The other choice would be to just stay right there at the Golden Nugget and play some $2/$4 limit Hold'em, but the thought of doing that five days a week has about as much appeal as an impacted wisdom tooth.

In March, April and May I will be depositing onto WSOP in addition to paying back the $47 I currently owe my bankroll a total of $260. This will give me an opportunity to utilize this money for poker investment purposes you might say and then in June I will withdraw that $260 add to it another hundred dollars from my June check and I will be entering into the 2017 World Series of Poker event number 25 "The Giant" which is a $365 buyin, a bracelet event, and has a 20K starting chip stack with 20 minute blind levels for day one in which they will play 18 levels or down to 10 remaining players whichever comes first and then day 2 and 3 are 40 minute blind levels. I am super excited about this and I cannot wait to experience my very first World Series of Poker bracelet event. Just being in the same casino with the greatest of the greats to say nothing of being in the same general poker area as them will be a thrill of a lifetime.

So let's get you today's update. I started the day with a total bankroll of $564 which under my bankroll management stipulations means that if I wanted to, and if they were available, I could play in a maximum of six $10 tournaments today. Of course there are not six $10 tournaments available, but you get the general drift. Two things of note. I am not giving up on the $10 6-max PLO even though I have struggled in it because what the hell, it took me a 117 tries to win the $800 guaranteed NLH deep deepstack rebuy tournament so patience is a virtue and if it first you don't succeed keep grinding it out. I also added in the 3:15 p.m. $5 two rebuy 1 addon 6 Max tournament even though they screw with the blind structure in this one, but it only amounts to getting to certain levels two levels faster than normal. I figured since I have an edge in any tournament I play it was worth it to toss this into the daily play schedule.

I met up with MIB on the Strip today so I could pay him his share of the profits from the stake which was $50 and we just hung out in a Sportsbook and chilled for a little bit and I was able to get back to the house in time for the 12 noon tournament. The previous day I had lost $44 in buy-ins, but cleared another $10 bonus so it was a loss of ($34). I was hoping I could get back to cashing today and it turned out to be a pretty good day. In the 12 noon tournament I ended up finishing 5th for a $53.28 return. The $5 two rebuy one add-on deepstack that changes the blind structure somewhat is a tournament that I have kept avoiding because of those changes in the blind structure, but decided to start playing it anyway as I mentioned before and I ended up finishing 4th in that one for a nice little return of $72.57. I finished out of the money in the 7:30 p.m. $800 guaranteed whatever and QQ into AA.

For the second day in a row I've played a $5 rebuy satellite for a total cost of $10 each day and a shot at an entry into a $200 tournament on WSOP and for the second straight day I had no fortune in that one. It does make me wonder if it's a waste of money to enter into these satellites because I mean after all my $10 is not going to return me any immediate cash only get me an entry into a bigger tournament, but what a tournament that would be if I could ever have a deep deep Run in it. You take this past weekend for example and that $200 tournament had 120 players and paid over $6000 up top. That single tournament alone could get me to my goal real fast, but I have to ask myself am I looking for a shortcut and I shouldn't be?? I'm really not sure of the answer and even if the answer is yes I'm not really sure if that's altogether a bad idea. It is $10 a day, but as I have said so many times everything is about risk verse reward and what a reward something like this could provide in one shot. The main problem I have with these satellites is they are all turbos and as has been discussed before my style of poker play is not geared toward turbos. It is for this reason that I take whether or not I'm going to play these on a day-by-day basis and make my decision as to whether or not to play them each day without planning ahead on them.

Another non cash in the $10 PLO 6 Max makes me 0 for 12 for these things in February and 0 for 15 in them on my own dime this year. I actually have played them 16 times and won one of them but that was on a stake with MIB, but on my own dime 0 for 15 this year. Part of me says give it up Flushh and another part of me says hey it took you 116 tries before you finally binked the $800 guarantee at 7:30 p.m. I believe that I am making some errors in this and I believe the error constitutes playing big draws over aggressively. You take tonight for instance with an open ended straight flush draw and an over Pair of Kings I shoved the rest of my 7000 stack on this. I believe that was an error because I was fairly certain the kings were no good although miracles do happen and the absolute seduction of these huge draws that I play aggressively and probably over aggressively is downright intoxicating and probably accounts, and this is no joke, accounts for seven or eight losses in that 0 for 12 run. Obviously I need to chill out with these things. I need to just call it down and see if I actually hit these draws then make my move because playing them hard and fast is definitely not working.

So today was a profit of $77. Bankroll at $641 total and 12.8% towards the goal of $5,000. A decent day, not a great hourly for nearly 12 hours of grimding, but the hourly will be more reasonable later on down the road. Until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: 641.85
Goal: $5000
Progress: 12.8%

Well it happened again. I realized an error or approach that I was doing was not the best positive EV and took steps to change it and those changes paid off greatly and immediately. I wrote yesterday about how I was 0 for 12 in PLO tournaments this month and I had realized what my errors were. In tonight's tournament I made sure not to repeat those mistakes and ended up taking down the $10 deepstack PLO reentry finishing 1st out of 37 for a $165 return. I then followed that up with a 5th place out of 166 finish in the $3 deepstack rebuy $800 Gtd for a $96 return. The entire day was a profit of just over $213 which I believe has been my best single day result since I started playing on WSOP and over $290 in the last 2 days. Definitely trying to ride this wave for as long as I can.

Of course my number one fan,my little kitty Diamond was railing me as close as possible lol and sharing my pillow at the same time lol. I've always loved animals and I've always had a special bond with them but it still amazes me how fast you can completely fall in love with a pet. I'm telling you this little girl had me wrapped around a little paw in the first two days.

I decided not to make any further deposits as I reported I was planning on doing Ian yesterday's entry with the exception of the money that I owe my bankroll which will be paid on March 4th. Instead for this year's World Series I am simply going to utilize my poker earnings to pay for the WSOP entry which makes more sense considering that it is simply another tournament and all part of my poker journey and besides it doesn't leave me so short as far as money left over each month. My good friend, MIB decided that he wanted to get in on the action so we will be each paying 50% of the buy-in for the World Series and along with that we are also in a 50% arrangement for the 11 a.m. tournament at the Golden Nugget on Friday, and in some $5 rebuy satellites for the $200 Weekly $20k Gtd on WSOP.

Earnings for 2017 ending tonight are now $821.78 and I am now 16% towards my $5,000 goal. Less than $180 to go to hit $1,000 and start playing the $10 rebuys and $20 deepstack on hopefully a continual daily basis. I will not come close to achieving my February goals as far as volume. I don't know what got into me when I stated in that particular post that my goal was to play in 150 tournaments this month. I must have been figuring more per day that I'm playing, but I won't come close to playing 150 tournaments in February, however my stated goal for earnings for February was $440 and for the month of February alone I am at $608.11 so I have surpassed that for now. I could hit a cold run at anytime so nothing is guaranteed as of yet, but at least for right now I have matched it and passed it and it's a great feeling.

Anyway that's going to wrap this one up period relatively short blog entry from my norm. It's after 4 a.m. so I don't see myself getting up on time for the 9 a.m. tournament, but you never know. I do have my alarm set for 8:30 a.m. so we'll see if I actually wake up or just turn it off and reset it for the noon tournament. Either way until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $821.78
Goal: $5000
Progress: 16%

I have decided to make an adjustment to my future plans. As you know my goal is $5,000 so that I can utilize approximately $3,500 for live play at the Golden Nugget each morning which would give me 50 buyins for them, and keep the remainder for online play. The Golden Nugget tournaments however have 20 minute blind levels, a fantastic blind structure, but nonetheless 20 minute blind levels, and since my playing style is best geared to the highest starting stacks and longest blind levels, I started doing a little poking around and found that I might be far better off instead of playing the 11am $70 tournament at the Golden Nugget each morning, which by the way has a 26% or 27% juice, that it might be better to play in tournaments that have a similar blind structure meaning blind levels of 1000/2000 not happening until approximately level 10, but at the same time finding tournaments that also have at least 30 minute blend levels.

