Because there may be tax benefits to tracking this. All those tips are business expenses, so having a record of them will come in handy.

Again, I'm not talking about just playing a couple hours on a weekend trip here. I'm talking about playing anywhere from 2-4 hours every day from here through summer. That number will grow over time and serve a purpose.

standardized deductions will outweigh that for the normal person. I like the idea of tracking everything, but in a cash scenario @ LL levels, I really don't think declaring deductions are going to impact you.

if you ran yourself as a business, perhaps incorporate/self employed and had real property to declare, then maybe. Especially if you need "seasoned" capital... that applies to buying a home when you are self employed (nearly impossible these days) or if you pay cash for high ticket items, otherwise it's just better to fly under the radar and keep EVERYTHING off the books.

no one cares if you spent 600$ yr on bottled water and much of the expenditure will NOT be deductible depending on your filing status.

Once again, it's a good practice to keep track of this stuff, but you have more important things to worry about.. like learning to drive

1 - I do have a business for this.

2 - I think you're underestimating how much this will come out to as a tax deduction. With the hours I'm planning on putting in, it will be much higher than just $600. All deductions help with taxes

why don't you just play low stakes on wsop.com while you're in Vegas? It sounds like you need work on fundamentals. You'll get a lot more hands in playing online and you can easily find a sweet spot between too good/too bad players with more selection in stakes available.

I understand that a lot of people prefer playing live vs. online. I am almost exclusively a live player myself. But if you're just working on fundamentals, it would be extremely difficult to argue against the volume you can get online. You need to play a lot of hands to implement coaching advice given to you, no way around it.

That's not a bad suggestion. But, as I've stated earlier in this thread, I do not plan on playing any CET properties and that definitely includes playing online. I do consulting for CET and online poker . . . I really don't want to say much beyond that. Suffice it to say, it just wouldn't be right for me to play anything remotely related to CET.

This is my second posting with results. I've added a few more hours since my last update. I would have liked to add more than this but I have been unable to because of final exam testing for my Masters course. That took a lot out of me.

My winning proportion continues, but cushlash has assured me that this will drop closer to 50%. I suppose that's inevitable but it's nice to see it keep going. I suspect that the hourly will also drop but for right now it's worth my time to keep going on this.

I am still working on putting together stories from some of the sessions that have led to this, to bring it to present day. From there I will start a more of a "rolling" update to present things as they happen. My plan is to play pretty much every day of the summer and see how things go. I really want to get to 80 sessions and see where I end up at that point.

I think the standardized deduction for a single is around 6000$... depending on whether or not it's allowed, Chush's time schooling you might fall into that category... but I doubt it.

I think it's a bit much to obsess on this stuff at this level though you are learning valuable skills. it's much easier to just fly under the radar.

but carry on, looks like you are doing it right

Question.

Taking your total hours divided by sessions, I noticed that your sessions are quote short.

Is this intentional? Or I assume it's because you are still doing consulting, so time is limited?

Not to get rhetorical or anything but what is a short session?

Part of it is my consulting work. Part of it is my masters (the semester finished yesterday). Part of it is just wanting to try different rooms.

So I'm just trying to put in hours/sessions where I can. I think the length of sessions will increase as more of my time frees up.

I guess for me, I find it hard to play for 2-3 hours only because I feel the need to press

Whereas if I know i will be at the table for a while (ie. 5 hr plus), I can sit back and relax and let the game come to me.

Hopefully you are stronger psychologically than me and don't feel that..,

I'm sure Jim's reasons are probably the singular cause for his "short sessions."

For me, I have bad ADD. Like, annoyingly bad. I still struggle to sit over 4 hours in a given session. For several months after returning to live poker in 2013 (I took 18 months off post black friday) I couldn't sit more than 3 hours tops without having to get up and go to another casino and in between do a couple of things. I get antsy, I get impatient and I play poorly as a result.

So I guess all of my sessions are short and I'm working on it. If you ever see me racking up after 2 hours with a profit, I'm not meaning to hit n run. I probably just need to go back to the room/switch casinos because I'm getting antsy/need to smoke a J, etc. etc. It's annoying but it is what it is since I don't do the Rx fix for the ADD.

