Still in after getting dangerously low at 10 BB's. I now have over 30 BB's. 14 people left. Only problem is I feel really sick. Took several doses of cough meds over the last several hours and still fighting a bad cough

Just knocked out a guy and then knocked out two more in same hand (one was almost as big as my stack). I am now second in chips. Down to final nine. Top six pay.

go go go !!!

I got fourth and went out on a cooler. Top two versus straight on flop. Made about $350 profit after taking out my buddy's half for buying 50% of my action.

The thing that sucks even more is the guy who got third went out on the very next hand bc he was short stacked.

nonetheless, you had a good run! 5 figure roll now.. getting closer to ur goal

I'm over the 5 digit mark despite running into a mega cooler on 2/4 for a stack. Lost set over set in battle of the blinds.

Current Bankroll: $10,098

I'm still sick. Took another day off work to try to get some rest and get over this thing. Still got a really bad chest cough.

Also we had our first baby appointment with the doc today and heard the heartbeat. Everything sounded good and healthy they said. We're looking at an early February due date.

Lastly, my in laws have made it known that they would like us to move out soon. So I will either need to find us an apartment, rental house, or see if I can convince my parents to let us stay maybe a month or two. We are still a ways away from having enough saved to buy a house. I also just remembered we are gonna owe about 5500 in taxes for the first time home buyer credit repayment since we sold out house, which I didn't factor into my savings goal calculations. Plus all the medical bills for the pregnancy and delivery which will be about 3000 if I remember right from our first child. So will have to recalculate the goal and ETA of reaching it and will post when I do.

Excited and stressed!

Hey man, sorry to hear about the added stress! Not only does that suck but like it or not these situations tend to follow us to the poker table if we're not careful! However, all things considered it seems like the Lord is leading you somewhere special!

Last month you started with a 5.4k bankroll and now you're at over 10k! You've made over 4k in just this one month, and mentioned you and your wife are able to save up $1500 a month. I live in SoCal and manage to make it on $1200 a month so hopefully you guys can find a more stable situation with the $1500 a month you guys are able to come up with in savings.

I'll be praying that everything turns out for the best for you and your family! I hope your parents will let you stay there for a month or longer because each month they let you stay there is an extra $1500 into your savings. Not only that, you've proven that a lot can happen in just one month of playing. If you keep a level head and keep kicking ass at the tables, then this time next month I see you at around 15k easily. I'm sure this situation is incredibly stressful for you right now, but you've been working hard at this and I'm sure it'll all work out if you keep at it!

But don't be afraid to take breaks if you don't feel like you're able to play your A game. Stress makes you think about stress, not poker. After losing 2-3 buy ins your A- game quickly shifts to a C game. You've nearly doubled your bankroll in a little over a month! That is a huge accomplishment and I'm truly happy for you! I just bring up that fact again because if you feel like you "have" to keep playing, just remember the fact that you doubled your roll in one month. You did it by playing solid poker and if you don't think you can play that same style of poker, stay off the tables.

I'm quite excited to see where you'll be in another month or two. Your progress is truly inspiring and has helped me get through a few tough downswings. When you put God first and work hard for something you will always be rewarded. Keep at it and God bless!

Great words of wisdom and encouragement, Kratos. That's really impressive you are able to live off that in SoCal of all places. I'm in the suburbs of North Dallas which have recently experienced an abnormal surge in real estate prices (one of the reasons we were able to sell our town home at above asking price) but I'm sure the cost of living here is much cheaper than SoCal. So that's really impressive. $1200 a month here would get us an okay 3 bedroom apartment but not a rental home, which is really what I would prefer.

I have actually been dealing w a huge amount if stress over the last couple of years and it just seems to shift from one thing to another. For awhile it was trying to sell the house so we could get out of debt--while using my poker earnings to pay down the debt. Then it was saving up so we can try to get another house. This feels less stressful since we aren't cashing out a large chunk of my bankroll each month to pay down debt.

Like you said, I am confident we can save the money. It just may take longer than I had initially thought. I can manage my own emotions about that but it does get hard when I have to help my wife keep hers in check and then when my boy chimes in saying he wants his old house back or wants to move into the house next to my in laws or my parents. Just need to keep giving that over to The Lord to help me keep my focus.

Hey man, I just stumbled across this thread and wanted to say good luck to you and your family. This is some really good inspiration. Keep up the good work

Yeah man it's all about finding ways to cut corners on little things. I run my house like a business. I found out a few years ago the first thing you can do is make your grocery bill cheaper. I buy flour in bulk and my fiance makes bread all the time. And for $10 I buy ingredients to make 40 frozen bean and cheese burritos, it's like $8 for 20 of them and they taste like crap :/

Instead of justifying spending $15k+ on a new car, I bought a used 97 Honda and fixed it up brand new practically. A penny saved is a penny earned right? :P

Just keep reading your bible for inspiration and I'll keep you guys in my prayers!

