Happy New Year 2+2!

I’m 23 and this is my second year of playing poker full time. Last year I played around 80% 2/5 and 20% 5/10 but this year I plan on putting in the majority of my hours at 5/10. I wanted to make a thread because I think the 2+2 community is great and an incredible tool for improving your game. I also want to be able to look back at the end of the year and see how I’ve improved in various aspects of poker/life/whatever else.

I play live 4-5 days a week (Monday-Friday) and don’t really have a set schedule of when I play online. I’ll be posting results after every session along with any interesting hands and how I think I played overall.

Background
I’m a very competitive person and grew up spending all my free time playing sports and video games, especially anything that involved strategy. My dad introduced me to poker when I was 15 years old and I quickly fell in love with the game. Within a week I was reading Super System and any other poker book I could get my hands on. My dad knew of a couple local ½ home games and would bring me and stake me for a 50/50 split of the profits. I was a decent winner out of the gates because although I was a super nit, people would try and bluff me in almost every pot (can’t blame them, I was a little kid playing with adults). By the time I was 16 I was playing on my own dime and winning enough to spend money on whatever I wanted, put some in the bank, and not get a job doing something I didn’t enjoy (something I don’t think anyone should do).

I graduated college with a degree in Business Management, got a sales job right out of school and was doing very well at it. The people I worked with were great but the work was something I knew I didn’t see myself doing in the future. After 5.5 months at that job I quit to pursue playing poker fulltime. This normally wouldn’t be an easy thing to do but I have awesome parents and an amazing girlfriend who support me no matter what.

Goals for 2017
-Keep doing things that make me happy
-Make no excuses
-Study wayyyy more
-Read more non-poker books
-Start streaming on Twitch
-Eat/live healthy
-Make 100k

For anyone looking to really improve his or her game I highly recommend reading The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and Applications of No-Limit Hold’em by Matthew Janda.

I feel like I covered everything I needed to in order to get this thread rolling. If anyone has any questions, fire away. Thanks!

https://www.twitch.tv/deegthree

I've recently started playing graveyard shift since the 5/10 is much better than the reg filled one during the day. These are my first five sessions of the year, played Monday-Friday last week.

1/2:
5/10 5 hours 17 minutes +1023

1/3:
2/5 0:43 +303
5/10 3:16 +704

1/4:
2/5 1:17 +84
5/10 1:26 +1013

1/5:
2/5 3:08 -301
5/10 2:02 +1903

1/6:
2/5 1:04 -203
5/10 3:25 -1278
2/5 5:58 +2348

This is the biggest pot I played of the week. Curious what others think about my line.

UTG +1 (1700) has been playing pretty tight compared to everyone else at the table. Haven't played with him before or seen him get out of line yet.

BB (1000) 2/5 regular, plays 5/10 when the game is good. Squeezes a lot and usually plays big hands slow and tries to trap.

Hero SB(2300) Chipped up by winning a lot of medium sized pots with no showdowns. Probably viewed by UTG +1 as a solid TAG.
_____
Preflop
UTG +1 opens to 30, MP calls, Hero TJ calls, bb calls.

Flop (135):KTx 6
Hero checks, bb checks UTG +1 leads 55, Hero calls, bb makes it 140, UTG +1 calls (I feel like in this spot he's raising sets and KTs, pretty draw heavy board vs 2 players ), Hero makes it 420, bb folds, UTG +1 tank calls.

Turn (1185): 8x
Hero bets 600, UTG +1 tank calls. (At this point I think his range mainly consists of strong one pair hands AK, KQs, AA, and some draws. I block ATss and AJss but he could still have AQss or maybe Axss although I don't think he is opening these hands UTG +1)

River (2315): 7
Hero jams, UTG +1 calls

Fold pre. No seriously, why are you calling out of position against a 6x open not even closing action with a BB who you claim also squeezes a lot.

Nice results, what state do you play in?

@Kelvis
Game was 5/10, thought I wrote that in, my bad

@discipline
RI and CT

Subbed! GL and good start to the year, potential to go large!!!

i don't get why you just don't jam the turn, it's just over a pot sized shove no?
what do you plan to do when you bet that size and the river bricks out?

anyways subbed and gl boss

Slow start to the year posting wise and don't have an excuse, will work on this.

1/10:
2/5 4:14 +1396
5/10 4:47 -1835

1/11:
5/10 2:55 -3500

1/12:
2/5 4:00 -254
5/10 2:39 +1079

1/13:
5/10 7:01 +2103

Online results
50NL&100NL Zoom 6:40 +652.88


Heading to Atlantic City tomorrow for a couple of nights. Plan on shipping Event 1 but if that somehow doesn't happen then I'll be getting in a lot of cash game hours.

Fired my first bullet in Borgata's $560 2 mil guaranteed on Wednesday but never got anything going and eventually busted and went to play cash. Fired another bullet today and made day 2 with ~160k chips going into 3k/6k blinds 500a and 45 minute levels (hated the 30 min levels for all of day 1). Two biggest hands of the day were JJ < J7ss on 894ss and 33 > AK aipf.