After some checking, and as I am sure is blatantly obvious to anyone reading this, in order to accomplish this it's going to require a a buy-in higher than $70. It's one of those cases of you cannot have your cake and eat it too. The daily $125 tournament at 1 p.m. at the Aria Monday through Thursday is probably the best possibility. There are other higher-priced tournaments that have higher starting stacks comma but let's be reasonable about this it's starting off my daily life plan I need to keep with the price reasonable for me. This presents a few issues that need to be thought about.

First of all 50 buy-ins for a $125 tournament if I were going to do it as I was going to for the Golden Nugget tournament is $6,250 for the live tournaments alone. Just to round things off let's say another $1750 for online we are looking at a goal amount of $8,000 which is $3,000 higher than the current $5,000 goal. I am not liking this at all since the last thing in the world I want to happen is for this to take a longer than necessary.

Since these tournaments are only Monday thru Thursday perhaps if I just give it a one-month try as an example, then I would not need as much. At the end of that month I could see what the profits or losses were and then reevaluate at that time. Playing a Monday through Thursday tournament the most I would be able to play in a month is 19 of them. I rounded it off to 20 because I can always use the extra $125 for expenses of some sort, but no matter how you slice it and dice it, 20 tournaments at $125 each is $2,500. We leave another $1,500 online and lo and behold my goal amount can actually be decreased to $4000. If I wanted to give myself a two-month try then I would need $5,000 for the live game and then let's say $2,000 for online for a total of $7,000 thus increasing the goal amount by $2,000. There is no doubt in the world which one that I am choosing. New goal is $4,000. Tournament to be played will be the $125 daily at the Aria Monday through Thursday. Friday, Saturday, and Sundays will be played online.

My biggest concern about this plan is undoubtedly the Aria tournament probably gets significantly more players than the Golden Nugget one does so cashing in it could be more difficult, but then again online, where the competition is more difficult, I am facing fields of over 75 almost each and every tournament and I'm killing it as far as ROI goes so I'm just going to hope that even if I don't start out on a heater hopefully I don't start out on an ice cold run. Even if I were to lose the entire $2500, let's say I went 0 for 19 in that first month, I would then simply realized that I need more buy-ins and a longer testing period, perhaps two months, and if that didn't work then it would be three months and I will keep doing this until it works. If I need to reevaluate and try again I will simply earn the money online and then try again and again and again for as long as it takes.

Today was a good day on the tournament tables. The previous day was a small loss but I had broken an 0 for 14 slump with a couple of small cashes. Going into today bankroll was $707 and today I played six tournaments on my own dime and three $20 tournaments in which MIB decided to get in on half the action. We have decided to put an end to the satellites because I am not a turbo player by any stretch of the imagination but it was worth playing the ones that I did for a chance into a $200 tournament. The tournaments I played on my own dime I ended up making $43. I cashed twice in the $3 deepstack rebuys one of them being a fifth-place finish in the 9 a.m. tournament for $63. On the three tournament's that MIB had half action in my share of the earnings was roughly $80 so overall the day was about $123 profit for me personally. In the three tournaments that MIB had have action in I cashed in two of them both 5th Place finishes one for $142 and the other for $111 so overall it was a good day and brought my bankroll up to $830.68 and with the new goal amount being actually dropped by $1,000 I am now 21% towards it.

I am taking all day Monday off and sleeping late considering it is after 4 a.m. as I complete this entry and on Tuesday MIB and I will be doing another half action arrangement on the three $20 tournaments. With the bankroll of $830 currently a lot of things are happening and will be happening. I am $170 away from a $1,000 bankroll in which I will be playing the $20 tournaments on my own dime exclusively for as long as the bankroll is $1,000 or higher. Also even if I do not cash in a single tournament on Tuesday which I hope it's not the case, I will end February with earnings of at least $533 for the month and a minimum of earnings of $746 for 2017.

That's going to wrap up this entry for now. I am very happy about the results so far this year and even though it doesn't seem like a lot to some people it is more than I expected for the first two months. It's slow going, but it's getting me to my ultimate goal and that's what I am so focused on right now. That's why I going through borderline sleep deprivation, grinding 16 hours a day because as anyone that's been a long time reader knows, I'll put in what it takes to get to my goal. Long hours playing poker and has never bothered me before it is not about to start now. So until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $830.68
Goal: $4000
Progress: 21%

An absolute awesome suggestion someone made in a comment on this blog on Blogspot made me start to think about how I could best implement his suggestion. The comment that he left on that last entry which was as follows.

FD, if you want to take shots at the Aria $125 tournaments, why not just take a shot every time you got $125 above $1500?

My reply was that it would mean having to make a withdrawal and a separate stop at a different casino other than Aria every time I wanted to play the live tournament which obviously as one might imagine might be a bit of an inconvenience. The suggestion kept rolling over in my mind. It is a great suggestion and would get me to those live tables so much faster and I started thinking to myself was there a way I could implement this and then I came up with a slight variation to it. Somewhat of middle ground you might say. Instead of his suggestion about playing a tournament each time I'm $125 above whatever I want to keep online, and instead of my plan of building up a month's worth of tournament buy-ins, why not find the middle ground and take it one week at a time.

If I set an amount that I want to keep in my online bankroll and then when I have a week's worth of tournament buy-in entries choose that as the time to withdraw and then play them. This makes all the sense in the world to me. Since I want to make the $20 tournaments online a daily part of any online play and since true bankroll management recommendations state 100 buyins should be the standard it seems to me that $2,000 online is definitely not only satisfactory but the best most intelligent approach. A week's worth of entries at the Aria is $500, that being $125 a day for 4 days Monday through Thursday, so therefore every time I have $500 above $2,000 I have just earned myself a week's worth of Aria tournament entries. This is absolutely beautiful and a perfect solution. It gets me to the live tournament that much faster so a big thanks to Pokerdogg because if not for his comment and suggestion I would never have been able to find this middle ground, thanks much bro. This means that my goal is $2,500. Not $5,000, not $7,000, and not $4,000 which probably would have taken me months and months and months to accomplish. $2,500 is not necessarily around the corner, but it is a lot closer than the other options.


So on to the February recap and then on to the March goals. Let us be reminded of what the February goals were.


February 2017 Goals

Tournament Played: 150
Tournament ROI: 40%
Tournament Earnings: $440


Goal: 150 tournaments played

Not counting satellites and of course I can't count the tournaments that I had a full or partial stake in since that was not what my goals were based on, I ended up and playing in 103 tournaments so I was 47 short of the goal for February. I played a lot less tournaments then I actually anticipated, almost a full one third less, so for March I will be cutting down that goal amount, but it will be more than the 103 that I did get played this month.


Goal: $440 in earnings

I'm happy to report I exceeded this by $142.91. The $440 goal was also based on playing a 150 tournaments and I played only 100 non satellite tournaments, but was still able to beat my earnings goal and the only reason that happened is based on ROI.


Goal: ROI of 40%

I was able to surpass my Roi goal as well with an ROI of 77.8% in tournaments that I played that were not part of a stake. This was the only reason I was able to surpass my earnings goal. I must say it surprised me as I really didn't think I would hit that high and was definitely pleasantly surprised by the overall results.


The final numbers for February looked like this.

Tournaments: $586.64
Stake Earnings: ($18.41)
Freerolls: $1.25
Online Cash: ($7.57)
$2/$4 Limit: ($8)
Promo/RB: $29

Total Earnings: $582.91


Now for the upcoming month and even though I am starting march with a bankroll of $796.58 I am still not rushing into the $10 rebuys or $20 deepstack tournaments until I hit that magic $1000 bankroll. Therefore my goals are smaller than one might expect.


March Goals

Tournaments Played: 120
ROI: 40%
Earnings: $400


You will notice that the goal for the amount of tournaments played is less than last month's goal and you will also notice that the earnings goal is less than last month. This is based on 20 days or more of tournament play and $1,000 in tournament buy-ins and of course a 40% ROI. Now this earnings goal could, remember that word could, be smashed because none of this goal is based on $10 deepstack rebuys, $20 deepstack freezeout tournaments, or the Saturday $25 superstack. Yes I've only got a couple hundred dollars to go before I can start playing those $20 tournaments on a hopefully daily basis, but nothing in poker can ever be assumed when it comes to goals so I am basing this on not including those $20 and $25 tournaments. If things continue to go well and I am playing those more and more on a daily basis then this $400 goal could be exceeded in a huge way, but only time will tell.

