One table left... this has been on par with my absolute worst days of run bad... like I literally lose every time I get the money in unless I have the guy drawing to 2 outs or less and even some of those I lose. I built a couple of stacks despite this, but nothing worth noting aside from the Hot 3.30 which I then busted around 100 to go... I'm around average stack in some ****ty little $11 tourney and then I am done until Sunday. So unless I FT this thing, I'm just gonna sign off until then otherwise this entire pot will be a whine fest and nobody wants that.

This **** though, all day, just as example...

Have a great weekend heros... see you Sunday.

Had a good couple days off. Got in an epic heads up battle of Beer Pong with my buddy Friday while we waited for more people to arrive at the cottage...

The Kokanee and the damage done...



Ready for the grind tomorrow. I have made a decision to reduce my Field Size Average significantly. I will be playing only the Bigs, not the Bounty Builders and dropping all the turbos for the time being. I will be adding more $4.50 SNGs until I've added about another 1k to my roll, at which point I will begin dropping those in favor of more $16.50-$33 events to start increasing my ABI.

I will also be playing a lot more of the MEGA satellites to continue giving myself inexpensive shots at bigger Daily Major events... anyway, should kick off around 10 AM tomorrow and get around 40ish events in.

GL heroes!

Played I think 27 or 28 events yesterday, ended up un-registering a handful towards the end as I was having another day of epic run bad. I have a relative coming in from England today and I am looking after him today and tomorrow, so I am going to take those days off and end my month.

Month to Date Graph:


The positives are I got my best month volume wise (maybe ever?) and didn't feel like it was that stressful to do, so I can easily see myself getting increased volume as the summer progresses so I am ready for the fall/winter grind. I also felt like my tilt control was good, despite running horrendous for yet another month overall in money situations. As you can see my cash rate is a balmy 23.3% and yet I am not converting that. Now, I have no doubt, I can find improvements to make with my late stages game and will be studying in the evenings the next two days on that, but I can confidently say the bulk of the issue this year so far has simply been routinely getting boned by the RNG. The final positive to take is that I am not losing a lot of money, which means my bankroll management and game selection are decent and I am grinding hard to get cashes, even if they are often small and end in 2 out disaster.

I do still need to work on being focused throughout my sessions. I still slip into the casual grinder mentality from time to time of just auto-piloting decisions and playing too fast, even when my table count is low. I definitely play better when I am playing each hand as its own entity and not just sort of auto-deciding, "10-9o is a fold, I'm in a middle position, next table..." - I've cut that sort of thinking way down, but not out.

I have my last free month before I move into my new house with my buddies July 1. Which also means I have a bunch of expenses coming, so a good profit month would be nice, but I don't set those types of goals, so we'll see how it goes. I am going to shoot for 750-800 MTTs this month (including 180s) and I am going to add some of the Power Series events to my schedule just to give myself a little variety RNG wise. I've been looking at 888 as well, but I'm not seeing a great selection to choose from in my time frame and given I like their software the least, I will wait until I am higher up ABI-wise before adding in events.

Anyway, taking my step bother (I'm not sure the technical relation, he is the grandson from my grandfather's first marriage) out for a beer tonight and a Jays game and downtown Toronto tomorrow, so that will be a good break from poker and then June 1 he is off to Niagara Falls to visit with other family and I will be back to grinding.

GL to the rest of the grinders on your end of the month grinds.

Peace

Thread Savers (for the long post...)

Took the entire week off (save for one live session on Friday).

Did some studying with a buddy of mine, going through some spots I was feeling uncomfortable with and just relaxed a bunch so I could come back feeling fresh again about the grind. So back to it today, will just take things day by day for the moment, but will start with a good session today on Stars/Party and see how things go...

GL everyone!

Wassup Heroes?!

This thread has been dead because I've basically not been playing any poker at all, but that's about to end this weekend. I've been doing some other work for my side business and it's been going well... but it's time to get back to the grind. That said, I'm pretty much done with online (possibly outside of Sundays, I may keep a decent low/midstakes grind for every other Sunday). I'm basically going to grind 1/2 during the week and 2/5 most weekends (unless I have a terrible week and think I shouldn't expose myself to an even bigger loss on the weekend) and ideally be full time at 2/5 by end of the summer, at which time my buddy and I are planning to move down to either Vegas or LA and grind live there.

