Developing a game plan, need some Help plz!

[adam61]

There may be a great article or post about this but some basic searching didn't reveal it. Basically I want to figure out a good way to continue to improve my game, slowly but surely raise stakes, and take some out as profit so it feels like I'm making some money. So it's a mix of a strategy question and a bankroll management question.

Little history about me. Early on in the poker boom I started playing, around the time the first WPT aired. I played for a little over a year. Played over 200,000 hands at .5/1 1/2 2/4 and a little 3/6. I also played about 500 MTTs and 5000 SNG STTs. I always kept it pretty low stakes, but on my original $500 I left with $4000 in profit, and about $700 in books and software paid for with poker profit. Totalling around $4500 in gains. I left because of a mix of getting burned out and just a lot going on with a new job and such.

So fastforward to now, I took about 8 months off and now I've been back around a month. I put $1000 in, played a little 1/2 to get my feet wet. When I had 300BB I switched to 2/4 and turned my $1200 into $2000 and that's where I'm at now. I generally play 4 tables comfortably, I feel like that's optimum for me, any more and it'd be overstimulation any less and I'm losing EV and it feels slow.

So the question really is, what should I do to improve, what limit is a good limit to spend a long period of time at both building bankroll and taking out some profit (I'm thinking 50/50). In the medium-term I'd really like to turn poker into something I'm good at, that's fun, and that nets around $1000 a month average. In the long-term who knows. So both on a specific level (how many BBs to move up, where to stop for a while etc) and on a general level(risk tolerance, comfort at certain stakes) where should I be heading.

Thanks a lot I appreciate your help.

[smoore]

Read SSHE by Miller a couple times. (Re)read TOP by Sklansky.

Read and reply to the Small Stakes forum here.

Use pokertracker to figure out what you did wrong in certain hands.

Sounds like you shouldn't play as much as you used to, since that burned you out.

RE bankroll: find the level you can beat handily and take profit for a few months. When you feel up to it, "learn" to beat the next level up. Don't expect profit for awhile.