The making of a professional...poker player and trader

Originally posted by aXSesPSRNMD
Hi There

I have a full time job, but trade stocks and play poker at the same time.
I have often thought abotu getting into full time trading, but also really love playing poker.
Throughout my life I have never specialised in one thing, (jack of all trades, but master of none) and seem to be doing this with job/poker/trading.

Recently I have been playing poker more, but still have like 90% of my bank role with trading.

So I will favourit this thread and keep on reading, see what happens.
In the meantime I will be learning poker and mostly trading psychology as I think my biggest enemy in my poker/trading career is myself


my 2 cents.

hey,

I am sort of in the same situation. I have a day job, but now I am concentrating on poker again. With the bankroll i build from poker I plan to start trading again (open another account with 5k and continually add to the account, something like that)

Trading has been my first love(since i was around 17 or 18 years old), and will remain my true love. Poker is my mistress ♠_cool:

thought it was about time I revived this blog.

After playing on bwin, stopped at the end of December with the whole merger with Party. Haven't been playing until a few days ago, when I started again and am committed fully to make it this time.

I am settling for 6max cash Zoom.

As I also have a full time job, want to go to the gym to get rid of the fat and get ripped, have a girlfriend, also study trading, read a lot of books, etc, Zoom/Rush Poker is the best for me, because I can get in a lot of hands/hour.

Started on February 14, and already played 10k hands.

Hands played: 10k
Winrate: 1.83 bb/100

not really worried about the winrate because 10k hands is nothing and the variance in 6max (especially zoom) is high.

Also installed Sidekick because I'm into the whole social/app for everything you do thing. I only installed it today, so I only logged 979 hands with it, but already won 12 badges.

The whole thing with Sidekick is a great idea and is a great motivator. At least for me. I view it as a game where you level up, and who doesn't like games ? At least for me, Sidekick is a great motivator.

I have so far been awarded 12 kicks(too easy kicks to worth the mention), but I've looked over all, and already have some ideas for more kicks. Will forward them to the Sidekick team when I put them in order

I've looked over all the kicks, and for those that you can have control over, I have decided I want to achieve all but one until next Sunday(the 23rd of February)

These badges are:
- Working hard or hardy working (100 hands on each weekday of a single week)
- Weekend warrior (100 hands on each day of the weekend)
- All the number of hands played badges, the goal being Poker Adult 10k hands
- Sunday grinder (1k hands on a Sunday)

The one badge I will not be actively pursuing yet is the Every Day I'm Shuffling, because 10k hands is a lot for me to play right now in a day. But I'm sure I'll do this in the near future.

I will also start updating the kicks in my signature, 1/week, Sunday evening

with the grind on the mind !

Today I was victim of what I know is the enemy of a good trader, being greedy.

Had around 450 something in my account and mixed my NL10 tables with a couple of NL16 tables, because there were some huge fish there.

Played fine for about 50 minutes, won 1 buyin from a fish, and was 200 BB deep with the fish afterwards at the table. The perfect situation comes up. I get AA in the SB the fish opens, he had a PFR of 39 and I 3bet for value(a little bigger than normal). The fish obviously calls and the flop comes Qxx. I bet, fish calls, turn is a heart(2 hearts now on the board), i bet close to pot again to set up a river shove. The river completes the flush. It was kind of awkward that what the stack sizes are concerned, the pot was around 22$, fish had 20$, i covered him. What do you do here ? You know the fish can call easily with top pair, you have seen him do that before. You shove for value and get called by the nut flush (runner runner of course). Fuck my luck. I insta-quit the tables in mega-tilt.

Now, normally I think this hand would have been ok, BUT after the hand I was aware that i was not thinking about his range at all on the turn and river. Once he called the Qxx board, my mind was set up how do I get the money in. Again, against a fish this kind of thinking is ok, BUT you also have to think about the ranges. Sure, fish call with all kinds of shit and you cannot really put them so accurately on hands, but again, not thinking about his range AT ALL on the turn and river is simply not good poker. The river was a K, which gave him some 2 pair combos, also Qx are a lot of 2 pair combos, there was also a straight possible, although unlikely. I could have checked back the river, or bet/called or of course shoved. But all I was thinking about is how to get my hands on the fish's money. That's greed. That's not thinking things through and acting on greed when you see all the $$$$$$. That is not good poker.

My gf told me why I am in such a hurry to move up. Good question. Maybe because I think I know I can beat NL16. I probably can, but I also think I can do a lot of things before I actually do them. I start doing them, hit my head against the wall, fall back, get up and then try again.

Anyway, I will not take any more shots at NL16 this month(this was my 4th shot), rebuild to $500-$600 and then take shots again. I am not good enough yet. I still need to learn more. a lot more. But one thing I know for certain: i am smart. very smart. Thank God for that. Unfortunately I have a lot of flaws, which I am trying to correct. Usually it takes me a lot of time to correct them, but in the end I am going to. I know that if I put my mind to it, I will make it. I do not know another person as zealous as me and as hard-working as me when it comes to something they want. I've been breakeven for 2 years in poker. 2 years in which I played a lot, always changing the type of game I played, never really studying enough because I wanted to make money quickly. I doesn't work like that. It takes a lot of time, dedication, discipline and hard work. But I know I can.

I will crush.

Will post hand and other thoughts tomorrow. Will from now update this blog regularly