If he bails on me, which is possible, I'll likely end up back out West in Vancouver and playing 2/5 at River Rock instead with frequent trips to Vegas/LA.

As for this summer, my day to day grind will be at Rama, some weekends there too when I'm at my buddy's cottage. Other weekends will be at Playground in MTL and Fallsview in Niagara. Yah, so I'm kind of happy to know I won't be sitting in my basement grinding online at ****ty limits anymore on a very "blah" schedule and I wasn't really feeling the 19 different platforms plan to make it a little better. Live is slow and can be boring, but with headphones being allowed in the casinos here now, that makes it better and I definitely enjoy the social aspect of it more. And it's what I started at back in Niagara and have always had the most consistent success.

So I'll keep posting here, maybe once a week with an update and some hands I've collected for the week. And I still like checking in on the other heroes and seeing how they're doing with the grind. And I'm sure I'll see some of you on the virtual felt on some Sundays.

Take it easy! GL grinders!

TL;DR = It wasn't important, here are half naked girls...

Hey Guys,

Been pretty quiet lately. Enjoying summer weather mostly. Started to play a bit this week and should continue to expand my hours logged. Put in two sessions this week at 1/2 for a combined +$600 net profit. Was really just trying to shake off the rust in preparation for Montreal this weekend where my buddy and I will likely play around 25-30 hours of poker at Playground around seeing The Cult at Metropolis Sunday night.

I'm using this weekend as a kick start to getting back on a more regular grind. Should be about 3-4 days per week live with most Sundays online for a low/mid stakes session.

I'll post some hands when I get back Tuesday. Good luck to all the grinders!

gl

Thanks!

----

Not going to do a full trip report right now. Drove overnight after playing until midnight last night to get back for 6 AM this morning. Still pretty wrecked. Had a great weekend as always, love playing at Playground. And of course, The Cult were tight as usual, great 16th show, looking forward to number 17 soon!

My buddy went down about $900 on the first night after a horrible group of beats, but recovered to make $450 or so.

I made around $300 for the weekend after starting off hot at 1/2 and then cooling off at 2/5 for a small win Saturday and then pretty much even Sunday and Monday. But still a $900 week with the Rama sessions, so nothing to complain about.

I'll post some hands later, for now here's a few pics from the weekend...

My buddy's 1/2 stack on Monday after climbing out from down ~$900...


Some random pics of me playing he took cause he was bored...




Anyway, I'll be back at it up at Rama tomorrow, Thursday and Friday (possibly 2/5 Friday if I have decent sessions leading up)... I'll try to keep track of hands and get posting a bit more regularly.

Peace out!

Playground is such a nice place!! Free food and drinks too, sexy waitress ♥ GLGL

Hey guys,

Not to much been happening the past few weeks, put in a few live sessions. Enjoyed summer a bit.

Anyway, soon enough fall will be here and that usually coincides with an increase in online play for me through the winter... and I am curious about staking and was hoping some of you could point me in the right direction to get more information.

I have been in a pretty steady cycle since returning from Thailand of working part time and grinding a mix of live cash and online micro/low with occasional higher shots MTTs and doing just well enough to pay the bills and have a bit of a social life, but never having any big one off score and not making enough monthly to really consider saving to move up. I've started thinking about staking more.

But I'm not really sure what to expect and what would be expected of me in such an arrangement... so I was hoping some of you might have some suggestions on places to look to help me first find out if anyone would even want to stake me and second then decide if it's something that's right for me.

Thanks for the help.

OK... time to get this thread going again.

I am in the process of loading up some funds for September and getting back to a 4 day a week grind with one live night per weekend. But, I have a slow down on my echeck deposits apparently, so it takes 7 business days. I want to start playing now tho as I basically haven't been online all summer. So I have $30.69 in my account at the moment (screenshot below) plus 2 x $0.55 tickets (from StarsCoin which I will reuse to play other events and I will play Mega satellites that fit the BI range and I will play VIP freerolls on Saturdays).

