100nl --> Part Time Millionaire

I'm currently playing 100nl Heads Up NLHE on Full Tilt as 50outsToTheNuts and Stars as callmenuts26. I've been playing poker for almost two years. I'll be graduating college with a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Colorado School of Mines (would guess nobody has heard of it) next December and hopefully getting a job, so I have no real aspirations of making this my sole source of income, but I enjoy it a lot and wouldn't mind having a hobby that I make more money at than I do at my real job!

I've been on a pretty sick heater! I decided to take a shot at 100nl 4 days ago, said I'd move down if I lost 3 buy ins, and am up 9 BIs since then in 750 hands! Completely unsustainable winrate, but always nice to take a shot at a limit and catch some run good all at the same time!

Since this is the first entry in this blog I'll layout a couple goals to check my progress. I previously had a blog on a different site, and a year after I started it, it was really cool to see my progression from freerolls to 50nl.

1. Have fun and enjoy the ride!
2. Move to 200nl (10k roll) by the end of the school year (first week of May)
3. Regularly play 400nl and 600nl by the end of the summer!
4. Study adequately, both for school and poker
5. Learn HU PLO

cheers!

First off welcome to FTR. Hope your OP is a successful one. Looking forward to it!

Thanks Harley!

Made another 2 BIs playing 50nl HU PLO while waiting for action at 100nl NLHE. I'm so bad at the game, but I've run really really well, and it seems like everyone that sits with me doesn't have a clue either. The game is uberswingy and my sample is essentially zip, so it's quite possible I'm a losing player and just haven't found out yet, but I've made over 16 BIs there in my first 536 hands, so I've got a little cushion if/when I start experiencing the other side of variance, or the fact that I suck at the game kicks in.

My wrestling team won it's dual tonight 40-3 and I won my match 6-0. This meant no poker today, but I'll probably play quite a bit tomorrow and try to get some homework done while I wait for action.

cheers

Man, I think you are one of the few poker players who actually graduated. j/k (or maybe not?)

Welcome

GLGL. But it may be best to not focus on results as much as you are.

GL. Heads up is a pretty awesome game. Actually have heard of Colorado school of Mines and considered going there.

@ ggpokergg that reminds me of PCA coverage in 2010. He is a pro, dropped out of college, he is a pro / millionaire dropped out of high school . . . for like all the young pros :P

Thanks for the replies!
Haha, well I still don't have the roll or skill to make it as a pro, so hasn't been a temptation, does seem kinda dumb to put all your eggs in a basket that flips over as much as poker though.

@!Luck
Yeah, I definitely think you're right and as soon as I hit a rough patch I think the focus of my blog will change more to trying to figure out how I can get better and not crying about my bad results. I just think it's good to enjoy the big upswing while it's happening, and then change the focus away from results on the downswings. I suppose that mentality could hinder my improvement while I'm running well though, so will have to kinda weigh the pros and cons.

That's cool you've heard of it, it's a good school, but there is like 4 dudes for every 1 girl so you prolly made a good choice going elsewhere!

Made another 330 mostly at 100nlhu, and some at 50huplo yesterday, I played bosoxx34 (the deucescracked instructor) ffor a bit at plo yesterday and I've decided I'm entirely too loose, so hopefully I can avoid some of my good but second best hands in the future by folding a little more pre from both positions. My wrestling team has another away dual today, so once again no more poker. Also have a lot to do with school this week, so prolly won't get a lot of volume in till about thursday.

Cheers

I've ran so well lately, just need to stop checking the cashier, so I'll be motivated to put better volume in. Poker is certainly a lot of fun when it is going like this though. I'm running at 49.44 bb/100 so far this month.

cheers

Nice mountain you're starting to build, that graph is shit hot. GL, looking forwad to following your progress.

Dat be on seeexy graph!

gl Chad

Thanks all!

Right about the time I posted that graph, everything went bad. I've been playing really unfocused lately. I'm not thinking through complete ranges, properly taking into account game flow, and I'm acting too quickly in important situations. It is so important heads up to not auto pilot, so gonna make a conscious effort to do better with that in future sessions. I've only lost 2 buy ins, but I could have easily made 4 or 5 since my last graph if I didn't make such blatantly incorrect decisions in a lot of spots. My tilt control has to improve too, I'd say I'm down 2 or maybe 3 buy ins since my last post simply because I got frustrated and made some ridiculous bluff or raised so big for value that no part of their range is calling. So ya, hit a very minor rough patch, but I've just got to make sure I fix the problems that caused it before I actually run bad and have a terrible downswing.



cheers,
Chad

Glad to see your dip didn't keep going the wrong way.