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment with a retina specialist because when I got my new prescription of eyeglasses a couple of months ago the eye doctor spotted some bleeding in the back of the eye. The good news is that he said it looks like we caught it very early, but it could be caused by the blood thinners that stop me from getting blood clots that could kill me or it could be because of a diabetic condition. The retina specialist will know more, but I'm nervous as hell. There are only two reasons that I can think of off the top of my head that I would want to end my life. One would be being paralyzed from the neck or the chest down where I couldn't even use my arms and the other is going blind. Any thoughts or prayers my way would be greatly appreciated.

That's going to wrap this entry up for now. Not sure if I will play a tournament tomorrow or not, but I probably will play in at least 2 or 3 of the early evening ones . I don't expect to get back in time for the 4 p.m. but will be back in time for the 6:30 p.m. PLO and the 7:30 p.m. $800 guarantee $3 deepstack rebuy. Until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $796.58
Goal: $2500
Progress: 32%

Play some live poker, the rake is eating you alive at micros online. All that time your putting in should have polished your skills. Tldr thread btw! Let's see some of that high stakes limit soon.

OP could become a writer; bedtime strory specialist

Gl!

I'm not sure how you figure this. The juice in online tournaments is only 10%, yet even the $125 at Aria is a 20% juice. The juice at the Wynn is less than 15%, but well beyond what I can play at this time, but still above the online tournament rake of 10%.

3/6/17

March has been an absolutely horrendous start, but fortunately I still found myself at that particular moment with a bankroll of over $600, all earnings, and still well in the game. The first 5 days and into the 6th day of March seems to be cooler, after cooler, after cooler. Set over set, AK into AQ and they flop the three ooter, AA or KK versus QQ and they flop or river the queen, or I'm all- in preflop because of stack size compared to blinds and come up with a decent AJ or AQ hand for shoving and run into AA, KK, or AK. It's been these kinds of coolers that has been constant and prevalent for the month of March. So going into today my own dime tournaments I was down ($11). Half action Stakes I was down ($119). My bankroll stipulations only allow me to play up to $10 buyin tournaments with just a few exceptions, so MIB buys half action in the $20 tournaments which keeps my cost at $10 and his cost the same, but I have not done well. Going into today we decided to do another half action stake on the 11 a.m. Golden Nugget tournament, but the cooler continued and I ran JJ into QQ all-in preflop. So much for that and my stake earnings were now a loss of $154.47 for the month.

I've been through cold runs before and I will go to them again and no matter what the law says that I was showing I am very very confident and 99% assured that I will be showing a profit by the end of the month, but it is still very frustrating to have to try to work through these things. I got back in time for the $5 deepstack rebuy 6 Max and would be playing that plus two of the $3 deepstack rebuys, and the $10 PLO reentry 6-max if the latter went off.
So as I hit the online tables I could only hope that this would be the day where the coolers came to an end. I wasn't necessarily looking for heaters, although those would have been nice, I was just looking to avoid disasters within tournaments and a steady increase in my chips back throughout the entire tournament would be more than pleasant enough. After all the bands was considered I was in the red for ($194) for the month of March.

Out early in the 730pm $3 Deepstack Rebuy when I ran into a set over set situation. The 4pm $3 Deepstack Rebuy and $10 PLO Deepstack Reentry went nowhere, but the 315pm $5 Deepstack Rebuy 6 Max I ran quite deep in and in fact something happened when we were down to the final 4 that could have been helpful or disastrous. We have 4 left and lo and behold I spilled an entire large glass of chocolate milk on my bed. What a mess. By the time I got the mattress cover and body pillow on the floor so I could take it down to the washing machine I came back and I was heads up with 4,000 chips left. Needless to say I finished in second for a $139 return. Would I have won if the chocolate milk incident hadn't happened or would I have been knocked out in 4th if the chocolate milk incident didn't happen?? Your guess is as good as mine, but I just look at it as fate. I cashed for $139 in that tournament and finished up yesterdaywith losses for the month of ($54.22) which is a far cry better than ($194).

In the space of six days this month that is the second time that I have been down a considerable amount when you consider what my bankroll is just to be bailed out. The last time I believe it was Friday I was down about ($139) for the month and finished third in the 930pm $5 Deepstack Rebuy for $107 bringing the losses to down ($32) for the month. The weekend was pretty rough and as I stated I was in the red for $194 after the buy-ins and I pulled one out of the fire yet again so that the losses going into today we're only down ($54). Obviously I was definitely hoping that going into Tuesday I could get the month of March back into the black overall. It wasn't to be as the cooler returned. In all fairness I only played two tournaments on Tuesday and then ended up falling asleep before 7pm, but my KK vs TT all-in pre-flop and they flop a 10 so down $76 in the first 7 Days of March. It's got to turn back sooner or later and the volcano will once again erupt. I'm just waiting for it.

Many personal things are coming that will interfere in The Daily Grind. It is now Wednesday 2:20 a.m. and later this morning I have an appointment with the orthopedist about the shoulder or actually both shoulders. I'm almost certain that the right shoulder is going to require surgery and hence is where we have a problem and hence where my readers are going to either think I'm crazy or being stubborn. Even if the shoulder does require surgery there is no way I am going to allow them to put me in a sling for the next 3 weeks. I refuse to be put on the sidelines and even if surgery is required the sling will be removed for The Daily Grind. I am right handed and it is my right shoulder. Yes I could try to do left-handed but I've tried doing things left-handed before it just does not work out so I am going to need access to my right hand and arm to grind online. I refuse to be stopped. I will wear the sling when I go to sleep at night and if I'm not playing in a tournament, but other than that my life will go on as usual no matter what the doctor may want. As I've told my friends before my doctors are on a need-to-know basis and I decide what they need to know.

As far as the retina specialist goes those of you that don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook it turns out that I was born with torn retinas. These torn retinas can and does lead to detached retinas which can can and will cause blindness. On the 15th I am going in for laser surgery on both eyes. The doctor tells me this is not a fix but a preventative insofar that it will prevent the retinas from detaching and prevent me from going blind so that's the best thing in the world as far as I'm concerned and for now delays suicide because as I have stated before no way I go through life in the darkness.

So orthopedist tomorrow, pulmonologist the following day, laser surgery on the 15th, and sleep apnea doctor on the 16th which I may reschedule since I never got the sleep apnea machine that they want me on at night. I am not happy about this interruption in my Poker schedule, but unfortunately it is a necessary evil.

That's going to wrap this one up for now. Not going anywhere fast so far this month, and in fact going in the wrong direction, but waiting for things to turn in a big way which I know they will it's just a matter of when. Until next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $726
Goal: $2500
Progress: 29%

__________________

March has been rough. In the first 84 Holdem tournaments that I have played on my own dime and on a half stake during the month of March as of the end of play on Sunday March 12th I had no less than 22 different instances of major coolers. These are a QQ running into KK and AA, AQ and AJ running into AK, 99 or TT running into JJ or QQ, I am sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. In those 84 tournaments I also had instances where I was beat by a 2 or 3 outer on 12 separate occasions, and I lost with three of a kind or a flopped set 7 times. I have been knocked out of a tournament or crippled so bad that it really didn't matter with the hands of AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, and AQ 25 times in 84 tournaments played.

As bad as it's been, Monday the 13th topped it all. AA cracked by A4o and out, I get knocked out of another with my AK vs AJ. in yet another tournament I finish on the bubble when my QQ gets beat and then in the 7:30 p.m. $800 Gtd I get knocked out of another with QQ leaving me with less than 10 big blinds. Somehow I'm able to build it back up and later on get involved in a three-way all-in pre-flop when I have AA vs 99 vs TT and I lose to both of the hands. The 99 flopped a set the TT ends up going runner runner straight and I was out of the 7:30 as well. I hit the fkn roof.

