New year...New challenge

Alright my first post for this year and update from like forever, not even sure where to start from. I could make a really long post of everything that happened to me but I don't feel like doing that and I don't think too many people care about my person life so I will just make an outline. Last year I made roughly $20,000 give or take a little unfortunately had no rake back so missed out on like extra 10-15k but that's ok. I took a bit of a break at the end of the year and barely played any poker and instead bought an xbox and played that for little bit, at first it was definitely fun but after a while I was like meh, my true passion is poker and I needed to start back up. Now I had to start from scratch and build my roll again, and this is where my impatience messed me up. So I put in 50$, lost that fairly quick, perhaps I was too excited to play and at the time I was having a rough time in my personal life so that's probably the reason. Then I decided to start over again with a $50, hit a rough patch and went busto again so I'm thinking what am I doing and wrong. Then I borrowed $100 from a friend quickly built it to an over 1k in like a week, paid him back and yet again went busto because of letting emotions get in my way. Started over from like 30ish got it back up to 350$ish and the other day I completely tilted, I was getting very unlucky but I certainly can blame myself for losing control of myself. I have had times where I would get a little mad but I never got to the point I did the other day, so I took a day off and I'm back to the grind.

Have I improved? Certainly, I hand read better, I improved my strategies, I have a better style, went deep in few really big tourneys already but got a tad bit unlucky at the end, lost few coin flips and a made a mistake or lost with a monster, which happens of course and only thing I can do is just get it in with the best of it and hope it holds up. So I do feel like my game has improved a lot and I know it certainly wasn't because I was getting owned by someone that prevented me from winning, in fact out of all people I have played, I feel like the play was harder on full tilt. So I did learn my lesson, it wasn't the players that stopped me from winning, it was me and I finally faced the facts and am ready to grind once again. I'm not sure why I rushed with a few decent rolls, perhaps I wanted to be playing the higher stakes like I did last year, a lot of my poker buddies are playing at the higher levels and are tearing it up and I'm very happy for them and not jealous by any means, I just wanted to be up there tearing it up myself but I let my emotions prevent me from doing so. I'm a left brained person and I feel like being able to analyze situations very well and not letting my emotions get in the is what makes me such a strong poker player and I need to use that to my advantage. I have analyzed my situation, learned my lesson and I am ready to grind, so therefore I decided to make myself a challenge, and make my BRM a lil bit, I would say strict but a lil more careful, I never been a brm nit and never will be, I just don't have the patience for that and I feel like that will just make me play worse, but instead I will set myself rules that are reasonable and I feel comfortable with.

so what's my challenge? Well my over all goal is to take the T$11 ( tournament dollars) and turn it into 30,000 by the end of the year, it will certainly be kind of hard at first but definitely not impossible, since last year I made 20k in about 6 month and I know now that I'm better than before it will be easier. I'm not going to make the whole guideline like I did last time but instead I will take it one step at a time. So my first step is to turn the 11$ to 50$ just playing at the 1$ level. I will also play the 1.75 18 man omaha h/l sit n gos since I find those very easy to beat and very profitable so I will probably start out taking 3 or so shots at that and hopefully win. Then at 50, I will update and decide what I want to play from there, so right now pretty much 1$ sit n gos and 1$ mtts and maybe short stack 5nl if nothing else goes well.
So overall, I'm feeling great right now, of course I'm dissapointed I blew my roll but I definitely made quite a bit before and I know I can do it again. My mind is clear and strong so no tilting from me again and I'm ready to grind. My personal life is going great again, my gf and I are on same page and doing great so yea time to go grind!!! Oh yea, I will try to not be lazy and update this on regular basis for those of you who actually care and read :)