Hope your classes are going well. Less than a year to go.

Golden huh? Hey neighbor. GLGL

I'm taking a break from poker till the end of the semester at least. I went on a huge heater, made about 3k, and was kind of excited, but not really any happier for it. I hit the other side of things, lost about 1300 and felt like I got stabbed for like 2 days. I've got enough money saved to pay for all my life expenses till I graduate so if poker isn't making me happy then there's no reason for me to play.

So ya, the earliest I would play again would be this summer, but I'd probably go back to full ring if I do. I think it is the bigger swings of heads up that are more addicting and more painful when things are going bad. The personal nature definitely doesn't help either. It's probably more +$EV to play Heads Up, but i think its +LifeEV to go back to full ring. I also might play some 2nl or freerolls if I'm extremely bored. Welp see y'all in May

cheers

Wow hope it works out for ya!

A 100BI roll and balls of steel are good things to have when playing HU.

As you have pointed out yourself: you have almost no sample for a game as swingy as HU. At some point your graph will be upside down over the same sample and you need to be able to stomach that.
Your goals are counter productive as well imo. Focus on playing well, not on what level you want to be in what timeframe.

My wrestling season has ended and I'm back on track with school stuff, so I've got a little more time on my hands and think I'm ready to play a little poker. Thanks for the replies and I definitely agree now with what a couple people have said. When my focus with poker is on how much money I'm making, I'm setting myself up for failure and misery. That's why I needed a break for a couple weeks and I need to take steps towards preventing that from happening again.

I feel like my biggest strength as a poker player is my ability to think a step ahead of my opponents and read hands well. My biggest weakness is my emotional control and occasional inability to predict what players will do with the range I put them on. So, as far as the emotional control front goes, my first plan of action is to take auto rebuys off. I need to take a second to evaluate my emotional state if I take a rough beat and decide whether I'm capable of playing my A-game and if I have an edge in the game. I feel like this time is critical so I don't fall into that zone of monkey tilt where I've maxed out the amount of pain I'm going to feel and don't care if I lose another 5 buy ins. I'm also going to stop checking the cashier during sessions, if I feel worried about how much I've lost, its time to quit. After my last little freak out, I withdrew a bunch of money, so I should have enough in my bank account to pay for rent, food, and all that jazz through summer and most of next school year, which means I won't have to dip into my poker account for quite a while. I think this will allow me to treat poker more like a video game that I'm just trying to beat the next level in. Hopefully this makes it more of a challenge of skill rather than a way to pay for stuff, and results in me just striving to play well and not punching something when I played perfectly and ran bad.

I guess with my inability to predict what my opponents will do, I just need to only make a play when I'm near positive it's a good one. I often find myself in situations where I say he's got QQ or JJ for sure, and if I were in his shoes I'd fold to a shove, so I shove and he looks me up with QQ and then I'm angry. I have to realize that just because I would think through my opponents likely range and realize I can't beat any part of it except for a bluff and fold doesn''t mean my opponents are thinking the same way. My edge comes because I am thinking through ranges and not just about how pretty my hand looks. I need to do a better job of identifying who is thinking like me, who is thinking more than me, and who is plain not thinking. I should probably just try to play straightforward until I know enough about an opponent to be able to run a big bluff on them.

I'm going to scratch my old goals and make some new ones.

1. Balance poker with school.
2. Have fun
3. View each game as more of an intellectual challenge where score happens to be kept with money, and not a gambling game where immediate results are important.
4. Get better and beat the 100nl and 200nl levels in a reasonable time frame. I think my original goal of setting a time limit is flawed because a time frame adds stress and factors in short term results very heavily.
5. Don't be scared to move up when I have the roll for the next level. I do a good job of moving down when my shot doesn't work out.
6. Play some good regs at 50nl and be able to tell where my edge is coming from against them before I move back to 100nl
7. Play at least 8k heads up hands per month during school and no more than 12k. Play at least 20k per month during the summer.

Poker has been going pretty well recently. I've had a lot of + or - 8 BI sessions because I think I've gone off the deep end a little bit with my aggression recently, but I'm working on finding that balance.

Before all of my wrestling matches, I pray with my dad (not to win, but more just to do the best that I am capable of), he stretches my arms, pops my back, we do a up and then down high five thing with both hands (its really simple but very hard to explain), then I bounce around and visualize the match for about 20 minutes, when its time for me to wrestle I do the same high five thing with the head coach, a one hand thing with the assistant, put my ankle band on my left leg, step on the line, stretch both legs, shake the refs hand, and then I'm ready go, all the nervousness has turned into adrenaline and I'm in the right mindset to handle whatever is thrown at me whether I start winning or losing it just exists and my game plan changes accordingly there's no frustration, and no overconfidence. I NEED TO DEVELOP THIS FOR POKER!!! Too often I'm playing the game far too conscious of my short term results and not treating it as a mental challenge against another player. This leads to me constantly playing on tilt and/or unfocused. There's a sticky note application on my computer, and I think I'm going to use that to write something important down before every session. Hopefully this will keep my goals in mind as I'm playing and keep me focused on adjusting to my opponent and not the luck factor in either direction.