I was livid. Losing tournaments is one thing, but losing with what I have lost with this month is outright fkn ridiculous. I withdrew the entire remaining balance of $526 that I had online at that point. To hell with it, let's give the live tournaments a run for the money. 10 buyins at Sam's Town, $100 on the side for expenses, let's go for the gold or go for broke. I texted my buddy MIB to let him know what was happening expecting him to simply wish me luck in my endeavor. As a friend I would expect him to hope that I would be successful, but instead what do I get from this friend...... I get a lot of bull**** facts and figures. I get him having me calculate not just the 2 for 40 run I waa having this month at that point in the $3 deepstack rebuys, but instead calculate the whole thing for the year, and when I did, it showed me that even as bad as I have run in that particular tournament in March I still am holding a 69% ROI overall in that specific tournament after 154 played. I really didn't need this kind of crap from him, being logical, being the voice of reason, forcing actual numbers in my face, how dare he lol. I simply needed my friend too wish the best for me and naturally agree with me of course, but no I didn't get that. Instead I get reasonableness, logic, and, calm assessment. That's not what I wanted from him, I reiterate, how dare he lol.

It took him nearly 2 hours over the phone to calm me down. He told me he completely understood and that it was obvious the bubble finish and 7:30pm tournament was just simply a breaking point for me and I was steaming and if I insisted on doing my plan he definitely was hoping for the best for me but for some reason he wanted to keep inserting logic and reasonability into this conversation which was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear, but whether it's fortunately or unfortunately, he was successful in his task and I reversed the withdrawal.

I only played three tournaments the following day with one 7th place finish. I withdrew $150 and then spent the next couple of days over my friends Michelle house. Definitely needed to get at least one live tournament in and I played to the shovefest donkfest $50 tournament over at the Golden Nugget. MIB decided he wanted in on half the action and away I went. 25 entrants only the top three were getting paid and unfortunately I finished in 6th, but damn I enjoyed playing in that live tournament so damn much. It may have been a good thing or it may have been a bad thing because it's just got me more and more determined to get off of the full time online grind and mix in some live tournaments with it. It's like a never-ending craving. Give me live tournaments are like crack and just like the drug also takes is one time to get you hooked and believe me ladies and gentlemen I was hooked on live tournament play years ago.

I may have reversed that largeish withdraw but playing at The Golden Nugget just enhanced that never-ending craving and to that end I am taking immediate steps to get off of this full time online grind as fast as possible. To hell with waiting, but even I understand that I do need to have some backup money so effective immediately not only has my online bankroll approach just changed, but the monetary goal has been significantly decreased.

Online Bankroll: $1,000
Aria: $500
Golden Nugget: $280
Expenses: $220

All I need to do is get to $2,000 in earnings so I can get the hell away from this computer and out in the real world for at least a 4-day try. Unfortunately till I get there I will keep grinding, but a significantly different approach. I'm setting my low point bankroll of $500 which means below $500 it's only $3 deepstack rebuys and nothing else, but a bankroll of $500 and above and I'm dabbling in $20 tournaments maybe I can only do it for a day here and there maybe the bankroll will fluctuate from above $500 to below $500 to back up, but I am not sitting back waiting for thousand dollars before I start playing these $20 tournaments because just a couple deep runs in his these will Skyrocket tbe situation. For the rest of March MIB and I being I are involved in another half action stake agreement with me playing the $20 deepstack freezeouts each day. $160 is the cost for each of us so let's see how we roll in these the rest of the month.

So I went in for the laser eye surgery and lo and behold contrary to the information I was given when the appointment was made they refused to do both eyes at the same time. So we started with the right eye, did that one, and I'll have to have the left eye done in 2 weeks. He warned me I would have blurry vision for 20 minutes, he told me that's because of the dilation that would be an issue, but what he didn't tell me and to wit why I had visions and fantasies of committing a freaking homicide, was that my eye would water almost non- stop for two straight hours. Grrrrrrr!!

After 4 hours my eyes return back to normal or at least what was normal for me. The doctor that I'm dealing with was actually very nice all during the procedure which was a far cry from what he was during the initial consultation. Granted he's an eye doctor, but the man had all the patience, understanding, and consideration of a spitting cobra during that initial visit so the change in his overall attitude was definitely a pleasant surprise. I do try to be understanding about these things and maybe he was just having a bad day that first time it happens to us all. So in two weeks I will get the left eye done and then I can put this behind me and just go on and continue to enjoy life and seeing this beautiful world and every bit of beauty, enchantment, and mystery it has to offer.

That's a wrap up for now. Yesterday I played just a couple of tournaments not counting the $20 deepstack that's part of the half action stake and I finished 6th in one of them for a $41 return so nothing significant. Today will be my first full day schedule in several days and I have dropped the 6-max tournaments that I've been playing. I don't feel they are in my wheelhouse although I did retire them with a small profit. I've added the $2 rebuy back in after looking over PokerProLabs and finding that when I used to play it I went 3 out of 10 so not quite sure why I stopped comma but knowing me probably because of the smallish payouts for first place in the $50 to $70 range, but at 11 o'clock in the morning I'm not doing much else anyway so I might as well throw it in. Until next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $657.47
Goal: $2000
Progress: 33%

For nearly three months now I have been grinding tournaments online and averaging about $225 in earnings a month. However the live tournament play seems so far off in the distance and while I am a good tournament player with the buyins that I am forced to play online and quite frankly with the amount of money being invested on a daily basis it seems that this is not where the money is and I need to be doing whatever it takes to get me into these live tournaments as fast as possible and that means I need to be playing where the money is.

As much as I hate the thought of this the fact of the matter is I can make more month by month on average grinding the online $10 and $20 No Limit cash games then I can grinding the tournaments in the buyins that I am forced to play at this point. $500 minimum a month is a realistic possibility grinding the cash games and furthermore with a lot less risk to the bankroll. If you figure worst case scenario is I may lose for a 5 buyins in a single day that's %m $40 or $50 compared to some days where my tournament buy-ins are over $100 a day.

Quite frankly I'm getting tired of having to grind online day in and day out and day in and day out when my real life is outside of this house, my real life is in casinos playing live tournaments, that's where my true destiny lies, but it's hard to achieve destiny with lack of capital. Furthermore I want to be playing live tournaments at least a few times a month to start out with anyway and not having to wait for $2,000 or $3,000 to be able to do it so therefore, and I can't even believe I'm about to say this because the thought of doing this is about as appealing as a tooth extraction, but if it's going to get me to where I want to be then I'll do whatever I have to and henceforth beginning today Tuesday March 21st 2017, yours truly FlushhDraw, is on a full-time online cash game grind.

It's a whole new ballgame folks and it does not come without certain issues like the fact that cash games online in 2016 were a freakin disaster. Like the fact that I believe cash games have more variance in them then tournaments. Like the fact that I have never proven myself successful in this particular form of poker so why should anyone expect me to be successful now. However, if I can prove myself successful in this I will be able to be playing my live tournaments a half a dozen times a month to start out with because I plan on keeping $500 online and every time I am $70 above that $500 I will be withdrawing it and headed down to the Golden Nugget for a $70 tournament which generally pay about $600 up top. The first time I bink one of those all of a sudden instead of it being a one shot deal I'm going to have eight or nine more opportunities to keep trying them and and cashing in one or two over the course of those eight or nine following attempts creates more and more opportunities.

Obviously this is a whole new plan and while I have been criticized in the past for changing my plans the way I look at it is you try something if it doesn't work or doesn't work good enough two individual satisfaction, then you try something else and the more you try different things sooner or later you're going to stumble onto one that is perfect for you as an individual. This particular approach has many advantages. The least of which is It gets me in more live tournaments while at the same time always maintaining a 40+ buyin online cash game bankroll and it gets me in the live tournaments much faster even if they are going to be sporadic at first, which gets me out of the house which will thrill my doctors no end, and it will allow me to enjoy my life just a little bit more instead of waking up every morning and saying oh God I got to play online yet again. I think I'm starting to get burnt out by the long hours because my goal seems so far away, but by going about it in this way those goals can be achieved so much faster. It may be sporadic at first and that's okay because when you see even the smallest glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel you're going to run towards it.

I made a withdrawal of over $300 and went out and had a day out yesterday played a couple of tournaments played a little $2/$4 limit however I was not successful. I left $200 online to start the cash game grind and in approximately two weeks another $200 will hopefully be able to be added to this creating that initial $400 cash grinding bankroll so that means I only have to earn $170 at these stupid cash games and my first $70 tournament under this plan.