Going to try and get a lot of sleep tonight and eat a nice breakfast before the 12pm start tomorrow then build some towers.

1/18:
-560 Event 1 bullet 1
2/5 1:01 +268
2/5 3:34 +1560

AC trip was fun but I'm in no rush to get back there. If you're not staying at one of the casinos the surrounding areas are pretty ****ty. Ended up placing 290ish out of the 5500 entrants they had for Event 1 which was good for a $15xx cash. Really happy with how a played this tournament, made the majority of my chips without showdowns and think I made very few mistakes. Put myself in good positions to get a lot of chips but didn't end up winning enough flips.

The 2/5 games during this series were juicy and plentiful, tried to play 5/10 a couple of times but the game was either 9 guys with headphones or newspapers, or never got started. The thing I like most about playing in a new casino with strangers is you're able to create any image you want and I definitely took advantage of that.

1/19-1/20:
+977 Event 1 bullet 2
2/5 7:00 +929

1/21:
2/5 2:14 +111

Curious about what he possibly could have called there with on the river. AA is a bluff catcher. And like you said, sets most likely 4 bet on the flop to charge draws.

@Dream
He can call river with smaller flushes or bluff catch with AK and AA. Figured if I check I'm calling off anything and he's only betting river with flushes or somehow bluffing QJ if he gets there with this (don't think he can't think he has much fold equity here). I don't want to let him check back worse hands that would maybe be calling a shove here.

1/24:
2/5 1:04 -50
5/10 3:58 +1075

1/25:
2/5 0:56 +9
5/10 2:11 +830

1/26:
2/5 1:29 -1386
5/10 5:41 -1110

JsTs hand - I like checking river some %, jamming is always a flush and you have a bad one.

Played online the last three days, probably 20 or so tournaments total with buy-ins ranging from 6-33 and the 109 on acr. Lost ~350 playing 100 NL HU when low on tournament tables in about an hour (don't think I should be mixing a lot of cash [esp HU] when I'm playing tournaments). Had 1 cash, made 4 final tables and around 1200 total profit.

End of Month Breakdown

Not sure how I want to wrap up the end of each month in this blog but for now I'm just going to note my stats for the month broken down into four sections; live cash, live tournaments, online cash and online tournaments.

Live Cash
Time Played: 82 hours 34 minutes
Profit: 7238
Hourly: 82.60
Games: ~50/50 split between 2/5 and 5/10

Live Tournaments
Borgata WPO Event #1 $560
Fired two bullets and cashed for 1537
Time Played: 18 hours
Profit: 417

Online Cash
Time Played: 10 hours 25 minutes
Profit: 842.3
Games: 50NL/100NL Zoom and HU

Online Tournaments
Time Played: 24 hours
Profit: 1150.95

Total
Time Played: 135 Hours
Profit: 9231.25
Hourly: 68.38

Goals for 2017
[x] Keep doing things that make me happy
[ ] Make no excuses
[ ] Study wayyyy more
[ ] Read more non-poker books
[ ] Start streaming on Twitch
[x] Eat/live healthy
[ ] Make 100k

Very happy with this start to the year results wise but need to work on achieving the goals I set. Streamed zero sessions on twitch and still haven't gotten it fully set up. Need to study more next month and would like to start reading a non-poker book. Would also like to post a minimum of 5 difficult live hands next month. If anyone has any recommendations on things I should add to this thread feel free to let me know. Thanks!

subbed, GL

@Avi thanks!

Month is off to a really good start. Wasn't going to play live today if the roads were bad from snowing all night but I'm glad I went in.

2/1:
5/10 3:48 +3736

Fun cooler hand from today.


Preflop:
Three limps, Hero (CO) QQ raises to 65, MP and HJ call.

Flop (220): 972r
Check, check, Hero bets 115, one fold, HJ calls.

Turn (450): 9x
HJ checks, hero checks.

River (450): Qx
HJ bets 375 (~1700 behind) Hero (covers) jams, HJ snaps with 77.

5/10 6:32 -2400

Pretty frustrating session, feel like I played my C game all day. Paid off 2 river bets when I should've been able to find folds. Lost stacks on 6783ddcc with 77 and on 678hh5 with Q9hh both vs T9.
Might be results oriented thinking but a couple hours into the session the game was filled with 5 solid regs and no big spots and I thought about picking up my small profit. There was a soft looking 5/10 must move and a couple 2/5 games running. Game selection is very important and I shouldn't be sitting in a game if I think it's bad.

sounds pretty results oriented, unless you're suggesting just not having a calling range that isn't the stones

@YGO
results oriented thinking was to the game selection, not the hands.

2/3:
5/10 3:22 +2079

Pretty solid session today, made some thin value bets, won a lot of medium sized pots without showdown and don't think I made any bad decisions.

in, gl

2/4:
5/10 3:48 +507

Supposed to get 8-12 inches of snow tomorrow. Girlfriend already has school work canceled so will be staying home just relaxing. Will probably get in a couple hours of cash games at some point

Subbed - also working on my live game. Sounds like you live in NJ?