Basically the story of my play is I play well for a while, then I run too good and fall in love with bluffing, lose a bunch of money freak out, pull money out of my account, get my head back on straight, start from lower stakes and repeat. Hopefully I can stop the cycle and just play good for an extended period now.

Anyway, I'm hungover and officially on spring break now! Gonna go get something to eat and probably go to the casino with a buddy or play a little online sesh if I'm feeling better after some food.

Isn't it funny how we play our worst when we are either loosing or winning. I to have noticed if I start winning big then suddenly I start thinking I'm god and I can't loose. I try very hard to constantly remind myself what has been working and if I step outside of that I try and real myself in. you're playing numerous levels ahead of me but still very similar.

Keep it sir!

Yeah, that's certainly the truth Harley, I think we all just need a dose of reality one way or the other every now and then.

Played a session live today and wound up + $317. Its always a rush to get your money in the middle in a live game. Its just too bad that only happens once every couple hours. I'm played two hands like a moron and still kinda pissed at myself for it. I was oop on both and I put both players on hands very similar to what they had, so I assumed they would bet and I could check raise the river, but live players are generally incredibly passive, so they didn't make their bet and I missed out on a total of about $70 worth of value by not just leading into them on the river or raising the turn. Next time I head to the casino I'll have to make sure I take this into account and lean towards just betting for value instead of relying on them betting tptk. But ya, had a lot of fun and took home some cash despite a couple mistakes so that's always nice.

One more thing with live play. Is it just me or is every old man actually delusional?!?!? Right after I sat down I started talking to the guy next to me and he was a pretty friendly fellow. He shared some stories about playing in Vegas back in the day and what not and it was good conversation until he started to share his strategy with me. His theory was that the only reason to play live poker was for the bad beat jackpot, so he always limped in to see if everyone would connect enough with the board to hit quads over quads and bam we're all rich. I just smiled and nodded, then began playing my game where I raised nearly every time I entered a pot. He didn't say anything but I'm sure he wasn't happy. He also said that the guy that just sat down and was going to wait till the button passed should just post so he could try and hit the bad beat. I started to say something about how the odds of hitting the bad beat probably don't mathematically justify the -EV of posting, but I caught myself just a little bit in and stopped realizing that he didn't really want my opinion, he just wanted to share his "wisdom" with me and I was fine with that, it made better conversation and a friendlier atmosphere that way.

I also sat a couple winning regs at 50nl and finished up a buy in and a half. I love playing thinking regs, it makes the game so much more fun but . . . . . . . I also love money, so I'm working on finding that balance between the two where I get a lot better and am building a bankroll to move up. Maybe I'll just play kinda mehhh regs while I'm waiting for action for a while and move more towards playing the good ones right before I move back up to 100nl. My game is improving so much recently, I've been a lot more focused since I started viewing it more as a competition than gambling. I feel like I'm at a bit of a turning point in my poker career, so hopefully I can keep riding these good feelings for a while and learn a lot!

cheers,
Chad

Spring Break is the nuts.

Woke up, played an online sesh, made about a hundred, loaded rock climbing gear into the car, went to the casino made another 73, grabbed lunch, drove to North Table Mountain to climb for a couple hours. Now headed to downtown Denver to go to the bars and get in line for Kegs and Eggs (free concert with green beer and eggs put on by a local radio station) starting at 7 am tomorrow. Good Fucking Day!!!!

cheers,
Chad

I am such a fish.

About twice a day I get into a spot where I have a good hand, and I say to myself this is great I have to value bet, but that would suck if I get raised. If I get raised, I can't beat anything but a bluff. Then villain raises, I get upset and instead of sticking to the plan I call anyway and go on tilt. Like this, weaktight | Hand | TKo - $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Holdem or this weaktight | Hand | KAo - $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Holdem . I know its wrong, I know I should fold but its like I'm on permatilt and refuse to do what I know I should. I'm embarrassed to even post those hands cuz they're soooo bad but its such a big problem for me that I think the embarrassment might be necessary to get me to fix it.