I am definitely a man alone as as I have become used to people automatically assuming I'm going to fail especially when I step up things and take an aggressive approach. Whether it be strangers or friends the only one that seems to believe in me is me and that's okay because I'm going to be able to show my detractors that even though it took me a few different plans to stumble on the right one that eventually I did get it right and before long I'm going to be sitting across the table from guys like Jeff Boski in tournaments with $10,000 on the line up top. My day is coming I have no doubt about, but in the meantime I'm going to do what I want, how I want, and I will be successful, and I will do it my way. I think that is probably my main theme song in life.

So I suppose the immediate question would be exactly what am I expecting from this cash game grind. I said previously that I think $500 a month can easily be expected. A good player should be able to hit 10 big blinds per 100 hands and I figure grinding 12 hours a day I'll get over 2000 hands played so even if my earn rate is less than that $500 should still be within my range. On average I'm figuring $20 a day, just 20 little dollars. I don't even want to think about what that comes out to hourly so please no one bother telling me lol, the only thing I'm thinking about is getting to $70 above the $500 bankroll level, then every 5 days on average over the long term I have the opportunity to play a $70 tournament at the Golden Nugget. That $20 a day and those Golden Nugget tournaments is my soul focus, but only if I can prove that I can actually win playing cash games. After 2016 there is no way in the world I expect anyone to believe I will be successful at this. I certainly did not prove myself last year but I damn well plan on proving myself this year. I will admit to a certain degree I have a certain amount of pride on the line in this one come but more than anything I see the extra dollars that can be earned and that's what I'm after.

The first day of this started out horrendous, but what the hell would I expect, this is me we're talking about. I hate cash games with a passion due to the variance. Dollar-for-dollar and buyin for buyin cash games must have 300% more variance than the tournaments will ever hope to and it was no different for me starting out today. 900 hands and down $30 three full buyins. Especially after 2016 I'm a little bit paranoid when I'm taking losses so I immediately went over my hands right in the middle of this session to make sure it wasn't my fault per se. I had a full house on three different occasions and lost every one, I flopped trips twice and lost, and had a straight and lost. These pleasantries added up to two-and-a-half buy-ins of the loss. I was also running pretty card bad as draw after draw after draw just absolutely went nowhere so although I was down $30 at least I knew it wasn't from any errors or mistakes that I had made just the higher variance of cash games over tournaments in general.

After 1350 hands were played I found myself down $18 a nice little comeback do two specific hands that happened back to back on the same table. 1570 hands and and I'm now down only $10 one little buyin because it took over 1500 hands for me to flop a set. If I had flopped a set previously nothing happened past the Flop and I really don't recall flopping a set before this specific one it was nice to get paid off on it and best of all this guy called a flop raise, a turn pot bet, and a 3/4 riverbed with top pair age kicker. Needless to say a note was written down on this particular player. Game over 1500 hands before it gets paid off, talk about running like ice. Just over 800 hands later I ended the 12 hour session and over the final 800 hands it was dead on break even just about. 2374 hands place an overall loss of $10.19 less a dollar I got in rakeback. A lousy way to start this adventure off, but it's a damn sight better than being down $30 that I was. Today is another day and hopefully if I don't necessarily run hot I just run to expectation. Full houses not getting beat would be a great start.

Well that's going to wrap this entry up. Let it be clearly understood that I am not doing this because I like it. I am doing this solely for the earnings potential. Overall tournaments for the first three months of the year I ran above 60% ROI, but the amount of the buy-ins just do not and will not produce the money potential available in these $10 No Limit cash games. I'm not doing this because I want to, but as my favorite departed Uncle used to say "Money talks and bull**** walks." Take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

Any updates on the journey?

I have been dealing with some personal issues that had put me in a very dark place in my life. I will not go into too many details about it, but I seemed to enter a pretty serious depression beginning in March. I believe the cause was two significant birthdays in March one my wife and the other a former fiance both of whom have passed away and I think it completely overloaded me.

During this time a lot of things were happening the least of which I stopped eating for the most part. I talked myself into the fact I was simply on a weight loss plan since I suffer from a weight issue and have all my life, but it had unfortunate results. After a couple of weeks of 500 calories a day or less, I ended up being taken by ambulance outside of Harrah's to a hospital where I was diagnosed with tachycardia, dehydration, dizziness, disorientation, a blood pressure that went from 80 over 62 to 160 over 120 within the space of less than 7 minutes, renal and kidney failure and according to the doctor it was because of the so called weight loss program I was attempting to make part of my everyday life. It was either the depression, part of an eating disorder that I've suffered from for over 20 years that shows its face from time to time, or maybe both.

I was so out of it that even poker didn't hold its passion for me during this time. This thing really had a hold on me. Depression can be a very rough thing, but I'm here to tell you that I am back and I am back grinding on ACR. I'm also back with a very small bankroll, but I'm just going to have to deal with that. Small bankroll or not I am ready to grind and have been for the last 6 days.
Because of a friend on Twitter during the past week I was able to do two player to player transfer for $50 and $20. I'm not sure if the person wants me to mention who they are so I will withhold that information and respect their privacy in case they do not, but suffice it to say this person sent me $50 and $20 on ACR and I sent them the equivalent on PayPal so I started the month of May on ACR with $70. It's not a lot of money but if anybody can work it up from a low amount I know I'm the guy that can do it.

Starting back up on ACR with only $70 and only playing only $1.10 & $2.20 tournaments where payouts up top are only $20 or $30 is not easy. Everything in me wants to be playing in these $3.30 and $5.50 $500, $1,000, $1500 and higher Gtd's so bad I can taste it, but discipline must be maintained. So why ACR and not WSOP?? The bottom line is I don't trust that site anymore. I will not go into details about it because quite frankly I really don't feel like putting up with the harassment about it, but the bottom line is if I don't trust something I'm not playing on it, I'm not putting up hard cash on it, and I will leave it at that. Not to mention ACR is definitely the place for a tournament player. Do I like three hour and five hour late registrations of course not, but with the guarantees that they have over here I'm going to have to put up with these inconveniences.

There are different examples of good news/bad news when it comes to tournaments on ACR. The good news is they pay out more spots in their tournaments. The bad news is they pay out more spots in their tournaments. Yes, it's easier to make the money, but it reduces the amount that can be won so in the long run I have no idea what kind of an ROI I'm going to have. The good news is your opponent cannot see your mucked cards on ACR The bad news is you can not see your opponents mucked cards on ACR. The good news is ACR has a variety of tournament structures. The bad news is ACR has a variety of tournament structures. You may have a specific structure that works best for your game, but unfortunately it is not uniform throughout all their tournaments so you need to know just what kind of structure the tournament you're playing in may have. Doing a little research I have broken it down to certain categories of tournaments. These examples we are going to look at I'm using the blind levels of 1000/2000 and 5000/10,000 as the determining points, what level they occur, and how many hours and minutes of gameplay has elapsed when you hit that particular level. Listed below are just two examples although there are more different examples.


10 Minute Blinds


Category 1
1k/2k: Level 19: 3:00
5k/10k: Level 27: 4:20

Category 2
1k/2k: Level 23: 3:40
5k/10k: Level 35: 5:40


As you can see with just the two examples that I posted there is a significant difference especially when you're talking about the higher blind level of 5k/10k. Between the two different tournament structures you're talking a full hour and 20 minutes in difference before arriving at 5k/10k and depending on the playing style that can make a significant difference as well, but then again it might not. The only way to know for sure is to document how I do in each category of tournament and I'm going to attempt to keep track of that over the right side of this blog. The results may surprise me, they may not, only time will tell.

The goal is the same that it always has been....... live play. At ACR however, withdrawals are just a little bit different. I mean after all it is an offshore site so that is to be expected. The easiest way for me to get my withdrawal is via MoneyGram, but ACR will charge me depending on the amount roughly 12% for a withdraw. I know there is also Bitcoin available but it is not something that I want to trust with what to me are moderate sums of money so I am more than willing to pay the 12%. If I take out $705 it's going to cost me a $95 fee. Before everyone starts screaming at me at how crazy it is, because of the added advantage of the great tournament selection, I am more than willing to do this so what I'm thinking is the best approach is to run this balance up to $1,200 withdraw $705 so that I'll have 7-9 buyins at the Golden Nugget for the $70 tournaments wirh the remainder of the withdrawal for expenses and this will still leave $400 online to grind up again and again and again if necessary. So my goal currently and for the future should stay at $1,200.

