2005 Microquests Thread -- Post Your Progress, Setbacks

[bottomset]

I saw this linked, and thought it would be a good time to look back at how far I've came so far

1/7/05
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I was in the process of moving up to 2/4 when i had to get my car fixed, and someother expenses so I had to clear out my BR down to 300BB of .5/1

its been alright so far only about 1000hands, +35BB .. but I don't feel I've been playing good poker


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back to playing .5/1, and no I didn't play good poker back then

3/7/05

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well I have been pretty lazy this yr with poker, I have rebuilt my BR to 350BB of 1/2, and plan on mixing in 6max

I need to start bonus whoring more, and playing more in general .. but its been a fairly successful year so far



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I didn't play much or bonus whore during the first 2months, but ran good at .5/1 .. couple weeks from that I jumped into the 1/2 6max games, and forgot about FR online basically

3/21/05
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for me May3rd is the key, right now I haven't had time to play much with school and work taking up most of my time

I hope to get in 20k hands/month May,June,July,August mostly 6max, and really start bonus whoring, I only have enough time to go 700 to Party reload instead of the full 1k ..



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um I played more during those months, but never near 20k hands in a single month, 90+% at 6max though

4/1/05

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I'm getting comfortable in the 1/2 6max games and they've been really good so far lot better than the reg 1/2 or even .5/1 games

I want to get about 50k in at 1/2 6max and hopefully start taking shots at 5/10 6max late summer



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this was before party 3/6 6max was spread, and I actually thought I would be able to make that sort of jump, my lifetime total of 1/2 6max hands is just under 20k, so I wussed out on that too


5/20/05

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well I had a 200BB downswing at 1/2 6max, and another 100BB at 2/4

so it hasn't been a fun month, I have played way to much nano HU, not enough real games .. and had to resort to playing .5/1 to clear, to regain confidence and play against total idiots again

2/4 6max at stars has been pretty good so far, even with the downswing .. plan on taking a shot at 3/6 when my BR hits 3k


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this was the toughest stretch of my poker career to date, the move up to 2/4 was ill-advised, I struggled there, but it was a very good month for bonuses so I actually built up the BR

June was spent at 2/4 mainly, and at the end of June Party added the 3/6 6max games, and I moved up in the first week they were open, I ran very good in July at 3/6 but didn't log a lot of hands, also at this time I started working with JoeTall which has really helped my game

August/September/Oct were chronicled in my 6k in 60days thread .. November was going to Vegas, running bad losing a fair bit of money but having a very good time, online its been getting comfortable at 5/10 6max, I'm still in the easing into the game phase, where the money amounts still feel extra large, but I did get back into the black a couple days ago .. hopefully for good

I think its amazing how far some of the people have come that orginally posted in this thread, and that should be reassuring to the people who are currently struggling at .5/1, 1/2 or whereever, a lot of us that have moved up went through the exact same thing a while back

as for the remainder of the year, my goal is to become comfortable at 5/10 6max, and have that be my main game for the future, and to start logging a minimum of 15k hands/month

[jaxUp]

not too sure how I missed this whole thread

[detruncate]

I started being more diligent about putting in a reasonable number of hands in Aug. And promptly started losing. Bonuses and occasional forays outside my main games + not having to withdraw much helped, but I was downswinging and not happy.

Segue into a planned vacation to visit family. 3-weeks of poker free existence. I didn't even read any 2+2 for the first 2 weeks. My confidence and desire to improve started to return. I got home ready to have at it. And promptly started losing again.

All told I dropped more than 300 BB at 2/4 and 2/4 6 between Aug and Nov over ~15k hands. I also didn't play nearly enough since I spent so much time trying to keep my [censored] together or recovering from yet another bad session. I'm usually not too bad at dealing with the swings, but this slide killed me. Every time I had a long awaited decent session and started to think I might be headed back in the right direction the bottom fell out. The Party split also didn't help, as my regular game was gone. So I bounced around and tried not to whine too much.

I took a little break at the beginning of Nov, and as of last week I'm back at the Party. I've been 8-tabling the .5/1 tables to try to get my full ring chops back and work on my 8-tabling. Plan is to move back to 2/4 once I shake the rust off and get back to grinding out hands for real, mixing in some shorthanded and 3/6 full sessions in preparation for a long overdue upward move.

I felt comfortable playing full ring 3/6 during my interrupted move up last spring, but when I was thinking about moving up again this summer the introduction of 3/6 6 had happened and I decided to spend time trying to prepare for a move to 6-max instead. It's been rocky, but I can probably fund my shorthanded adventures through full ring play until they start to be more profitable.

I'm also interesting in getting some coaching, which means making enough to pay for it.

This whole process has reminded me of a few things:

1) How happy I am to be so over-rolled

2) Hand volume is the best way to mediate the negative effects of variance

3) Study is great, but I need to be cranking out lots of hands to improve my game -- I'm someone who needs to work through things to really understand them

4) I stalled in my upward climb largely due to giving in to my natural aversion to risk. I allowed myself to get too comfortable. It's a drag that my forced break last spring came after I had moved up to 3/6 but before I considered it to have stuck (I never got back on track after that), but I had plenty of time to read and think and feel I'll be in a good position going forward.

5) It doesn't matter what happened yesterday or last week, or how much you've won and lost before. All you can control is the quality of your next decision. I have known this for a long time but somehow managed to let myself believe otherwise for a while.

Hopefully others are having a more productive Autumn.

Happy pokering.

[tiltaholic]

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not too sure how I missed this whole thread

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fish are unobservant. it's in the genes.