It's a mix of both of the items above, really. I do have adult-diagnosed ADD so short sessions are preferable, and, more importantly, it's hard to play consistently good poker for long stretches. Having said that, I think my sessions are average something close to 2.5 hours? I guess it's all relative with experience, but that doesn't strike me as all that short.

I agree, Jim. Perhaps that's because of our attention spans, or backgrounds in online poker where you can clear a Sunday Major in a third of the time LAG logs in a given session (that 24 hour monster).

For me, if I'm struggling 2.5 hours into a 1/2-1/3 table it's time to get up and hit the reset button. I know the various opinions on this, but sitting and struggling to focus mentally is more -EV for me than leaving whatever potential value I may be walking away from at the table.

My exception to this has been crushing a table where the fish don't get up, in which case the hours can pile up without realizing it's been 4-5+ hours. That hasn't been often, however. Most times I just book nice wins or small loses, not bunches of buy ins one way or the other.

Completely agree. I'm also with you on the non-Rx approach to ADD. I just accept it and try to work my best with it while not impairing myself in any way. Being aware of it is half the battle, as I'm sure you've seen.

Shouldn't this be in House of Blogs? It's basically a cheap version of amusedlols thread over there.

If you compare this to my previous results, you can see that I have experienced some nasty regression-to-the-mean in my play.

I had two sessions where I was stacked multiple times, one at the Luxor and one at the Wynn. Luxor was ironic because I ended up splitting the pot twice within full-houses. The numbers on that are infinitely small but it happened and I couldn't get anything going. At Wynn, I think I just ran into players that are more skilled than what I'm ready for.

My latest session, last night, was profitable, so I'm going to try to carry that session into getting me back into positive territory.

-$260 for 40hrs is not too bad. I can lose WAY more than that in 40hrs

You're right, its not. It's more about the regression down. If I were to look at the last ten hours, the loss would be around $800 - that's the part that was more depressing.

-$800 is meh, whatev. Just depends on how you felt you played in losing those 4 buy ins. If you misapplied some concepts in an effort to put them into practice it could be money well spent in the process of learning. If you lost it through bad habits and known leaks that's another story....

DollarStoreBaller is right.

You gotta keep your mentality in check, partner. I realize you're not depressed as in you're gonna start lighting your toes on fire, but let them bad feelings fly away.

Play well & may you suck out viciously from behind!

Did you stop playing?

I have been away from this thread for a little bit but I'm still here! In fact, I'm still alive and some VERY good things have happened:


Two significant things have happened:

1. I am profitable again!
2. I binked a tourney for $5,000

After suffering a downswing that approached -$900 I managed to work my way back up. While, I haven't really increased my hours, I have had a little better (higher quality) play. A BIG part of my comeback was playing in the WSOP 1-3 cash games. My most memorable action was a 4-way all-in that I managed to scoop So, yeah, that helped a lot to say the least!

I also - almost - managed to bink a tournament. It was a deep-stack on the Strip. It was my first time stepping up to a "big boy" tournament and I felt like I was really dialed in with my hands, picking up a couple of reads here & there and just basically hung in there. I got down to 3-hands and heads-up and I'm not proud of some plays I made. But, I still stuck around, took the second spot and made a score of $5000.

I'm REALLY surprised I made it that far. Start-to-finish it was a 12+ hour effort, so a really, really long day. That's the most hours of continuous poker than I've played . . . well, ever! As some of you have commented before in this thread (and it's true) I play relatively short sessions. So for me to still be in it going past all those hours is amazing. It's still, more-or-less, sinking in, what I did . . .

That is BY FAR my largest poker score to date and I must say that it felt pretty good. My view on the aggressive nature of poker has made a 180-degree turn from where I was before. It takes a ton of guts to play this game, moreso than I ever imagined.

Great job Jim, good to see an update!

I'm playing at the WSOP today. Going to try the 3pm deepstack with 2 buddies. If I've met you before feel free to stop by and say hello. Just hanging out now waiting for this thing to start

Busted out of yesterday's deepstack with about 600 players left. Man those antes rise quickly! Plus, antes after only two levels? Seriously? I guess they have to do that in order to keep it a one day event?

I'm going to try again today (Monday) and then most likely Wednesday. Work duties might take up the rest of the week.