So as of this posting I was getting ready for another Manic Monday which on Mondays they offer some very inexpensive tournaments for some very high guaranteed prize pools. I had played Monday through Saturday although Friday I only played one tournament and I took Sunday off. I wish there was some major major advances to report but that's not the case. During the 1st week I took that $70 plus an extra $0.11 that I found I had in my rakeback account because that's another advantage to ACR as I am getting 27% rakeback, but I took that $70.11 start and going into today had $93.51 in the ome bankroll. $15.90 was won at the online tables over $19 of that one in MTTs as there was also ($3.60) in losses at SNGs. That was just something that I wanted to test out, but quickly realize not something that I am going to continue on with I just cannot stand the starting stack sizes of 1500 chips. So $15.90 in profit at the tables, another $1.50 in rakeback and $6 in bonuses starts me off today with $93.51. Thus far in May the 3 best cashes have been a 2nd, another 2nd,and a 5th for $22.22, $18.48, and $8.40 respectively. I know the payoffs that I'm going to be getting right now are laughable so feel free to laugh about them but slow and steady is going to win this race.

I plan on doing what I have to do now that I'm back to my old self again and grind grind grind his top priority. As far as a bankroll management system that I will be using since my goal is $1,200 at a time so that I can withdraw and play live, I'm going to be utilizing a somewhat aggressive approach. I'm going with an approach of 60 buyins of the highest price tournament I want to play during the day. So for me to play the $3.30 tournaments I need roughly in the neighborhood of $200 in my bankroll. It basically works out to the same as having 100 average buyins, but instead of having to add up all my buyins for the day, divide that by the number that will be played and then multiply that by 100 on a daily basis, I'll just utilize the 60 buyin rule for myself as it pretty much comes out to be the exact same thing and the math of it is a lot easier and a lot faster.

Well, that's a wrap for today. As of right now total online earnings for this year are $544.25. I've lost $276 playing live so far and the main reason for that is because I'm just playing one here and there and not able to string a few playing sessions together so that is why I am going to wait until the bankroll is at $1,200 and then withdraw $705 because I think it'll give me a potential earnings advantage if I can string at least six to eight live playing opportunities together. This year there have been nearly $175 in withdraws, but it was needed for living expenses like keeping food in the house not just an excuse to go out and have fun so with that I am very satisfied if not happy about the fact that I had to do the withdraws. I'm not going to try to pay it back, it simply is what it is I may be able to pay back a little here and there but it's not something I'm going to focus on. Either way I am back and I am grinding and I've got that fire back within me. So until next time, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.


Bankroll: $93.51
Goal: $1200
Progress: 7.8%

So like a damn monster movie "Attack of Godzilla" it seems like my monster movie might be called Attack of the Gout. Approximately 10 days ago I woke up with the left shoulder hurting for a solid 3 days and I thought it was simply the cortisone shot that had worn off, but then for the next 2 days the shoulder was not able to be moved on its own, it was like it was paralyzed. In order to move it I would have to take my right hand grasp my left wrist and move the arm where I wanted it to go in this fashion. I ended up in the emergency room, x-rays were negative and they flatly refused to do an MRI although I have all the insurance in the world and they would be paid. The term idiots seems to apply here. The pain during this time is absolutely indescribable and playing online poker was not even a remote possibility. It's quite obvious to me at this point that I must have severely torn some tendons or possible a tear in the Rotator cuff.

This, for lack of a better term, paralysis of the shoulder, lasted for another three additional days. The pain involved in this was Insidious period on a pain scale of 1 to 10 this was a 15 and could actually bring tears to a grown man's eyes that's how bad it was. A few days ago I noticed I had more movement in the lower arm but the shoulder was still on moving. The following day there was just a little bit of movement in the shoulder area and upper arm, the next day there was more the following day even more than that. What the hell was going on??

A friend of mine in Washington State suggested she thought it might be Gout because my circumstances seemed to parallel a co-worker of hers and although gout in the shoulder is rare it is not impossible. I did a little checking on my own and the time frame, the symptoms, and several of the reasoning for the symptoms fits. The pain was still pretty bad you know when the shoulder was able to start moving a little, but at least it was down to about an eighth on a scale of 1 to 10. Over the course of the last few days more and more movement in the shoulder and the pain has diminished a little more each day at least to the point where I'm back on the tables again.

I have an appointment with a new primary care physician on June 7th and I'm going to ask him for a complete blood work-up because I'm not sure if the kidney damage that the intense weight loss program that I was on that put me in the emergency room and in minor kidney and renal failure is not still there. As for the shoulder I don't know what the true answer is. Was it Gout?? It's a good possibility because I cannot imagine that if I have a torn tendon or torn Rotator cuff that it would heal in 10 days. These things usually take months if not surgery, but I'm not a doctor I don't know for sure. On the 7th I will explain to the doctor exactly what happened and get his professional opinion. He may want an MRI done anyway, he may not, time will tell, but all I know is that after about I guess 12 days now of this insanity the shoulder is going back to its normal inflamed condition and always had. Thank God for Little Miracles. Until next time Which should be in just a couple or three days, take care everyone, and I'll see you at the tables.

Hang in the FD. It can only get better from here on out.

This is a pretty long entry so you have been forewarned.

Taking a chance, considering I have certain concerns about WSOP, I nonetheless decided to make a return to that site, but this lasted only a single day because the very following day in their Infinite wisdom or lack thereof, they decided they did not want to cater to the small bankrolled players apparently and took away all $1 and $2 regular tournaments. The only reason for the return to that site was because I realized that on ACR I was facing three times as many players in the $1.10 tournaments to get only double the amount of money up top because they pay so many spots out and for roughly the same buyin. Oh well if they want to have that kind of attitude to hell with them. ACR has a much better selection of tournaments even for those of us with small bankrolls.

So back to ACR for me and this time it would be permanent. I got my Bitcoin all straightened out so time to start utilizing that form of payment to establish a history of Bitcoin transactions, but according to some reliable sources I need to set up with a third party as well. I noticed deposits over to ACR from Coinbase are coming with a 12.9% fee. Sending money to the bank account is considerably lower so any future deposits will be done via MoneyGram since ACR will give me my Moneygram fees back from what I understand and I will utilize Bitcoin for the withdraws. The bottom line is I ended up starting June with a bankroll of $100 exactly.


My time on ACR this year from January through May 31st has not been a profitable one.

MTTs: ($108.15)
SNGs: 23 for 60: ($15.11)
Cash Games: ($53.91)

Bonus: $82
Rakeback: $14.21
Casino: ($5.15)
Sportsbook: $27.79

Net Total: ($58.32)


Don't even ask what I was doing in the cash games when I have sworn off of them but at the time I figured hey a different site maybe something will happenen. It happened all right but in the wrong direction. Cash games just have such a higher variance than tournaments, but I tried and I move on.

Obviously my biggest concern is my performance in tournaments. You would think that with them paying 18% and 20% of the fields that I would be crushing it, but that is not the case. a funny thing with tournaments over on ACR is that they have varying degrees of late registration times not to mention various structures. The decent guaranteed prize pools for a low buyin have either a 3 hour or 5 hour late registrations and in those specifically I have lost just over ($106). Here is the breakdown when it comes to these late registration times.

1 Hr: $32.28
15 for 55 / 27% / 37% ROI

1.5 Hrs: ($27.78)
10 for 52 / 19% / (- 31%) ROI

2 Hrs: ($1.28)
20 for 69 / 29% / (-1%) ROI

3 Hrs: ($80.54)
3 for 34 / 9% / (- 89%) ROI

5 Hrs: ($25.49)
1 for 13 / 7% / (- 74%) ROI


Now I grant you the sample size is not large but there is a definite pattern to this. 3 hour and 5 hour late registrations are atrocious for some reason. A combined for 4 for 47 and losses totaling over ($106). I don't know what the exact reason has been for the poor performance from January through May. It could be the time of the late registration, it could be the fact that those tournaments have hundreds of entrants in them and I just have not run deep yet, it could be I was not observing correct bankroll management as in playing $3.30 tournaments with about $50 or $60 on the account and the Poker Gods decided to bite me in the ass over that maneuver, and it could also be as far as the overall picture goes for these five months that I was playing the majority of these when I was going through my period of depression.