[adsman]

Let's see,

Returned to online poker after a 6 month hiatus in November 2004. Bankroll that had been sitting in party the whole time was around $500. Sat straight back down into 2/4. Oh dear, what a mistake that was. 2500 hands later and I was down 80BB, leaving only about $180 of my bankroll remaining. Moved down to 1/2 and after 1800 hands I was down 30BB, leaving ... well, not very much. Moved down to 0.50/1, and around this time started posting on 2+2 where I had lurked all that time without picking up any real info. It's funny how much a difference in the learning curve there is between lurking and posting.
Realised that I knew nothing about bankroll considerations. From late Janurary until earl August I ground it out at 0.50/1 slowly bringing my bankroll up to $600. Around mid-August I finally made the jump back up to 1/2 and with great fortune, I killed it. For my first 2000 hands I was at 7.9BB/100 hands. (I usually only get in 2000 hands a month due to the fact that I don't multitable.) Things squared around after that and by the end I had played 7000 hands at 1/2 with a 2.6BB winrate.
I then made a post on the forums asking whether I should move up to 2/4 or have a shot at 1/2 6max. The advice I received was to hit the 6max tables. One poster cryptically said that once you tried 6max you wouldn't want to go back. I inwardly doubted that comment at the time.
Moved up to 1/26max and once again landed squarely on my feet. I was made for this game. This was in October. I killed this game that month. 5000 hands, 7.5BB/100 hands. This was fantastic. At this point my bankroll was at very healthy proportions, so I decided to move up to 2/4 full and fix those pesky pokertracker stats that were still in the red from a year ago. 2000 boring hands. -40BB. So much for that. I just find fullring boring after 6max and I find myself trying to "make things happen." Which obviously doesn't work. Thought about this a bit. In October I got rakeback on absolute and they have 2/46max tables there. A lot of people said that they were rock gardens. Well, party 2/4 is a fecking rock garden, I decided to check things out on the 2/46max.

The thing that I have discovered this year. 6max is my home. I just can't at this point go back to full ring. 2/4 6max, first 1000 hands, 17BB/100 hands. What a start. These players are terrible, and they sure aren't rocks.

I read a lot of poker books this year but my best purchase, without any doubt, has been Inside the Poker Mind. That book put a lot of things in perspective for me. I'm not a mathematical poker player, I'm a feeling, psycholgy poker player. ITPM has helped me take my game to a new level.

Goals? Keep pounding up the 6max tables. 3/6 6max is next. I'll put 5000 hands in at 2/4 and then if things are still going well I'll make the jump.

[Reqtech]

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1) Average playing 1000 hands a week.

2) Start multi-tabling up to 4 tables. Currently playing 2 at a time.

3) Build up a 300BB bankroll to move to 2/4 (I plan on skipping 1/2)

4) Play winning poker at 2/4.


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Man, my goals were weak.

1) Playing more like 2000 hands a month.

2) Since I play 6max, I 3 table. 4 is too many for me to handle.

- 3 and 4 changed since I stopped playing full ring around april

3) I didn't skip 1/2...well, at least 1/2 6max.

4) 2/4 6max is now in the rear view mirror. 3/6 is home now [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[car ramrod]

Well, I made it to 2/4 and got past the mental aspect of worrying about the money. I have been playing 3/6 6max and 2/4 for the last 2 months and have been running pretty bad. I still feel confident in the game.

My goal before the end of the year is to take a real shot at 5/10 6max. I have sat a few times, but nothing that constitutes a real shot.

It's funny to read some of the old posts from the beginning of the year, and it's nice to see how well some of them are doing.

[Reqtech]

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Well, I made it to 2/4 and got past the mental aspect of worrying about the money. I have been playing 3/6 6max and 2/4 for the last 2 months and have been running pretty bad. I still feel confident in the game.

My goal before the end of the year is to take a real shot at 5/10 6max. I have sat a few times, but nothing that constitutes a real shot.

It's funny to read some of the old posts from the beginning of the year, and it's nice to see how well some of them are doing.

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I remember thinking about in January how 2/4 seemed like such a lofty goal for me. Now, 2/4 6max on Stars is just automatic.

Funny how it feels like the poker world has evolved (at least in my head). A year ago, I never would have considered playing 6max. Now it seems to me like that is the only way to go it terms of online play.

Hopefully one day I'll be one of those guys that have moved on to 10/20 6max and beyond...

[car ramrod]

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Hopefully one day I'll be one of those guys that have moved on to 10/20 6max and beyond...


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I think you will. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I have sit in a few 5/10 short games and I honestly found some [censored] players. Stats like 50/4/1. I just think table and seat selection is very important when moving up.
Good luck in your future pokering.

[jaxUp]

well, I didn't post in this thread initially, so I feel like I have nothing to update. I will try anyways. When this thread started I was taking a shot at 2/4 for the second time. It turned out well and I ran decently, but soon got sick of it. I only played sporadically through May-July, and wasn't around the forums much. In July I started up again and things continued to go well. I was feeling good about myself and tried to take a shot at 3/6 6max at the end of August with about 1k hands of previous 6max experience. Surprisingly, it went very well. I ended up playing 30k hands by the end of September and decided to have a go at 5/10. It also turned out pretty good and I have played about 40k hands there since then, with a 3:1 mix of 6max and full. To start this month I took a shot at the 10 game, and though feeling good about myself, dumped about 75BBs. so, since then I have moved back to 5/10 and dumped over 100BBs (probably over about 8k hands). I had been having some problems handling the loss at first. I wasn't worried about the $, I just hate losing for a prolonged period of time. Since then, I have decided to just say [censored] it and not worry about it anymore, rather than being a results-oriented nit. I am going to start regularly 4-tabling the 5/10 SH game again, and put more effort into studying. Once I win another couple grand, I will be taking another shot at the 10 game. Before I do that, however, I need to develop better session review, and reading habits.