To those of you who live on the edge, welcome to the third incarnation of my journal!

Why another one? Well during my time off I’ve completely revamped my entire game and I want my journal to reflect this. I can’t promise that this journal will be more interesting, witty, substantial or succinct than my others, but I will promise that this will, in one way or the other, be the last attempt at a journal on BTP. Scout's honor.

As I’ve said, I’ve taken my time off from poker. I neither played nor read about it. However, it was almost impossible to avoid thinking about why I’ve had such a hard time keeping interested in poker.

I think the problem came because I had absolutely no real reason for playing. I had a vague goal of reaching some sort of bankroll to move up in limits. At the same time I was trying to find ways to keep poker enjoyable to me and the main thing was moving down to single-tabling. These two things started to butt heads. Despite not actually wanting to play many days, I forced myself to do it because I knew that single tabling gave me few enough hands as it was, and to skip any days playing I had no real chance to move up in limits within the next year (at least). As a result I was playing many times when I really didn’t want to and the enjoyment factor dropped quickly. So then I wasn’t having fun and still wasn’t getting in very many hands per week. Soon it seemed pointless because it felt like if I wasn’t enjoying myself when playing, and I wasn’t giving myself a chance to build a bankroll, why play at all?

I felt it really came down to a big decision for me to make. Either play for enjoyment only, not give a damn about my bankroll, and never play when I don't feel like playing. Or, get serious about poker. Treat it as a part-time job of sorts and realize that it may often not be all that fun, but make it all about winning, building a bankroll and moving up in limits.

I wish I could say it was an easy decision to make, but I’ve been back and forth many, many times.

On the enjoyment side, it seemed like a good thing to be able to just jump online and knock off a session whenever I wanted and if I won, great, but if I lost, then that was okay too, because I felt I would ultimately come out ahead. However, the more I thought about it the more wondered how long it would be until that started to feel even more pointless. I think I finally realized that I enjoy putting $$ into my bankroll (or bank account) even more than I enjoy playing a slow, leisurely game of poker.

On the serious side, where it would be all about putting $$ into the bankroll or bank account, the plus side was obvious. But I worried that I wouldn’t be able to stick with it if I’m playing whether I felt like it or not. I also worried about how I’d react to an extended losing streak (which will happen, of course). I wouldn’t be having fun playing and here I would be even losing money as well.

I think you know by now which path I’ve chosen to take (I probably wouldn’t be writing this and certainly wouldn’t start a new journal if it was going to be all about fun). I’m going to get much more serious about my poker playing and enjoyment be damned! I think the idea that I’d never find a part time job as easy or more (potentially) lucrative than playing poker really pushed me towards this decision. I’m sure I could find a job less mentally gruelling, but nowhere near as satisfying.

The remainder of this post will detail how I hope to accomplish some of the new goals I’ve made for myself regarding poker.

The first thing I did, oddly enough, was to take $300+ from my bankroll and deposit it in my personal account. I did this because I could use the money at this very moment, but also because I’ve decided to basically start from scratch at the $25 tables. I also felt it important to start with a bankroll that consisted entirely of my poker winnings and by taking out that $300 I’m assured that it is. It’s just a psychological boost to me. I’ve left exactly $500 into my bankroll, 20x the buy-in. So now I felt I needed to choose exactly where my bankroll needs to be to move up in limits. Because, in theory, each limit up is probably a little tougher, I’ve chosen a progressive buy-in schedule.

