Trainer_Jyms Going Pro

So people have been asking how it’s been going. Well, I guess this would be the best place to post it. I want to get the blog up and running again, so why not answer some questions.

1) How has it been Going pro?

It’s been great. I love the playing full time, I love being home and I absolutely could do this for a lot longer, But… and there is always a but, it’s tough. I knew the bankroll was tight. I didn’t have the plan on playing full time yet, and withdrawing off of a $2K, $3K or $4K roll to provide for a wife and kid is not easy. I have had to drop to $25NL at the beginning of every month after withdrawing and just before Christmas I actually dropped to $10NL. I even had my BR bottom out at $385 on December 15th. But I still got to make a $1600 withdraw on time by January 15th. Taking out $1000 for the month and money for Xmas almost ruined the dream.

As for the future, i am going to go back to work. I am not sure yet if it is a full time or part time job, but for the next year I want to improve my game and get to $400NL. I can’t keep banging away at the micros. They are easy and I seem to be able to keep getting by, but I don’t think it’s feasible to grind this tightly and not have a chance to get better and move up past $100NL. I also need to make sure I get some sort of paycheck, in order to get benefits/prescriptions/Dental and a tax form. I don’t feel like paying taxes on poker earnings so working for a check will cover my ass.

2) How are you doing?

I am running fine considering. I have withdrawn $1K a month since getting laid off August 10th, starting in September 15th thru January 15th. I took $700 more for Xmas and gave the wife $600 in January for her trip to El Salvador.

Here is December and January’s PT stats. December I managed to get myself back to $100NL before withdrawing, but needed to drop again after the 15th when I withdrew $1700, leaving me with $385.

can’t figure out the image sttings on the blog software. Here’s the link

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The worst part is I haven’t been able to get the hands in for January. Partly because of pounding the pavement to find a job and partly from my son being home from daycare sick for over a week.

3) How’s Grinderschool.com working out?

Awesome. Started out in November and already have over 100 subscribers. Many are doing well too. We are getting so much great feedback from them, and all of it good. We have a bunch of them doing OP threads and blogs that you can see if you go there, even without a subscription. We are now in the process of changing a bunch of things to make the site more user friendly. We now have multiple subscription levels for micro and small stakes, and are going to start adding some higher stakes videos by request in the near future. Check it out, don’t be afraid to ask any questions that you may have.

That’s about it for now. I will be trying to keep the blog up and running now and in the future. Hopefully the job thing works out, because I am dying to see what I can do without withdrawing form the bankroll every month. I haven’t missed a $1000 withdrawal since getting laid off in August, and if you count the $700 for Xmas and the $600 for the wife’s trip, my BR would actually be at $7.5K playing only 16k hands $100NL and actually playing almost 200,000 hands at $50NL and under. Not bad eh? Could be worse. If nothing, I am an experienced Micro and small stakes grinder now, and I know what it takes to get the BR up from the ashes. So hopefully I won’t ever need to do fret doing this again for while. Good luck.

Alright, here is the plan. I still am on track for my original goals and plans of grinding $200NL for a decent winrate and playing full time in 08. Changes in the plan are as follows:

1) I already am playing full time, since getting laid off last month.

2) I am currently sitting comfortable at $100NL again with more than 30 BI’s.

3) I am already withdrawing from the BR on a regular basis instead of just grinding it up to the $5K I had told myself I needed to take a shot in the new year.

So I need to really alter the plans. With the newly planned website almost up and running I will have more time again to post and play, I would hope. I just recently went through some tough swings in BR and mood with a failed attempt at the FT $100NL games, so I bailed and completed a couple bonuses on Stars instead. As of right now, I am sitting on a BR consisting of:

$1600 at Battlefield (Prima)
$1400 at Party
$ 120 at Stars
$75 at FT

I also have $1500 that is designated as a $1K live roll and $500 for backup in case we need anything quickly here at home. I will either save the $500 as part of my $1K withdrawal on the 15th or use it as backup to the live roll if it becomes unnecessary to put online. So at last count that leaves me with almost $5K as we speak but not really as an online BR. For arguments sake I will call it 30 BI’s of $100NL.

Alright enough history, whats the plan? Well, I am going to grind the heck out of that Prima site. I have 60% RB and there seems to be enough tables, fish and no shortage of time to play, so long as I do it before 10pm or so, I will be good to go. The site seems to slow way down after that. Prima also allows for datamining so finding seats and tables should be quick and easy.