I am going to grind until my deposit clears starting this afternoon with all MTTs from $0.55 to $1.10 (6 events) and the rest $1 - 180 man SNGs... gives me 32 buyins. Basically I'll keep grinding it until either it busts, my deposit clears OR if we get some decent upswing before then, I may just keep grinding to see how far I can take this $30.

I'll post daily graphs and brief reviews of the session and any hands I found interesting and hopefully it will get this thread going again until the end of the year.

Hope everyone had a great summer and is ready to get back on that winter grind!

Cashier:


Threadsavers...

Day 1

Starting Roll: $30.69
Ending Roll: $23.66

Finished a baby session today, I had intended to play more, but first I had a power surge that forced a restart mid session and then when I got back online, my whole computer was running horribly sluggish and has been for some time. So I decided to finish out the 12 MTTs I had running and then do a reset tonight on my machine to clean it off as well as hook up my 2nd 27" monitor so I can pump out better volume tomorrow.

I am unfortunately 14 points shy of SilverStar, so unless I want to gamble it up and risk losing this roll entirely, I'm not likely going to qualify for the 30k freeroll, which is sad.

Anyway, I am running atrocious, pretty much all year, in all-in situations, but whatever, I made one FT and finished 9th today and the play is still quite terrible in those, so I should be able to get something positive going this weekend anyway.

Off to fix my machine. See ya tomorrow.

OK, so I decided after looking a little closer at the outcomes of trying to grab SilverStar for today or not to go for it. I needed 14 x $3.50 6max Hypers to get it done and I had 6 to start, but I've had success in the format before and figured I risk killing the roll on one hand, but if I'm successful I'll not only get SilverStar and add the Freeroll, I'll also boost my StarsCoin intake going forward and and I'll grab another 160 SC right away for clearing another Step and I'll likely turn a profit of some kind. So I went for it...

And was successful... So new roll looks like this:

Bankroll: $54.34
StarsCoin: 180

So I will add in all the $2.20s and likely the small field $3.30 with the other stuff. I will be fairly aggro on management as I only have a week to either run it up to something decent or I'm abandoning this when my deposit arrives.

So vamos today!

Blah, one of my monitors is messed completely. And I need an adapter for the other one, so today is probably not going to happen, sucks to miss the freerolls. But my machine isn't ready yet anyway. I'll make up for it tomorrow, big grind from like 9 AM start.

First orbit, first tourney today... it'll be awesome when I don't run like this again, I'm excited for that! /whine

PokerStars - $1+$1+$0.20|30/60 Ante 9 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP+1: 99.73 BB (VPIP: 100.00, PFR: 100.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
CO: 100.85 BB (VPIP: 30.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
BTN: 91.45 BB (VPIP: 80.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
Hero (SB): 74.02 BB
BB: 77.65 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 10.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 10)
UTG: 39.1 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
UTG+1: 80.32 BB (VPIP: 100.00, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
MP: 75.52 BB (VPIP: 10.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)

8 players post ante of 0.15 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.7 BB) Hero has 2 2

UTG calls 1 BB, UTG+1 calls 1 BB, MP calls 1 BB, fold, CO calls 1 BB, BTN raises to 3.5 BB, Hero calls 3 BB, BB calls 2.5 BB, UTG calls 2.5 BB, UTG+1 calls 2.5 BB, MP calls 2.5 BB, CO calls 2.5 BB

Flop: (25.7 BB, 7 players) 2 5 5
Hero checks, BB bets 19 BB, fold, UTG+1 raises to 76.67 BB and is all-in, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 70.37 BB and is all-in, BB calls 55 BB and is all-in

Turn: (244.07 BB, 3 players) 8

River: (244.07 BB, 3 players) A

Bankroll Start: $54.34
Bankroll End: $98.60

I ended up grabbing a 2nd and a 3rd back to back to end the day in $1 180 mans for a nice profit. Nothing special today, didn't get as much volume as I'd like or should have, but I'll take almost doubling the roll and will try to get the volume up tomorrow.

I think I will play the $1 - 180s as a base tomorrow, and then play the $2.20-$4.40 smaller field events and some $4.50 - 180s, I realize it means no big score potential but I feel like shipping the smaller field events is easier and less variance.

