February Week 3.

Wow!!!! I had one hell of a week. I fted a bunch of shit. I felt a bit snake bit at the $55 fo fts I made. I ended the week by winning a 33 and the ftp 26/28k. I managed to get in 130 mtts playing 5 days this week. My big scores for the week were:

4th in the stars 33/15k for 1.6k
5th in the stars 55/5k for $810
5th in the stars 55/5k for $790
1st in the stars 33/2k for 1.3k
1st in the ftp 26/28k for 5.5k


Exercise and diet didn't go as well as I'd like, but I'm going to continue to work on it. I'm really too tired to add any more thoughts other then I feel like I finally got the monkey off my back winning my 1st $26. I decided that my updates aren't going to include roi cuz it's too damn hard to figure given I play a lot of kos and a few rebuys in a session.

Week:
MTTs played: 130
Cashes: 16
FTs: 7
Profit: $8,199.25

Month to date:
Profit: $7,637.13

Year to date:
Profit: $8,407.71

February Week 2

I didn't get the volume I wanted. I played Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday which was good but I also wanted to get in a long session on Sunday. I woke up Sunday and felt terrible and decided playing would be a major waste of money. I still managed 90 mtts, 10 short of what I'd like to get. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get my volume in. I'm thinking of playing 5 days where 3 days I play 30 mtts and the other 2 I play 20 mtts, or playing 4 30 mtts sessions, or maybe playing 4 30 mtts sessions and 1 small 10 mtt session. What I do know is that I want a minimum of 400 mtts played in a month. Right now I'm 49 mtts behind where I need to be. I'm getting to the point where 8 tabling isn't much of a problem and I might start 9 tabling by the end of the week. That should help with my volume.

I fell short of my cardio and weight lifting goals. I managed only 3 weight lifting sessions and 2 cardio sessions where I was shooting for 4 and 3. I think I'm going to start trying to get some joggin in because that's what I loved to do back when I was in shape. It's great for a couple of reasons 1) you get outside 2) it's great exercise 3) it clears my mind.

I'm pretty happy with my play this last week. I had one session where the first 20 min I played terrible, but other then that I made some deep runs. My results aren't great but I gotta think the nice scores are coming. If you total up the 320 or so mtts I've played I've pretty much broke even with some really tough hands that didn't go my way as I got deep in quite a few mtts. A suckout here, a hold there and I'm looking very good but, alas that's mtts for ya.

Save for not really making any money, I really like the freedom of getting up when I want, playing when I want, and not having to do what some retard boss wants me to do. Poker is a funny game because it's often hard to know if you're good. I really wonder if I'm all that profitable. I might just be some guy that's just good enough to barely make a profit, but not enough to live on. I guess the great part of playing full time is I should get a chance to find out or maybe bink something big and kid myself that I am profitable in this game.

Going forward I'm going to have to kick butt these last 2 weeks and get in 249 mtts to get to my 400 mark. February is a big month for me. I think by the end of the month I should have a clearer picture of where I am from a profit standpoint.

Week:
MTTs played: 90
Cashes: 15
FTs: 2
Profit: $192.44

Month to date:
ROI: -16%
Profit: -$568.68

Year to date:
ROI: 3%
Profit: $208.90

I only played 3 online mtt sessions. On Monday I felt really drained and just slept in real late, I'm pretty sure it was a combo of a minor sinus infection and my body getting used to a drastic cut in calories combined with exercise. I decided in the middle of the week to not worry about my diet and make sure I exercise. I heard somewhere that it's a good idea to do one or the other 1st because it is tough on your body. Pretty sure ur sposed to diet 1st, but I already had a week and a half exercise routine goin.

Tuesday I was 10 minutes from starting a session when my bro called up to see if I wanted to hang out. I buckled and said yes. I ended up going to the casino and playing a $40 mtt. I basically got no cards. My biggest hands were kq 2x, 55, 44 2x, 33. My bro looked like he was gonna make a run so I sat down at a 1/2nl game. My 2nd hand i opened 88 on the co for $10, the button called and we saw a Qh Jh 8x flop. Obviously not the nuts I was going to go with it unless super scary cards hit. I bet $20 into the $20 pot. The kid snap calls. Turn is an Ax obv KT got there and most live cash morons get there vs me when I have a monster. I put villain in as he has a psb left he snap calls and quickly flips up KTo. NH sir. The river is a beautiful Q and I rake inthe $120 pot. That was in fact the first set in a live cash game that's won me money in over a year. I proceeded to open 2 more pots that got called and I won with a cbet for a cash game profit of $78. All in all on my day off I made $38. I would've played longer but my bro is terrible at cash games and was steaming cuz some retard limp/called his QQ shove w/A2s and got there. I'd feel bad when he lost his money cuz he was gonna lose it, so we left shortly after.

