Operation: Stop Lurking, crush 50NL

I'm a pretty chronic lurker. I've been on FTR for years, read a ton and check these forums (mostly) daily. I've learned a ton thanks to the suggestions and good humour of the people here. I've decided to get over my natural antisocial urges and start writing my poker goals, hands, development and experiences. Also, it'll be +EV. While this op is largely for my self development, I'm obviously really happy with anyone who takes interest, and I love any and all constructive critisism. I do tend to write a bit much.

I'm from South Africa, just finished my BA in writing and drama. While looking around for a decent full time job in my small town, which is a very difficult task, I'm going to be focusing on poker as one of my main forms of income. The current exchange rate is over 8.3 rand to the dollar. My current part time job in a bookstore earns R20 an hour, or just 2.3$ an hour. My earning rate at 6m 20NL on Cake has been around R140 an hour after about 200 000k hands. As you might imagine, I'm taking the poker very seriously at this point. My cost of living is very low, around 350$ a month. I am also keeping my crappy part time job for security and peace of mind.

Back in the past, during my degree I played a bunch of poker and went busto after a few months. (I did withdraw about 200$ from my roll every month, so it wasn't too terrible). This time I started with a deposit of 210$ and have had great success just trying to be consistant, solid and not suffer FPS. Withdrawn quite a bit from my roll for living expenses and stuff like a 2TB external HD and 19 in' monitor. I've taken 2 shots at 50NL and both times have been CRUSHED MERCILESSLY, with my very poor play ultimately being the reason why I had to move down. I am very very comfortable at 20NL and been winning there for many months, though my room for improvement is still huge. So begins...

OPERATION: Stop lurking, crush 50NL.

Current BR: 1793$
Will be withdrawing atleast 300$ of this for next month living costs.

Goals (also written on a whiteboard, thanks Carroters)

-Move up to 50NL at 2000$. Move down at 1500$
-Continue yoga+breathing medidtation before I play any poker session.
-Stop being antisocial: Update poker operation a couple of times a week, post a minimum of one hand in the BC a week.
-On days with no commitments, play a minimum of 4 hours. On RP-dnd/work days, a minimum of 2 hours.
-Continue to improve, both in volume and usability, my notes on villians. 'VBL CS loves any A' > 'Called A4 2 streets on a 33598 board.
-Continue to talk to myself during my sessions, as if it were a railing session and a good player is watching me. I never ever do anything stupid when I do this, though if I play for a while my voice starts to feel raw.
-Play in 1 hour blocks, then take a short break for meditation, breathing and refocus and continue. (thanks 8-fold path to poker enlightenment, which I highly reccomend to anyone who hasn't seen it, applying many of its concepts and ideas has greatly helped my focus during sessions and I'm way less tilty).
-Excercise more and eat more veggies and fruit. I'm also planning on picking up a martial art once a week in January with my brother. I'm naturally very competitive and this will help keep me in shape in a fun way. Also I love MMA.
-Focus on assigning ranges and eliminating hand combinations during my sessions, which is currently sorely lacking.
-Avoid creating excessive 'Narrative', especially HU. I end up overadjusting and doing stupid shit. Instead, I must just take advantage of the massive leaks, hyper aggresion with weak ranges and poor play evident in my opponents by playing solid, positionally aware poker. (This FPS has been the downfall of me at 50NL). Swing my dick less with good regs via 3bs.
-FUS DO RAH!

I hope to be doing well at 50NL in the coming months. But I want to make sure my bankroll is stable and solid at all times, because it means I don't have to move boxes in a bookstore. I'm dedicated to improving both as a person, and as a poker player (I think the two are inseperable due to tilt ect) and welcome all suggestions, advice and verbal abuse when I 3b K8os OOP. See you around.

some solid goals you have there. and some similarities with my current situation. gl

Thats a good post A A .
look forward to your b/c posts.
gl

oh by the way, do you specialise in FR or 6m or mix it up? i skim-re-read the OP and didn't see anything regarding what games you play. if you did mention it then don't mind me

glgl

Thanks guys. RPM I started out with FR back in my student days but I play 6max exclusively now. I much prefer it to FR tbh.

nice. i've also recently switched to playing almost exclusively 6max. i figure it's the same as FR except the 3 most boring seats have been culled from the table

So well, I'd forgotten December is a boiling pot of friends, family and other commitments and I've had way less time for poker than anticipated.

In the couple hours I've played this month I'm running slightly in the red, and been running like ass with only the massive spew of some guys allowing me to be nearly breakeven. I felt I've played ok this month, but not quite my A+ game I had running for a few sessions. Also, after some introspection I've realized biggish losing sessions bother me more than I'd been admiting to myself and its been sapping my will to play. I need to get over this kind of results orientated stuff to post real volume.

Otherwise, two of my best friends are arriving on the 12th, and the days that follow will be full of D&D, LANning, and hitting the local alternative nightclub and shamelessly hitting on girls (the one friend, like me, is a big proponent of game theory and we like to set up sitations and see what kind of girls we can pick up).

I have a couple of wierd and interesting hands I'll post. I must say, when I really look at the vast majority of players at 20NL on Cake, they are so spewy, crazy and wierd that I struggle to classify them as thinking people. Solid vaulebetting works really, really well and not too many other tricks. I have been attacking certain players postflop tendancies and I feel that I'm learning a ton via this and really growing as a player. I think the biggest leak in wanabe regs play is calling lots of 3bs in and out of position and playing fit or fold post flop with a wide range, which allows me to print money 3betting a merged vaule range. Also, most regs at this level don't 3bet much at all (perhaps 3-6%), making it very easy to play against their 3bets.

Also, partly I think because of all the videos out there, but double barreling is becoming the new cbet. Several 'regs' at my limit are double barreling every board, every time. Which I realized how crazily unbalanced they are in these spots I've started calling their x2 barrels lighter than I usually would and seen great success. x3 barrels nearly always are TPTK+ though.

I'd characterise these past few days a poor start to my operation, I can definately do better, though during December it will be tough due to everything.