[Closed] A fresh start - Cake - NL4 - BSS

Hi all,

So this is my third and final blog.

I was playing at pokerstars NL5 FR, I have a positive win rate over 30K+ hands but it's not good enough and I feel the need to start again.

Last night I played when I was tired and that really wasn't my brightest move.

Someone stacked me by landing a full house on the river when I had trip aces so I decided to buy in for max on all of my tables ($10) to get my money back off him and to maximise winnings on other tables... The problem? I didn't maximise winnings, I maximised losses and ended the session 3 stacks down ($30) at which point I had realised it was only going to get worse and closed all of my tables.

So, my roll is back at $100 and I'm more than a little annoyed with myself.

I read Gabinr1's blog and took a lot of inspiration from the way in which he has moved up the limits.

I've read a lot of strategy articles and watched video's but if I'm honest with myself I've not really put in the effort required to properly be successful. I still tilt. When I'm on a heater my earnings are good but when I hit a cooler it's not just the cards that lose me money, I start to tilt and play badly - My bad decisions are made 100 times worse and the things I got away with when on a heater now decimate my BR even further.

I think playing at a tracked site is important, the strategy articles, video's, coaching sessions and hand evaluation forums are an invaluable resource that I want access to and so that means moving to a tracked poker room.

A few weeks back PS gave me a second $50 to put on Everest but I quickly tilted it away because I hated the software, Ironically, by the time the $50 had gone I had grown familiar with the software and so went to deposit but I only have a Maestro card to pay with and they don't accept that.

I went back to Pokerstars (I had just been adding money here and there to play mtt's for fun) and won $30 in a MTT which saw me start playing 18 man sng's.. I grinded my roll up to over $200 then went on a cooler and dropped back to $106. I started playing FR NL5 and my roll went back above $200 and then I decided to try 6max - LOL - My account dropped back AGAIN to $100 or so and so I went back to FR, got back up to $130-ish then tilted myself back to $100 last night.

I've opened a moneybookers account this morning, withdrawn my roll from stars and put it on to Everest.

This is a fresh start. I have played a lot of poker this last year, DON's (4% roi over 2k games), 18 man sng's (5% roi over apprx 1k games), a lot of mtt's (-50% roi over a few hundred games), 12K hands 6 max -$95 and 30k+ hands NL5 FR +$82.

Basically my FR cash profits were destroyed by trying to play 6 max and my DON profits (apprx $90) were destroyed by trying to play silly numbers of 45/90 man sng's (-100% ROI LOL). I broke even a while back over a few hundred $3.40 and $6.50 STT's so basically I have wasted a year and around $300 by having lots of ambition but not working properly to achieve my goals.

My goal is to move up the limits basically, I want to go as far as I can with 100% effort and not sell myself short by going broke now because I don't have the sense to realise I am doing something very wrong - Not putting the required effort in.

So this is the plan.

At Everest for some reason there is no NL5 so I will need to play NL2 until I am rolled for NL10 which means I need to win 75 stacks. Nice.

I will re-read all bronze strategy articles and watch all of the coaching video's again. I will attend every coaching session that I can.

Each week I will update my blog - My updates will include:

1) Number of hands played
2) Profit/Loss for the week
3) What I've learned that week and what change this has bought to my game.
4) My two biggest winning hands and two biggest losing hands but these are not to be hands where the play was obvious and I was lucky/unlucky (AA/KK all in pre etc). I will specifically look for hands that I thought were played particularly badly or particularly well so that I can receive some constructive criticism on my play - These hands will also be posted in the hand evaluation forum.

Sorry for the mamouth post but this is to be a new start so I wanted to include everything here so I can just get on with posting decent content from here on. This is something my other blogs lacked - Decent content.

If anyone has had the patience to read this far then thank you, I hope you stick around because this blog will start to get interesting as the weeks go on.

At NL2 I would hope to be making at least 1 or 2 stacks every 1K hands so I have between 35 and 75K hands to play. The software at Everest isn't great for multi tabling and there aren't that many full tables so I will only be playing 4 at a time (apprx 200 hands/hr). I could be at NL2 for a while lol. Let's hope my winrate is better, 40bb/100 hands would be a stack an hour which would be easier to deal with but maybe it's not possible, I don't know until I've put in some hours.

4 Tables is ideal anyway, I need to put more effort in to identifying player types and getting reads. This may not be necessary at NL2 but experience in this area will pay dividends at the higher limits so it's a good habit to to get in to now. Up until this point rather than concentrating on reads I tried to play as many tables as possible - A big leak I think.

Anyways, If anyone has read this then thanks, next update will be in 1 week.