Just busted in like <60th in the Big 3.30... standard run bad. Whatever. Had one interesting hand, that I am fairly sure my bet was OK on the river, but maybe I'm wrong...

I know he calls pretty much any bet with a J here... and he folds all missed draws IMO, not calling A-high I don't think based on reads... but I felt like I had to bet as I don't beat enough of the draws with only K-high (weak kicker)... losing to AQ/A10/K10/K9 and Axss... only beating 109.108/98 and some small FDs...

Anyway, curious thoughts on sizing/if I should be betting at all... anything really...




Anyway, I will take about a $9 loss today overall, but I have a 50K stack in the Mini-WCOOP Phase event, so good chance to push a stack through on first try.

I didn't know about the mini-WCOOP, if we can get a decent roll going here the rest of this week, I will definitely keep grinding through m-WCOOP as I wouldn't be playing much regular WCOOP anyway even with the deposit, so might as well take a shot at a bink and keep running this roll up.

Lead flop for 10k. River is a bad card to bluff and everything missed. People love to herocall in these spots. I'd go like 14-15k otr to hopefully get him off a PP/ace high type hand.

^ Well, as I said, I did feel strongly this particular player was not calling with his no pair hands based on my read... but... if I did lead 10k on the flop, what's the follow up action? am I triple barreling? safe to assume he calls flop with the J, so I will have to act again. Thanks for the response.

I did not end up getting that stack through to Day 2 unfortunately, got two outed for a big pot and then shoved A10 into AJ in BB. Shrug.

I will fire the 8 AM Day 1 each day I play at the end of late registration with the start of my session at Noon. I am off today, girlfriend and I are hitting up the beach. Then sessions tomorrow and Thursday before Friday off to hit a concert in Toronto and then I guess I will just crush huge sessions through m-WCOOP and see if I can bink something and if not, I'll probably abandon this little bankroll run-up and go back to regular low/mid-stakes with a deposit.

OK... this has still been haphazard, so enough is enough.

Starting fresh here, starting with $50 now, so a small increase over what I originally started with as I did grow it a bit.

As I wouldn't be grinding a big WCOOP schedule anyway, I will give this bankroll challenge until the end of m-WCOOP and try to turn it into a bankroll worth continuing to grind post series. I will only be on Stars for now as there isn't enough to split, but if it grows I will consider adding Party and 888 to the mix.

My basic plan is to grind MTTs up to $4.40 (mostly $3.30 and under) and then just fire as many $1 - 180s as I can per day over about a 5 hour period.

I will do one session today to sort out my HUD and get used to the grind as I haven't put any real hours in still and then I'm off the next two days, but I will do some studying Saturday night from the HH of today and then Sunday I will get back to a solid 4-6 per week grind depending on the WCOOP schedule offerings.

If I bust the roll, I will either try again or quit and simply deposit for low/mid stakes grind and just get back to that until end of the year.

For an arbitrary goal, I'd like to hit $15k by January 1, 2017.

Peace

Break even day, but bagged up $223k @ 1k/2k tomorrow in the $11 Marathon, so that's nice. Two good events tomorrow as well plus I am pretty much abandoning the micro grind, just playing a 6-8 table count in the mostly low stakes range with some satellite shots and mid stakes stuff.

See ya tomorrow.

Ugh. Winning day, but we got screwed bad in the $11 Booty Builder. 1010 < 77 AI on the flop of 363 BvB and he turns a 7 to lose both a solid bounty and a 1.75M chip pot with like 30 to go. Then we lose our shove A10hh < KQdd when he makes a flush. Also made F2T of $3.30 2K. Will play next session for either Wednesday or Thursday, not sure yet. Beach tomorrow with the GF.

We also had a cash in the mWCOOP $2.20-R and some other small stuff.

Definitely better grinding 6-10 tables and focusing more on my play instead of being a robot and relying on all-ins far less, which is good obviously. Played really well, just super annoyed to bust both before FT.

I'd be interested to read some thoughts on this hand:

He tanked almost full time bank before calling my river bet... should I have gone bigger?

Tough day, took a loss. Couldn't get anything going... just kept running into AA/KK everywhere... got in 36 events tho and am starting to get pumped for my sessions again, which is nice, so volume will continue to grow and scores will come.

Back on it tomorrow. Night!