Been thinking about ranges and balance a lot lately. Fish at 50nl and 100nl are generally so passive that it seems like I should basically never be calling their raises unless I have a nuttish hand. The only time I've been successful in calling their raises with less than 2 pair is when I think through their line and can literally put them on nothing. These villain's don't seem to be thinking through why they're bluffing so when they do it often makes 0 sense, and when they're raising for value there's at least a couple hands that make perfect sense and as unlikely as it may seem that they have one of the couple hands they almost always do. So ya gonna work on becoming more disciplined and folding more often when it looks like I'm beat, even if that means getting bluffed a lot more often, I think it will add significantly to my bottom line and help a bunch as I move up in stakes and start playing more regs.



The more I study HU play, the harder time I have believing that I'm really winning at all. I make so many huge mistakes on a regular basis that I feel like if I just plug some of the big ones I'd be winning a ton more, but somehow despite those I'm doing pretty well. HU is an extremely complex game, and that's why I have so much fun learning and trying to figure it out. I think I'm going to dive into some of the math that governs some common situations I've been struggling in tomorrow. If i have any aha moments or come up with some things I feel are useful I'll share here!

cheers,
Chad

My school has this 3 day celebration called E-days (Engineering Days) and it starts tomorrow night!!!
Generally my school is boring, not much of a party school at all, but E-days changes all that for a couple days. There's a fireworks show, concert, keg race, and a bunch of other stuff. A couple years ago during E-days, I got on the steps of the state capitol hammered drunk led half the school in our fight song (missed a verse . . . .oops) on a microphone with our dean and other important school people on my right and the governor and news crews on my left. There's a bunch of other stories and a lot more to elaborate on with that one, but basically everything memorable about college has happened during e-days.
Here's a video of the fireworks show that kicks it off.

Colorado School of Mines: Engineering Days 2008 Fireworks Show on Vimeo


So ya, def shouldn't be playing any poker till Sunday with the state I'm likely to be in from Thursday night to Saturday and the test I'm not ready for Thursday morning. This month has been pretty solid though, have reached a new peak earnings and feel like I improved a lot as a player. I ended up playing about 16k hands of HU and 14k hands of other games. This might have been a little excessive, but my original target hands was definitely an underestimate.

April Sucks so far, I'm on a 15BI downswing, I feel like my general session starts with me getting coolered a couple times, then I tilt off a buy in before quitting.

I decided to hire a coach right before all this started, I think it'll improve my game enough to make it well worth the investment, but dropping 300 on a coach after losing 750 at the tables and any confidence I previously had in my game is pretty painful. Have my first session with him tonight, so hopefully that goes well and it'll help the confidence issue at the moment.



Hopefully things turn around this month.

cheers,
Chad

Well I guess the good news is I turned my April into a winning month just in time. The bad news is there will be no June, July, or August in my Holdem Manager. I was planning on using money from online poker to pay for rent, food, beer, etc. until I get a real job around May 2012, but that's not exactly an option anymore. Luckily there's a casino 30 mins. away and it's actually a really cool drive through the mountains to get there, so I guess I'll be doing that 3 or 4 times a week for a while. I've also started applying for a ton of internships, which could be good for the long run. Ideal situation for the summer is I get an internship making 14 or 15 an hour and that provides enough money for all my living expenses and I still have time to play like 15-20 hours per week at the casino. Worst case scenario I don't find a job and I wind up playing more like 30 hours a week at the casino and doing my best to withstand live variance. I absolutely refuse to get a job making 8 dollars per hour doing something I hate, never had one of those and never will. Been 4 times since Black Friday made 262, 453, 4, and then lost 500.

Live players at 1/2 are lol bad, and most of the online players that are in the same boat as me seem like they're on perma tilt and refuse to adjust to a live game, so it shouldn't be a problem making about 20 per hour in these games as long as I can run close to EV and all that. But, playing 30 hours per week for 12 weeks during the summer at 35 hands per hour. I can only expect to get 12,600 hands. Anything can happen in such a small sample so I'll at least have to not run terrible or I could be screwed.

up $1706 since Black Friday. live poker is easy and I have ran ridiculous hot, it's also a lot of fun getting to talk to the people you're playing against. It's a pain in the ass driving to the casino all the damn time, and the game is terribly slow, but yeah.

I'm also going to predict that I'll wind up with a job when I graduate college because of the casino. Poker tends to draw a lot of people that are fairly smart, I talk to a ton of people when I play live so I don't get bored, and my school is known as a really good school. So, I'm betting that one of these days I strike up a conversation with someone that owns a business or is an engineer for a company and can help get me in the door at a company. Last night i met a lawyer and the CEO of a health insurance company, neither of these are a lot of help but I'm gonna keep fishin and hopefully start a conversation with the right person one of these days.

cheers,
Chad