My poker journey

I've decided to start a blog to hopefully set some goals for myself in writing and to inspire myself to work as hard as I can at something that I feel I may have a passion for. I guess to start out I should lay down my poker background up to now.

I started playing poker when I was probably too young to even grasp the concept of gambling. I've always liked poker since I was maybe 8 years old. Through the years I've played homegames on and off and even ventured online to play with playmoney from time to time. Poker was always just a hobby to me and something I've been mildly interested in until recently.

About five months ago I downloaded Ultimate Bet. Yes I know, Ultimate bet isn't a site I should be playing on. I know about the super user problems but it's where I started and I haven't had the motivation to leave yet. Anyway, within a couple of weeks of playing I managed to cash in a Freeroll. The thing about their freerolls is they're not very generous (which I assume most sites aren't.) The one I joined had the maximum amount of entrants... 5,000. After hours of playing somehow I ended up cashing in 4th place winning a grand total of $4. Even though it was only 4 bucks somehow it was a huge satisfaction to me to beat out a field that big and come away with free money. With my enormous, newlyfounded bankroll i began to play fifty cent, ten person sitNgo's. Somehow I donked my way up to about $10 which was also about the time I found FTR.

I began reading each and every article in the poker strategy form on sitNgo's. I quickly realized the debth poker had to offer. Poker is such a simple game in appearance but beneath the surface is a complexity I could never have imagined. I was hooked. I started reading everying I could find on SitNgo's. I bought the book Sit 'n Go Strategy by Colin Moshman and read that as well. After about a two months I was still obsessed with learning about poker but quickly learning that Sit 'n Go's were more about volume and repitition than solid ABC flop turn river poker. Its a Push Fold Strategy that may hinder real poker learning. Thats when I decided to switch to cash games.

By that time I managed to get my roll to about $100. I switched over to $2NL cash games and started in on my reading again. For the last two months I've read every post in the 6 max section of FTR as well as some other forums that I'm not as partial to as I am FTR. As of today I've grown my BR to $267 and am now playing $10NL. Here's my first 6k hands of 10NL:


At about hand 3,000 I changed from a LAG opening range to a TAG opening range. I think the way my graph has progressed since then has been better.

I'm much more excited about playing cash than I was Sit 'N Go's. I feel like there's more money to be made, more to be learned, and it's possible to progress much further. To end this opening post I'd like to list some short term and long term goals I have for poker.

Short term:
-Play 15,000 hands of poker in the month of November. As of now I'm 3 tabling. At about 90 hands per hour per table I need to put in a total of 55 hours of poker time this month. That's 13 hours per week. Well within reach as I only work a part time job.
-Reach 25NL. I need to get to $500 in my roll to have 20 BI's for 25NL. Hopefully if I stick by my 15k hands of 10NL I'll be able to reach 25NL by the end of November.
-Read Doyle's supersystem. I bought it right when I first started with Sit 'N Go's but Haven't read it yet.

Long Term:
-My main goal is to reach 100NL. Of course one day it'd be great to get beyond that but for now I believe 100NL is well within my reach. I look at earnings graphs of 100NL 6max players and it's honestly inspirational. To be able to suppliment my income playing poker at a decent hourly rate would be amazing. What a wonderful world we live in that someone can play something as fun and challenging as poker and actually make money at it.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'd like to continue to post graphs of my progress and hopefully I'll be able to do that when I break down and buy Hold'em manager. I have 5 days left in the trial and after that I'm going to have to make a bit of a purchase.

Thanks for reading, any comments or suggestions are always appreciated. I look forward to hopefully becoming a member of the FTR communtity.

Hey that's a great first post, good luck slownpainful, looks like you have nailed the essentials which is why you've done so well so I'm sure you'll just continue to grow. Inspiring to read - I look forward to reading your updates, good luck!!

The graph goes the right way!

Very well done and hope it continues.

Originally Posted by slownpainful

What a wonderful world we live in that someone can play something as fun and challenging as poker and actually make money at it.

Amen. Best of luck.

Just a little update. I grinded my way up to $400 and decided to practice a little agressive BR management and take a shot at 25NL. Probably not a great idea but I've been feeling confident at 10NL.

Long story short 7k hands later at 25NL I'm still just a bit over $400. Kind of fustrating to basically go on a 7k hand break even stretch but I know variance is a biotch and it happens to the best of them.

I'm realizing though that I have two huge problems with my game that I need to fix ASAP. First, I've been going on tilt fairly easily and donking off whole stacks. It seems like I'm even more prone to it now that I'm playing for a bit more money than $10 in front of me. I need to learn to calm down and when that little voice in my head says "you're beat get the fk out" I need to get the fk out. Second, I've been making a lot of terrible river calls. Also partially because of tilt, maybe also a bit of curiosity even though I know he has the better made hand. I'm be willing to guess over half my losses have been due to those two things and I'd probably be well over $500 now in my roll if it wasn't for me getting easily aggittated.

Anyone have any suggesions to calm this down? I'm aware I'm doing it yet I sometimes let myself be the world's hugest station anyway. I need to take up buddhisim or find my chi somthin.

Off to spend more hours of what I hope will be winning poker.

From your chart I can see most of your winnings are from your showdown winnings. That means you are a very tight players, you only showdown when you quite sure about the winning. lol