I will then play Party tables until I call it a night. Party seems easily beatable, if you play a Cocco_bill style and just make your hands and value bet the b’jesus out of them. The aggression needs to be very selective, these guys can’t fold. I can table select at will there since my new computer will run Partyplanner, betpot, PartyHandGrabber and table highlighter along with PT and Hud easily. I can datamine and should have no excuse for finding tables since at 4am my time there are still 20+ tables of 6max running full.

So targets, hmmmm. i will set some hand targets, and that is my goal, the PTBB stats will just be something I have to hit to move up or I’m just not beating the game good enough. If I don’t hit those it’s fine, as long as I play winning poker for the amounts of hands I need to get.

October - 50K hands @ 5PTBB/100($10/100) = $5K
If I can achieve this I will take a shot in November at $200NL. I must hit both targets or I have to play until I hit that target over 50K hands. Simple as that. If I grind out less PTBB but am still winning I will reevaluate when it comes time, based on BR and actual stats.

November - 40K hands @ 2PTBB/100($8/100) = $4K
If I play $200NL I will have achieved goal #1 and have moved up. I will then play less hands for the month because I will spend more time studying the game. It would be my first real attempt at these stakes so I would like to spend some time learning the game. I don’t feel that I would need to grind out as many hands since I would be comfortable doing this for the rest of the year. In the new year I will analyze where I am and post some new short term and long term goals.

December - will be either (a) still grinding the $100NL stakes to get my 50K hands at 5PTBB or getting in hands at $200NL until the new year. Either way it will be only 35K hands as a target since it’s the holiday season and I expect to be both busy and taking a little time off near the end of the year. That is all for the month

Other poker related goals for the rest of the year.

1) I want to watch a lot of the CR vids that I need to see. I don’t need a ton of details here, suffice to say, I will see at least one a day but most likely two. I hope to start my morning session with one and if possible with time permitting, I will start my evening session with one too.

2) I want to play every day for the rest of the year except the odd day every week or two. If I start to burn out, which hasn’t happened yet, I will take a 2 or 3 day break. As it stands, since getting laid off I have played at least 500 hands a day, most days is 1K or more. This is nothing compared to my work schedule the last 5 years.

3) I will continue this soon, I need to sleep on it. It’s 6am I also want to put in place some personal goals as well.

So here we go, with the advent of the new Blog system, I will chronicle my ups and downs of going pro on a measly bankroll and playing the SSHE poker game. To update the less informed, I lost my job on Aug 10th. My position was absorbed mainly due to the rise of the Canadian dollar. Working in Canada for a US company had it’s benefits, but now, not so much. One of the problems that I will not get into detail about is that I may not be receiving unemployment, so my bankroll is my only hope.

Anyway, back to poker. I started grinding out the $100NL game at Stars and AP. I was running ok for the first week or so, but then the problems hit. I needed to withdraw. It takes a week or so to get the money from Moneybookers so when I took out $1K to make my usual payments it left me with less than $2K in my roll. This is where things get fun. One of the things you count on when playing full time on a short roll is Rakeback and bonuses. When your not rolled for $100NL those things drop in value quite a lot. So what did I do. “Meh, I can beat the game, just grind it back. Your close enough with 15 but ins”

Mistake #1, this is not where you want to be when playing for a living. Can you say stress, can you say pressure. Everything that will make you play poorly, desperate and under stress was in effect. No bankroll cushion, losing daily and being asked by everyone in the house to do this and that, “since your home all day” really causes grief.

Mistake #2, was not dropping down right away. I would have had less stress playing $50NL now that I look back. I still could have grinded back to where I needed to be, (25BI’s at $100NL) at $50NL. It may have taken a week, but when downswinging or playing bad, not dropping half your bankroll ( 6+ BI’s) would probably be a lot less hassle to recover from.

Mistake #3, was not asking for help. I had offers to help, to cushion the roll, to take some payments off my hands. I thought I could do it without the help. Here’s the thing, taking the offer for help then for a little cushion would have been a lot easier than dealing with asking for a lot of help now. I should have, and now I did. I don’t have anywhere near the cushion I need, hell I ain’t even rolled for $100NL yet. I have withdrawn $2K from my roll so far since Aug10 and am still playing $50NL, and I am now only 2 tabling. (I will get to this in my next blog post)

So where am I? Digging in. I am not giving this up. I can play more hours than you can imagine. I won’t. I need to prepare for the long haul. So I am spending more time watching Vids. Reviewing hands, and talking poker on AIM, MSN and Vent. I play only 2 tables instead of 4, and I am getting a game. No more grinding 4 tables for a breakeven winrate and getting some Bonus and Rakeback. I want to get to $200NL by November 1st. All the while withdrawing $1K twice a month to pay my bills. May not happen, I may have to go back to work. I don’t want to, it all depends on the poker gods, and not finding,

Mistake #4……