OK folks, May really sucked. So I've decided its time for some discipline and accountability, and the best way is to start an operation!

A bit of history: I made my first deposit of $50 on Poker Stars in February, with my only experience being some play money games on Stars and PokerRoom and a handful of home games.

I played a couple hundred hands at 10NL (knowing nothing about bankroll management) and donked off about a buy-in, and then thought I'd better get more serious before I run out of $$$.

So I dropped down to 2NL and tried to learned the basics. I read as many online poker strategy articles as I could find, bought TOP, NLHETAP and HOH1 (read the first two and halfway through HOH1 now), and lurked on the forums here and at a couple of other sites (this is the best one though!). Absolutely destroyed 2NL for more then 40ptBB/100 and moved up to 5NL within about 2,500 hands, but have found the going tougher since. I've now played about 15K hands overall for a winrate of a bit over 10ptBB/100, and my roll has reached the lofty heights of $128. I was at $175 about a week ago at a much better winrate, but the past 2K hands have been a shocking run of bad cards, coolers and the odd bad play. I guess it was I have to expect it though, especially considering I probably had a very good run earlier on at 2NL.

Stats time! Lifetime I play 23/16/6, mostly at FR. However I've moved to 6-max for the past 4K hands or so and have been playing 26/18/5 there. A couple of other choice stats:
W$WSF - 44.19
WTSD - 17.81
W$SD - 48.14 (although less than 40 at 6-max - maybe not picking my spots well enough)
3Bet - 3.56
A2S - 46.14

Any feedback on these would be much appreciated. I would like to close the gap between VPIP and PFR a bit, probably by lowering my VPIP, and I think I might be a bit too aggressive post-flop, but overall I think that my stats aren't too bad?

Anyway, my overall aim is to learn to play poker properly and move up the stakes. I also believe in setting shorter term achievable goals, so the three immediate ones are:
(1) Clear my Stars bonus before it expires - I'm about halfway there, but its hard work earning VPPs at 5NL!!
(2) Move up to 10NL as soon as I can - already 12K hands at 5NL and only $128, so still a long way to go.
(3) Make the roll to hit 25NL - $625. Goal is to do that by the time my Stars bonus expires, which is the second week of August.

I plan to update here often, vent, boast, ask questions, post hands and pretty much indulge myself in the hope that someone out there might take some interest, and perhaps even impart some advice from time to time. Judging by my past week or so I certainly need all the help I can get!