Haha, sounds like definitely are stretching your dollars. I too got an old honda based on the advice from author Dave Ramsey and got rid of my gas guzzling Jeep Wrangler that I was making monthly payments on. Making or even cooking food is definitely one way my wife and I could cut back more. Both of us don't really like to cook and don't know how to cook much. But eating out sure adds up and isn't healthy.

My wife is wanting to get a new SUV though. She's got an '04 Lexus RX and doesn't think it's large enough to have two car seats in the back. She's already done her research and thinks we can get an Arcadia for under $300 a month. Told her we can't do that until we get our new house though. Right now both of our cars are paid off.

subbed

Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.

Glad to have ya

Will definitely be following, going through a very similar situation as yourself. Have had to move back in with my parents and have one child and another on the way.

Good luck, will be railing for you!!

Wow, very similar indeed. When is your second child due?

I tried another shot at 3/6$ playing a couple tables. I am continuing to notice a lot more meta game and aggression. Still have a good amount to figure out how to play certain situations and common tendencies for the stake. Found myself hero calling too much and then getting called down at spots I normally can push people off hands. Finished the session down about 900$.

Then I was only able to play a short session last night after trying to figure out why my wireless suddenly went out. Turned out to be bad drivers after a windows update. Finished about even playing half 2/4$ and half 1/2$.


Current Bankroll: $9,278

Not looking forward to having a convo with the wife about our future living plans. Have already sent her a couple apartments that were the cheapest (which would allow us to save the most) and she didn't respond well to them.

We still have about 16k to go to save in order to have enough to put a 10% down payment on a 200k house, pay off our 5500 first time home buyer tax credit bill, have 3k for the delivery of the baby after insurance pays the rest, have a 4k bankroll, and have 5k emergency fund. There may be one or two more things. Will have to check my spreadsheet on my home laptop.

We had some setbacks the last couple months due to car repairs and a little of other unplanned expenses so we haven't saved much beyond what I've made in poker.

Savings account is at $12,700
Poker account is at $9,278

So we've made significant progress from being in $8k debt prior to selling house and having only $1,300 in my poker account back in March when I was cashing out what I made each month. Praise God for that.

Been feeling pressured by her to find another higher paying job. Also feeling stressed about where we will live next.

Need to pray and give all this over to The Lord and remember "He will never give me beyond what I can bear" (1 Cor. 10:13) and to "learn to be content whatever the circumstances" (Phil. 4:11).

Hoping to get back to 5 digits this weekend again. Gonna stay away from 3/6 until I am closer to 12k.

We are with you man! take a break from 3/6 and concentrate on 2/4 and 1/2

How much are you making per hour with holdem? With your background and education which job could you get that would realisticly pay more than poker? Have thought. about moving somewhere, where you could play live? You have enough of a BR to take a 10 buyin ($500) shot at 2/5.

I believe you would crush it.

Second child is due Christmas Eve. Then it's back to sleepless nights.

Convo with wife didn't go as bad as I had thought it might but still not great. When I told her we are about 16k away from being where we need to be to put a down payment down, she said that will take us another year.

She begrudgingly agreed to let me ask my parents if we can stay with them til the end of August. So now have to think of when and how to do that.

On another more, what I thought was a driver issue, might be a hardware issue (I.e. My wireless card may be dead). I tried installing all updates drivers off the dell website for my specific laptop but that didn't do it. The fact that my wireless just suddenly stopped working without me changing anything also points to that. Gonna take it to geek squad at best buy to confirm. So if it ends up being that I might as well just buy a new laptop for $400 or so.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I have averaged about $30/hour since I started back in late March. And as I have moved up to 2/4 I have been making $50/hour but on a smaller sample size.

At my job right now I make about $30/hr plus benefits (insurance, 401k matching up to 5%, etc).

Several reasons I play online instead of live.

1) Time - I can play four tables at once online which each average many more hands per hour than a human dealer can churn out. There is a zero minute commute compared to an hour and a half each way to the nearest casino. The most common time I play is right after putting My boy to bed. I just play for a few hours at a time.

2) Expenses - don't have to pay dealer tips, pay for fast food, pay for a tank of gas and tolls when I play online.

3) Quality time - a lot of the time when I am playing is when my wife and I are watching our tv shows or a movie. We just finished Breaking Bad while I had my great month this month. So breaking bad is plus EV I do realize I am not playing at an optimal level when I am not continuously focused on the tables and am allowing myself to be distracted by watching the tv. But the HUD helps make up for some of it. And the rest I am happy to give up as a trade off to make sure my wife and I still spend time together. She's cool with it too.

