Normally I’d spare you the details but I feel like sharing today. In my first 10k hands, I’ve run KK into AA three times and had the reverse 0 times. I’ve been set over set twice. And I’ve gotten it aipf with KK against 77 and 88 only to lose both. Those are the only ones I can remember without pulling up hands.

Ok, I just pulled up hands. Ten out of my biggest 12 pots were losers. That’s gotta be a good thing, right? Oh, and 18 out of the 21 biggest pots I’ve played were lost. That makes my insides happy.

The good news is that my last 5k hands were played positively and, even though I believe I was playing +EV the whole time, I think I got a couple more bugs worked out. It looks like I’ll be at 25nl for a while longer.

The Fedex cup is heading to Chicago this week! I wish I was home so I could go. Tiger is going to need to pull of something special to even make it to the tour championship. He for sure needs a top ten, maybe even a top five, just to advance. And he’d really like to win to get him into a solid position to win the entire thing.

Corey Pavin announced his captain picks for the ryder cup this morning. The only surprise was Fowler. I probably wouldn’t have picked him but it’ll be great experience for him and he loves Bubba Watson so I’ll be anxious to see if they’re paired together. It should certainly be entertaining!

It’s hard to tell whether you’re playing bad or just cold when you’re in the midst of a downswing. Especially when you’re making changes to your game, as I am. Are the changes what’s causing the downswing or is it just a case of bad timing?

I’m fairly certain that I’m playing well and the changes I’ve made to my game are going to be beneficial over the long run. First, I’m running 5 buy-ins below EV. Second, I’m getting coolered all over the place. I’m just a couple AKs into AA away from needing a new mouse. And I’m only one KK into AA away. And third, my red line is flat. So I don’t think I’m bleeding money.

Looks like I’ll be at 25nl for quite a while longer.

I’m taking a short break now to clear my head and watch some golf!

**Edit** I Just ran KK into AA for a 300 BB pot. Two hands later I have AcAs with four spades on board and an 80BB pot and my computer froze. I forfeited the pot.

Hello rock bottom. My name is Joey. Nice to meet you.

Rush is really fun and addicting. And there are a ton of positives to it. You don’t have to spend time or brain power trying to keep open however many tables you’re playing. Which is connected to my next point; You don’t have to table select. You’re already playing with all the available players. And it’s very easy to sit out and back in for bathroom breaks.

And as an added bonus, the play seems to be horrible! For months I’ve been wondering what happened to all the recreational players who only play one table and buy-in with 50bbs. Well, they’re all at rush! Granted I’ve only played 2k hands, but thus far rush has been everything I expected it to be and more!

I would like to throw out some goals for the month but I really haven’t given it much thought. Hmmm. And it depends on where I’m going to be playing. I started rush at 25nl to get used to the format and to continue to work on my new lag style. I’d like to move up this month. I’d put the goal somewhere between 40k-60k hands depending on where I spend my time. And I’d like to believe that I’ll crush any goal in that range. But we’ll see.

Although I have a renewed sense of excitement towards poker, my run bad is still in full swing. I finished today three buy ins below EV. I’ll post graphs and stats after I have logged more hands…

So I’m back in Florida. Yay.

We’re pretty much all settled in to our new place, which is becoming really nice. And I’ve finally started to work out again.

But really I’m just bored and unhappy with life. I don’t know what to do to feel productive. I’ve been reading a lot. I haven’t started playing poker again, because I hate it. How anyone plays online poker full time I’ll never understand. It must really take a certain kind of person to enjoy sitting alone behind a computer screen doing the same thing day after day. After day. After day.

Oh, and someone stole the back wheel off my bike yesterday. So, thanks for that.

But I know that’s a horrible way to think and I’m trying to shake it. I started up my first session today at 50nl and about 200 hands in my computer shut down on me. I have been getting this error sporadically for a couple years and sometimes it happens every time I turn my computer on and sometimes I’ll go months without seeing it.

So, the error shut me down and I decided to just quit as it was apparent that I’m not really ready for 50nl. It’s just astonishing to me how different 50nl plays than it did a couple years ago.

Four years ago, while I was studying abroad in Australia, I deposited $1200 in a Full Tilt account after taking a hiatus from poker. I started at 50nl and it played the way 10nl plays now. It was just funny how bad the play was. I quickly moved through 50nl to 100nl and then to 200nl where I stayed. In the five months I was in Australia my roll was above 10k.

My point is that 50nl now plays tougher than 200nl did back then. I’m going to watch some more videos and try to play more tomorrow because I think there’s a lot to be learned by simply playing. I binked 1.5 BIs in my 200 hands today running AA into QQ and hitting a flush draw. So I was happy to just quit.