Haven't updated in forever, sorry

Well someone reminded me about my blog today and I'm like oh wow I forgot about it and decided to go ahead and update it. I guess I will mainly talk about my poker life, Well as far as I remember I didn't post anything about my win in the 33$ 1 rebuy 1 add on tourney last month for 3.5k which was nice. I guess thats where I will start, I cashed out some of it left plenty to build up off, slowly but smoothly builded back up to about 5k. I also had about a 2 week break, which I cameback from like a week or two ago, I think. At first I didn't quite have my "touch" and was having a hard time winning but few days later I won the 75$ stud h/l, the funny part is that was my second stud h/l tourney ever played. Only time I ever played stud h/l was in horse, and I don't really play horse that much. It wasn't really that much but hey for about 3 to 4 hours of work 1750$ is not bad in my opinion. I been doing quite a bit of cashing out last month and little bit this month which is always great and probably means I'm getting better at poker.
I personally think there are 5 steps to becoming a "pro" at poker. I guess I will try to smart here for little bit. First one which is where everyone starts is, of course the beginner, I don't really know anybody that was born and already knew how to play, this step we learn hand rankings, pot odds, percents and outs and stuff like that, basically the math and logic behind poker. Step 2, improving beginner, well we probably fell in love with the game, we are getting sick of losing and we want to actually start winning, we are trying to get better and be able to make good decisions, we still sometimes chase too much, make silly mistakes basically, we do win occasionally but not that much, we want to start winning more. step 3, I think quite a bit of online poker players are on this step, I'm going to call it semi good player, now we are getting the hang of it, we are trying to get rid of our silly calls, chases, tilting, etc. we now know how to win more often, although occasionally we still make those mistakes, maybe because we still don't handle the emotions properly, or maybe we are rushing and being impatient, but we do start winning little here and there, and lose some here and there. Now step 4, I think is one of the toughest steps in my opinion, "solid player", now we are where we start winning quite a bit, probably not enough to live on but pretty decent side money to spend on fun things, laptop, ipod, monitor, tv etc etc. Now we are where we learned all there is about poker, we calculate our odds and outs in few seconds, we start making reads on people, we start really getting deep in hands, we think about hands in all ways possible, we start seeing patterns and stuff like that. We go deep in a lot of tourneys, have small cashes, but like I said now we are on that step where the next step is becoming a pro and playing poker for a living, I'm sure many of us thought, dreamed, tried or w/e to become a pro, not many will have success with this, because not many know what they are getting into. Many people think, well I can get up and go to bed whenever I want, I will win some tourneys and I will be fine, well not really thats not how it works. I'm personally on that step 4, but there are so many things to becoming a pro. Well first of all you need some sort of schedule, you should be playing tourneys that are most profitable for you, but also you need some time for personal stuff, family, kids, etc. Also you definitely need a backup plan, if you just don't have the nerves and just can't handle it, you need some sort of education, so its easier to get a job, of course there is nothing wrong with playing poker on free time, weekends after work, w/e, for little etc money. Also you need money to start with and some money as back up in case you go on a bad run which happens to every poker player at least once during their poker career. Also you need to learn how to become more aggresive and start taking top 3 instead of just trying to make ft, I know a lot of players try to just make ft and then try to get w/e they can get, well to be able to make actual profit, you need to get top 3 places, since they pay the most money, not many have what it takes to take down tourneys, but if you are playing more aggresive that means in some cases you might not even make the final table, that means you need to learn to deal with it and still play your best game in the remaining tourneys if you multi table, which is probably a good idea. This is also where you should be making almost no mistakes unless its just a cooler or bad beat. But yea, I'm kind of tired and kind of sleepy, I hope i made my point. I might have to reread it and rewrite it later.
Other than that I been doing ok, I'm still working on improving my game, I still do make occasional mistakes just from anger problems and sometimes not paying attention, Thats also what i need to do, concentrate more on the game, I tend to do a lot better when im concentrated. I think thats just about it for now, I'm going to go grab a snack and sleep. I will try to start updating this more often, also sorry about being lazy for last month, lol. good night.

Sorry about the hand replayer

I do not know what's wrong with it, I thought I would use it to make it easier to see the hands I played but for some reason there are few problems with it, I will try to figure out later, but thought I would let everyone know, for some reason it doesnt show turn or river, sometiems shows turn but not river, very weird. I apologize but will try to get it fixed hopefully.

Icemonkey special

One of my friends, icemoney is very known for winning hu in one hand so I decided to show that I can do it too, with little bit of luck, hehe.

Moving on up!!!

Had a fairly good today, just took 2nd out of 90 in 3.30 ko and also 10th out of 400 something in 3.30 ko, could of made more $ but I'm still happy with it, lost 10s vs AJ heads up when J came on river, to lazy to get hand history and screen shots and way to tired right now, need to go take a shower and work on my sng article, really have to edit it and see if i missed anything important. I did hit 300$ today, well I just won two 6$ heads up, played a little out of my roll but it wasn't like I was tilting or anything and played a game I was actually really good at, heads up that is, after I finish my sng article I may start one for heads up. Oh and reason I took 10th was because I made a move at wrong time, had A4 on button, CO raised, i was trying to pick up a fairly nice pot so i re raised all in, not because I like a4 but I was just trying to make a move and ran into 10s, not mad about it or anything but I'm glad I do get to move up to 5$ 6$ games. I forgot to take a screen shot of my original roll and when I moved up but here is a screenshot with me at 300$, hope you trust me enough to believe me that I started with 25$ lol, and also I did use my points to help me out a little, but I'm sure I could of got there even without points, just would of took more time. I think thats it for now. Laterz.

You can't bluff me baby

Sick read I had during a heads up.

Kind of a tough handuring the 2$ rebuy

Had to think hard on this one but made right decision, :)