4) Lack of success / perception of casinos - I used to go to the casino every other weekend before my wife filed for divorce and she said that was one of the things that really bothered her. Since I was away for like 10-12 hours on a weekend (which is when we now spend a lot of quality time together) and then when her family or friends would ask where I was, she didn't like telling them I was at the casino (she was embarrassed). Playing online only helped address that concern for her. Anyways, when I used to go often, I played 1/2$ and honestly ended up making like $3 per hour lol. The fact that it is nine handed instead of six max and it being live have an impact on my success. I don't seem to make as many moves or play nearly as aggressively as often bc people get annoyed or make comments and so I end up having a lot more anxiety that prevents me from playing nearly as optimally.

At some point I would like to quit my job and play poker full time but right now I don't make enough per year playing poker to justify it and I need the insurance at least until our second child is born.

My background (especially my master's degree) are more of an albatross around my neck than anything. My parents and in laws (and my wife too) think that means I should be able to automatically go out and get a 6 figure job and just assume I don't want to or am too lazy.

But it is in such a specific area (creative advertising) that it doesn't do anything for me in potential employer's eyes other than show I have a propensity to learn. But it hasn't opened any doors or gotten me a bigger raise or a promotion. The reason I am where I am today is my best friend was working at the bank and was in good with the VP and told him I would be as good as him at the job. I was hired without any real vetting. I worked my way up to become a manager.

I would love to live in California but my wife and I would hate to be away from her parents and mine. They also help watch our kids while we work (nothing beats free babysitting from people you trust the most in this world). We all live in a North Dallas suburb. So we really don't want to relocate.

Just try your best to put it in perspective. You're only 16k from your goal, and a $300 a month car payment is 3.6k a year! That's 1/5th of what you need in car payments, and that's just the 1st year of car payments. Sometimes you have to be comfortable with what you have. I'm sure she'll listen, it's all about what we need, not want.

My girlfriend and I have lived in trailers and cars before, so having a house with a working car (Praise the Lord!!) is a HUGE blessing after having lived in cars/trailers for a few years. We make a lot of sacrifices to keep what we have though. We rarely go out on dates, we find ways to be happy while at the house we both feel thankful to have. Why spend $100+ a month on restaurant food when that's 1/6th of our rent? A trick I've found that works for us is before you spend money on anything, think about what else that money could buy. We used to have a drinking problem, we spent over $150 on alcohol a month. We could pay our internet AND phone bills with that money.

We're a little biased though because we know what it's like to have nothing, so its easy for us to choose what we need over what we want. Many couples argue about money like that because of how easy it is to get caught up in what we want instead of what we need. But all we need is the grace of our Lord and everything else will fall into place! I'm sure your Mrs. is quite stressed right now, but as long as you stay by her side and help put things in perspective I know she'll come around! Living with the inlaws/parents makes you feel powerless, just stay the course and remember that you're exactly where the Lord wants you right now!

And don't feel too bad about the Masters degree, it isn't just you my friend! After all, why pay you a Masters degree salary when a high school drop out will work for half the pay? My fiance's mom had a bachelors in computer science, but she never once worked in the field. She instead stood home and watched/raised the kids. They lived in motels/trailers their whole lives because only her Dad was working. But this worked out for the best, because my fiance and her brother are wonderful people that were clearly raised right! I know how much trouble I was able to get into because of how often my parents were working!

Back when I lived in Tennessee there was a grocery store in town, so small I knew everyone working there so I obviously noticed the new cashier and struck up conversation with him. Turns out he just got his bachelors and that was the only job he could get. You're in a stressful situation, your inlaws and you and your wife want your own space. You guys are all adults after all. When we get stressed we often default to the blame game. I was guilty of this for years until by the grace of God, my loving and patient fiance showed me that complaining about stress is a waste of energy that could be used to DEAL with said stress.

I definitely think you should drop in limits for the time being until things mellow out for you. My sincerest apologies for the wall of text, but I know how it is to be stressed out. And poker is fun for us, so when we're losing while going through stuff in our lives it puts us on tilt even harder. It's my duty as a Christian to help build up my fellow human beings in their time of need and I'm here to do just that! You've had an amazing amount of progress in these last 6 weeks, somuch so that it wont hurt if you take a break or drop down in stakes for a little bit. For what it's worth, I'm proud/amazed as **** at your progress and if I can ever help in any way please let me know.

I'll keep you in my prayers friend. Just stay the faith and know that you're exactly where the Lord wants you to be. He is gonna take you to great places! When in doubt, open up the Bible for wisdom. God bless my man!