$25 tables=20x buyin=$500
$50 tables=22.5x buyin=$1125
$100 tables=25x buyin=$2500
$200 tables=27.5x buyin= $5500
$400 tables=30x buyin=$12000

Next I wanted to figure out a schedule of play that would work for me and give me as many hands as I could get in each month. However, I took into account that playing 6 or 7 days a week would just be too taxing for me. I felt it was important to take some days off during the week instead of playing almost every day as I have been. I finally settled on a 4 days/week schedule. I’ll basically play 4 sessions per week. Each session will be 3 hours. Each session will consist of 4 tables at a time. This comes to roughly 11,500 hands per month (averaging 60 hands per minute). I will play Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And in an attempt to face the weakest competition possible (I have been playing in the afternoon, not a great time to play) I’ll play each session as late in the day as I can. Friday and Saturday I have no problem playing after I get home and staying up until two or three AM (I’m a night owl anyways), but Tuesday and Thursday I’ll have to settle for 6-9:00 PM to make a concession for my real job. At least that’s central time so it’ll be an hour later on the east coast. I may even play a 5th session on Saturday morning or afternoon, but it’s not part of the schedule and I’ll only play if I feel like it. I will not play at all the other three days (a Saturday night session running into early Sunday morning is the exception). I think it’s important that I stay as far away from any serious holdem playing as I can those days to avoid burnout.

But I realize I’m trying something very new to me here, and I’m kind of flying blind, so the above is what I’ll do for awhile, but if I find later on that it’s better for me to maybe add a 5th poker day and shorten my sessions I’ll do that. The really important thing is that I want to get in a minimum of 10,000 hands per month.

Okay so I had my days and buyins set, so now I focused on a withdrawal/bankroll system I wanted to use. Because building my bankroll is more important than withdrawing money for personal use, I’ve decided to “pay” a certain amount of money to my bankroll with winnings. Only after I’ve paid that amount will I be able to take any leftover money for my personal use. At the $25 level I’ve decided on $200/month. That means that the first $200 I win goes into my bankroll and I will not put more than that into it each month. Anything I make over $200 is available for withdrawal. I felt this is a pretty good system because it will keep me motivated to keep playing hands towards the latter part of the month. A best case scenerio (putting in $200 every month and never having to put in less), will get me to the $50 level sometime in early October.

I won’t go into details on what I’ll be doing at each limit as far as bankroll/withdrawals go. I’ll just wait until I near each new limit and consider it at the time, because I’ll have much more information and be able to make much better decisions.

I’ve decided to do away with stud for the time being in any serious way and focus only on holdem. Not to say I won’t play stud on my “off” days, but I no longer have a stud bankroll as I just don’t feel it will make me enough money to consider playing that as a substitute to holdem. As a concession I’ve kept $50 in fun money in my Stars account. I can use it to play very low limit stud, omaha, MTTs or whatever else I feel like playing just for fun. I’ll never use my bankroll to supply more money if I lose it all, but I can use any withdrawn (personal) money if I feel like it.

Ummm...I think that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else anyways. I’m still taking off from poker (except maybe just playing around on my Stars account) until June 1st. That’s when I’ll start this for real.

I actually wanted to post this ahead of time to see if anyone had any suggestions that might help me that I hadn’t considered. I think I can do this, although I know 4 tables for 3 hours will be pretty gruelling at times. But since I have a full time job I’m not sure what else to do to get in enough hands. I don’t want to break it down 3 smaller sessions a day because I’d never stick to that, nor do I want to play every day and not give myself any time off because I’ll burn out very, very quickly.

Anyways (he says as if anyone is actually still reading this) I guess that’s it for now. I’m still not sure whether this will be a weekly journal or what, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t feel like posting (nor have the time) after each session. I’ll just have to see how that goes.

Thanks Snowman!

I forgot to mention bonuses in my first post. I still haven't decided yet what to do with bonuses when they come my way. I may put them toward my bankroll or I may simply withdraw them into my personal account. Either way I want to be careful about getting to a new limit too fast. I still want to make sure that I feel prepared to tackle the next level up and the only way I can do that is to beat the level below it for a decent period of time. Keeping a limit on how fast I can build my bankroll each month may be a way to assure myself of that. I'm not too worried about the $50 tables because I've played there often (and won), but after that I need to be a little more cautious.