I played Wed, Fri, Sat. On Thursday someone came over to look at my water heater so I didn't play that day so I got in only 61 mtts for the week.

Totals:

Week:
MTTs played: 61
Cashes: 6
FTs: 2
Profit: -$754.12

Month to date:
ROI: -51%
Profit: -$754.12

Year to date:
ROI: 0%
Profit: $16.46

My January consisted of me working the first 2 weeks at my job and the last 2 weeks I grinded 8 sessions. Tilt seems to be my biggest issue and I think by the 4th session of the week I got it pretty much nipped in the bud. For these 8 days I made 6 fts, 4 of which 1st made at least 1k. I got, 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 6th in those. I ran really poorly at those fts. Had I won 2 key hands(yes I got sucked out on pretty bad) in the 25/25k I'm probably looking at making 7k in January, but that seems to be my MO when it comes to big mtts.

What I'm proud of since I started playing for a living:

-I got 4 weight lifting sessions last week
-I got 3 30 minute sessions on my recumbent bike
-Because of the 2 above I lost 5 lbs
-I've gotten better at not tilting mostly because putting in 169mtts in 8 sessions u get numb to bad beats


Things I need to work on:

-reviewing more of my hhs
-posting more in strategy forums
-start meditating every day

What I can do to improve on the above is I think I can post in the strategy forums at least once a day. I'm thinking that reviewing a hh on my off days is the best I can do. Meditating I think would work best right before a session, but I find myself often rushing to make some lunch right before I start playing at 3pm.

Now that I have put in some time grinding full time I think I need to set some goals.

Personal Life:
-Get a routine going such as sleep schedule, days off, etc.
-Lose 100 lbs this year, yes I'm a fat bastard

Money-wise:

Tier 1- Make 38k for the year; this would allow me to live really comfortably however I wouldn't add any money to my savings/roll

Tier 2- Make 47k for the year; I think this is achievable unless i suck at poker, I guess we will see

Tier 3- Make 100k for the year; I'd have to run amazingly well for this to happen, but hey I can dream right?

Poker:

-Hit a new high score, currently my biggest cash is 3.7k; this should be pretty easy
-Hit a 5 fig score
-20k roll
-30k roll
-I'd like to go to vegas during the wsop this year; this really depends on how grinding goes. Most likely this won't happen this year.

The updated totals:

MTT buy ins: $391.70
MTTs played: 20
Cashes: 2
FTs: 1
Money won: $374.40
Profit: -$17.30

Year to date:

Total ROI: 23%
Total Profit: $770.58

At work things have been really slow, so my company I still technically work for decided to transfer 6 of us to other departments for less pay. I wasn't really crazy working for 4k less per year so I decided to quit. I'm going to take a shot at playing small/mid stakes mtts starting out around a $22 average buy in.

This wasn't an easy decision I went through a range of emotions after finding out I was being transferred. At first I was pissed, which seems obvious. I was like fuck this place I'm going to play poker for a living w/out really looking at the big picture. About a week or 2 later I got irrationally scared because my family was telling me it was a bad idea and in most cases my family gives great advice, but they don't understand that over the long run poker is absolutely profitable. Finally after talking to a few more friends who were in good jobs and who could easily take a shot if they were single told me it seemed like a feasible and maybe even a great idea. At that point after looking at living expenses, my bank roll, and my savings I decided this might be my only shot to give this a try.

I took a careful examination of whether keeping my job or going pro(I say going pro cuz it's quicker then saying playing mtts for a living) was the best idea. The money assuming I have around a 50% roi was going to be a bit more going pro so this point was a wash. Benefits, well benefits have gotten worse the more I worked at my job and expect it to get much worse when our contract ends in July, but still my previous job had an edge here.

The next thing I looked at was which option would I be happier. Playing a game I love with the ability to put 100% of my energy into it given my competitive drive has a huge edge over doing some mundane, slightly dangerous job. At my job I was going to have to work from 6pm-6am 14 of every 28 days which sounds beyond shitty where as going pro I'd work 8-12hrs/day starting around 2pm 5 days/week again edge by a long shot goes to going pro. The next thing to look at was taking personal days off. At my job even if you're sick with a doctor's excuse you get charged an incident after 3.5 incidents in you're in deep shit and can't miss another day for like a year or you're close to getting fired, poker you can take a day off whenever the fuck you want, edge by a long shot poker.

So as of today I have about an 11k bank roll and close to 8 months living expenses. As I mentioned I'm going to start out playing around a $22 abi and get in about 400 mtts/month. I'll post a bit in what my goals are for 2010 including some life goals in a few days.

I heard that the wbcoop is coming up on pokerstars. The wbcoop is a series of freerolls for poker bloggers and since I both blog and like free money I'm going to sign up to play.




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