I decided to shut it down for the month a day and a half early because I have crossed the $1000 profit mark and do not want to fall back below my milestone! November '04 is my 21st month in poker and a real breakthrough for me, I made more this month than the previous 20 months combined. I am so happy with the way this month turned out that I wanted to share some of the things that I was doing.
Here's how it broke down:
173 hours .25/.50 NL always 2 tables at once (346 table-hours)
Up $1006.88 $2.91/hr - I don't yet have pokertracker, a project for December
$853 additional in deposit and redeposit bonuses - I discovered www.bonuswhores.com
Basically all I did with my free time this month was play poker
Reading a book by John Feeney called Inside the Poker Mind (2+2 publication), he pointed out is that it is very interesting how people learn poker, as it is usually unstructured, unsupervised, self-taught learning. He points out that often in this chaotic setting, nothing much is learned. After reading that, I set out to play in November with Army boot camp structure. I set strict gudielines then swore to myself I would not deviate from them.
In the past, I played in anything and everything offered at the low limits. Tournaments and cash games in all forms of poker, whatever appealed to me at the momnet. I selected the .25/.50 games at the urging of my good friend Jake (Bob314) who told me the games are very soft.
I also decided to get a tutor. I got Barry Tanenbaum as I like his CardPlayer articles and his posts on UPF, and because of price and availability. This is well worth $100/hr, I really wish I had done this sooner. In my two sessions with him so far, it has been like someone drawing back curtian on something I was trying to see. He has already made me 3 or 4 times the amount of money I have sent to him.
I gave myself reading assignments and set a goal to post and reply here and on UPF with submissions that I would put enough thought into that I felt I could stand by my opinions. And I want to thank you guys for thoughtfully responding to my posts!
I strongly encourage anyone who want to improve to write down your goals and some strict guidelines and don't waver. Make them realistic but challenging.
For December, I am going to continue to play NL, this time at the .50/1 level.
This month I am adding the following:
I am also going to make myself get up and running w/ PokerTracker. I have several technical hurdles, I won't go into them here.
I am going to reread The Theory of Poker cover to cover.
Avoid sugar and caffiene before and duing play sessions. This is a subject nobody ever talks about, but I have recently noticed my concentration is some much better when I am sugar and caffiene free. Couldn't hurt to clean up my diet a bit anyway.
I hope you guys had a great month too! Mike

Hey, congratulations!

Could give a quick run-through of Barry T's tuition, was it e-mail based, phone? Did you basically just get to quiz him for $100 an hour? would you go over specific hands only? How many hours did you hire him? how many hours is 'normal' (probable answer: 'it depends'). An interesting option, depending on your answer I may be tempted.

Good luck next month

Molina

Email me at solobraniff@yahoo.com and I will give you his email, I'm not sure he would want to to post it
He charges $100/hr, I have spoken with him on the phone for two 1-hour sessions so far. He actually quizzed me a good bit at first to get a good feel for where I am at and how he can help the most. He did this via email though, so I did not have to use our session time for him to get to know me. We have talked about general poker topics so far, mostly NL, and how it differs from limit, because most of my reading and study has been about limit. In future sessions we plan to discuss individual hands and or situations more. He will talk with you about anything you want though. He just loves to talk poker.
Mike