100nl --> Part Time Millionaire

A 100BI roll and balls of steel are good things to have when playing HU.

As you have pointed out yourself: you have almost no sample for a game as swingy as HU. At some point your graph will be upside down over the same sample and you need to be able to stomach that.
Your goals are counter productive as well imo. Focus on playing well, not on what level you want to be in what timeframe.

My wrestling season has ended and I'm back on track with school stuff, so I've got a little more time on my hands and think I'm ready to play a little poker. Thanks for the replies and I definitely agree now with what a couple people have said. When my focus with poker is on how much money I'm making, I'm setting myself up for failure and misery. That's why I needed a break for a couple weeks and I need to take steps towards preventing that from happening again.

I feel like my biggest strength as a poker player is my ability to think a step ahead of my opponents and read hands well. My biggest weakness is my emotional control and occasional inability to predict what players will do with the range I put them on. So, as far as the emotional control front goes, my first plan of action is to take auto rebuys off. I need to take a second to evaluate my emotional state if I take a rough beat and decide whether I'm capable of playing my A-game and if I have an edge in the game. I feel like this time is critical so I don't fall into that zone of monkey tilt where I've maxed out the amount of pain I'm going to feel and don't care if I lose another 5 buy ins. I'm also going to stop checking the cashier during sessions, if I feel worried about how much I've lost, its time to quit. After my last little freak out, I withdrew a bunch of money, so I should have enough in my bank account to pay for rent, food, and all that jazz through summer and most of next school year, which means I won't have to dip into my poker account for quite a while. I think this will allow me to treat poker more like a video game that I'm just trying to beat the next level in. Hopefully this makes it more of a challenge of skill rather than a way to pay for stuff, and results in me just striving to play well and not punching something when I played perfectly and ran bad.

I guess with my inability to predict what my opponents will do, I just need to only make a play when I'm near positive it's a good one. I often find myself in situations where I say he's got QQ or JJ for sure, and if I were in his shoes I'd fold to a shove, so I shove and he looks me up with QQ and then I'm angry. I have to realize that just because I would think through my opponents likely range and realize I can't beat any part of it except for a bluff and fold doesn''t mean my opponents are thinking the same way. My edge comes because I am thinking through ranges and not just about how pretty my hand looks. I need to do a better job of identifying who is thinking like me, who is thinking more than me, and who is plain not thinking. I should probably just try to play straightforward until I know enough about an opponent to be able to run a big bluff on them.

I'm going to scratch my old goals and make some new ones.

1. Balance poker with school.
2. Have fun
3. View each game as more of an intellectual challenge where score happens to be kept with money, and not a gambling game where immediate results are important.
4. Get better and beat the 100nl and 200nl levels in a reasonable time frame. I think my original goal of setting a time limit is flawed because a time frame adds stress and factors in short term results very heavily.
5. Don't be scared to move up when I have the roll for the next level. I do a good job of moving down when my shot doesn't work out.
6. Play some good regs at 50nl and be able to tell where my edge is coming from against them before I move back to 100nl
7. Play at least 8k heads up hands per month during school and no more than 12k. Play at least 20k per month during the summer.

Poker has been going pretty well recently. I've had a lot of + or - 8 BI sessions because I think I've gone off the deep end a little bit with my aggression recently, but I'm working on finding that balance.

Before all of my wrestling matches, I pray with my dad (not to win, but more just to do the best that I am capable of), he stretches my arms, pops my back, we do a up and then down high five thing with both hands (its really simple but very hard to explain), then I bounce around and visualize the match for about 20 minutes, when its time for me to wrestle I do the same high five thing with the head coach, a one hand thing with the assistant, put my ankle band on my left leg, step on the line, stretch both legs, shake the refs hand, and then I'm ready go, all the nervousness has turned into adrenaline and I'm in the right mindset to handle whatever is thrown at me whether I start winning or losing it just exists and my game plan changes accordingly there's no frustration, and no overconfidence. I NEED TO DEVELOP THIS FOR POKER!!! Too often I'm playing the game far too conscious of my short term results and not treating it as a mental challenge against another player. This leads to me constantly playing on tilt and/or unfocused. There's a sticky note application on my computer, and I think I'm going to use that to write something important down before every session. Hopefully this will keep my goals in mind as I'm playing and keep me focused on adjusting to my opponent and not the luck factor in either direction.



Basically the story of my play is I play well for a while, then I run too good and fall in love with bluffing, lose a bunch of money freak out, pull money out of my account, get my head back on straight, start from lower stakes and repeat. Hopefully I can stop the cycle and just play good for an extended period now.

Anyway, I'm hungover and officially on spring break now! Gonna go get something to eat and probably go to the casino with a buddy or play a little online sesh if I'm feeling better after some food.