(beware OP is definitely tl;dr)
Hai guise,
Haven't been a regular poster at PS.com in quite some time - i guess it's been about a year or so? Had a SNG blog at one point here, then left it for dead as I experimented with 6max NL cash, which was a total waste of time as I played bad and broke even with rakeback for a year. My poker study skills sucked and I blamed it on variance when clearly variance wasn't the problem.
So this past spring, I returned to SNGs, where I more or less built up my roll in the first place. Started talking to guys like lessonthree, who was a big help in improving my game, and became a regular poster on twoplustwo where I had the chance to expand my contact list and talk strat/review with some really solid players. I started at the $6.50s on FTP (my FTP account is untracked, unfortunately) and worked my way up to the $36s, while placing in the top 5 on the FTP leaderboard 3 months in a row. Which is kind of a brag, I guess, but i wasnt really making much in June/July and first half of August and was really only making money on rakeback.
Variance blows, and while there's no doubt I wasn't a perfect player by any means; I'm sure lessonthree and other midstakes SNG regs can attest to the fact that I was way better than my ROI indicated. Unfortunately BE stretches can occur over 10k game samples in SNGs (albeit they are rare). I had put in roughly 9k games over the summer and was getting pretty tired of the games. Grinding has never been a problem for me, but I was starting to lose motivation to study and that was a problem for me. The ridiculous breakeven stretch (approx. 7k games) was finally getting to me. While lessonthree certainly is a shining example of a top SNG player who has no doubt put the work in to get to where he is - the reality is that the profit ceiling in SNGs is relatively low compared to cash and MTTs and the variance can be sickening.
So halfway through August, and with enough poker winnings to cover my school expenses for my upcoming school year anyway - I figured it was time for a new challenge. I was told that the ranges in FR SNGs translated reasonably well to FR cash, so I decided that a return to cash might be in order. I played some nl25 on FTP when I started - to get the hang of things. Obviously I'm ridiculously overrolled for those limits, but it seemed to be a decent starting point. Won some, nothing outstanding, woteva.
I put some money on bet365 (now tracked on PS) to do some bonus whoring with my newfound cash game skills and what should be a softer network (compared to FTP). My first ~11k hands went pretty well - you can see for yourself.
I guess that qualifies as a heater - 24bb/100 on ipoker so far (all nl20). But damn its so much fun for for a former pushbot SNG player to play some postflop pokah! I even have a positive redline 
- I guess I like to bruff lots.
So I think I'm gonna move a bit more money over from FTP to bet365...enough for a solid cushion to grind nl50. Theres no way I could clear that bonus playing nl20. I like the software at bet365 and the player pool was insanely soft at nl20, the regs sucked and the fish were quite willing to donate their stack to me. Hoping my move to nl50 goes well too.
Congrats to anyone who actually read through my ramble - looking forward to returning to the PS community!
A 
