Back at it lately

I joined a CAT team (Catastrophe) last month and have been on the road since 5/3. I may or may not have mentioned this in the past, but my main job is as an independent auto damage appraiser. I have been doing it for 13 years and have always enjoyed it. It pays way too much for the work involved and afford me a lot of freedom as I set my own schedule. It is a great job and offers me great opportunities to pursue any hobby I choose.. including poker.

That being said, I was working 17 hour days for 3 weeks and it was really beginning to wear on me. I have managed to get some poker in recently and have built the bankroll from $400 to $1800 during the trip. I have also achieved 35k VPPs for the year and still think I can make Supernova by years end. Once I get back to 50NL the VPPs fly in. My lofty target, however, is to be grinding 100NL by September and October. A push towards 200k VPPs might be within reach if I can put in 2-3 solid months there.

I did change the game that I play in. I found that the games post the Stars changes were worse than ever. So I decided to move to a particular NL Hold'em game where it seems all of the fish have moved. I won't mention what I am playing here, I don't want all the regs doing what I am doing obv.

I am only a 1.7BB/100 lifetime 25NL winner.. but since I made the switch I am nearly a 3BB/100 winner. Cha ching.

At any rate.. I have always dealt with mind games in regards to my play. I guess I am unconsciously very superstitious when it comes to the structure of my sessions. I have found in the past that I would monitor how my sessions were going and if I got way up early I would quit.. and if I was stuck, I would play on for hours trying to dig out of the hole. I am finding out this is a horrible way to play!

So I did an experiment starting this month. I set a specific amount of time to play in between checking to see how I am doing. I basically play until my next stellar reward and then check my earnings/review hands.. then I rinse and repeat. I was amazed out how much this liberated me during my play. Now I can focus on each hand as they come and give my all to each situation. I seldom look at any results even during while I play. I stack tables so this is quiet easy. Of course, I am cannot be completely oblivious to it. If a table pops up and I'm suddenly up a ton of cash, its pretty obvious I won a big pot. I have to be careful of reverse tilt. I get those "feel good" feelings and it makes me play more hands than I should.

Now I can play as many hours/sessions as I want and focus solely on the hand in front of me and table selection. I feel this is hugely +ev in favor of my winrate. (and sanity)

I have really gotten a lot more nitty about BR management. Ever since that 50NL fiasco back in February, where I definitely got out of my comfort zone/chased losses etc... I am now much more cautious. I will not move back up to 50NL until I have $2,500 in my poker account. Then $5,000 for 100NL.

Since my current job is quiet lucrative, (I make $350-$450 per day of work) I hopefully will not have to cash out out of necessity ever again. Even though I am sacrificing a lot being away from my family, I am gaining the freedom to play more hands when I have spare time and build up the bankroll. I feel like I have improved substantially over the past few months and am really for 50NL and beyond. I follow a blog by a guy named Ronfar, who grinds 100NL and typically makes 15k-25k per month. I aspire to do half as well as him. His blog is at http://www.pairtheboard.net/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=50

I'm sure anyone reading this knows of him, though. His journey is really inspirational and gives guys like me hope.

Anyways, thanks for reading this wordy post.. I will try to blog here more often since I am back to playing again. I will post my graphs as I put in hands and at milestones.