Today, I’m starting my $50 to 50NL challenge.

A little history: long-term break-even/losing player has finally had enough of this. I'm setting up a challenge for myself to finally turn myself into a decent winner.

I know this isn’t something that hasn’t been done before. Verneer’s epic thread has taught me a lot about poker, although he started with $100. The one thing I have not learned or developed from that, though, is discipline. I think, when I have my head on straight, when I’m focused and paying attention, I’m a decent player. The problem is I tilt way too easily, I lose my concentration, and my bankroll takes a big hit. Over time, I’ve won a bit, lost a lot more, won a bit, lost a lot more, and I’ve finally decided to sit down, take a good hard look at myself and my play, and try and develop the discipline to actually win at this game.

So I’m starting this challenge. It’s for myself and myself alone. This public post is more to keep me honest with myself (psychologically speaking, they say public pronouncements make it more likely you’ll follow through on your goals; i.e. smoker’s who tell everyone they know they’re going to quit are more likely to quit).

In order to develop discipline, I’ve decided to lay down some rules for myself and my play:

1) No session begins before I’ve spent at least 10 minutes meditating.

I used to meditate, and I don’t much anymore. I felt I was much more present with my life in general when I was meditating, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to stay focused now that I don’t. Meditating before each session will help me stay focused and aware of myself during play, not to mention general life benefits.

2) After every session, upload the tables for the day to Bluff.com and review every hand.

I don’t do much, if any, post session review. I want to get in the habit of reviewing myself, as well as my opponents, and making notes on my opponents and myself. Pokerstars, at least, allows you to add notes to players even if you’re not on the table with them. I plan on doing this more afterwards so I have more information at my fingertips when I play. It will also give me some more insight into the types of leaks I still have.

3) Stoploss at 4 buyins, stopwin at 6 buyins.

Tilt is a huge problem for me. Losing a few buy-ins usually just makes it worse. So the need for a stoploss is obvious. However, I have the same problem when I’m winning: winner’s tilt. I get over confident, assume I’m going to hit draws, shove in obviously bad spots expected to outdraw my opponent. It’s pretty bad. There’s also a positive psychological factor in “clocking a winning session.” I win 6 buyins, I’m happy, I call it a day. I would also like to mention here that playing for several hours has never been a problem for me. If I’m playing well for the 1st, I’m still playing well at the 4th if I haven’t tilted in interim.

4) Buyin requirements: 20 buyins for the next level before I move up, move down again if I hit 15 buyins for current level. For SnGs, 50 buyins for the next level (although I don’t play many SnGs).

Again, I need to develop the discipline to move back down again if I hit a rough spot: tilt, variance, coolers, whatever. Just move down. I’ve got it stuck in my head that I’m a 25NL player, so starting over at 2NL is going to be humbling. But it’s important. I have to do it.

So this means no shot-taking. I take shots at 50NL HU all the time, and it’s a HUUUUGE leak. So that has to end.

I also plan on playing in the $3.30 6 max MTT @ 9:40 every morning. I like MTTs, I’m decent at them, but I have a focus problem with those as well (in that I go deep, then spew off all my chips on a bad bluff and lose). Playing one MTT a day will improve my MTT game; hopefully, one of these days I’ll actually ship that MTT and can get out some of the grotesque amounts of money I’ve put into this game.

5) No distractions during play.

The amount of times I’ve playing while watching HSP, or a tv show, or some other video, is really lame. I need to remain focused on the game while I’m playing, or I’m simply not going to be as effective.

6) Write about it in a blog after every session.

Again, making this whole process public will force me to stick to the guidelines I’ve set out.

7) If I break any of these rules, I’m voluntarily locking myself out of the software for my next “play day.”

As my work schedule currently is, I can play 2, maybe 3, days a week. Not a whole lot. If I break one of my rules, I lose one of those days to play. Kind of an intense punishment, but totally necessary. I’m trying to figure out a reward system for following the rules, but I don’t want the reward to be poker-related. If you have any suggestions, feel free.

All these rules are intended to make me focus and play my A-game as often as possible. It wil be the only way I’ll have any chance of making any money at this game. I’m also going to add here that I’m planning on making a $150 withdrawal @ the $200 mark because I deposited $250 for the SCOOP bonus that I had planned on taking out as soon as it cleared, and I lost most of it. So I’m going to get some of that back out before I continue on.

It’s going to be a long process. It has to be. Hopefully, some of this self-exploration will turn me from a spewy, losing playing, to a solid, winning LAG.

Thoughts and comments appreciated. Flame on!

Good luck

Well, I didn't know where else to put this. BBV seemed best.

Also, I'm not planning on posting follow-ups here, so I'm not turning BBV into a blog. I know no one here REALLY wants to follow my trek through 2NL .

tldr
I did read the first line: you're rolled for 50nl , congrats!

i like it

P.S. If anyone IS actually interested in following me, PM me for the blogspot address. If I get more than 2 PMs, I'd be surprised.