Obviously my mind was not 100% on things. I'm not looking for an excuse, but more so a reason and I really feel that being as depressed as I was with my mind not totally on things that was the major reason for my poor performance. Since I am out of that depression and back to my fully optimistic happy-go-lucky self that has that feeling within mind and spirit of complete invincibility, the only way I was going to find out for sure was to see how June would go. If all of a sudden I started turning profits even if they were small profits because of the low buy-in amounts I'm forced to play that would go a long way in telling me one way or the other.

After the first 5 months I am showing a profit this year, but the profit is only a little over a couple of hundred bucks taking into consideration the over $500 in online earnings and the ($276) in live losses thus far and withdrawals of $169.95 in which had nothing to do with having fun but had everything to do with either half the buyin on a half action live stake tournament or just putting food on the table at the end of the month when things ran a little short. However, although I have very little left over at the end of the month anymore, I think I've created a monthly budget where I will not have to touch my poker money. I must admit however, I do believe participating in those half stakes was a mistake in of itself. Playing a tournament sporadically here and there is not usually going to add up to profits and I think I am much more likely to show some live profits if I can string four or five tournaments played in consecutive days so stepping forward that is the primary goal.

So it's time to build and build some more, but what will be the precise monetary goal here on ACR and what exact bankroll management plan do I want to employ. With so little left over in my regular monthly finances it is imperative that I protect my bankroll to the extreme and this means setting up a bankroll management plan where I am almost sure not to tap out because my bankroll is not easily replaceable and at the same time being able to go out and play live poker while at the same time keeping enough online to go back and do that as well if needed or for the days I just don't physically feel up to being out and about because those days do happen.

ACR is an offshore site I believe in Nicaragua somewhere so therefore it is not a place where I want to keep a thousand dollars on it or even several hundreds of dollars so periodic withdrawals and then stashing that cash offline is going to be something that I am going to be doing. I would be okay with leaving $300 on at all times. And therefore feel that everytime I make a hundred dollars over that I will withdraw it maintaining that $300 online account balance.

I have decided to go with a bankroll management plan that utilizes an average buy-in calculation which is calculated on a daily basis utilizing the average buyin of the tournaments that I plan to play. 50 seems too low and 100 seems ultra-conservative especially when the tournaments I'm dealing with are paying 15% to 20% of the entrants. When I look at the tournaments in the morning that I wish to play that day, I add them all up and see how much they will cost, divide them by the number of tournaments that are intended to be played giving me my average buyin for that day. Provided I have started the days poker with at least 75 of those average buy-ins in my bankroll, then I can play those tournaments that I planned on playing. However, if I am so much as a dollar short of that amount I will have to readjust my days' plans. I can go with this 75 average buyin plan, but I must be extraordinary strict with myself, no excuses, no ifs, ands, or buts and I think by utilizing this strict adherence to this bankroll management plan I will be able to not only protect my bankroll, but take shots at the various $2.20, $3.30 and even $5.50 tournaments here and there while I build, build, and build some more.

There are five standard $1.10 tournaments that I play each day so as an example say I wanted to play those five and I wanted to add a $3.30 tournament in there that would cost a total for the day of $8.80. Now we divide that by the total number of tournaments that covers which in this example would be 6 giving me the average buyin which would be $1.466666. Which I always round up to the next penny which would be $1.47. We take that $1.47 and multiply it by 75 and in this example in order to play those tournaments I planned out I would have to start the day with a bankroll of $110.25. If my bankroll is only $110, because of the strict strict adherence I would have to formulate a different approach for that day. Some may find that kind of adherence very silly, but I believe that not only will it help me now, but it will help me down the road.

So, it has already been established that if I'm going to play some live tournaments I want to be able to play at least a few of them consecutively to hopefully have a better chance of a deep run or two and establishing some sort of live bankroll. The question I need to answer it how many is that and then I can figure out how much I need to earn before I make that run. Now a week's worth would be about 12 but I'm not even looking for that. I'll be happy giving myself half that number, a 6 shot run at it. Total buyins would be $420 and add another $80 for traveling and eating expenses, so a nice round figure of $500. So my initial goal is a bankroll of $800 in which I can withdraw $500 for some tournaments at the Golden Nugget and still leaving myself $300 online which is what I want to do and mentioned previously.

So let's talk about June. Over the course of the first 8 days I took one of those days off completely and on another one I played only a single tournament but the remainder of the time was a full slate of tournaments which for me usually means 6 to 9 a day. After the first 8 days of the month of June total earnings are $22 with $20.45 of that coming in regular tournaments which are non private tournaments because there's a variety of different private tournaments I play such as rebuy freerolls, regular freerolls, and actual buyin private tournaments so I separate the two distinctions, but in the regular multi-table tournaments earnings are at $20.45 in the first eight days. I look at the amount and am pretty much disgusted, but the problem is I'm looking at the amount of dollars that I am making. As it turns out I should be happy with this performance. In the first 8 days in these regular tournaments I am 16 for 43 in the money which is an ITM of 37%. That $20.45 that I have earned is from a total of $53.47 in buyins which gives me an ROI of 38%. I believe these numbers would be considered respectable by anybody, but I keep looking at the amount of 20 lousy dollars, and I need to stop doing this, because if I continue, I know me, and I'm going to get frustrated and start jumping buyins by adding a few $3.30s and maybe a $5.50 mixed in on a bankroll of less than $130 and that is not acceptable under any circumstances. So instead of simply looking at the fact I've only made a total of $22 in 8 days, I'm going to try to not remember that that is less than $3 a day grinding tournaments for hours on end and instead I'm going to look at my ITM percentage, my ROI percentage, and just look at this as taking one step at a time, but believe me, it is much easier said than done.

Here is tomorrow's schedule. I ended today with a bankroll of $122. I also wanted to add in the 12:15 p.m. $2.20 PLO8 tournament for tomorrow but after figuring the average buyin and multiplying it by my minimum of 75 it would require a bankroll of $123.75 so I am $1.75 short. Although tempted to do so I will not make up some excuse as to why I can get away with it, I will simply not play that tournament just yet. I also do not include that $0.11 tournament as part of the average buyin because it's so low it would totally skew the numbers and not in a good way.

415pm: $0.11 NLH $100 Gtd
435pm: $1.10 NLH KO
445pm: $1.10 PLO 6-Max $100 Gtd
530pm: $1.10 NLH $50 Gtd
545pm: $2.20 NLH KO $50 Gtd
645pm: $3.30 NLH $500 Gtd
720pm: $1.05 PLO8 Rebuy
745pm: $1.10 NLH 6- Max KO


I also play the 1145pm PLO8 6-Max KO at times, but since it's not an every night happenstance it is not included in my average buyin calculations.


Well, it's not a pretty picture not by a long shot, but I never surrender and I never give up. If anybody can make something happen with this I know I can. I know I have readers out there shaking their heads saying it's not going to happen, but as far as I'm concerned it's already a sure-fire certainty. As long as my monthly budget can hold out giving me the opportunity not to touch this poker bankroll then there is no question about it, it's going to happen.

Finally the personal financial update. I've alluded previously in this post as to how I'm having less money available to me for the remainder of the month after bills and expenses are paid and this is why and what has happened. After being on disability for a couple of years now I was finally eligible and at the same time forced to be switched over to Medicare. There was no choice in the matter and in the process of this I lost certain things which were helping me out and because of the loss of these services my monthly expenses have increased. As for the actual insurance I'm covered 100% on anything and everything, but after everything is figured for the money that needs to be spent on a monthly basis whether by choice or whether by necessity, if I do not owe anybody an outstanding loan, I have about $70 left over for the remainder of the month. Because of the switch I lost access to a PCA so money will have to be spent on Lyft to do shopping each month, I lost free prescriptions so money will have to be spent for co-pays on that each month, then of course there's my little baby girl Diamond my kitty cat and she cost me a certain amount of money each month, but as far as I'm concerned having her here is simply priceless and you'll never hear me complain about the money I spend on her, but the fact of the matter is it does add to the monthly expenditure and as I said after all the sudden done I only have about $70 left so even my tiny $122 bankroll that I ended tonight with would be somewhat difficult to replace all at once. It also leaves very little room for socializing. Obviously the most intelligent thing to do would be to continue to add this to the bankroll, but of course I like to get out and see friends from time to time, maybe grab a quick bite to eat, maybe someone is coming into town so I can meet up with them and have a drink, but as you can see there's just not much for these things and certainly not enough for all of these things. Careful decisions and choices have to be made.