Of course after saying all this, I'll probably bust out my bankroll in a month and feel a little silly worrying about winning "too fast".

Also, I don't have a huge bankroll right now anyways, so that's going to limit any chance to get a decent bonus. I'll get what I can, but I'll feel much better when my BR gets high enough so I can start getting maximum bonuses instead of the partial ones that I'll have to settle with for awhile.

...and he's back! Welcome back dude.

I totally understand the balance between playing for enjoyment and playing to make $$. The way I see it, I don't enjoy playing 300-500 hands during the weeknight and 1,000+ on the weekends, but when the $$ comes out of my bankroll when I hit my goals, I think I'll get plenty of enjoyment from that. And I'm sure you'll feel the same way.

Are you going back to UB?

Thanks RR! I'm finally catching up on my BTP reading an I'm sorry you've been going through a bad patch lately. Good for you to keep trudging through it despite that though (it's an example I'll be trying to duplicate when things aren't going so well for me). Here's hoping that your last session (the $50+ win) is a sign of a big turnaround for you!

At the moment I have no real "home" site. I have some of my BR left at Party from before my break, but that doesn't really mean anything either. I'd like to keep as much of my bankroll available as I can to avail myself to what bonuses I can right now (and thanks for the tip Snowman; I'll check out that thread very soon), so I can't stretch my BR out much between different sites as there just isn't very much to stretch at the moment. Eventually, when my BR gets large enough, I'd like to be able to play at a different site each day to keep things as fresh as possible. But I can only do that when I can keep enough money in each site as well as have enough left over in my BR to take advantage of a bonus opportunity that may come up.

Despite Snowman's capital-lettered suggestion *L*, I'm not ruling out UB. I know from experience that it can be as fishy as any site at times, especially on the weekends. I also have to say that since I'll be 4-tabling the mini-view is appealing to me but I can't let something like that be a huge influence to a decision. So I guess the answer to your question about UB is: Probably I will return there from time to time, but I'm not sure when or for what period of time, but it will most likely be on Friday or Saturday nights.

That's not a bad idea. I may move sites once my bonus is cleared and try Paradise, Pacific, or the Tribeca network. But on Friday/Saturday nights, UB has been just as bad as bad can be. I like you approach - move from site to site and keep the majority of your bankroll at Netteller.

Are you going to keep a different PT database for each site, or combine?

When you say "bad as bad can be", does that mean it's a bad time to play (i.e. facing tough or tight competition) or that the players are playing quite badly? It's been quite some time since I've played the weekends at UB (it used to be the time to play) and I'm interested in whether things have changed there. I have $540 in bonus yet to clear there and while I'm reticent about abandoning it completely, I will if it means facing tough or tight competition rather than trying to clear the notoriously slow UB bonus. But if I can clear it some by facing easier competition (and I'm not working on another bonus at the time) I will definitely play there.

The idea about moving sites is hopefully that if I play quite a few, after awhile I'll be able to see what sites are paying me off better than others. Then I can maybe narrow it down to 4 or 5 that pay me off nicely and I'll alternate between them just to keep giving me a new look and feel every so often so it doesn't get stale.

In the beginning, though, I'm hamstrung by my smaller bankroll and my desire to get in plenty of hands. I want to be careful that I don't miss a session just because almost all of my bankroll is "in transaction" from somewhere to somewhere else. I'll probably start out playing Party on my weekday sessions and elsewhere on my weekend sessions (whether it's UB depends on what the answer is to my question at the top of this post ). Once I build up my bankroll a little bit I can test out other waters.

I absolutely intend on keeping only one database for everything. It'd be different if PT didn't let you filter out sites with a click of a mouse, but they make it so easy that I like the idea that I can combine my aliases and keep track of my own game in one place. It would make it easier to find a leak in my game if (or, more probably, when) one pops up. I will, however, only use this DB with the $25 tables. When moving up in limits I'll always make a new DB.