Let's move this one to a new home as well.

Good luck dude,

I like all your rules, if you stick with them you should do well.

Have you got any software to help you out?.
Also I dont think it a good idea to quit when winning. I am trying to get myself to keep playing when winning. Sometimes its easy to quit but when you are running well or playing well I think you should keep playing until you are tired.

Keep updating.

Good luck man. You sound really dedicated.

Writing a blog after every session is pretty time consuming and not that much of a benefit, but reviewing your hand histories after a session is a must. You should also add a time limit to your sessions as well as the buyin loss/wins. I find myself after 2-3 hours that I can't play as well, but I still want to play and end up losing a bunch. Some people are robots however.

As for your meditation idea... lolllll good luck.

Post regular updates.

Good luck Nimh! Now that this forum exists, you should definitely post updates. I'm glad you're going with a session review, its a great idea. Additionally, if I were you I'd commit to posting one hand per session to the strat forums to talk about. It will give you less of a sense of having to do it all yourself, and let people help you try to improve as you go.

Would it be possible for people to sweat you during the challenge?

I would be interested in your blog.
I think there are things when people say or write them that I might be able to relate to, or better yet, a light bulb goes on for myself.

good luck

Meditation will be a very good way to start

you need to buy holdem manager and a dueces cracked subscription bro.

Hey guys,
Didn't even realize this forum was here! Sweetness. Thanks to BF for moving it and reopening. As I said in my PM, appreciated!

Thanks for the support so far. I'm PMed those who've asked for the address. I am going to update the rules a little bit:

Withdrawls are being changed to as follows:

Withdraw $50 @ $150 ($50->$150)
Withdraw $50 @ $250 ($100->$250)
Withdraw $50 @ $300 ($200->$300)
Withdraw $50 @ $350 ($250->$350)
Withdraw $50 @ $400 ($300->$400)

I NEED to get the $250 out, and this seems like the best way to do it: it will still feel like progress, and I changed it slightly so that after the 2nd withdrawl, I can still play 10NL comfortably within my rules.

I'm also going to up the BR requirements for 50NL: 30 buyins ($1500) before I move into that level. I've been told that there's a much bigger jump between 25NL and 50NL than between 10NL and 25NL (although I thought the jump between those two was pretty big to begin with, at least at Stars).

To Achill3s:
I use PokerCopilot. It doesn't have positional stats yet, unfortunately, but it works well enough.

I've been reconsidering the stopwin. I think I'm going to change it to a 3 hr straight cap (unless I go deep in an MTT, in which case, I close the rest of my tables and focus on that) and a stoploss.

To noobsickle:
I think the benefit for writing a blog to make the process public and keep me honest. As I said in the beginning, public announcements of intentions makes people makes people more likely to actually follow-through. I've also always had dreams of actually having an actual blog, rather than a place to stick random thoughts . This is as good a place as any to start.

And I love meditation. I just stopped doing it .

To RayPowers:
I post hands where I get into spots and look back and don't know what I should've done. The thing for me right now is not that I'm getting into spots and getting confused, it's that I'm getting into spots and going "well, that was a stupid bluff" or "why did I raise there again?" So I'm not going to make it a "rule" that I post a hand a session, but I already make it a habit of posting hands that confuse me. If I consistently do a session review, posting hands will naturally follow, so I'm not going to force myself to post if nothing interesting happens in a session (which will probably be that way through 5NL, as my mistakes on those levels will be thinking people can actually fold hands and making obvious/stupid mistakes).

To ClifLee:
Yeah, if they want. I've only done a sweat once, and the connection was really slow, but if anyone wants to sweat me, they're more then welcome to do so.

To two_isles:
The link has been PMed to you, and for anyone else who's interested, it's in my profile.


I love this forum! It's like BBV, but with nice people, instead of trolls .

I have PokerCopilot. I'm probably going to look into training sites when I have a bigger roll.

A rule I've been using lately is to sit out on all my tables if I lose a stack to a bad beat, even if it's completely f#@king obvious that I got it in with the best of it. I review the hand immediately and think carefully about it from beginning to end. Sometimes I find that I played the hand badly, usually I conclude the obvious, a bad beat. Either way, I usually regain my composure 100% and can confidently get back to it.

Same goes for when I deal out a bad beat to someone else, for obvious reasons.

I actually really like this challenge...

A lot of the things you mention sound familiar, like watching videos, or reading forums while playing. I also don't review enough after a session, etc.
So I think i'm gonna apply some of these rules to myself, and see how far i get.

Anyway, good luck

I'm looking forward to some updates.

Updates? Has this started yet?

I haven't started yet. With my work schedule, sessions tend to be few and far between. I might be able to get an hour-long session in this afternoon, but if not, probably not until Sunday or Monday.

gl man

looking forward to updates

you can get cardrunner training for ftp points

gl