It's not forever however, because when I turn 50 at the end of October I am eligible for what they call the disability widowers benefit. My late wife made more money in her working days than I did in mine and therefor her disability payment, if I remember correctly, was about $1,200 maybe a little more and the way I understand it, this disability widowers benefit will give me either what I am getting now or what she was getting whichever is higher. I won't get both, but I will get one or the other and if I am right in my understanding of all of this my disability payments beginning as early as November could be increased by over $400 a month. Obviously this is still five months away, but it's better than not having anything to look forward to. However, for the next five months there will simply be a lot of grinding, a lot of adding whatever I can to the bankroll with the very little left over each month, and very little socializing.

Well that's going to wrap this one up for now. Don't count me out, in fact never count me out, because I plan to thrive. it may take awhile, but I plan on nothing but success in the long run. Until next time take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $122
Goal: $800
Progress: 15%

The progress is going slow, but it is going in a positive direction for the month of June. Entering today's action earnings were $31.70 over the first 14 days however this was not 14 full days of play. A full day typically for me is 8 to 10 tournaments on average per day, sometimes a little more if I hop into a private tournament or two whether that be a pay tournament or freeroll. I only played a full day 9 of those days. On the 1st, 7th, 9th, and 14th I only played in 5, 1, 1, and 3 tournaments respectively, and on the 4th I took the day off completely. So those for partial days would act up add up to a full day so in the first 14 days we can say I played 10 full days of tournaments. The results we're $31.30 in total earnings after the first 14 days and 10 full days of Poker which comes out to $3.13 per day. The reason I point this out specifically is because of the point I want to address.


"Personally, winning $22 in 9 days is entirely to much effort for me FD puts in full days of grinding so far for the month with a profit of $22 (less than 2.50/day.)."


The above was a portion of a comment that was left on the post I did two entries back on my main blog at Blogspot and I focus on this because I know for a fact this is the attitude of many of my readers and it's really an attitude I just don't understand. Being a tournament player is so different from being a cash player in the fact that when we hit we hit for a amounts that increase whatever we're making per day by a factor of four or five in one fell swoop. Take last night as an example yes I was only making about $2.50 per day, but I finished 15th out of 235 players in a $3.30 NLH $500 Gtd tournament. If I had won that tournament it would have paid $136 up top so all of the sudden with a single win I'm now making 4 times more per day than what I started the day at. This gives the opportunity to play tournaments that cost more and winnings and the higher price tournament increase that amount per day maybe six seven or eight times of what it was. So I can go from making $2.50 a day to $10 a day to $40 a day to $100 a day and more. It's a progression, but in order to take advantage of this progression you do have to be very patient about it knowing your times are going to come.

At the end of play yesterday total earnings were $31.30 so that's an average of $3.13 per day since I have calculated 10 full days where I played. Today was a decent day going 346 with two final tables . Only made about 14 bucks but that's okay these are micro tourneys and when they pay 18% of the field only the top three again in anything relative. However, during this time I have gone 28 for 78 in the regular tournaments with 10 final tables, but no wins yet. It is an ITM percentage of 36% and an ROI of 45%. Total earnings are now $46.74 over 11 full days of tournament play. That puts it at $4.25 per day. As you can see it is increasing, slow but sure, but it is increasing. All in all I'm very satisfied with the results thus far for June.

Another point I wanted to hit on is why some readers notice that I will change my approach from time to time is because of the slow progress that tournaments can produce. I have to admit during the month of June it has happened again. All of a sudden my mind started going through what can be done to increase the pace. Cash games and SNGs came to my thoughts and each one of these is not my strong point yet a very large part of me was thinking "what happens if we give it one more try" "maybe this time it will be different" "maybe employing these along with the tournaments could increase this pace". These thoughts entered my mind just as they had so many times before. The only difference is this time I'm not going to fall victim to these thoughts. That has been the problem in the past I'll start adding cash games or think I should switch over to them for a couple of weeks and I will get hammered at it because of the increased variance and cash games vs tournaments. Or I'll add SNGs as I have done previously only to play 36 of them and come out absolutely dead even. What's the point. I know what kind of a player I am I know what I'm best at so no matter what the circumstances are, no matter how slow the earnings seem to be increasing comma I need to stay the course and at least on this particular occasion I am proud to say I am doing just that. I did not fall prey to these thoughts racing through my mind. We take our victories any way we can get them no matter how small they may be.

Now for the major opportunity that has been presented to me and actually this is the second time it's been presented to me in as many weeks. Somebody that I have known through blogging for a few years now I finally had the opportunity to meet in person when he got in touch with me and asked me if I would be interested in being staked to a tournament in the Grand Poker Series at the Golden Nugget. Standard staking agreement meaning I have no financial liability should I lose and he was willing to split any earnings 50/50. His name is Rhett, that's his real name as he told me there was no need for an alias and two Sundays ago we met for the first time at the Golden Nugget. He immediately struck me as a very decent likeable fellow and I thoroughly enjoy the conversations that we had the opportunity to engage in. We each registered for the tournament and tried to do what we could do.

On level 2 I was able to double my starting stack of 15K to just over 30k when with one limper and blinds of 50-100 I raised to 500 and two players to my left 3bet me to 1500. I could have called here and trapped him on the flop, but that does not come without certain risks, or I could have 4bet a moderate amount, but something told me that he would call a shove. I shoved he thought about it for about maybe 10 seconds and called with AKo. A queen High flop and nothing more on the turn and river put me at over 30k.

Levels 5 through 8 was like walking through a dead zone. During the course of those two hours I only received 4 playable hands and that was it. Although the blinds and antes weren't extraordinarily large they still cost my stack a good portion. During a couple of the breaks the one and only Tony Bigcharles joined Rhett and I outside of the Grand Room where we chatted just a little bit as Tony was in the Omaha8/Stud8 tournament I believe it was. Like most in the poker community Rhett knew of Tony through blogging. Talking with Tony is an interesting experience as anyone that has done so will know. When Tony gets on a subject he has a lot to say and sometimes I swear he doesn't take a breath in and only exhales lol.

Levels 9 and 10 I picked up some pots, but they were only small and finally by the time I got to level 13, I was just dwindling and dwindling when I finally shoved with a one gap suited connector with about 6 big blinds left. The small blind called with 2 overcards which considering what I had wasn't difficult to have and if that was the end of the story I would have been very happy with this as although I was a 3-2 to underdog, at that point in the tournament I was willing to take those odds, but unfortunately I also ran into the big blind who woke up with AA. There was actually an eight on the flop and I had life, but the river paired the queen that was also flopped not hitting any players and giving the AA hand top two pair and the pot and I was out.

I felt bad that I wasn't able to make money for us, but Rhett seemed satisfied with my performance and asked me right then and there if I would be interested in doing another stake in a couple of weeks. Obviously I'm not going to say no to this generous offer and that time has come and tomorrow Friday June 16th, 2017 I will be playing in event 27 of the Grand Poker Series at the Golden Nugget. The same tournament as last time. A $150 buy-in with a 15K starting stack and 30-minute levels and a delicious-looking structure. Obviously no one can know what's going to happen, but like last time I will play my heart out and do my absolute best although while texting I told Rhett that since he was the one that was doing all of the risk monetarily that if I do end up cashing this time I did not want it to be a 50/50 split that he definitely deserved at the bare minimum at least 60% of the take if there is any take to take home that is.

That's going to wrap this entry up. it's now 10:36 p.m. and I want to be heading to sleep by midnight so that I get at least a solid seven or eight hours shut-eye and be primed and ready for tomorrow. I will be doing updates after each level on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @flushhdraw for anybody that's interested. So that's going to do it for now. Current bankroll is $146.74, but who knows, after tomorrow it could be significantly more. Maybe not but to get rid of me it will either take a bad beat, a cooler like running Kings into Aces or an extra long period of card deadness. I can be out drawn, but I will never be out played. Take care everyone and I'll see you at the tables.

Bankroll: $146.74
Goal: $800
Progress: 18%