Oh, I mean people calling off stacks with 55 on an all overcard board with broadways facing pot sized bet and raises bad. I mean people trying to bluff people off of boats and wheelhouse straights holding rag two pair type hands bad.

During the week it's still the usual rock fest. Stay elsewhere during the week.

Good deal. I just got the e-mail back from UB and they upped my # of games at a time to 5. So that's one problem taken care of.

At the moment I have $150 in UB, $150 in Party and $200 in Neteller. Not as much as I'd like in Neteller at the moment, but by playing 4 tables at a time I have to assume that at one time or another I will need that extra $50 that I won't be putting in play from the start of sessions. I don't want a situation to occur where I don't have enough in the site's account to play with full stacks at the tables.

Hopefully my holdem goes better than my $.10/.20 stud is going. I'm getting my ass handed to me at the moment. I started off pretty well, winning the first 3 sessions and about $14. Since then I've managed to lose that back plus about $17 more as well. I'd love to blame it on the cards, but while I seem to be getting rivered a lot, I doubt it's more than anyone else. When I do win a hand they aren't very big pots, but when I lose they certainly are. I'm keeping my VP$IP around 25% while the rest of the table is at about 50% combined (of course there are exceptions; people who are even tighter than I am). I'm trying to be aggressive when I do play (because I usually have 3 overcards, three fairly big 3-flush or 3-straight cards or a big pair when I finally do come in; I'm starting to think that getting rolled up trips is a myth that never happens though), but most of the time that accomplishes nothing except getting more money into the pot for the eventual winner.

I may try an experiment where I try to take advantage of the passiveness and looseness "preflop" by calling the small bring in with mediocre cards and call the small 4th street bet with any chance of making a hand so I can see the 5th card cheap. I'm not seeing many 5th street cards right now. It might be an abberation, but those with 60% or higher VP$IP seems to be the biggest winners at this level (though I only have 500 or so hands logged in myself). Tight may be the correct way to go but all I'm doing now is losing most of my antes and when I finally do play I feel like I have maybe a 10% chance to actually win the antes back and then some, and a 90% chance I'll end up losing a lot more than I could ever win. Stud is just a really weird game. I'm looking forward to actually getting those books I ordered so I can read up a little on the game.

But anyways, I'm only talking about stud because I don't have holdem to talk about. I don't really care that I'm losing money in my "fun" account except the embarrassment of losing to not the greatest of players. But I am having fun playing so I guess that's the whole point of that account.

3 more days to go before I start holdem!

Stud is a game where terrible players can survive for a very long time. As such your variance will be higher and your true long-term winrate won't show for a very very very very very long time.

You're doing something very similiar to me, as I'm waiting till June before I return to hold'em games (primarily at least) and in the mean time i've been playing a lot of stud. I hope your luck turns around and I agree that whoring a few casinos sounds like a great idea.

Oops, haven't checked in here a couple days so missed the posts. Thanks for the input guys!

First of all, I've read the casino whoring bonus thread (Snowman suggested it earlier in my journal) and it sounds like a great idea. I'm certainly not against bonus whoring to make extra $$, but the more I thought about it the more I found that I really wanted my entire bankroll to consist of nothing but poker winnings. Yes, it's anal and it may keep me from moving up in limits as quickly as I can, but that's not altogether a bad thing. It'll keep me from making a move before I'm ready. I just want to always be able to look at my bankroll and know that nobody "gave" me any of that money; I earned it by winning. Of course I have absolutely no compunction about bonus whoring and keeping the money for myself. *L* I wish I could explain my mindset about this so it makes better sense, but you probably don't want to get inside my head any more than you need to.

Holdem is quickly approaching and I've been giving my strategy more and more thought. Some things I like but some things, I've come to realize, maybe aren't the best of ideas.