It was kind of funny though, four or five regs I played with at 25nl I played with at 50nl today. I guess we all moved up at the same time!

Because I’m not going to play today I’m going to come in a little short at 37.5k hands this month. But I’m still pretty proud of the volume as it’s the best I’ve done in a long time and it’s my first month back.

Here’s my month at 25nl. I finished +$158.08 which is .84 BB/100. My all-in EV for the month is at $397.48 which would have been 2.11 BB/100. But oh well…

Take a look at the same graph with showdown/non-showdown winnings added.

That black line is when I dropped down to 9 tables. I was astonished by what happened to my non showdown winnings. I guess 9 tables is my lucky number. If I add more I start to play poorly post flop, apparently. Here’s all the data for me while I was 9 tabling.

Overall, it was a good month. The second half in particular was really solid. I started to do a lot of things well that I hadn’t done in the past. In the first half of the month I was more concerned with quantity of hands and it shows in the quality of my play. I feel good about 9 tables and next month I’m going to try to stretch my daily session to 2500 hands instead of 2000.

I am also going to watch Verneer’s climbing micro mountain series and I plan on taking a shot at 50nl next month. However, I’m moving in a couple days and my family is coming to town so I’ll be out of commission for a little while.

When I planned on playing a full month at 25nl I thought a $500 month would be very solid. And I would have gotten there easy if I ran at EV. Oh well, boo hoo. I still came pretty close.

I won $158.08. I cleared $60 in bonuses. And I earned approximately $212 in rakeback. Bringing my total to $430.08.

I’m just doing so many things well that it feels weird. Like I said, I’m table selecting like crazy which I wasn’t doing during the first half of the month. I’m taking notes and marking fish with purple tags. When I step away from my computer I don’t bring any emotional baggage with me or let my results affect my mood. And the thing that I’m now doing that I’ve never done before… I don’t look at my results during a session! I just play as well as I can for as long as I can, which is about 3 hours.

Since I’ve been doing all these things I’ve been winning at 3.16 BB/100 and my EV is at 4.44 BB/100. The sample size is only 14k hands though. And I’m definitely not running well. I’m 4 buy-ins below EV for those 14k hands and 10 buy-ins below EV for the month.

I’ve got another 5k hands to play this month to make 40k. So I’m going to try to play 2500 tomorrow and Thursday so I can spend Friday packing up all my stuff and cleaning the apartment because I move on Saturday.

I’ve also been trying to widen my opening range from late position. My numbers are way too tight. I used to like playing from a tight image because it’s easy to play from. You can take advantage of light three bets all day long. However, I was just folding away money and I’m working on opening up my range a little.

Unfortunately I’m still running poorly. I played really well today and got it in good or flipping every time (except one) and finished a couple buy-ins below EV. Which brought me to over 9 buy-ins below EV for the month.

The only problem I’m really struggling with now is my eyes! I can’t figure out how to keep my eyes from hurting. After about three hours I have a headache and my eyes will hurt for the rest of the day. This can’t be good.

I’m moving at the end of the month (just across town) and my dad and brother are coming to help out. Then I’m going home for a couple weeks so August won’t be a big month for me volume wise. So at least I’ll hit 40k this month!

I’m definitely still improving too, which feels nice. Each session I pick up on a couple more things. And only playing 9 tables at a time is definitely helping me.

I’ve played 25.8k hands this month and I’m shooting for 40k which I should do fairly easily.  And depending on how the rest of the month goes I may take a shot at 50NL or I may just stay put until I’m crushing 25nl through a larger sample size and while playing more tables. I really feel like watching Verneer’s climbing micro mountain series could help me plug a bunch of leaks but I’m too cheap to pay for a membership when I’ll get one for free after this month.

I’m really not sure about what to do about my eyes either. I can’t play for longer than about 3 hours because looking at the computer screen for that long puts so much effing strain on my eyes. *brag* I have excellent vision too, better than 20/20. ~20/13 vision meaning I can see at 20 feet what a person with 20/20 needs to be 13 feet away to see */brag*.  Could I possibly be causing long term damage to my eyes?

My girlfriend and I saw Toy Story 3 over the weekend and we both loved it. We were both crying by the end. Those Pixar guys are amazing. I watched that special on msnbc or cnbc a couple weeks ago about Pixar and it was pretty incredible how they got it so right on their first try in a media that had never been done before. Toy Story was their first full length film and it was a home run! Nay, a grand slam!

I’m also hearing some incredible stuff about inception that’s peaked my interest. It’s supposed to be “mind blowing”. I’ll definitely have to check it out.