The whole "play every Friday, Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday" thing for starters. I realize there might not be times I really want to play and that's okay. However, it occured to me if I go into a session expecting to lose, or not caring really if I win or lose, it could be a very, very bad thing to force myself to play on that particular day. Even if I don't really feel like playing I must be able to at least go into the session with the idea that I'm playing to win; if I can't summon that up in some way I'd be better off taking the day off instead of sticking to a rigid schedule.

One other concern is the 4-tabling thing. Not that I don't think I can win at 4-tabling (I believe I can, at least at the $25s), but I began to wonder if, right now, the 4 tables will be profitable enough to overcome the aggravation and lack of reads. I feel I'm a pretty good reader of a single table without my focus split. At two tables my reads probably fall even more than 50%. At 4 I only notice a moronic play and rarely anything else (and usually the moron has just busted out on the play I noticed and is gone so that doesn't help). My biggest problem at 4 tabling is actually playing high pairs. During my 4-tabling stint to clear my bonus at Party QQ was by far my biggest loser, followed by JJ. I just am not comfortable making fast decisions against opponents who I have no read (and as a result, usually make the exact wrong decision). 8-10 tablers are probably LOL at me considering 4 tables "fast". But I don't have their experience to quickly get a feel for a table or opponents; it takes me even a little while single-tabling before I'm comfortable with my reads and, as a result, the decisions I make.

So anyways, I guess what that means is that I'm going to start out a little slower than my grand design by two-tabling at the beginning. I still need to learn how to get good reads playing two tables at a time, but that'll be a helluva lot easier to figure out than trying to do the same with 4 tables. I'll work my way up to 4 tables instead of jumping right into it. Of course this means I probably don't have a chance in hell of making the 10,000 hands/month that I wanted to, but I'll probably add a session here and there to get in as many hands as I can. It'll be less taxing if I'm only two-tabling and I think I'll be able to get in quite a few sessions without fear of burning out. I'm keeping my bankroll/withdrawal plan the same though, so it's more likely I won't be withdrawing any money and most, if not all, of it will go to pad my bankroll.

Oh and a few words about stud. Emmasdad, I took your advice even before I happened to read it today. I've still been playing pretty tight stud in the hopes that tight play would eventually turn things around instead of me trying to make something happen by playing looser. I even did it for the very reason you mentioned; developing bad habits that would be hard to break. Over the last 5 sessions I've had 4 winning ones and made back about $12 of what I lost. Yesterday I got one of my stud books (Roy West's one) and though I'm only halfway through it, it's already cleared up a lot of questions I've been having about stud. It's embarrassing, but it seemed like every time he said something to the effect of "lots of low limit players do this and they are just giving their money away" I almost always recognized it as something that I've been doing. Hopefully it'll help tighten up my game even more (especially 4th street and later where I feel I've been giving away too much money by not paying enough attention to the live cards or other player's board cards), but I can't imagine it doing anything except helping my stud game. In fact today I used many of his strategies. I was down $5 quickly when I hit a big two pair and trips (made on 4th street for both), was very aggressive with them and got rivered by straight draws (one the inside variety). But I stuck with a tight game and waited for good opportunites and by the time it was over I'd won back that $5 plus another $6, so I was really happy about that and it helped reinforce to me that you can most definitely win with tight, aggressive play even at this level. I threw away a lot of small, split pairs on third that I normally would've played because I finally learned how important the kicker was, and how bad of a hand small two pairs are, so that saved me quite a bit of money as well. I played hands that when they improved, they were strong hands and was lucky towards the end that they held up (and of course I was then very happy that so many people stayed in chasing their longshot draws against me because they helped me win bigger pots than I lost when I got rivered earlier).

And finally thanks for the good wishes Roy! I've only just gotten a taste of how high variance is in this game. Although I think up until now sub-par play by me is just as big a factor as variance to my losses. Until I started reading West's book I really didn't know how little I knew about playing stud...at that's just a "beginner" book! I'm sure I have a whole lot left to learn, but hopefully one day I'll reach the point where the losses is almost all about variance and very little about bad play.